The care and science of the draughtsmanship is as noticeable as the richness of the design. The perspective being carefully given as of figures actually seen above the eye-line, and with all the sumptuousness and the mixed elements of the design there is a certain restraint and monumental severity which preserves its dignity.
Rubens, when at Mantua in 1606, was struck by the splendour of the work, and gave a Rubensesque rendering of one of the compartments, which is in the National Gallery; but it loses the peculiar dignity, serenity, and decorative character of Mantegna's work in the somewhat florid and bumptious style of the late Flemish master; but there is no doubt that Rubens entertained a real admiration for the work, and was instrumental in getting Charles I. to purchase it.
Among Mantegna's chief works may be named "La Madonna della Vittoria," now in the Louvre, painted as an altar-piece for the church built by the Marquis of Mantua, to commemorate his victory on the retreat of Charles VIII. from Italy; the Crucifixion, also in the Louvre, containing the artist's own portrait in the half-length figure of the soldier seen in front; the fine allegory of the Vices flying before Wisdom, Chastity, and Philosophy; and the beautiful Parnassus, which were painted for Isabella d'Este, and filled panels in a room in her palace at Mantua, as has recently been discovered. Mr. Armstrong has had a fine large scale model of one side of this room set up in the South Kensington Museum, to show the effect of the decorations complete of Mantegna's allegories (represented by copies). One must not forget either the wonderful Circumcision, at Florence, or, in our own National Gallery, the Virgin and Child enthroned.
Besides his paintings there exists a multitude of drawings, designs, and plates of his own engraving (an art which he took up when he was sixty years old). These include the fifth, sixth, and seventh compartments of his own "Triumph of Julius Cæsar."
Perhaps the greatest individual mind of the Italian Renascence was Leonardo da Vinci, who was so distinguished in so many different departments of thought and art; and while he summed up and passed beyond the philosophical and scientific knowledge of his age, and experimented in nearly all directions, and was at once architect, chemist, engineer, musician, poet, his fame still rests upon his achievements in painting, which are distinguished by a peculiar refinement, extreme finish, and intellectual and poetic quality. He was born at Vinci, from which he takes his name, near Florence—that Athens of the Middle Ages—in the lower Val d'Arno, on the borders of the territory of Pistoia. His father was an advocate, not rich, but able to give his son the advantage of the best instructors in the science and art of that period. He studied under Andrea Verrocchio (famous for his superb bronze equestrian statue of the Coleoni at Venice), himself uniting the arts of sculptor, chaser in metal, and painter. There is a story that Leonardo as a youth was set to paint an angel in a picture of Verrocchio, and so outdid his master that the latter never touched painting again.
A weird fantastic vein which appears in Leonardo's work, especially in his love for inventing grotesques, comes out in the tale of the fig tree. A peasant on his father's estate cut down an old fig tree and brought a section of the trunk to have something painted upon it for his cottage. Leonardo determined to do something terrible and striking—a beautiful horror which should rival the mythical Medusa's head (which he afterwards painted), and, aided by his natural history studies and the reptiles he collected, he produced a sort of monster or chimera which frightened his father into fits and was therefore considered too good for the peasant's cottage, and afterwards sold for much. The peasant was persuaded to give up his fig tree and put off with a wooden shield painted with a device of a hart transfixed with an arrow.
In a letter to the Duke of Milan, who had invited him to his court, he thus recites his qualifications as an artist: "I understand the different modes of sculpture in marble, bronze, and terra-cotta. In painting, also, I may esteem myself equal to anyone, let him be who he may."
Of his paintings the widest-known, through engravings, is "The Last Supper," which was painted on the wall of the refectory of the Dominican Convent of the Madonna delle Grazie at Milan, occupying two years, from 1496 to 1498—but the fresco has suffered by time and restoration, and but little of it is now left. There is a fine study of the head of Christ.
Brogi Photo.]