LITTLE JOURNEYS TO THE HOMES OF EMINENT ARTISTS

by ELBERT HUBBARD

MEMORIAL EDITION

CONTENTS

RAPHAEL

LEONARDO

BOTTICELLI

THORWALDSEN

GAINSBOROUGH

VELASQUEZ

COROT

CORREGGIO

BELLINI

CELLINI

ABBEY

WHISTLER

RAPHAEL

And with all this vast creative activity, he recognized only one
self-imposed limitation--beauty. Hence, though his span of life was
short, his work is imperishable. He steadily progressed: but he was
ever true, beautiful and pure, and freer than any other master from
superficiality and mannerism. He produced a vast number of pictures,
elevating to men of every race and of every age, and before whose
immortal beauty artists of every school unite in common homage.
--_Wilhelm Lubke_

[Illustration: Raphael]

The term "Preraphaelite" traces a royal lineage to William Morris.
Just what the word really meant, William Morris was not sure, yet he
once expressed the hope that he would some day know, as a thousand
industrious writers were laboring to make the matter plain.

Seven men helped William Morris to launch the phrase, by forming
themselves into an organization which they were pleased to call the
"Preraphaelite Brotherhood."

The word "brotherhood" has a lure and a promise for every lonely and
tired son of earth. And Burne-Jones pleaded for the prefix because
it was like holy writ: it gave everybody an opportunity to read
anything into it that he desired.

Of this I am very sure, in the Preraphaelite Brotherhood there was
no lack of appreciation for Raphael. In fact, there is proof
positive that Burne-Jones and Madox Brown studied him with profit,
and loved him so wisely and well that they laid impression-paper on
his poses. This would have been good and sufficient reason for
hating the man; and possibly this accounts for their luminous
flashes of silence concerning him. The Preraphaelite Brotherhood,
like all other liberal organizations, was quite inclined to be
illiberal. And the prejudice of this clanship, avowedly founded
without prejudice, lay in the assumption that life and art suffered
a degeneration from the rise of Raphael. In art, as in literature,
there is overmuch tilting with names--so the Preraphaelites enlisted
under the banner of Botticelli.

Raphael marks an epoch. He did what no man before him had ever done,
and by the sublimity of his genius placed the world forever under
obligations to him. In fact, the art of the Preraphaelites was built
on Raphael, with an attempt to revive the atmosphere and environment
that belonged to another. Raphael mirrored the soul of things--he
used the human form and the whole natural world as symbols of
spirit. And this is exactly what Burne-Jones did, and the rest of
the Brotherhood tried to do. The thought of Raphael and of Burne-
Jones often seems identical; in temperament, disposition and
aspiration they were one. That poetic and fervid statement of Mrs.
Jameson, that Burne-Jones is the avatar of Raphael, contains the
germ of truth. The dream-women of Burne-Jones have the same haunting
and subtle spiritual wistfulness that is to be seen in the Madonnas
of Raphael. Each of these men loved a woman--and each pictured her
again and again. Whether this woman had an existence outside the
figment of the brain matters not: both painted her as they saw her--
tender, gentle and trustful.

When jealous and o'erzealous competitors made the charge against
Raphael that he was lax in his religious duties, Pope Leo the Tenth
waived the matter by saying, "Well, well, well!--he is an artistic
Christian!" As much as to say, he works his religion up into art,
and therefore we grant him absolution for failure to attend mass: he
paints and you pray--it is really all the same thing. Good work and
religion are one.

The busy and captious critics went away, but came back next day with
the startling information that Raphael's pictures were more Pagan
than Christian. Pope Leo heard the charge, and then with Lincoln-
like wit said that Raphael was doing this on his order, as the
desire of the Mother Church was to annex the Pagan art-world, in
order to Christianize it.

The charges of Paganism and Infidelity are classic accusations. The
gentle Burne-Jones was stoutly denounced by his enemies as a Pagan
Greek. I think he rather gloried in the contumely, but fifty years
earlier he might have been visited by a "lettre de cachet," instead
of a knighthood; for we can not forget how, in Eighteen Hundred
Fifteen, Parliament refused to pay for the Elgin Marbles because, as
Lord Falmouth put it, "These relics will tend to prostitute England
to the depth of unbelief that engulfed Pagan Greece." The attitude
of Parliament on the question of Paganism finds voice occasionally
even yet by Protestant England making darkness dense with the
asseveration that Catholics idolatrously worship the pictures and
statues in their churches.

The Romans tumbled the Athenian marbles from their pedestals, on the
assumption that the statues represented gods that were idolatrously
worshiped by the Greeks. And they continued their work of
destruction until a certain Roman general (who surely was from
County Cork) stopped the vandalism by issuing an order, coupled with
the dire threat that any soldier who stole or destroyed a statue
should replace it with another equally good.

Lord Elgin bankrupted himself in order to supply the British Museum
its crowning glory, and for this he achieved the honor of getting
himself poetically damned by Lord Byron. Monarchies, like republics,
are ungrateful. Lord Elgin defended himself vigorously against the
charge of Paganism, just as Raphael had done three hundred years
before. But Burne-Jones was silent in the presence of his accusers,
for the world of buyers besieged his doors with bank-notes in hand,
demanding pictures. And now today we find Alma-Tadema openly and
avowedly Pagan, and with a grace and loveliness that compel the glad
acclaim of every lover of beautiful things.

