THE YEAR OF BIRTH OF LEONARDO DA VINCL
(TO THE EDITOR OP THE "SPECTATOR."J
SIR,--The reviewer of M. Merejkowski's romance, " The Fore- runner," in the Spectator of August 9th, corrects the author's chronology by the statement that the birth of Leonardo da. Vinci " is now known to have taken place about 1461." The date of Leonardo's birth is proved by an entry in a list of the household of his grandfather, Antonio da Vinci, made for taxing purposes in 1457 (see Gaye's " Carteggio Inedito d'Artisti," L, 223) : " Lionardo, son of the above-mentioned Ser Piero, illegitimate, son of him and of Caterina, now the
wife of Accattabriga di Piero del Vacca of Vinci, 5 years." Leonardo, if five years old in 1457, must have been born in 1452. This is the date accepted by Milanesi in his edition of Vasari, and by all the more recent works which deal with Leonardo. I would instance Professor Uzielli's " Ricerche intorno a Leonardo da Vinci" (1896), p. 38, and also the mono- graphs by Dr. Mfiller-Walde, Dr. Richter, M. Searlles, M. Mentz, and Herr Rosenberg. A landscape drawing in the Uffizi—the authenticity of which has never been called in question—is dated " the day of S. Mary of the Snow, the 5th day of August, 1473." The inscription shows that he had already adopted the method of writing from right to left. Moreover, in the year 1472 his name appears in the Red Book of debtors and creditors as a member of the Guild of Painters of Florence. It would be difficult to reconcile these facts with the suggestion that he was born in 1461.-1 am, Sir, &c.,
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