'I have been told that I have not done justice to Lionardo in this short sketch. I give in an abridged form the accurate and appreciative analysis of the man and his work in Sir C, and Lady Eastlake.'—Kugler. It is stated that the versatility of Lionardo was against him. He attempted too much for one man and one life. An additional impediment was produced by his temperament, 'dreamy, perfidious, procrastinating,' withal desirous of shining in society. His ideal of the Lord's head is the highest that art has realised. The apostles' heads are among the truest and noblest. The countenances of his Madonnas are full of ineffable sweetness and pathos. 'At the same time he analysed the monstrous and misshapen, and has left us caricatures in which he seems to have gloated over hideousness half human, half brute. He altered and retouched without ceasing, always deferring the conclusion of the task which he executed with untiring labour and ceaseless dissatisfaction.' The wonder is not that he should have left so little, but that he left enough to prove the transcendent nature of his art. 'There is nothing stranger in history than the fact that his great fame rests on one single picture—long reduced to a shadow—on half-a-dozen pictures for which his hand is alternately claimed and denied, and on unfinished fragments which he himself condemned.' Lionardo was too universal to be of any school.
INDEX.
FOOTNOTES:
Note 1:[ (return) ] It is in their unconsciousness and earnestness that a parallel is drawn between the first Italian painters and the Elizabethean poets. In other respects the comparison may be reversed, for the early Italian painters, from their restriction to religious painting, with even that treated according to tradition, were as destitute of the breadth of scope and fancy attained by their successors, as the Elizabethean poets were distinguished by the exuberant freedom which failed in the more formal scholars of Anne's reign.
Note 2:[ (return) ] Kugler's Handbook of Art.
Note 3:[ (return) ] While writing of goldsmiths that became painters, I may say a word of a goldsmith who, without quitting his trade, was an unrivalled artist in his line. I mean Benvenuto Cellini, 1500—1571, a man of violent passions and little principle, who led a wild troubled life, of which he has left an account as shameless as his character, in an autobiography. Cellini was the most distinguished worker in gold and silver of his day, and his richly chased dishes, goblets, and salt cellars, are still in great repute.
Note 4:[ (return) ] Kugler's Hand-book of Painting.