Drawings of Leonardo da Vinci [by Charles Lewis Hind]

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DRAWINGS OF
LEONARDO DA VINCI

DRAWINGS OF THE

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DR/WINGS OF
LEONARDO DA

VINCI

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LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

PLATE

PROFILE OF A WARRIOR . . . Frontispiece

PORTRAIT OF ISABELLA D'ESTE i

STUDY OF AN OLD MAN n

STUDY OF DRAPERIES FOR KNEELING FIGURES . in

STUDY OF A BACCHUS iv

HEAD OF A MAN v

BATTLE BETWEEN HORSEMEN AND MONSTERS . vi
WOMAN SEATED ON GROUND AND CHILD

KNEELING vn

STUDIES OF HEADS vm

YOUTH ON HORSEBACK ix

STUDIES FOR THE EQUESTRIAN STATUE OF

FRANCESCO SFORZA x

}^THE VIRGIN, ST. ANNE AND INFANT ... xi

STUDIES OF CHILDREN , xii

THE COMBAT xm

STUDY FOR A MADONNA xiv

STUDIES FOR "THE HOLY FAMILY" ... xv

STUDIES FOR "THE LAST SUPPER" .... xvi

COURTYARD OF A CANNON-FOUNDRY . . . xvn

STUDY OF THE HEAD OF AN APOSTLE . . . xvm
STUDY FOR BACKGROUND OF "THE ADORATION

OF THE MAGI" xix

STUDY OF LANDSCAPE xx

STUDY OF A TREE xxi

TWO HEADS. CARICATURES xxn

ST. JOHN THE BAPTIST xxm

THE HEAD OF CHRIST xxiv

CARICATURES xxv

HEAD OF AN ANGEL xxvi

STUDY OF A MAN'S HEAD xxvn

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

PLATE

STUDIES OF HANDS .... . xxvm

DRAGON FIGHTING WITH A LION .... xxix

MAN KNEELING xxx

PORTRAIT STUDY xxxi

STUDIES OF ANIMALS xxxn

PORTRAIT OF LEONARDO, BY HIMSELF . . . xxxni

SIX HEADS OF MEN AND A BUST OF A WOMAN xxxiv

STUDY OF A HEAD xxxv

THE ST. ANNE CARTOON xxxvi

STUDIES OF HORSES xxxvn

HEADS OF A WOMAN AND A CHILD . . . xxxvm

STUDY OF DRAPERY FOR A KNEELING FIGURE . xxxix

KNIGHT IN ARMOUR XL

STUDY OF A YOUTHFUL HEAD XLI

STUDY FOR "LEDA" XLII

HEAD OF AN OLD MAN XLIII

STUDY OF A HEAD XLIV

STUDY OF THE HEAD OF ST. PHILIP FOR "THE

LAST SUPPER" XLV

STUDY OF DRAPERY XLVI

GIRL'S HEAD XLVII

STUDIES OF A SATYR WITH A LION XLVIII

THE DRAWINGS OF
LEONARDO DA VINCI

BY C. LEWIS HIND

EONARDO DA VINCI found in drawing the readiest
and most stimulating way of self-expression. The
use of pen and crayon came to him as naturally as
the monologue to an eager and egoistic talker. The
outline designs in his " Treatise on Painting " aid
and amplify the text with a force that is almost
unknown in modern illustrated books. Open the pages at random.
Here is a sketch showing " the greatest twist which a man can
make in turning to look at himself behind.'* The accompanying
text is hardly needed. The drawing supplies all that Leonardo
wished to convey.

Unlike Velasquez, whose authentic drawings are almost negli-
gible, pen, pencil, silver-point, or chalk were rarely absent from
Leonardo's hand, and although, in face of the Monna Lisa and The
Virgin of the '^pcks and the St. Anne^ it is an exaggeration to say that
he would have been quite as highly esteemed had none of his work
except the drawings been preserved, it is in the drawings that we
realise the extent of " that continent called Leonardo." The in-
ward-smiling women of the pictures, that have given Leonardo as
painter a place apart in the painting hierarchy, appear again and
again in the drawings. And in the domain of sculpture, where
Leonardo also triumphed, although nothing modelled by his hand
now remains, we read in Vasari of certain " heads of women
smiling."

" His spirit was never at rest," says Antonio Billi, his earliest
biographer, " his mind was ever devising new things." The rest-
lessness of that profound and soaring mind is nowhere so evident as
in the drawings and in the sketches that illustrate the manuscripts.
Nature, in lavishing so many gifts upon him, perhaps withheld con-
centration, although it might be argued that, like the bee, he did
not leave a flower until all the honey or nourishment he needed was
withdrawn. He begins a drawing on a sheet of paper, his imagina-
tion darts and leaps, and the paper is soon covered with various

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THE DRAWINGS OF LEONARDO DA VINCI
designs. Upon the margins of his manuscripts he jotted down
pictorial ideas. Between the clauses of the " Codex Atlanticus "
we find an early sketch for his lost picture of Leda.

