familiar. Both are possessed of a strong sense of the harmony of
nature with human life. The smile of the Virgin of the Rocks is a part
of the mystery of her shadowy environment;[2] the serenity of the
Madonna in the Meadow belongs to the atmosphere of the open fields.

[Footnote 2: That the Leonardesque _smile_ requires a Leonardesque
_setting_ is seen, I think, in the pictures by Da Vinci's imitators.
The Madonna by Sodoma, recently added to the Brera Gallery at Milan,
is an example in point. Here the inevitable smile of mystery seems
meaningless in the sunny, open landscape.]

Among others who were affected by the influence of Leonardo--and chief
of the Lombards--was Luini. His pastoral Madonna has, however, little
in common with the landscapes of his master, judging from the lovely
example in the Brera. The group of figures is strikingly suggestive of
Da Vinci, but the quiet, rural pasture in which the Virgin sits is
Luini's own. In the distance is a thick clump of trees, finely drawn
in stem and branch. At one side is a shepherd's hut with a flock of
sheep grazing near. The child Jesus reaches from his mother's lap to
play with the lamb which the little St. John has brought, a _motif_
similar to Raphael's Madrid picture, and perhaps due, in both
painters, to the example of Leonardo.

It is said by the learned that during the period of the Renaissance
the love of nature received an immense impulse from the revival of the
Latin poets, and that this impulse was felt most in the large cities.
In the pictures noted, we have seen its effect in Florentine and
Lombard art; that it was also felt in isolated places, we may see in
some of Correggio's work at Parma, at about the same time. Two, at
least, of his Madonna pictures are as famous for their beautiful