BOOKS.
LEONARDO DA VINCI.*
WAS the genius of Leonardo complete or fragmentary I Like all things connected with this marvellous man, the enigma awaits solution. We can point to unfinished pictures, 3tatues never carried out, great projects abandoned, and end- less speculations not put to the test of practice. "The Adora- tion of the Magi" is unfinished ; one version of the "Virgin with St. Anne" remains an incomplete cartoon. The Sforza equestrian statue was never cast, and was knocked to bits by the archers of Louis XII. The cartoon prepared for the wall painting of the battle of Anghiari set the artistic world of Italy in a blaze of enthusiasm, but a chemical failure in the actual painting caused the artist to abandon the work, which soon perished. The projected engines of war which were to make the Duke of Milan invincible seem never to have been made. So one can go on enumerating the failures. Looked at in another way, Leonardo achieved greater and more definite results than almost any other man. One most definite and far-reaching achievement was to entirely revolutionise_ the whole art of painting. In fact, modern painting begins with him. The Florentines had learnt to draw with admirable precision, but their passion for form ran chiefly in the direction of outline and silhouette. Leonardo appeared, and saw that painting could express form in the third dimen- sion as well as in height and breadth, so he taught Florence, Italy, and the world that by the use of shadows modelling could be achieved, and a whole new instrument of expres- sion was put at the disposal of artists. This discovery was of the most far-reaching kind, and for the first time mysterious depths and vague suggestions appear in pictures. No pictures painted before his time had those haunting quali- ties of sentiment and subtle realisation of roundness which we see in the "Mona Lisa," the "Bacchus," or the "St. John." It is true that art before the time of Leonardo had been growing freer by degrees ; but there came a change as great as it was sudden when he painted the "Last Supper" at Milan. For the first time absolute freedom of form, of gesture, and of arrangement had been accomplished, and hence- forth the old order changed, and the primitives disappeared, and gave place to the Sistine and the Stanze. It was not merely that Leonardo set afloat new ideas which stimulated other men. If the quantity of his painting is small, nothing can exceed it in quality. He taught others not only by enunciating laws, but by practice. Nowhere else is there such unconstmint without pose as in the composition of the " Lest Supper."
Of all men, Leonardo was the most absolutely original. He seems to have no artistic ancestors ; he stood as much alone in relation to art as he did to society. Cut off by the circum- stance of his birth from the family of his father, who was a notary in the country town of Vinci, he lived alone, and without family ties, to the end of his life. The author of the book before us says that "in the five thousand sheets of manu- script he left us, never once does he mention a woman's name, except to note, with the dryness of a professed naturalist, some trait that has struck him in her person: Giovannina 'ias a fantastic face ; she is in the hospital at Santa Caterina.' This is typical of his tantalising brevity." And yet it was this man who was above all things occupied with feminine beauty
• Leonardosda Vinci: Artist, Thinker, and Man of Science. From the French ot Eugene tants. London W. Heinemann. Ws.] and character. The truth seems to be that Leonardo was an example of intellectual detachment, combined with a bound- less curiosity. It is this passion for research into natural things which makes him at once the forerunner of modern science and the most interesting of artists. To really appre- ciate the genius of the man one has to study his drawings, which reveal his endless versatility and freshness of point of view. In them we find the same mental detachment as in his geological speculations, for the mind which had grasped the fact of the vast antiquity of the earth, was equally free and untrammelled in his perceptions of beauty.- In a highly interesting part of this book in which he deals with the scien- tific theories of Leonardo, M. Miints says:—
"He does not condescend to discuss the Biblical tradition as to the date of the Creation ; his estimates proceed by hundreds and thou- sands of centuries. Neither is he embarrassed by the most appalling ideas of distance. After assigning to the accumulations formed by the Po a duration of two hundred thousand years, he prophesies that all the rivers which now fall into the Mediterranean will end by being tributaries of the Nile, and that the latter will have its mouth at the Straits of Gibraltar, just as the rivers Which once fell into the gulf of the Po are now affluents of the Po itself."
M. Miintz has gathered together some of the religious expres- sions found in Leonardo's various writings. These sayings point to a lofty and philosophical religion joined to a high morality, which, if not of such deep piety as the faith of Michelangelo, was infinitely in advance of the superstitious reverence almost entirely divorced from morals which was so common at the time. In one of his writings the sage says: "The supreme wisdom of God led him to choose those laws of movement which were in closest agreement with abstract and metaphysical reasoning." The mind which spoke thus, and reasoned freely as to the antiquity of the earth in an age of orthodox chronology, was not likely to be much indebted to artistic predecessors, either ancient or modern. It is to Nature alone that he turns for inspiration. Yet in no sense is Leonardo a materialist; his writings breathe as deep a spirituality as do his pictures. Indeed, he seems a sage who attained to a cosmic con- sciousness which enabled him to see into the heart of things. His was a mind which had so entered into communion with Nature by patient and infinite study, that it enabled him to announce in one of his manuscripts, "The sun does not move," anticipating Copernicus. Equally he could reveal to us with his brush mysteries of the human heart in a way that no words could effect. Beside these profound and mysterious powers, his intelligence conceived, among other mechanical devices, the parachute and screw propulsion. After such achievements over such a wide field it seems absurd to think of Leonardo's work as unfinished ; rather, few men have done so much. From all the great figures of the Renaissance he stands apart, unlike any one, yet influencing them all.
M. Miintz certainly deserves our gratitude for the survey he has given of this wonderful man. He shows a wise dis- regard of the prevailing fashion, which always denies the authenticity of pictures and drawings at the mere fancy of the critic. The book is filled with illustrations, the number and excellence of which are quite astonishing. As Leonardo exhibited all his best qualities in his drawings, and as drawings are capable of nearly perfect reproduction, this book with its three hundred illustrations is of exceptional value. The drawings in the Royal Library at Windsor have been largely used. M. Miintz says that there are six times more drawings there by Leonardo than in all the rest of the European collec. tions put together.
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