The world at large to-day reverences him as a painter, but to
Leonardo painting was but a section of the full circle of life.
Everything that offered food to the vision or to the brain of man
appealed to him. In the letter that he wrote to the Duke of Milan
in 1482, offering his services, he sets forth, in detail, his qualifications
in engineering and military science, in constructing buildings, in
conducting water from one place to another, beginning with the
clause, " I can construct bridges which are very light and strong
and very portable." Not until the end of this long letter does he
mention the fine arts, contenting himself with the brief statement,
" I can further execute sculpture in marble, bronze, or clay,
also in painting I can do as much as any one else, whoever he be."
Astronomy, optics, physiology, geology, botany, he brought his
mind to bear upon all. Indeed, he who undertakes to write upon
Leonardo is dazed by the range of his activities. He was military
engineer to Caesar Borgia ; he occupied himself with the construc-
tion of hydraulic works in Lombardy ; he proposed to raise the
Baptistery of San Giovanni at Florence ; he schemed to connect
the Loire by an immense canal with the Saone ; he experimented
with flying-machines ; and his early biographers testify to his skill
as a musician. Painting and modelling he regarded but as a moiety
of his genius. He spared no labour over a creation that absorbed
him. Matteo Bandello, a member of the convent of Santa Maria
della Grazie, gives the following account of his method when
engaged upon The Last Supper. " He was wont, as I myself have
often seen, to mount the scaffolding early in the morning and work
until the approach of night, and in the interest of painting he forgot
both meat and drink. There came two, three, or even four days
when he did not stir a hand, but spent an hour or two in contempla-
ting his work, examining and criticising the figures. I have seen
him, too, at noon, when the sun stood in the sign of Leo, leave the
Corte Vecchia (in the centre of the town), where he was engaged
on his equestrian statue, and go straight to Santa Maria della Grazie,
mount the scaffolding, seize a brush, add two or three touches to a
single figure, and return forthwith."

Leonardo impressed his contemporaries and touched their imagi-
nations, even as he captivates us to-day. Benvenuto Cellini describes
King Francis as hanging upon Leonardo's words during the last
years of his life, and saying that " he did not believe that any other
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THE DRAWINGS OF LEONARDO DA VINCI

man had come into the world who had attained so great a knowledge
as Leonardo." Everybody knows Pater's luminously imaginative
essay on Leonardo, and scientific criticism has said perhaps the last
word upon his achievement in Mr. McCurdy's recent volume, and
in Mr. Herbert P. Home's edition of Vasari's " Life." As to the
drawings, Mr. Bernhard Berenson, in his costly work on " The
Drawings of the Florentine Masters," has included a catalogue
raisonne, has scattered lovely reproductions through the pages, and
placed his favourites on the pinnacle of his appreciation. In the
manuscripts, with their wealth of sketches in the text, one realises
the tremendous sweep of Leonardo's mental activity. Some are still
unpublished, but the Italian Government promise a complete edition
of the MSS. at an early date. His " Treatise on Painting " is easily
accessible in Dr. Richter's " Literary Works of Leonardo da Vinci "
— that wonderful treatise which begins : " The young student
should, in the first place, acquire a knowledge of perspective, to
enable him to give every object its proper dimensions : after which,
it is requisite that he be under the care of an able master, to accustom
him, by degrees, to a good style of drawing the parts. Next, he
should study Nature, in order to confirm and fix in his mind the
reason of those precepts which he has learnt. He must also bestow
some time in viewing the works of various old masters, to form his
eye and judgment, in order that he may be able to put in practice
all that he has been taught." Chapter ccxxx. in the section on
" Colours " is entitled " How to paint a Picture that will Last Almost
for Ever." In view of the present condition of The Last Supper at
Milan, fading from sight, Leonardo was wise to insert the word
" almost." He is constantly giving the reader surprises, and not the
least of them is the series of " Fables " from his pen, included in
Dr. Richter's edition of his literary works.

One authentic portrait of Leonardo by his own hand exists — the
red chalk drawing in the library at Turin. Dating from the last
years of his life, it shows the face of a seer, moulded by incessant
thought into firm, strongly marked lines. The eyes lurk deep
beneath shaggy brows, the hair and beard are long and straggling —
it is the face of a man who has peered into hidden things and who
has pondered deeply over what he discerned. The beard is no longer
" curled and well kept," in the words of a contemporary document,
wherein he is described as " of a fine person, well proportioned, full
of grace and of a beautiful aspect, wearing a rose-coloured tunic,
short to the knee, although long garments were then in use."