We are making head. We have ceased to believe that Paganism is
"bad." All the men and women who have ever lived and loved and hoped
and died, were God's children, and we are no more. With the nations
dead and turned to dust, we reach out through the darkness of
forgotten days and touch friendly hands. Some of these people that
existed two, three or four thousand years ago did things so
marvelously grand and great that in presence of the broken fragments
of their work we stand silent, o'erawed and abashed. We realize,
too, that long before the nations lived that have left a meager and
scattered history hewn in stone, lived still other men, possibly
greater far than we; and no sign or signal comes to us from those
whose history, like ours, is writ in water.

Yet we are one with them all. The same Power that brought them upon
this stage of Time brought us. As we were called into existence
without our consent, so are we being sent out of it, day by day,
against our will. The destiny of all who live or have lived, is one;
and no taunt of "paganism," "heathenism" or "infidelity" escapes our
lips. With love and sympathy, we salute the eternity that lies
behind, realizing that we ourselves are the oldest people that have
tasted existence--the newest nation lingers away behind Assyria and
Egypt, back of the Mayas, lost in continents sunken in shoreless
seas that hold their secrets inviolate. Yes, we are brothers to all
that have trod the earth; brothers and heirs to dust and shade--
mayhap to immortality!

In the story of "John Ball," William Morris pictured what to him was
the Ideal Life. And Morris was certainly right in this: The Ideal
Life is only the normal or natural life as we shall some day know
it. The scene of Morris' story was essentially a Preraphaelite one.
It was the great virtue (or limitation) of William Morris that the
Dark Ages were to him a time of special light and illumination. Life
then was simple. Men worked for the love of it, and if they wanted
things they made them. "Every trade exclusively followed means a
deformity," says Ruskin. Division of labor had not yet come, and men
were skilled in many ways. There was neither poverty nor riches, and
the idea of brotherhood was firmly fixed in the minds of men. The
feverish desire for place, pelf and power was not upon them. The
rise of the barons and an entailed aristocracy were yet to come.

Governments grant men immunity from danger on payment of a tax. Thus
men cease protecting themselves, and so in the course of time lose
the ability to protect themselves, because the faculty of courage
has atrophied through disuse. Brooding apprehension and crouching
fear are the properties of civilized men--men who are protected by
the State. The joy of reveling in life is not possible in cities.
Bolts and bars, locks and keys, soldiers and police, and a hundred
other symbols of distrust, suspicion and hate, are on every hand,
reminding us that man is the enemy of man, and must be protected
from his brothers. Protection and slavery are near of kin.

Before Raphael, art was not a profession--the man did things to the
glory of God. When he painted a picture of the Holy Family, his wife
served as his model, and he grouped his children in their proper
order, and made the picture to hang on a certain spot on the walls
of his village church. No payment was expected nor fee demanded--it
was a love-offering. It was not until ecclesiastics grew ambitious
and asked for more pictures that bargains were struck. Did ever a
painter of that far-off day marry a maid, and in time were they
blessed with a babe, then straightway the painter worked his joy up
into art by painting the Mother and Child, and presenting the
picture as a thank-offering to God. The immaculate conception of
love and the miracle of birth are recurring themes in the symphony
of life. Love, religion and art have ever walked and ever will walk
hand in hand. Art is the expression of man's joy in his work; and
art is the beautiful way of doing things. Pope Julius was right--
work is religion when you put your soul into your task.

Giotto painted the "Mother and Child," and the mother was his wife,
and the child theirs. Another child came to them, and Giotto painted
another picture, calling the older boy Saint John, and the wee baby
Jesus. The years went by and we find still another picture of the
Holy Family by this same artist, in which five children are shown,
while back in the shadow is the artist himself, posed as Joseph. And
with a beautiful contempt for anachronism, the elder children are
called Isaiah, Ezekiel and Elijah. This fusing of work, love and
religion gives us a glimpse into the only paradise mortals know. It
is the Ideal--and the Natural.

The swift-passing years have lightly touched the little city of
Urbino, in Umbria. The place is sleepy and quiet, and you seek the
shade of friendly awnings to shield you from the fierce glare of the
sun. Standing there you hear the bells chime the hours, as they have
done for four hundred years; and you watch the flocks of wheeling
pigeons, the same pigeons that Vasari saw when he came here in
Fifteen Hundred Forty-one, for the birds never grow old. Vasari
tells of the pigeons, the old cathedral--old even then--the flower-
girls and fruit-sellers, the passing black-robed priests, the
occasional soldier, and the cobbler who sits on the curbstone and
offers to mend your shoes while you wait.

The world is debtor to Vasari. He was not much of a painter and he
failed at architecture, but he made up for lack of skill by telling
all about what others were doing; and if his facts ever faltered,
his imagination bridged the break. He is as interesting as Plutarch,
as gossipy as Pepys, and as luring as Boswell.

A slim slip of a girl, selling thyme and mignonette out of a reed
basket, offered to show Vasari the birthplace of Raphael; and a
brown-cheeked, barefoot boy, selling roses on which the dew yet
lingered, volunteered a like service for me, three hundred years
later.

The house is one of a long row of low stone structures, with the
red-tile roof everywhere to be seen. Above the door is a bronze
tablet which informs the traveler that Raphael Sanzio was born here,
April Sixth, Fourteen Hundred Eighty-three. Herman Grimm takes three
chapters to prove that Raphael was not born in this house, and that
nothing is so unreliable as a bronze tablet, except figures. Grimm
is a painstaking biographer, but he fails to distinguish between
fact and truth. Of this we are sure, Giovanni di Sanzio, the father
of Raphael, lived in this house. There are church records to show
that here other children of Giovanni were born, and this very
naturally led to the assumption that Raphael was born here, also.

