Page:Cyclopedia of Painters and Paintings, 1887, vol 4.djvu/436

From Wikisource
Jump to navigation Jump to search
This page needs to be proofread.

VINCI for Venice, and the year after (1502) to visit the fortresses of the principal cities of the Eomagna as military engineer to Csesar Bor- gia. Between 1503 and 1505 he produced the famous cartoon of the Battle of the Standard, from which he was to have paint- ed a fresco in the great Hall of the Palazzo Vecchio at Florence. It hung side by side with Michelangelo's cartoon of the Battle of Pisa, in the Hall, where both were studied as miracles of art by all the painters of the time until after 1518, though Vasari erroneously says it was cut to pieces in 1512. In Octo- ber, 1507, Leonardo once more established himself in Milan, where he remained, with the exception of two short visits to Florence in 1511 and 1513, until 1514, when he ac- companied Giuliauo de' Medici to Home to assist at the coronation of Leo X. Unless he had previously visited Rome, of which we have no proof, Leonardo must at this time have painted the admirable fresco of the Madonna with Donor, in a lunette in S. Ono- frio on the Janiculum. Leonardo went in January, 1516, to France, at the invitation of Francis I., and spent the last three years of his life in the King's service. But one of the many sides of this most many-sided of great men can be considered here, and that very imperfectly namely, his work as a painter. Of this, unfortunately, very little which can be regarded as certainly authentic remains. His great mural painting of the Last Supper, at Milan, is in such a degraded and repainted condition that it is but a shadow of a shade, of the original perfection of which we can best judge by the fine drawing for the head of Christ, in the Brera, and to some extent by the copy by Marco d' Oggione, in the Royal Academy, London, and the well-known engraving by Raphael Morghen. His cartoon survives only in the drawing of one of its groups by Rubens, in the Louvre, a Flemish copy of which was probably used by Edelinck for his engrav- ing of the Battle of the Standard. Few of the easel pictures attributed to Leonardo have stood the test of modern criticism ; one after another has been assigned to some of his numerous disciples, until those beyond dispute authentic are the following : La Belle Ferroniere (about 1497), Mono, Lisa (about 1500), Madonna with St. Anne, Ma- donna of the Rocks, Louvre, Paris, and Na- tional Gallery, London. Other works which pass under Leonardo's name are : Bacchus, St. John Baptist (probably authentic), Lou- vre ; Vanity and Modesty, Palazzo Barbe- riui, Rome (painted by Luini or Salaino) ; Madonna, Palazzo Belgiojoso, Milan ; Ma- donna of the Scales, Louvre (Salaino or Ce- sare da Sesto) ; Madonna and Infant St. John, Louvre (by Bernardino Luini) ; Por- trait of Charles d'Amboise, Louvre (by Beltraffio) ; Resurrection, Berlin Museum ; Salome with Head of John Baptist, Vienna Museum (by Cesare da Sesto) ; Male Por- trait, perhaps of Lodovico Sforza, Dresden Museum ; St. Jerome, Vatican ; The Gold- smith, La Monaca, Palazzo Pitti, Florence (at- tributed to Lorenzo di Credi) ; Portrait of Isa- bella of Aragon, Ambrosian Library, Milan ; Madonna della Caraffa, Palazzo Borghese, Rome ; Portrait of Leonardo (?), Annuncia- tion (?), Adoration of the Magi (?), Uffizi, Florence ; Madonna, fresco, Villa Melzi at Vaprio ; Holy Family, Hermitage, St. Peters- 4 ~. j burg. Vasari, ed. 1 /) L/ Mil., iv. 17 ; Burck- <r hardt, 363, 625; /* MUndler, 112; Pater, / / " /. Studies, 90 ; Dohme, L i/o. Yt Ch Blanc florentine; Houssaye, Hist, de Leonard de Vinci (Paris, 1869); Kugler (Eastlake), ii. 347 ; GaUenberg, L. da Vinci (Leipsic, 1834) ; Archivio storico italiano, Series HI., Vol. 16 ; Amoretti, Memoire storiche ; Bossi, Cenacolo ; Carl Brun, Kunst und Kiinstler des Mittelalters und der Neuzeit ; Brown ; Heaton ; Richter ; Symonds, Renaissance ; Eastlake, Five Great Painters (London, 1882) ; Art Journal (1882), 33 ; Jahrbuch der preuss. Kunst- samml., v. 293 ; Kunst-Chronik, xx. 201, 372