Mr. Berenson has suggested that the youth in armour, who alone

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THE DRAWINGS OF LEONARDO DA VINCI
among all the figures in Leonardo's Adoration of the Magi in the
Louvre turns away from the scene and looks towards the spectator,
is a portrait of Leonardo himself. Botticelli reproduced his own
features in a figure similarly placed in his Adoration of the Magi.

The largest collection ot Leonardo da Vinci's drawings is in the
Royal Library at Windsor Castle. They are not accessible to the
public in general, but under certain conditions they may be examined.
Other collections are in the Louvre, the British Museum, the Uffizi,
the Royal Library at Turin, the Venice Academy, and in the port-
folios of private collectors such as M. Bonnat of Paris, and Dr. Mond
of London. The drawings in the Print Room of the British
Museum, which are easily available to students, include the remark-
able Head of a Warrior in profile, from the Malcolm Collection,
which is reproduced in this volume. This beautiful and minutely
finished head and bust in silver-point belongs to Leonardo's early
period, when he was still under the influence of his master, Verrocchio.
Indeed, there is a resemblance between this arrogant warrior and the
head of Verrocchio's statue of Colleoni at Venice ; it has been
suggested by Dr. Gronau that this profile represents an effort of the
pupil to show Verrocchio the manner in which he would have handled
the task. Be that as it may, this drawing is a striking example of
how, in the hands of a master, the most profuse and detailed decora-
tion can be made subservient to the main theme. The eye follows
with delight the exquisite imaginative drawing in armour and helm.
Nothing is insistent ; nothing is superfluous. Every quaint and
curious detail leads up to the firm contour of the face. Leonardo
saw the theme as a whole, and the decorator's ingenuity has
throughout remained subservient to the artist's vision. It is War
quiescent, as Rodin's famous group is War militant. The British
Museum also contains a sheet of those grotesque heads, specimens of
which are reproduced in this volume, horrible faces of men and
women grimacing and screeching at one another, with protruding
lips and beak-like chins, looming from the discoloured paper. In a
drawing at Milan there are two sketches of a combat, a man on
horseback fighting a grotesque animal, that are startling in their
power of arrested movement. There are also drawings of fearful
wild-fowl, dragons, and the like, snarling at one another and making
frightful onslaught. Critics have tried to explain the reason why
Leonardo gazed into these gulfs, but the explanation is probably
nothing more than the fertility and fecundity of his imagination.
The grotesque and the terrible often have an attraction for gifted
minds, forming a relief from the endless quest after beauty and the
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THE DRAWINGS OF LEONARDO DA VINCI

physical strain of living continually on the heights. Rossetti com-
posed verses that arc not included in his collected works. A distin-
guished living writer has confessed that the byways of his leisure
are brightened by the study of criminology. The late Arthur Strong,
commenting on the grotesques by Leonardo da Vinci at Chatsworth,
contributes this curious and interesting theory : " His method was
akin to the geometry of projection. Just as the shadow of a circle
is an ellipse, so by projecting the lines of a human face of a certain
marked type he was enabled to detect and exhibit, as in a shadow,
the secret but most real kinship between the bete humaine and the
dog, the ape, or the swine, as the case might be. In a sheet of
drawings at Windsor we see the same process applied to the head of
a lion until it quickens into a lower canine form."

The late librarian of Chatsworth also comments upon the copies
and forgeries of drawings by Leonardo da Vinci that abound at
Chatsworth, as in other collections. The process of sifting the
pictures ascribed to Leonardo may be said to be complete. John
William Brown, in the Appendix to his life of Leonardo, published
in 1828, catalogues nearly fifty pictures from the hand of the master.
Mr. McCurdy, in his study of the records of Leonardo's life, has
reduced that generous estimate to ten. There is still considerable
disagreement about some of the drawings, but there are enough
indubitably authentic, a bewildering variety indeed, for all practical
purposes of study, and to proclaim the abounding genius of this
flame-like Florentine, whose mind was a universe and who " painted
little but drew much " with " that wonderful left hand." The fact
that Leonardo was left-handed, with the result that the shading of
his drawings usually runs from left to right, and not from right to
left, should be evidence, as Morelli and others have pointed out, of
the authenticity of those drawings whose lines of direction run from
left to right. But this test is far from perfect, as it is the first
business of a forger to study mannerisms. Many of the drawings
bear comments in his handwriting, which also usually ran from right
to left, the famous letter to the Duke of Milan being an exception.
A pen-drawing in the Uffizi has, in the lower part, a note from
which the beginning has been torn away. The words that remain
are : "... bre 1478 ichomiciai le 2 Vgine Marie," which may be
interpreted, "October 1478, I began the two of the Virgin Mary."