Just one thing of touching interest is to be seen in this house, and
that is a picture of a Mother and Child painted on the wall. For
many years this picture was said to be the work of Raphael; but
there is now very good reason to believe it was the work of
Raphael's father, and that the figures represent the baby Raphael
and his mother. The picture is faded and dim, like the history of
this sainted woman who gave to earth one of the gentlest, greatest
and best men that ever lived. Mystery enshrouds the early days of
Raphael. There is no record of his birth. His father we know was a
man of decided power, and might yet rank as a great artist, had he
not been so unfortunate as to have had a son that outclassed him.
But now Giovanni Sanzio's only claim to fame rests on his being the
father of his son. Of the boy's mother we have only obstructed
glances and glimpses through half-flung lattices in the gloaming.
Raphael was her only child. She was scarce twenty when she bore him.
In a sonnet written to her, on the back of a painting, Raphael's
father speaks of her wondrous eyes, slender neck, and the form too
frail for earth's rough buffets. Mention is also made of "this child
born in purest love, and sent by God to comfort and caress."

The mother grew aweary and passed away when her boy was scarce eight
years old, but his memories of her were deeply etched. She told him
of Cimabue, Giotto, Ghirlandajo, Leonardo and Perugino, and
especially of the last two, who were living and working only a few
miles away. It was this spiritual and loving mother who infused into
his soul the desire to do and to become. That hunger for harmony
which marked his life was the heritage of mother to child.

When an artist paints a portrait, he paints two--himself and the
sitter. Raphael gave himself; and as his father more than once said
the boy was the image of his mother, we have her picture, too.
Father and son painted the same woman. Their hearts went out to her
with a sort of idolatrous love. The sonnets indited to her by her
husband were written after her death, and after his second marriage.
Do then men love dead women better than they do the living? Perhaps.
And then a certain writer has said: "To have known a great and
exalted love, and have had it flee from your grasp--flee as a shadow
before it is sullied by selfishness or misunderstanding--is the
highest good. The memory of such a love can not die from out the
heart. It affords a ballast 'gainst all the sordid impulses of life,
and though it gives an unutterable sadness, it imparts an
unspeakable peace."

Raphael's father followed the boy's mother when the lad was eleven
years old. We know the tender, poetic love this father had for the
child, and we realize somewhat of the mystical mingling in the man's
heart of the love for the woman dead and her child alive.
Reverencing the mother's wish that the boy should be an artist,
Giovanni Sanzio, proud of his delicate and spiritual beauty, took
the lad to visit all the other artists in the vicinity. They also
visited the ducal palace, built by Federigo the Second, and lingered
there for hours, viewing the paintings, statuary, carvings,
tapestries and panelings.

The palace still stands, and is yet one of the most noble in Italy,
vying in picturesqueness with those marble piles that line the Grand
Canal at Venice. We know that Giovanni Sanzio contributed by his
advice and skill to the wealth of beauty in the palace, and we know
that he was always a welcome visitor there. From his boyhood Raphael
was familiar with these artistic splendors, and how much this early
environment contributed to his correct taste and habit of subdued
elegance, no man can say. When Giovanni Sanzio realized that death
was at his door, he gave Raphael into the keeping of the priest
Bartolomeo and the boy's stepmother. The typical stepmother lives,
moves and has her being in neurotic novels written by very young
ladies.

Instances can be cited of great men who were loved and nurtured and
ministered to by their stepmothers. I think well of womankind. The
woman who abuses a waif that Fate has sent into her care would
mistreat her own children, and is a living libel on her sex.

Let Lincoln and Raphael stand as types of men who were loved with
infinite tenderness by stepmothers. And then we must not forget
Leonardo da Vinci, who never knew a mother, and had no business to
have a father, but who held averages good with four successive
stepmothers, all of whom loved him with a tender, jealous and proud
devotion.

Bartolomeo, following the wish of the father, continued to give the
boy lessons in drawing and sketching. This Bartolomeo must not be
confused with the Bartolomeo, friend of Savonarola, who was largely
to influence Raphael later on. It was Bartolomeo, the priest, that
took Raphael to Perugino, who lived in Perugia. Perugino, although
he was a comparatively young man, was bigger than the town in which
he lived. His own name got blown away by a high wind, and he was
plain Perugino--as if there was only one man in Perugia, and he were
that one. "Here is a boy I have brought you as a pupil," said the
priest to Perugino. And Perugino glancing up from his easel
answered, "I thought it was a girl!"

The priest continued, "Here is a boy I have brought you for a pupil,
and your chief claim to fame may yet be that he worked here with you
in your studio." Perugino parried the thrust with a smile. He looked
at the boy and was impressed with his beauty. Perugino afterwards
acknowledged that the only reason he took him was because he thought
he would work in well as a model.

Perugino was the greatest master of technique of his time. He had
life, and life in abundance. He reveled in his work, and his
enthusiasm ran over, inundating all those who were near. Courage is
a matter of the red corpuscle. It is oxygen that makes every attack;
without oxygen in his blood to back him, a man attacks nothing--not
even a pie, much less a blank canvas. Perugino was a success; he had
orders ahead; he matched his talent against titles; power flowed his
way. Raphael's serious, sober manner and spiritual beauty appealed
to him. They became as father and son. The methodical business plan,
which is a prime aid to inspiration; the habit of laying out work
and completing it; the high estimate of self; the supreme animation
and belief in the divinity within--all these Raphael caught from
Perugino. Both men were egotists, as are all men who do things. They
had heard the voice--they had had a "call." The talent is the call,
and if a man fails to do his work in a masterly way, make sure he
has mistaken a lazy wish for a divine passion. There is a difference
between loving the muse and lusting after her.

