Famous European Artists

by Sarah Knowles Bolton

"Flora," a beautiful woman in blue drapery, holding a flower in her left hand, believed by many to be a portrait of Diana of Poitiers, is at the Hague, where the Hollanders call it "Frivolity" or "Vanity." Leda, the bride of Jupiter, with the twins, Castor and Pollux, "playing among the shell-chips of their broken egg," is also at the Hague.

Probably the celebrated La Vierge aux Rochers ("The Virgin among the Rocks") was painted at this time. Of this Théophile Gautier says, "The aspect of the Virgin is mysterious and charming. A grotto of basaltic rocks shelters the divine group, who are sitting on the margin of a clear spring, in the transparent depths of which we see the pebbles of its bed. Through the arcade of the grotto, we discover a rocky landscape, with a few scattered trees, and crossed by a stream, on the banks of which rises a village. All this is of a color as indefinable as those mysterious countries one traverses in a dream, and accords marvellously with the figures. What more adorable type than that of the Madonna! it is especially Leonardo's, and does not in any way recall the Virgins of Perugino or Raphael. Her head is spherical in form; the forehead well developed; the fine oval of her cheeks is gracefully rounded so as to enclose a chin most delicately curved; the eyes with lowered eyelids encircled with shadow, and the nose, not in a line with the forehead, like that of a Grecian statue, but still finely shaped; with nostrils tenderly cut, and trembling as though her breathing made them palpitate; the mouth a little large, it is true, but smiling with a deliciously enigmatic expression that Da Vinci gives to his female faces, a tiny shade of mischief mingling with the purity and goodness. The hair is long, loose, and silky, and falls in crisp meshes around the shadow-softened cheeks, according with the half-tints with incomparable grace."

This picture was originally on wood, but has been transferred to canvas. There are three pictures of this scene; the one in the collection of the Duke of Suffolk is believed to be the original, while that in the Louvre is best known.

Of the Virgin seated on the knees of St. Anne, now in the Louvre, Taine says, "In the little Jesus of the picture of St. Anne, a shoulder, a cheek, a temple, alone emerge from the shadowy depth. Leonardo da Vinci was a great musician. Perhaps he found in that gradation and change of color, in that vague yet charming magic of chiaroscuro, an effect resembling the crescendoes and decrescendoes of grand musical works."

"St. John the Baptist," in the Louvre, is one of the few pictures, among the many attributed to Leonardo, which critics regard as authentic. "St. Sebastian," now in the Hermitage in St. Petersburg, was purchased by the Tsar of Russia in 1860, for twelve thousand dollars.

When the French were driven out of Lombardy, Da Vinci left Milan, in 1514, and, taking his devoted pupils, Salaï, Francesco Melzi, and a few others with him, started for Rome, whither Michael Angelo and Raphael had already gone. Leo X. was on the papal throne: he cordially welcomed him, and bade him "work for the glory of God, Italy, Leo X., and Leonardo da Vinci." However, the pope gave him very little to do. "The pontiff," says Vasari, "was much inclined to philosophical inquiry, and was more especially addicted to the study of alchemy. Leonardo, therefore, having composed a kind of paste from wax, made of this, while it was still in its half-liquid state, certain figures of animals, entirely hollow and exceedingly slight in texture, which he then filled with air. When he blew into these figures he could make them fly through the air, but when the air within had escaped from them they fell to the earth.

"One day the vine-dresser of the Belvedere found a very curious lizard, and for this creature Leonardo constructed wings made from the skins of other lizards, flayed for the purpose; into these wings he put quicksilver, so that when the animal walked the wings moved also, with a tremulous motion; he then made eyes, horns, and a beard for the creature, which he tamed and kept in a case; he would then show it to the friends who came to visit him, and all who saw it ran away terrified."

When the pope asked him to paint a picture, Leonardo immediately began to distil oils and herbs for the varnish, whereupon the pontiff exclaimed, "Alas! this man will assuredly do nothing at all, since he is thinking of the end before he has made a beginning to his work." It is supposed that Leonardo painted for Leo X. the "Holy Family of St. Petersburg," with the bride of Giuliano de Medici as the St. Catherine.

Louis XII. of France having died, the brilliant young Francis I. succeeded him January 1, 1515, and soon after won back Lombardy to himself in battle. At once Leonardo, who had been painter to King Louis while in Milan, joined himself to Francis, not wishing to remain in Rome. He was received by that monarch with the greatest delight, and given the Château of Cloux with its woods, meadows, and fish-ponds, just outside the walls of the king's castle at Amboise. Here he abode with his dear pupils, who were content to live in any country so they were with Da Vinci; and was allowed a pension of seven hundred crowns of gold and the title of Painter to the King.