Most of the drawings are made with the pen, others are in chalk
and silver-point. In the well-known Isabella d'Este of the Louvre
there are traces of pastel, and some of the sketches of drapery are
drawn on fine linen with a brush.

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THE DRAWINGS OF LEONARDO DA VINCI

One of Leonardo's earliest drawings, if not his first attempt, is
the landscape dated 1473 in the Uffizi, done when he was twenty-
one years of age. It is signed, and these words are inscribed in the
left-hand top corner : " The day of S. Mary of the Snow, the fifth
day of August, 1473."

Another drawing that can be assigned to a period is the sketch
in pen and ink of a youth hanging from a rope with his hands
fastened behind his back. This unfortunate was Bernardo Bandini,
who was hanged for the murder of Giuliano de Medici in 1479.
It is supposed that Leonardo was commissioned to paint a picture
of the execution, and that he made the drawing of Bandini as a
preparatory study. Leonardo was nothing if not conscientious. On
the margin of the sketch, which is in the possession of M. Bonnat,
is this note describing Bandini's costume : " Small tan-coloured cap,
black satin doublet, lined black jerkin, blue coat lined with fur of
foxes' breasts, and the collar of the cloak covered with velvet speckled
black and red ; Bernardo di Bandino Baroncelli ; black hose."

As we turn over and examine the diversified drawings by
Leonardo da Vinci, we are continually reminded of the passion that
draughtsmanship was to him. Pen and pencil bear witness that his
mind was never at rest. He drew for the love of it ; his hand raced
to obey the thronging pictures that his brain conceived, and he drew,
not necessarily as a preparatory stage for the making of a picture,
but because draw he must. Despite the hundreds of drawings that
remain as examples of his industry, there are no studies extant for
the Monna Lisa, although it has been suggested that the hands from
the Windsor Collection reproduced in this volume were preparatory
sketches for the marvellous hands of that third wife of a Florentine
official upon whose head all " the ends of the world are come."
Critics differ on this point, but there is no difference of opinion as
to the beauty of Monna Lisa's hands. " The right hand," says
Mr. McCurdy, "is perhaps the most perfect hand that was ever
painted."

Probably many of the sheets of drawings of children, women,
cats, and lambs were for Madonna pictures that have been lost or
destroyed. He was never content with the stereotyped and con-
ventional arrangement for a sacred picture, such as satisfied Francia.
He was ever curious, as well as a seeker after beauty, and life being
his province, he loved to intrigue the human element into a Madonna
and Child motive. The Child playing with the cat, hugging a
lamb, learning his lessons at his mother's knee, numbers of them
testify to Leonardo's direct and large-hearted humanity. With him

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THE DRAWINGS OF LEONARDO DA VINCI

the Child is always a child, acting like a child. In a drawing in
the British Museum he clutches a protesting cat in his chubby arms,
while the mother smiles — the eternal, personal smile of Leonardo
that haunted him, as it fascinates us. In another drawing the Child
is dipping a chubby hand into a bowl of porridge, and again the
Mother smiles — the enigmatic, persisting smile of Leonardo. There
are no fewer than twenty-seven drawings of animals on one sheet at
Windsor. The majority are cats, but in some instance his imagina-
tion has invented a hybrid animal to which no name can be given.
In a drawing at Milan the Child is apparently receiving a lesson in
geometry — one of Leonardo's special studies. "He is entirely
wrapped up in geometry, and has no patience for painting," writes
a correspondent to Isabella d'Este in reply to a letter from her
asking what Leonardo was doing. " Since he has been in Florence,"
continues the correspondent, " he has worked only on one cartoon.
This represents an infant Christ of about one year, who, freeing
himself from his mother's arms, seizes a lamb, and seems to clasp it."
There is no record that these pictures of the Child with cat or
lamb, or dropping his hand into a bowl of porridge, were ever
finished ; but the drawings were seen by the young Raphael, who
drew inspiration from them. It is curious to turn from these imagi-
native designs to the literal study of a tree, searched out as carefully
as Leighton's drawing of a lemon-tree, but so much bolder and so
much more confident in treatment ; or to that drawing that might
have been produced in an engineer's office, showing a number of
nude figures lifting a heavy cylinder by lever-power, probably a
design dating from the period when he held the post of military
engineer to Cassar Borgia. During his residence at Pavia, when,
among other activities, he constructed the scenery for a kind of
masque produced in honour of the marriage of Gian Galeazzo with
Isabella of Aragon, and on another occasion arranged a tournament,
he also designed an apparatus of pulleys and cords to convey the relic
of the Sacred Nail to a different position in the Cathedral. The
sketch is inscribed, " In the Cathedral for the pulley of the Nail of
the Cross."

