PRESENT STATE OF THE PICTURE.

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mixture of pitch, mastic, and plaster, and some other ingredients. It was smooth and perfect in appearance, but the picture seems to have completely peeled off in patches a very few years after it was painted.

The younger Richardson may be said to have been the last observer of the original picture, that is, before it had undergone its first process of repair. The interesting book of the two Richardsons, on the Pictures and Drawings of Italy, was published in 1722, and the remarks of the younger are important as those of the last traveller who saw the picture in its original state. He says, "It is excessively ruined, and all the apostles on the right hand of the Christ are entirely defaced; the Christ and those on his left hand appear pretty plain, but the colours are quite faded, and in several places only the bare wall is left." He remarks, also, "They have nailed the Emperor's arms over the Christ's head so low that it almost touches his hair, and hides a great part of the picture." The door below, which appears to have been there when the picture was originally painted, was enlarged by the monks, and the legs of some of the figures were cut away in the alteration. Such was the condition to which this celebrated picture was reduced within two centuries of its production; and the work of final obliteration was completed by the restorers.

Since Richardson's visit the picture has twice undergone the process, not of cleaning only, but of repainting, if we are to believe the general report, though the remains have been watchfully cared for since 1807. We are forced to judge of the work therefore from copies, and fortunately several early ones are preserved; that possessed by the Royal Academy in London, by Marco d' Oggione, being probably, on the whole, the most valuable. It is in oil-colours of the original size, and was painted about the year 1510, for the refectory of the Certosa of Pavia, and in all probability was known to

Leonardo himself, as he was again much in the north of Italy after his appointment of court-painter to Louis XII. in 1507. As it is to copies, or prints, that we now of necessity must have recourse, in order to comprehend the character and merits of this celebrated picture, which marked an era in the history of painting, it is safer to review an old copy made by one of Leonardo's own scholars, and for people well acquainted with the original in its perfect state, than to trust to any of the more modern versions, made after the decay of the original picture, whatever may be their superiority of execution.

Sentimental and abstract representations, with little real imitation or comprehensive objective truth, were those characteristically made by the painters of the fifteenth century: they realised a sentiment or a passion, without substantially presenting all the various natural incidents and appearances necessarily associated with its real existence; all these minor accessory matters were conventionally unnecessary. So the broad outlines of a passion sufficient to identify it were nearly all that were expressed by painters generally; and even the human form itself was only intelligibly represented, according to the commonest individual standard. Still, much that was excellent was constantly displayed in the pictures of the fifteenth century, yet almost exclusively in the province of sentiment.

Leonardo da Vinci was one of the first of the Italians who discriminated between nature and convention, and discovered that the individual and generic character of the human form were distinct; and that individualities required to be generalised before an adequate ideal representation could be achieved. He further demonstrated that perfection of representation could never be attained by sacrificing the physical to the sentimental: body and mind required equal cultivation. Thus in his works we observe

already that enlargement of style which characterises the cinquecento, or sixteenth-century development of art, in Italy, from the quattrocento, or fifteenth-century, art.

may be almost termed the inventor of chiaroscuro, or the treatment of light and shade as an art.

Chiaroscuro became the most remarkable feature of Leonardo's style, and of his school in Lombardy all his subsequent works, and especially the portrait known as "Mona Lisa del Giocondo," or "La Belle Joconde," in the Louvre, are chiefly distinguished for the same quality.

The merit of his celebrated " Cenacolo" consists, however, of something more than what may be termed technical excellencies; its highest qualities are those of expression. The accessories, indicating the supper, and the grouping, are all subordinate to the one great aim of expressing the consternation of honest men on hearing the words, "One of you will betray me!" The power of expression was not new to Italian art, but the combination of the highest class of mental character, with a grandeur of development of the physical, was new; and in so far Leonardo anticipated his subsequent more fortunate rivals by nearly a generation. This great oil-picture of the Dominican convent at Milan. was commenced, possibly, before Raphael was born even, and certainly more than twenty years before Michelangelo's celebrated "Cartoon of Pisa" was exhibited in Florence. These are the facts which mark Leonardo's high position in the history of art. As a teacher, too, he was great. The studies still extant which he had prepared for his pupils show what a patient and painstaking instructor he was.

The Ducal Academy of Milan, which eventually exercised so much influence upon the painters of Lombardy, had been established by Leonardo about 1485; and many distinguished painters were educated in this academy. Even the school of Venice submitted to its influence, in adopting

the Milanese character of light and shade, as evinced by Giorgione and his imitators. Traditionary forms were superseded by more natural; and not the least of Leonardo's remarkable services was the diligence with which he devoted himself to the study of anatomy. He attended the demonstrations of Marcantonio della Torre at Pavia, about 1490, and made many minute pen-and-ink drawings of the parts of the human body. These studies were doubtless made exclusively to assist him in his own teaching; they have now no artistic value-they are too small and fragmentary—but many of the sketches are perfect in style, identical with the best efforts of Michelangelo or Raphael, and even in a scientific point of view they show the observation of some parts which were supposed, in the history of anatomy, to have been discovered only a century later: some of his sketches, however, are occasionally physiologically incorrect. Three volumes of these drawings, originally in one, are preserved in the Royal Collection at Windsor. There is no space here to enumerate the works of Leonardo; many are attributed to him, but very few can be authenticated. His pictures can never have been numerous, as he was not only fastidious and dilatory, but excessively laborious in his preliminary studies, and also much occupied in scientific pursuits, theoretically and practically: his hydraulic works were extensive.

Leonardo's peaceful and useful labours in Milan were, however, suddenly arrested by the invasion of Lombardy by Louis XII. of France and the flight of Ludovico il Moro, in 1499. Ludovico had given Leonardo a small vineyard near the Porta Vercellina, in the spring of that year, but he appears to have been otherwise ill provided for, and he was compelled to seek his fortunes anew in the world. He, however, retained this piece of ground and built a house upon it, which, with a portion of the land, he bequeathed to

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his scholar Salai; and the remainder to his faithful servant De Vilanis. It was sold after Leonardo's death for their benefit.

Having spent a few months with his friend and scholar Francesco Melzi at Vaprio, Leonardo set out, in 1500, with Fra Luca Paciolo, the mathematician, for Florence. Louis's Gascon archers had destroyed the model of his colossal statue of Francesco Sforza.

The portrait of the Donna Lisa, the wife of Francesco del Giocondo, and which occasionally occupied Leonardo for four years, appears to have been now commencent Florence; but in 1502, Leonardo was acting in the Romagna as engineer to Cesare Borgia, the Pope's general, who had been created Duke of Valentinois by Louis XII. In 1503 we find him again in Florence, when he commenced his cartoon of the "Battle of Anghiari," by order of the Gonfaloniere Soderini, for the decoration of one end of the Council Hall in the Palazzo Vecchio; Michelangelo's "cartoon of Pisa" was prepared for a picture for the opposite end of the same hall. These cartoons were completed and exhibited in 1506; but the pictures were never carried out, and the original cartoons have been destroyed, though parts of both designs are preserved.

In 1507 he was again in Milan, and was then appointed court-painter by Louis XII. Much of his time was now spent near Milan, especially on works of irrigation and navigation; and he was occasionally also, for short intervals, at Florence.

His first visit to Rome was made in the year 1514, in company with Giuliano de' Medici. His stay, however, in the Eternal City was very short. Leo X. had commissioned him to execute some work in the Vatican, and as he had resolved to paint it in oil-colours, he made the necessary preparations; these were seen by the Pope, who, mistaking