Perugino had been called, and before Raphael had worked with him a
year, he was sure he had been called, too. The days in Perugia for
Raphael were full of quiet joy and growing power. He was in the
actual living world of men, and things, and useful work. Afternoons,
when the sun's shadows began to lengthen towards the east, Perugino
would often call to his helpers, especially Raphael, and
Pinturicchio, another fine spirit, and off they would go for a
tramp, each with a stout staff and the inevitable portfolio. Out
along the narrow streets of the town, across the Roman arched
bridge, by the market-place to the terraced hillside that overlooked
the Umbrian plain, they went; Perugino stout, strong, smooth-faced,
with dark, swarthy features; Pinturicchio with downy beard, merry
eyes and tall, able form; and lingering behind, came Raphael. His
small black cap fitted closely on his long bronze-gold hair; his
slight, slender and graceful figure barely suggested its silken
strength held in fine reserve--and all the time the great brown
eyes, which looked as if they had seen celestial things, scanned the
sky, saw the tall cedars of Lebanon, the flocks on the slopes across
the valley, the scattered stone cottages, the fleecy clouds that
faintly flecked the deep blue of the sky, the distant spire of a
church. All these treasures of the Umbrian landscape were his. Well
might he have anticipated, four hundred years before he was born,
that greatest of American writers, and said, "I own the landscape!"
In frescos signed by Perugino in the year Fourteen Hundred Ninety-
two--a date we can not forget--we see a certain style. In the same
design duplicated in Fourteen Hundred Ninety-eight, we behold a new
and subtle touch--it is the stroke and line of Raphael.

The "Resurrection" by Perugino, in the Vatican, and the "Diotalevi
Madonna" signed by the same artist, in the Berlin Museum, show the
touch of Raphael, unmistakably. The youth was barely seventeen, but
he was putting himself into Perugino's work--and Perugino was glad.
Raphael's first independent work was probably done when he was
nineteen, and was for the Citta di Castello. These frescos are
signed, "Raphael Urbinas, 1502." Other lesser pictures and panels
thus signed are found dated Fifteen Hundred Four. They are all the
designs of Perugino, but worked out with the painstaking care always
shown by very young artists; yet there is a subtle, spiritual style
that marks, unmistakably, Raphael's Perugino period.

The "Sposalizio," done in Fifteen Hundred Four, now in the Brera at
Milan, is the first really important work of Raphael. Next to this
is the "Connestabile Madonna," which was painted at Perugia and
remained there until Eighteen Hundred Seventy-one, when it was sold
by a degenerate descendant of the original owner to the Emperor of
Russia for sixty-five thousand dollars. Since then a law has been
passed forbidding any one on serious penalty to remove a "Raphael"
from Italy. But for this law, that threat of a Chicago syndicate to
buy the Pitti Gallery and move its contents to the "lake front"
might have been carried out.

The Second Period of Raphael's life opens with his visit to Florence
in Fifteen Hundred Four. He was now twenty-one years of age,
handsome, proud, reserved. Stories of his power had preceded him,
and the fact that for six years he had worked with Perugino and been
his confidant and friend made his welcome sure.

Leonardo and Michelangelo were at the height of their fame, and no
doubt they stimulated the ambition of Raphael more than he ever
admitted. He considered Leonardo the more finished artist of the
two. Michelangelo's heroic strength and sweep of power failed to win
him. The frescos of Masaccio in the Church of Santa Carmine in
Florence he considered better than any performance of Michelangelo:
and as a Roland to this Oliver, we have a legend to the effect that
Raphael once called upon Michelangelo and the master sent down word
from the scaffold, where he was at work, that he was too busy to see
visitors, and anyway, he had all the apprentices that he could look
after!

How much this little incident biased Raphael's opinion concerning
Michelangelo's art we can not say: possibly Raphael could not have
told, either. But such things count, I am told, for even Doctor
Johnson thought better of Reynolds' work after they had dined
together.

It seems that Fra Bartolomeo was one of the first and best friends
Raphael had at Florence. The monk's gentle spirit and his modest
views of men and things won the young Umbrian; and between these two
there sprang up a friendship so firm and true that death alone could
sever it.

The deep religious devotion of Bartolomeo set the key for the first
work done by Raphael at Florence. Most of the time the young man and
the monk lived and worked in the same studio. It was a wonderfully
prolific period for Raphael; from Fifteen Hundred Four to Fifteen
Hundred Eight he pushed forward with a zest and an earnestness he
never again quite equaled. Most of his beautiful Madonnas belong to
this period, and in them all are a dignity, grace and grandeur that
lift them out of ecclesiastic art, and place them in the category of
living portraits.

Before this, Raphael belonged to the Umbrian School, but now his
work must be classed, if classed at all, as Florentine. The handling
is freer, the nude more in evidence, and the anatomy shows that the
artist is working from life.

Bartolomeo used to speak of Raphael affectionately as "my son," and
called the attention of Bramante, the architect, to his work. The
beauty of his Madonnas was being discussed in every studio, and when
the "Ansidei" was exhibited in the Church of Santa Croce, such a
crowd flocked to see the picture that services had to be dismissed.
The rush continued until a thrifty priest bethought him to stand at
the main entrance with a contribution-box and a stout stick, and
allow no one to enter who did not contribute good silver for "the
worthy poor."

Bartolomeo acknowledged that his "pupil" was beyond him. He was
invited to add a finishing touch to the Masaccio frescos; Leonardo,
the courtly, had smiled a gracious recognition, and Michelangelo had
sneezed at mention of his name. Bramante, back at Rome, told Pope
Julius the Second, "There is a young Umbrian at Florence we must
send for."