Moderns who try to paint without first undergoing the drudgery
of drawing for some years in the schools should ponder over
Leonardo's studies of the nude, reading at the same time the chapters
on "Proportion" in his "Treatise on Painting." What whole-
hearted pre-occupation in his work the following extract shows ! It
is entitled " Of studying in the Dark, on first waking in the Morning,
and before going to Sleep." " I have experienced no small benefit,

THE DRAWINGS OF LEONARDO DA VINCI

when in the dark and in bed, by retracing in my mind the outlines
of those forms which I had previously studied, particularly such as
had appeared the most difficult to comprehend and retain ; by this
method they will be confirmed and treasured upon the memory."

Flowers, trees, and wings he studied with the same fidelity and
felicity that he gave to hands and drapery. He was for ever pre-
paring and experimenting, for ever storing and developing his mind,
for ever increasing the cunning of his hands, as if life were endless.
His sixty-seven years of activity were all too short for this giant,
who excelled in every worthy pursuit of mortals except commerce
and politics. A Florentine poet of the Quattrocento, who knew
Leonardo in his early manhood, described him as the man who
"perhaps excels all others, yet cannot tear himself away from a
picture, and in many years scarce brings one to completion." His
mind was continually putting forth fresh shoots. We can imagine
him, before beginning to paint the wings of the angel in his picture
of TAe Annunciation in the Louvre, studying the ways of birds at rest
and in flight, and considering the problem of the possibility of man
ever achieving the conquest of the air. Such ideas never came to
fruition, but there is a passage in his writings, written in a moment
of exaltation, when he had vision of man floating on pinions in the
ether, and himself as inventor and originator of the triumph. In
that moment of vision of a perfected Santos-Dumont, Leonardo
wrote : " He will fill the universe with wonder and all writings with
his fame, and will give deathless renown to the nest which witnessed
his birth."

Through all his dreams, through all his scientific, human, and
grotesque imaginings, he never ceased from the quest of beauty, that
obsession of the true artist, which he expressed so often in the faces
of his women, their hair and hands, in the looks of children, in the
fall and fold of draperies, and in the figures of armed knights setting
forth to tourney or to battle. One only has to recall the face of
St. Anne in the Louvre picture, the curling, plaited hair about the
head of Leda in the Windsor drawing, the strange sexless charm of
the smile of St. John the Baptist in the Louvre picture, Monna Lisa,
the " sceptical " angel in The Virgin of the Rocks, and the head of
St. Philip in the Windsor drawing, to be impressed again by the
enigmatic beauty, always new, never palling, that Leonardo gave to
the world. In the cartoon of the Virgin and Child with St. Anne
which hangs in the Diploma Gallery at Burlington House, one of
the nation's greatest treasures, which so few Londoners ever visit,
this country possesses a characteristic and unapproachable Leonardo.
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THE DRAWINGS OF LEONARDO DA VINCI

It differs materially from the picture in the Louvre, the heads of the
Virgin and St. Anne being nearly on a level ; St. Anne is gazing at
the Virgin, not at the Child, her hand is upraised, the finger points
upwards, and the Baptist is included in the composition. But in
each the face of St. Anne has the Leonardo inward, extenuating
smile, suggesting that attribute of aloofness of which the mediaeval
schoolmen write. The upward-pointing hand of St. Anne is almost
identical with the motion of St. Thomas's hand in The Last Supper
at Milan, and with the hand of St. John in the Louvre. Comparing
the Diploma Gallery cartoon with the finished picture in the Louvre,
and with the sketch at the Venice Academy, we realise the years
of labour that Leonardo gave to a picture before he would call it
finished. One of the drawings of drapery reproduced in this volume
is an exquisite study for the garment that enfolds the Virgin's limbs
in the Louvre picture.

The series of heads of women reproduced in these pages show
again his love of hair, either flowing or in plaits, or confined in
strange and delicate head-dresses about the sweet, severe brows.
And always the eyes of his women are cast down, an attitude that
he rarely gives to his men, whose heads often have a touch of carica-
ture, a hint, but never pushed to the extreme that he allowed himself
in the grotesque.

