[Page heading: LEONARDO]

All that Giotto and Masaccio had attained in the rendering of tactile
values, all that Fra Angelico or Filippo had achieved in expression, all
that Pollaiuolo had accomplished in movement, or Verrocchio in light and
shade, Leonardo, without the faintest trace of that tentativeness, that
painfulness of effort which characterised his immediate precursors,
equalled or surpassed. Outside Velasquez, and perhaps, when at their
best, Rembrandt and Degas, we shall seek in vain for tactile values so
stimulating and so convincing as those of his "Mona Lisa"; outside
Degas, we shall not find such supreme mastery over the art of movement
as in the unfinished "Epiphany" in the Uffizi; and if Leonardo has been
left far behind as a painter of light, no one has succeeded in conveying
by means of light and shade a more penetrating feeling of mystery and
awe than he in his "Virgin of the Rocks." Add to all this, a feeling for
beauty and significance that have scarcely ever been approached. Where
again youth so poignantly attractive, manhood so potently virile, old
age so dignified and possessed of the world's secrets! Who like Leonardo
has depicted the mother's happiness in her child and the child's joy in
being alive; who like Leonardo has portrayed the timidity, the newness
to experience, the delicacy and refinement of maidenhood; or the
enchantress intuitions, the inexhaustible fascination of the woman in
her years of mastery? Look at his many sketches for Madonnas, look at
his profile drawing of Isabella d'Este, or at the _Belle Joconde_, and
see whether elsewhere you find their equals. Leonardo is the one artist
of whom it may be said with perfect literalness: Nothing that he touched
but turned into a thing of eternal beauty. Whether it be the
cross-section of a skull, the structure of a weed, or a study of
muscles, he, with his feeling for line and for light and shade, forever
transmuted it into life-communicating values; and all without intention,