Great things were happening at Rome about this time: all roads led
thitherward. Pope Julius had just laid the cornerstone of Saint
Peter's, and full of ambition was carrying out the dictum of Pope
Nicholas the Fifth, that "the Church should array herself in all the
beauteous spoils of the world, in order to win the minds of men."

The Renaissance was fairly begun, fostered and sustained by the
Church alone. The Quattrocento--that time of homely peace and the
simple quiet of John Ball and his fellows--lay behind.

Raphael had begun his Roman Period, which was to round out his
working life of barely eighteen years, ere the rest of the Pantheon
was to be his.

Before this his time had been his own, but now the Church was his
mistress. But it was a great honor that had come to him, greater far
than had ever before been bestowed on any living artist. Barely
twenty-five years of age, the Pope treated him as an equal, and
worked him like a packhorse. "He has the face of an angel," cried
Julius, "and the soul of a god!"--when some one suggested his youth.

Pope Leo the Tenth, of the Medici family, succeeded Julius. He sent
Michelangelo to Florence to employ his talents upon the Medicean
church of San Lorenzo. He dismissed Perugino, Pinturicchio and Piero
Delia Francesca, although Raphael in tears pleaded for them all.
Their frescos were destroyed, and Raphael was told to go ahead and
make the Vatican what it should be.

His first large work was to decorate the Hall of the Signatures
(Stanza della Segnatura), where we today see the "Dispute." Near at
hand is the famous "School of Athens." In this picture his own
famous portrait is to be seen with that of Perugino. The first place
is given to Perugino, and the faces affectionately side by side are
posed in a way that has given a cue to ten thousand photographers.

The attitude is especially valuable, as a bit of history showing
Raphael's sterling attachment to his old teacher. The Vatican is
filled with the work of Raphael, and aside from the galleries to
which the general public is admitted, studies and frescos are to be
seen in many rooms that are closed unless, say, Archbishop Ireland
be with you, when all doors fly open at your touch. The seven
Raphael tapestries are shown at the Vatican an hour each day; the
rest of the time the room is closed to protect them from the light.
However, the original cartoons at South Kensington reveal the sweep
and scope of Raphael's genius better than the tapestries themselves.

Work, unceasing work, filled his days. The ingenuity and industry of
the man were marvelous. Upwards of eighty portraits were painted
during the Roman Period, besides designs innumerable for engravings,
and even for silver and iron ornaments required by the Church.
Pupils helped him much, of course, and among these must be mentioned
Giulio Romano and Gianfrancesco Penni. These young men lived with
Raphael in his splendid house that stood halfway between Saint
Peter's and the Castle Angelo. Fire swept the space a hundred years
later, and the magnificence it once knew has never been replaced.
Today, hovels built from stone quarried from the ruins mark the
spot. But as one follows this white, dusty road, it is well to
remember that the feet of Raphael, passing and repassing, have, more
than any other one street of Rome, made it sacred soil.

We have seen that Bramante brought Raphael to Rome, and Pope Leo the
Tenth remembered this when the first architect of Saint Peter's
passed away. Raphael was appointed his successor. The honor was
merited, but the place should have gone to one not already
overworked. In Fifteen Hundred Fifteen Raphael was made Director of
Excavations, another office for which his esthetic and delicate
nature was not fitted. In sympathy, of course, his heart went out to
the antique workers of the ancient world, on whose ruins the Eternal
City is built; but the drudgery of overseeing and superintendence
belonged to another type of man.

The stress of the times had told on Raphael; he was thirty-five,
rich beyond all Umbrian dreams of avarice, on an equality with the
greatest and noblest men of his time, honored above all other living
artists. But life began to pall; he had won all--and thereby had
learned the worthlessness of what the world has to offer. Dreams of
rest, of love and a quiet country home, came to him. He was
betrothed to Maria di Bibbiena, a niece of Cardinal Bibbiena. The
day of the wedding had been set, and the Pope was to perform the
ceremony.

But the Pope regarded Raphael as a servant of the Church: he had
work for him to do, and moreover he had fixed ideas concerning the
glamour of sentimentalism, so he requested that the wedding be
postponed for a space.

A request from the Pope was an order, and so the country house was
packed away with other dreams that were to come true all in God's
good time.

But the realization of love's dream did not come true, for Raphael
had a rival. Death claimed his bride.

She was buried in the Pantheon, where within a year Raphael's
wornout body was placed beside hers; and there the dust of both
mingle.

The history of this love-tragedy has never been written; it lies
buried there with the lovers. But a contemporary said that the fear
of an enforced separation broke the young woman's heart; and this we
know, that after her death, Raphael's hand forgot its cunning, and
his frame was ripe for the fever that was so soon to burn out the
strands of his life.

Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci, Perugino and Fra Bartolomeo had all
made names for themselves before Raphael appeared upon the scene.
Yet they one and all profited by his example, and were the richer in
that he had lived.

Michelangelo was born nine years before Raphael and survived him
forty-three years.

Titian was six years old when Raphael was born, and he continued to
live and work for fifty-six years after Raphael had passed away.

It was a cause of grief to Michelangelo, even to the day of his
death, that he and Raphael had not been close, personal and loving
friends, as indeed they should have been.

The art-world was big enough for both. Yet Rome was divided into two
hostile camps: those who favored Raphael; and those who had but one
prophet, Michelangelo. Busybodies rushed back and forth, carrying
foolish and inconsequential messages; and these strong yet gentle
men, both hungering for sympathy and love, were thrust apart.