In the bust of a woman in profile at Milan we have a sketch
that in the unflattering presentment of a likeness is akin to his
remarkable drawing of Isabella d'Este, now in the Louvre. The
firm contour of the face, the thin nose and round, protruding chin,
the long neck and ample bosom, betoken that on this occasion his
eye, not his imagination, held the mastery. But the drawing of
Isabella d'Este is larger in conception, and this grave and simple
presentment of a distinguished lady of the Italian Renaissance is so
informed with an assured power that it is justly hailed as one of
Leonardo's finest efforts. It was made at Mantua, and was designed
to serve as the study for the portrait of the Marchioness which
Leonardo never completed, if indeed he ever began it. Five years
later Isabella d'Este wrote to Leonardo reproaching him for his delay :
" When you were in the country and drew our portrait in chalk you
promised you would one day paint our picture in colours." But
Leonardo was not, like Mantegna, ductile in the hands of the
Marchioness. He did not succumb to her blandishments. There is
no record that he ever gratified the lady by painting a certain small
work that she made petition for — " a little picture of the Madonna
full of faith and sweetness, just as his nature would enable him to

15

THE DRAWINGS OF LEONARDO DA VINCI

conceive her." Leonardo had pursuits more engrossing than the
making of a picture to please the vanity even of so great a lady as
the Marchioness of Mantua.

The flame of Leonardo's imagination did not burn with the desire
to provide little pictures of the Madonna full of faith and sweetness.
He must do things in his own way, and that way would inspire him
to produce such a drawing as the head of a young Bacchus with
long, curling hair, clothed in a costume, just peeping from the
sketch, of a similar material to the dress of Isabella d'Este ; or a
kneeling Leda, such a drawing as we find at Chatsworth, showing
how the artist gradually evolved the design for the final picture of
Leday which was seen in the collection of King Francis at Fontaine-
bleau, but is now lost. Here, too, the eyes of the woman are down-
cast. She turns to the children who are breaking from the eggs,
while one of her arms clasps the swan. The broken shells, and
the children just scrambling into existence, are as characteristic of
Leonardo's passion for the episodes of life as the Child playing with
the cat, or dipping his fist into the bowl of porridge. Leda is the
only mythological picture that he painted. The preparatory draw-
ings, like the drawings for others of his lost or destroyed works, such
as the Sforza Statue^ andT~the Baftle~of tJie "Standard are numerous.
There is no mistaking the drawings for the Sforza statue, although
it is not easy to decide which of the many designs of equestrian
figures were for the Statue of Francesco Sforza, and which for the
Trivulzio Monument. One of the Windsor drawings shows no
fewer than four sketches on one sheet for the group of horse and
rider, which, we are told, was twenty-six feet high. It would seem
that Leonardo's first intention was to make Francesco Sforza's charger
trampling on a fallen enemy, but that he abandoned this tremendous
conception for a quieter design. It is clear from contemporary
records that Leonardo spent sixteen years over the statue : to-day no
trace of it, except in the drawings, remains. There is some doubt
as to whether it was ever successfully cast in bronze, which explains
Michael Angelo's taunt that after Leonardo had finished the model
he was unable to cast it. Probably it was Leonardo's model that
was destroyed, or at any rate severely damaged, when the French
entered Milan in 1500. Fra Sabba da Castiglione wrote at the time:
" I have to record — and I cannot speak of it without grief and
indignation — so noble and masterly a work made a target by the
Gascon bowmen."

In his writings Leonardo describes war as a " bestial frenzy," and
in this grand conception of a rearing horse trampling upon a warrior,
16

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THE DRAWINGS OF LEONARDO DA VINCI

who is trying to protect himself with his shield, it was perhaps his
intention to pillory the horror of war, while at the same time pro-
ducing a heroic design. The splendid vigour of this group, and of
the maddened figures in the Battle of Anghiari, stimulate us even in
the slight sketches. We hear the shouts of barbaric warfare as we
draw them from their quiet resting-places in orderly portfolios. The
" bestial frenzy " of war was never depicted with greater force than
in Leonardo's studies for the last Cartoon for the Battle of Anghiari,
where horses gnash at each other, and soldiers, filled with the lust of
war, scream incoherent cries. The heads of two men in a drawing
in the Buda-Pest Gallery, in the very act of slaying, mouths wide
open, breathing fury, are almost painful to look upon. Leonardo
abandoned this battle picture while still in the midst of the task, as
if disgusted with continuing to portray the " bestial frenzy." But
the horses in the battle pictures probably interested him. There is
a galloping horse in a drawing of Horsemen and Soldiers at Windsor
that reveals a marvellous knowledge of the action of the horse at
high speed. Indeed, the horse was one of Leonardo's favourite sub-
jects. Vasari states that a book of such studies was destroyed when
the French entered Milan. In the large and minute drawing that
he made as a preparatory study for the background of his picture of
The Adoration of the Magi, which was changed and curtailed so
much in the final composition, there are horses, curvetting and
prancing, and in the foreground a camel is seen reposing. Actuality
is introduced in the persons of the retainers of the kings, busy with
their own affairs, amusing their leisure with a mock combat. In
the drawing in the Uffizi, of which we give a reproduction, the
retainers are shown below the great double staircase engaged in a joust.
One wonders if Velasquez, who did not reach his usual standard of
perfection when he drew a prancing steed, ever saw any of Leonardo's
drawings of resolute and spirited horses.

