Modesty and Vanity
(By Leonardo da Vinci)
We possess pictures enough of this great master, says Grimm,[i] to prevent us from considering the accounts of the magic of his art as empty exaggeration. We are ever inclined to be incredulous. Leonardo’s paintings, however, possess such a charm, that the truest description falls far short of them. We should scarcely consider them possible, if we did not see them with our eyes. He possesses the secret of letting us almost read the beating of the heart in the countenance of those whom he represents. He seems to see nature in constant holiday brightness, and never otherwise. Our feelings become gradually so deadened, that perceiving the same loss among our friends, we at length believe, that the fresh spring-like appearance of nature and life, which opened before us so long as we were children, was only the delusion of happiness, and that the dimmer light in which they appear to us subsequently, affords the more true view. But let us step before Leonardo’s finest works, and see if the dreams of ideal existence do not appear natural and significant! As splinters of metal are drawn to the magnet as it moves through iron filings, and adhere to it in a thousand fine points, while the grains of sand fall powerless away, so there are men, who, passing through the lifeless throng of constant intercourse, carry away with them, involuntarily, only the traces of the genuine metal in it, in this following their nature alone, which absorbs it on every side. They are rare privileged men to whom this is awarded. Leonardo belonged to these favoured ones of fate.[i]
THE END OF THE MEDIÆVAL EPOCH
While Leonardo was in his prime the period usually marked as terminating the Middle Ages was passed. Recent students are much less disposed than were students of the earlier generation to emphasise the division of past time into epochs; and of course it cannot be too often emphasised that the year 1492 marked no decisive turning-point in the estimate of contemporary minds. Nevertheless, the close of the fifteenth century has by common consent been regarded as marking the culmination of that intellectual development in Italy which has long been spoken of as the Renaissance. Scholars of to-day are fond of pointing out that the real re-birth of culture began away back in the eleventh and twelfth centuries; and we have seen how far this new development had progressed in the time of Dante and Petrarch. Nevertheless, despite the illogicality of such divisions, classifications of time, like the minor classifications of the zoölogist, have utility as aids to memorising and to vivid presentation of the facts of history, that make them all but indispensable. And doubtless the popular mind at least will long cling to the term “Renaissance” and apply it more particularly to that great final development of the graphic arts which reached its culmination late in the fifteenth and early in the sixteenth century and which had such exponents as Leonardo, Michelangelo, Raphael, and their minor confrères.
It is quite impossible to attempt anything like an elaborate discussion of the culture of this period within present spatial limits. We can at best glance at the work of the great central figure of the epoch, Michelangelo, and, letting him typify the period, content ourselves with scarcely more than mentioning the names of his great contemporaries.[a]
THE AGE OF MICHELANGELO
Michelangelo
(1475-1564)