When Raphael realized the end was nigh, he sent for Perugino, and
directed that he should complete certain work. His career had begun
by working with Perugino, and now this friend of a lifetime must
finish the broken task and make good the whole. He bade his beloved
pupils, one by one, farewell; signed his will, which gave most of
his valuable property to his fellow-workers; and commended his soul
to the God who gave it. He died on his birthday, Good Friday, April
Sixth, Fifteen Hundred Twenty, aged thirty-seven years. Michelangelo
wore mourning upon his sleeve for a year after Raphael's death. And
once Michelangelo said, "Raphael was a child, a beautiful child, and
if he had only lived a little longer, he and I would have grasped
hands as men and worked together as brothers."

LEONARDO

The world, perhaps, contains no other example of a genius so
universal as Leonardo's, so creative, so incapable of self-
contentment, so athirst for the infinite, so naturally refined, so
far in advance of his own and subsequent ages. His pictures express
incredible sensibility and mental power; they overflow with
unexpressed ideas and emotions. Alongside of his portraits
Michelangelo's personages are simply heroic athletes; Raphael's
virgins are only placid children whose souls are still asleep. His
beings feel and think through every line and trait of their
physiognomy. Time is necessary to enter into communion with them;
not that their sentiment is too slightly marked, for, on the
contrary, it emerges from the whole investiture; but it is too
subtle, too complicated, too far above and beyond the ordinary, too
dreamlike and inexplicable.
--_Taine in "A Journey Through Italy"_

[Illustration: Leonardo]

There is a little book by George B. Rose, entitled, "Renaissance
Masters," which is quite worth your while to read. I carried a copy,
for company, in the side-pocket of my coat for a week, and just
peeped into it at odd times. I remember that I thought so little of
the volume that I read it with a lead-pencil and marked it all up
and down and over, and filled the fly-leaves with random thoughts,
and disfigured the margins with a few foolish sketches.

Then one fine day White Pigeon came out to the Roycroft Shop from
Buffalo, as she was passing through. She came on the two-o'clock
train and went away on the four-o'clock, and her visit was like a
window flung open to the azure.

White Pigeon remained at East Aurora only two hours--"not long
enough" she said, "to knock the gold and emerald off the butterfly's
beautiful wings."

White Pigeon saw the little book I have mentioned, on my table in
the tower-room. She picked it up and turned the leaves aimlessly;
then she opened her Boston bag and slipped the book inside, saying
as she did so:

"You do not mind?"

And I said, "Certainly not!"

Then she added, "I like to follow in the pathway you have blazed."

That closed the matter so far as the little book was concerned.
Save, perhaps, that after I had walked to the station with White
Pigeon and she had boarded the car, she stepped out upon the rear
platform, and as I stood there at the station watching the train
disappear around the curve, White Pigeon reached into the Boston
bag, took out the little book and held it up.

That was the last time I saw White Pigeon. She was looking well and
strong, and her step, I noticed, was firm and sure, and she carried
the crown of her head high and her chin in. It made me carry my chin
in, too, just by force of example, I suppose--so easily are we
influenced. When you walk with some folks you slouch along, but
others there be who make you feel an upward lift and skyey
gravitation--it is very curious!

Yet I do really believe White Pigeon is forty, or awfully close to
it. There are silver streaks among her brown braids, and surely the
peachblow has long gone from her cheek. Then she was awfully tanned
--and that little mole on her forehead, and its mate on her chin,
stand out more than ever, like the freckles on the face of
Alcibiades Roycroft when he has taken on his August russet.

I think White Pigeon must be near forty! That is the second book she
has stolen from me; the other was Max Muller's "Memories"--it was at
the Louvre in Paris, August the Fourteenth, Eighteen Hundred Ninety-
five, as we sat on a bench, silent before the "Mona Lisa" of
Leonardo.

This book, "Renaissance Masters," I didn't care much for, anyway. I
got no information from it, yet it gave me a sort o' glow--that is
all--like that lecture which I heard in my boyhood by Wendell
Phillips.

There is only one thing in the book I remember, but that stands out
as clearly as the little mole on White Pigeon's forehead. The author
said that Leonardo da Vinci invented more useful appliances than any
other man who ever lived, except our own Edison.

I know Edison: he is a most lovable man (because he is himself),
very deaf--and glad of it, he says, because it saves him from
hearing a lot of things he doesn't wish to hear. "It is like this,"
he once said to me: "deafness gives you a needed isolation; reduces
your sensitiveness so things do not disturb or distract; allows you
to concentrate and focus on a thought until you run it down--see?"

Edison is a great Philistine--reads everything I write--has a
complete file of the little brownie magazine; and some of the
"Little Journeys" I saw he had interlined and marked. I think Edison
is one of the greatest men I ever met--he appreciates Good Things.

I told Edison how this writer, Rose, had compared him with Leonardo.
He smiled and said, "Who is Rose?" Then after a little pause he
continued, "The Great Man is one who has been a long time dead--the
woods are full of wizards, but not many of them know that"; and the
Wizard laughed softly at his own joke.

What kind of a man was Leonardo? Why, he was the same kind of a man
as Edison--only Leonardo was thin and tall, while Edison is stout.
But you and I would be at home with either. Both are classics and
therefore essentially modern. Leonardo studied Nature at first hand
--he took nothing for granted--Nature was his one book. Stuffy,
fussy, indoor professors--men of awful dignity--frighten folks,
cause children to scream, and ladies to gaze in awe; but Leonardo
was simple and unpretentious. He was at home in any society, high or
low, rich or poor, learned or unlearned--and was quite content to be
himself. It's a fine thing to be yourself!

Thackeray once said, "If I had met Shakespeare on the stairs, I know
I should have fainted dead away!" I do not believe Shakespeare's
presence ever made anybody faint. He was so big that he could well
afford to put folks at their ease.