Velasquez, when he painted the head of Christ in his Crucifixion
at Madrid, veiled the face with the long hair as if he shrank from
attempting to portray the sacred features, although nothing deterred
him from painting the head boldly and freely in his Christ at the
Column. History tells of a similar meticulous modesty on the part
of Leonardo in regard to the head of the central figure in his Last
Supper, which he left unfinished, on the suggestion of Zenale, that
could not surpass the majesty of certain of the Apostles' heads.

Several preliminary studies for The Last Supper exist, many of
which modern criticism refuses to accept as authentic. The most
prominent in the eye of the world is the pastel of the head of Christ

'7

THE DRAWINGS OF LEONARDO DA VINCI

in the Brera at Milan. Of the beauty of the head, feminine in its
softness and sadness, there cannot be two opinions, but it has not the
sense of virility of the head in the Milan fresco, although the pose
of the drooping face and the downcast eyes are identical. The
authorities of the Brera Gallery at Milan assign the pastel head to
Leonardo, and Dr. Richter describes it as " a genuine half-life size study
in pencil for a head of Christ, which is in a deplorable state of pre-
servation." In Mr. McCurdy's opinion, the Brera pastel " in its
present state is none of his, whatever its inception may have been,
and of that it is impossible to judge." But whatever vicissitudes of
retouching the Brera pastel may have undergone, it remains a beau-
tiful thing. The full-sized heads at Weimar, bold and inspiriting
drawings, of Judas and St. Peter, St. Thomas and St. James the Elder,
St. Andrew, and St. Bartholomew are not by Leonardo.

There is no doubt about the authenticity of the heads of the
Apostles in the Windsor Collection, or of the two preparatory
sketches for the composition of The Last Supper also at Windsor, or
of the drawing in red chalk at Venice, containing Leonardo's hand-
writing, in which the figure of St. John is shown grief-stricken, his
body thrown forward upon the table, his face hidden at the mere idea
of the awful words, " One of you shall betray me."

Leonardo's will, executed on April 23, 1519, in the chateau of
Cloux, near Amboise, is extant. He commends his soul to God,
orders the celebration of four high masses and thirty low masses, and
wills his vineyard, without the walls of Milan, to Salai and Battista
de Villanis. In taking leave of this restless, richly endowed and rare
spirit, we turn again to the last lines of Pater's essay, and with him
wonder how the great Florentine " experienced the last curiosity."
Then, perhaps, for the mind is always alert when thinking of
Leonardo, we recall a note in one of his manuscripts wherein he
expresses his conviction that some day with the help of steam a boat
may be set in motion, and another passage in his handwriting,
perhaps really nearer to his real self than the order for those four high
and thirty low masses — this : " When I thought I was learning to
live, I was but learning to die."

18

ILLUSTRATIONS

FRONTISPIECE

PKOb'ILE O? A WARRIOR (BRITISH MUSEUM)

Photo, Autotype Company

PLATE I

PORTRAIT OF ISABELLA D'ESTE (LOUVRE)

PHOTO, BRAUN, CLEMENT

PLATE I

STUDY OF AN OLD MAN (MILAN;

PHOTO, BRAUN, CLEMENT

PLATE III

STUDY OF DRAPERIES FOR KNEELING FIGURES
(BRITISH MUSEUM)

PHOTO, AUTOTYPE COMPANY

PLATE IV

STUDY OP A BACCHUS (ACADEMY, VENIC

un, Clement

PLATE V

HEAD OF A MAN (LOUVRE)

PHOTO, BRAUN CLEMENT

BATTLE BETWEEN HORSEMEN
AND MONSTERS (MILAN)

PHOTO, BRAUN, CLEMENT

PLATE VII

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WOMAN SEATED ON GROUND AND A CHILD
KNEELING (MILAN)

PHOTO, BRAUN, CLEMENT

PLATE VIII

STUDIES OF HEADS (UFFIZI, FLORENCE)

PHOTO, BRAUN, CLEMLNT

PLATE IX

YOUTH ON HORSEBACK (WINDSOR)

