suggesting successive improvements, might therefore, and most probably did produce in him an opinion that his own most laboured pieces were far from being finished to that extent of beauty which he wished to give them; and these sentiments of them he might in all likelihood be frequently heard to declare. Comparing his productions, however, with those of other masters, they will be found, notwithstanding this assertion to the contrary, as eminent in this particular also, as for the more valuable qualities of composition, drawing, character, expression, and colouring.
About the same time with this of la Gioconda, he painted the portraits of a nobleman of Mantua, and of la Ginevra, a daughter of Americus Benci[i53], much celebrated for her beauty; and is said to have finished a picture of Flora some years since remaining at Paris[i54]; but this last Mariette discovered to be the work of Melzio, from the circumstance of finding, on a close inspection, the name of this last master written on it[i55].
In the year 1503, he was elected by the Florentines to paint their council-chamber. The subject he chose for this, was the battle against Attila [i56]; and he had already made some progress in his work, when, to his great mortification, he found his colours peel from the wall[i57].
With Leonardo was joined in this undertaking, Michael Angelo, who painted another side of the room, and who, then a young man of not more than twenty-nine, had risen to such reputation, as not to fear a competition with Leonardo, a man of near sixty[i58]. The productions of two such able masters placed in the same room, begun at the same time, and proceeding gradually step by step together, afforded, no doubt, occasion and opportunity to the admirers and critics in painting to compare and contrast with each other their respective excellencies and defects. Had these persons contented themselves simply with comparing and appreciating the merits of these masters according to justice and truth, it might perhaps have been advantageous to both, as directing their attention to the correction of errors; but as each artist had his admirers, each had also his enemies; the partisans of the one thinking they did not sufficiently value the merit of their favourite if they allowed any to his antagonist, or did not, on the contrary, endeavour to crush by detraction the too formidable reputation of his adversary. From this conduct was produced what might easily have been foreseen; they first became jealous rivals, and at length open and inveterate enemies [i59].
Leonardo’s reputation, which had been for many years gradually increasing, was now so firmly established, that he appears to have been looked up to as being, what he really was, the reviver and restorer of the art of painting; and to such an height had the curiosity to view his works been excited, that Raphael, who was at that time young, and studying, thought it worth his while to make a journey to Florence in the month of October 1504 [i60], on purpose to see them. Nor was his labour lost, or his time thrown away in so doing; for on first seeing the works of Leonardo’s pencil, he was induced to abandon the dry and hard manner of his master Perugino’s colouring, and to adopt in its stead the style of Leonardo [i61], to which circumstance is owing no small portion of that esteem in the art, to which Raphael afterwards very justly arrived.
His father having died in 1504 [i62], he in consequence of that event became engaged with his half-brothers, the legitimate sons of Pietro da Vinci, in a law-suit for the recovery of a share of his father’s property, which in a letter from Florence to the Governor of Milan, the date of which does not appear, he speaks of having almost brought to a conclusion [i63]. At Florence he continued from 1503 to 1507 [i64], and in the course of that time painted, among other pictures of less note, a Virgin and Child, once in the hands of the Botti family; and a Baptist’s head, formerly in those of Camillo Albizzi[i65]; but in 1508, and the succeeding year, he was at Milan, where he received a pension which had been granted him by Lewis XII. [i66]; and in the month of September 1513, he, in company with his scholar Francesco Melzi, quitted Milan[i67], and set out for Rome (which till that time he had never visited), encouraged perhaps to this resolution by the circumstance that his friend Cardinal John de Medicis, who was afterwards known by the assumed name of Leo X. had a few months before been advanced to the papacy[i68]. His known partiality to the arts, and the friendship which had subsisted between him and Leonardo, held out to the latter a well-founded expectation of employment for his pencil at Rome, and we find in this expectation he was not deceived; as, soon after his arrival, the Pope actually signified his intention of setting him to work. Upon this Leonardo began distilling oils for his colours, and preparing varnishes, which the Pope hearing, said pertly and ignorantly enough, that he could expect nothing from a man who thought of finishing his works before he had begun them [i69]. Had the Pope known, as he seems not to have done, that oil was the vehicle in which the colours were to have been worked, or been witness either to the almost annihilation of the colours in Leonardo’s famous picture of the Last Supper, owing to the damp of the wall, or to the peeling of the colours from the wall in the council-chamber at Florence, he probably would have spared this ill-natured reflection. If it applied at all, it could only be to a very small part of the pursuit in which Leonardo was occupied, namely, preparing varnish; and if age were necessary to give the varnish strength, or it were the better for keeping, the answer was in an equal degree both silly and impertinent; and it is no wonder it should disgust such a mind as Leonardo’s, or produce, as we find it did, such a breach between the Pope and him, that the intended pictures, whatever they might have been, were never begun.
Disgusted with his treatment at Rome, where the former antipathy between him and Michael Angelo was again revived by the partisans of each, he the next year quitted it; and accepting an invitation which had been made him by Francis the First, he proceeded into France[i70]. At the time of this journey he is said to have been seventy years old[i71], which cannot be correct, as he did not live to attain that age in the whole. Probably the singularity of his appearance (for in his latter years he permitted his beard to grow long), together with the effect which his intense application to study had produced in his constitution, might have given rise to an opinion that he was older than he really was; and indeed it seems pretty clear, that when he arrived in France he was nearly worn out in body, if not in mind, by the anxiety and application with which he had pursued his former studies and investigations.
Although the King’s motive to this invitation, which seems to have been a wish to profit by the pencil of Leonardo, was completely disappointed by his ill state of health, which the fatigues of his journey and the change of the climate produced, so that on his arrival in France no hopes could be entertained by the King of enriching his collection with any pictures by Leonardo; yet the French people in general, and the King in particular, are expressly said to have been as favourable to him as those of Rome had been injurious, and he was received by the King in the most affectionate manner. It was however unfortunately too soon evident that these symptoms of decay were only the forerunners of a more fatal distemper under which for several months he languished, but which by degrees was increasing upon him. Of this he was sensible, and therefore in the beginning of the year 1518, he determined to make his will, to which he afterwards added one or more codicils. By these he first describes himself as Leonardo da Vinci, painter to the King, at present residing at the place called Cloux, near Amboise, and then desires to be buried in the church of St. Florentine at Amboise, and that his body should be accompanied from the said place of Cloux to the said church, by the college of the said church, and the chaplains of St. Dennis of Amboise, and the friars minor of the said place; and that before his body is carried to the said church, it should remain three days in the chamber in which he[Pg xlviii] should die, or in some other; he further orders that three great masses and thirty lesser masses of St. Gregory, should be celebrated there, and a like service be performed in the church of St. Dennis, and in that of the said friars minor. He gives and bequeaths to Franco di Melzio, a gentleman of Milan, in return for his services, all and every the books which he the testator has at present, and other instruments and drawings respecting his art: To Baptista de Villanis, his servant, the moiety of the garden which he has without the walls of Milan; and the other moiety of the said garden to Salay his servant. He gives to the said Francesco Meltio the arrears of his pension, and the sum of money owing to him at present, and at the time of his death, by the treasurer M. Johan Sapin; and to the same person all and singular his clothes and vestments. He orders and wills, that the sum of four hundred crowns of the sum which he has in the hands of the chamberlain of