If Leonardo should come to East Aurora, Bertie, Oliver, Lyle and I
would tramp with him across the fields, and he would carry that
leather bag strung across his shoulder, just as he ever did when in
the country. He was a geologist and a botanist, and was always
collecting things (and forgetting where they were).

We would tramp with him, I say, and if the season were right we
would go through orchards, sit under the trees and eat apples. And
Leonardo would talk, as he liked to do, and tell why the side of
fruit that was towards the sun took on a beautiful color first; and
when an apple fell from the tree he would, so to speak, anticipate
Sir Isaac Newton and explain why it fell down and not up.

That leather bag of his, I fear, would get rather heavy before we
got back, and probably Oliver and Lyle would dispute the honor of
carrying it for him.

Leonardo was once engaged by Cesare Borgia to fortify the kingdom of
Romagna. It was a brand-new kingdom, presented to the young man by
Pope Alexander the Sixth. It was really the Pope who ordered
Leonardo to survey the tract and make plans for the fortifications
and canals and all that--so Leonardo didn't like to refuse. Cesare
Borgia had the felicity of being the son of the Pope, but the Pope
used to refer to him as his nephew--it was a habit that Popes once
had. Pope Alexander also had a daughter--by name, Lucrezia Borgia--
sister to Cesare and very much like him, for they took their
diversion in the same way.

Leonardo started in to do the work and make plans for fortifications
that should be impregnable. He looked the ground over thoroughly,
traveling on horseback, and his two servants followed him up in a
cart drawn by a bull, which Leonardo calmly explains was a "side-
wheeler."

Leonardo carried a big sketchbook, and as he made plans for
redoubts, he made notes to the effect that crows fly in flocks
without a leader, and wild ducks have a system and fly V shape, with
a leader that changes off from time to time with the privates. Also,
a waterfall runs the musical gamut, and the water might be separated
so as to play a tune. Also, the leaves turn to gold through
oxidation, and robins pair for life.

Leonardo also wrote at this time on the movements of the clouds, the
broken strata of rocks, the fertilization of flowers, the habits of
bees, and a hundred other themes which fill the library of notebooks
that he left.

Meanwhile, Cesare Borgia was getting a trifle impatient about the
building of his forts. Two years had passed when Cesare and his
father met with an accident not uncommon in those times. The
precious pair had indulged in their Borgian specialty for the
benefit of a certain cardinal, whom they did not warmly admire,
though the plot seems to have been chiefly the work of Cesare. By
mistake they drank the poisoned wine prepared for the cardinal, and
the Pope was cut off amidst a life of usefulness, his son surviving
for a worse fate. Pope Julius the Second coming upon the scene,
speedily dispossessed the Borgias, and the idea of the new kingdom
was abandoned.

Leonardo evidently did not go into mourning for the Pope. He had a
bullock-cart loaded with specimens, sketches and notebooks, and he
set to work to sort them out. He was very happy in this employment--
being essentially a man of peace--and while he made forts and
planned siege-guns he was a deal more interested in certain swallows
that made nests and glued the work into a most curious and beautiful
structure, and when the birds were old enough to fly, tore up the
nest, pushing the wee birds out to "swim in the air" or perish.

I made some notes about Leonardo's bird observations in the back of
that "Renaissance" book that White Pigeon appropriated. I can not
recall just what they were--I think I'll hunt White Pigeon up the
next time I am in Paris, and get the book back.

When that painstaking biographer, Arsene Houssaye, was endeavoring
to fix the date of Leonardo da Vinci's birth, he interviewed a
certain bishop, who waived the matter thus: "Surely what difference
does it make, since he had no business to be born at all?"--a very
Milesian-like reply. Houssaye is too sensible a man to waste words
with the spiritually obese, and so merely answered in the language
of Terence, "I am a man and nothing that is human is alien to me!"

The gentle Erasmus when a boy was once taunted by a schoolfellow
with having "no name." And Erasmus replied, "Then, I'll make one for
myself." And he did.

No record of Leonardo's birth exists, but the year is fixed upon in
a very curious way. Caterina, his mother, was married one year after
his birth. The date of this marriage is proven, and the fact that
the son of Piero da Vinci was then a year old is also shown. As the
marriage occurred in Fourteen Hundred Fifty-three, we simply go back
one year and say that Leonardo da Vinci was born in Fourteen Hundred
Fifty-two.

Most accounts say that Caterina was a servant in the Da Vinci
family, but a later and seemingly more authentic writer informs us
that she was a governess and a teacher of needlework. That her
kinsmen hastened her marriage with the peasant, Vacca Accattabriga,
seems quite certain: they sought to establish her in a respectable
position. And so she acquiesced, and avoided society's displeasure,
very much as Lord Bacon escaped disgrace by leaving "Hamlet" upon
Shakespeare's doorstep.

This child of Caterina's found a warm welcome in the noble family of
his father. From his babyhood he seems to have had the power of
winning hearts--he came fresh from God and brought love with him. We
even hear a little rustle of dissent from grandmother and aunts when
his father, Piero da Vinci, married, and started housekeeping as did
Benjamin Franklin "with a wife and a bouncing boy."

The charm of the child is again revealed in the fact that his
stepmother treated him as her own babe, and lavished her love upon
him even from her very wedding morn.

Perhaps the compliment should go to her, as well as to the child,
for the woman whose heart goes out to another woman's babe is surely
good quality. And this was the only taste of motherhood that this
brave woman knew, for she passed out in a few months.

Fate decreed that Leonardo should have successively four
stepmothers, and should live with all of them in happiness and
harmony, for he always made his father's house his own.