PHOTO, BRAUN, CLEMENT

PLATEJX

STUDIES FOR THE EQUESTRIAN STATUE
OF FRANCESCO SFORZA (WINDSOR)

PHOTO, BRAUN, CLEMENT

PLATE XI

THE VIRGIN, ST. ANNE AND INFANT (LOUVRE)

PHOTO, BRAUN, CLEMENT

PLATE XII

STUDIES OF CHILDREN (CHANTILLY)

PHOTO, BRAUN, CLEMENT

PLATE XIII

THE COMBAT (LOUVRE)n

PHOTO, BRAUN, CLEMENT

PLATE XIV

STUDY FO'R A MADONNA
(UFFIZI, FLORENCE)

PHOTO, BRAUN, CLEMENT

PLATE XV

STUDIES FOR "THE HOLY FAMILY
(WINDSOR)

PHOTO, BRAUN, CLEMENT

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COURTYARD OF A CANNON-FOUNDRY (WINDSOR)

PHOTO, BRAUN, CLEMENT

Photo, Braun, Clement

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PLATE XXI

STUDY OF A TREE (WINDSOR)

PHOTO, BRAUN, CLEMENT

PLATE XXII

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TWO HEADS. CARICATURES (WINDSOR)

PHOTO, BRAUN, CLEMENT

PLATE XXIII

ST. JOHN THE BAPTIST (WINDSOR)

PHOTO, BRAUN, CLEMENT

PLATE XXV

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CARICATURES (WINDSOR)

PHOTO, BRAUN, CLEMENT

PLATE XXVI

HEAD OF AN ANGEL (TURIN)

PHOTO, ANDERSON

PLATE XXVII

STUDY OF A MAN'S HEAD (BRITISH MUSEUM) PHOTO, BRAUN, CLEMENT

PLATE XXVIII

STUDIES OF HANDS (WINDSOR)

PHOTO, BRAUN, CLEMENT

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PLATE XXX

MAN KNEELING (WINDSOR)

Photo, Braun, Clement

PLATE XXXI

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PORTRAIT STUDY (MILAN)

PHOTO, BRAUN, CLEMENT

PLATE XXXII

STUDIES OF ANIMALS (WINDSOR)

PHOTO, BRAUN, CLEMENT

PLATE XXXIII

PORTRAIT OF LEONARDO, BY HIMSELF (TURIN)

PHOTO, ANDERSON

PLATE XXXIV

SIX HEADS OF MEN AND A BUST OF A WOMAN PHOTO, BRAUN, CLEMEN'
CARICATURES (VENICE)

PLATE XXXV

STUDY OF A HEAD (UFFIZI, FLORENCE)

PHOTO, BRAUN, CLEMENT

PLATE XXXVI

THE SAINT ANNE CARTOON
(BURLINGTON HOUSE)

PHOTO, HOLLYER

PLATE XXXVII

STUDIES OF HORSES (WINDSOR)

PHOTO, BRAUN, CLEMENT

PLATE XXXVIII

HEADS OF A WOMAN AND A CHILD (CHATSWORTH)

PHOTO, BRAUN, CLEMENT

PLATE XXXIX

STUDY OF DRAPERY FOR A KNEELING FIGURE
(WINDSOR)

PHOTO, BRAUN, CLEMENT

KNIGHT IN ARMOUR (MILAN)

Photo, Braun, Clement

PLATE XLI

STUDY OF A YOUTHFUL HEAD (BRITISH MUSEUM)

PHOTO, AUTOTYPE COMPANY

PLATE XLII

STUDY FOR "LEDA" (CHATSWORTH)

PHOTO, BRAUN, CLEMENT

PLATE XLIII

HEAD OF AN OLD MAN (WINDSOR)

PHOTO, BRAUN, CLEMENT

PLATE XLIV

STUDY OF A HEAD (WINDSOR)

PHOTO, BRAUN, CLEMENT

PLATE XLV

STUDY OF THE HEAD OF ST. PHILIP FOR
THE LAST SUPPER (WINDSOR)

PHOTO, BRAUN, CLEMENT

PLATE XLVI

STUDY OF DRAPERY (LOUVRE)

PHOTO, BRAUN, CLEMENT

PLATE XLVII

GIRL'S HEAD (MILAN)

PHOTO, BRAUN, CLEMENT

PLATE XLVI1I

STUDIES OF A SATYR WITH A LION (MILAN)

PHOTO, BFAUN, CLEMENT

BINDING SECT. JUL121968

NG Leonardo da Vinci

1055 Drawings of Leonardo da

L5H6 Vinci

PLEASE DO NOT REMOVE
CARDS OR SLIPS FROM THIS POCKET

UNIVERSITY OF TORONTO LIBRARY