Leonardo was the idol of his father and all these stepmothers. He
had ten half-brothers, who alternately boasted of his kinship and
flouted him. Yet nothing could seriously disturb the serenity of his
mind. When his father died, without a will, the brothers sought to
dispossess Leonardo of his rights, and we hear of a lawsuit, which
was finally compromised. Yet note the magnanimity of Leonardo--in
his will he leaves bequests to these brothers who had sought to undo
him!

Of the life of the mother after her marriage we know nothing. There
is a vague reference in Vasari's book to her "large family and
growing cares," but whether she knew of her son's career, we can not
say. Leonardo never mentions her, yet one writer has attempted to
show that the rare beauty of that mysterious face shown in so many
of Leonardo's pictures was modeled from the face of his mother.

No love-story comes to us in Leonardo's own life--he never married.
Ventura suggests that "on account of his birth, he was indifferent
to the divine institution of marriage." But this is pure conjecture.
We know that his great contemporaries, Michelangelo, Raphael, Titian
and Giorgione, never married; and we know further that there was a
sentiment in the air at that time, that an artist belonged to the
Church, and his life, like that of the priest, was sacred to her
service.

Like Sir William Davenant, Leonardo was always proud of the mystery
that surrounded his birth--it differentiated him from the mass, and
placed him as one set apart. Well might he have used the language
put into the mouth of Edmund in "King Lear." In one of Leonardo's
manuscripts is found an interjected prayer of thankfulness for "the
divinity of my birth, and the angels that have guarded my life and
guided my feet"

This idea of "divinity" is strong in the mind of every great man. He
recognizes his sonship, and claims his divine parentage. The man of
masterly mind is perforce an Egotist. When he speaks he says, "Thus
saith the Lord." If he did not believe in himself, how could he make
others believe in him? Small men are apologetic and give excuses for
being on earth, and reasons for staying here so long, and run and
peek about to find themselves dishonorable graves. Not so the Great
Souls--the fact that they are here is proof that God sent them.
Their actions are regal, their language oracular, their manner
affirmative. Leonardo's mental attitude was sublimely gracious--he
had no grievance or quarrel with his Maker--he accepted life, and
ever found it good. "We are all sons of God and it doth not yet
appear what we shall be."

Philip Gilbert Hamerton, who wrote "The Intellectual Life," names
Leonardo da Vinci as having lived the richest, fullest and best-
rounded life of which we know. Yet while Leonardo lived, there also
lived Shakespeare, Loyola, Cervantes, Columbus, Martin Luther,
Savonarola, Erasmus, Michelangelo, Titian and Raphael. Titans all--
giants in intellect and performance, doing and daring, and working
such wonders as men never worked before: writing plays, without
thought of posterity, that are today the mine from which men work
their poetry; producing comedies that are classic; sailing trackless
seas and discovering continents; tacking proclamations of defiance
on church-doors; hunted and exiled for the right of honest speech;
welcoming fierce flames of fagots; falling upon blocks of marble and
liberating angels; painting pictures that have inspired millions!
But not one touched life at so many points, or reveled so in
existence, or was so captain of his soul as was Leonardo da Vinci.

Vasari calls him the "divinely endowed," "showered with the richest
gifts as by celestial munificence" and speaks of his countenance
thus: "The radiance of his face was so splendidly beautiful that it
brought cheerfulness to the hearts of the most melancholy, and his
presence was such that his lightest word would move the most
obstinate to say 'Yes' or 'No.'"

Bandello, the story-teller who was made a Bishop on account of his
peculiar talent, had the effrontery to put one of his worst stories,
that about the adventures of Fra Lippo Lippi, into the mouth of
Leonardo. This rough-cast tale, somewhat softened down and hand-
polished, served for one of Browning's best-known poems. Had
Bandello allowed Botticelli to tell the tale, it would have been
much more in keeping. Leonardo's days were too full of work to
permit of his indulging in the society of roysterers--his life was
singularly dignified and upright.

When about twenty years old Leonardo was a fellow-student with
Perugino in the bottega of good old Andrea del Verrocchio. It seems
the master painted a group and gave Leonardo the task of drawing in
one figure. Leonardo painted in an angel--an angel whose grace and
subtle beauty stand out, even today, like a ray of light. The story
runs that good old Verrocchio wept on first seeing it--wept
unselfish tears of joy, touched with a very human pathos--his pupil
had far surpassed him, and never again did Verrocchio attempt to
paint.

In physical strength Leonardo surpassed all his comrades. "He could
twist horseshoes between his fingers, bend bars of iron across his
knees, disarm every adversary, and in wrestling, running, vaulting
and swimming he had no equals. He was especially fond of horses, and
in the joust often rode animals that had never before been ridden,
winning prizes from the most daring." Brawn is usually purchased at
the expense of brain, but not so in this case. Leonardo was the
courtier and diplomat, and all the finer graces were in his keeping,
even from boyhood. And a recent biographer has made the discovery
that he was called from Florence to the Court of Milan "because he
was such an adept harpist, playing and singing his own
compositions."

Yet we have the letter written by Leonardo to the Duke of Milan,
wherein he commends himself, and in humility tells of a few things
he can do. This most precious document is now in the Ambrosian
Library at Milan. After naming nine items in the way of constructing
bridges, tunnels, canals, fortifications, the making of cannon, use
of combustibles and explosives--known to him alone--he gets down to
things of peace and says: "I believe I am equaled by no one in
architecture in constructing public and private buildings, and in
conducting water from one place to another. I can execute sculpture,
whether in marble, bronze or terra cotta, and in drawing and
painting I believe I can do as much as any other man, be he who he
may. Further, I could engage to execute the bronze statue in memory
of your honored father. And again, if any of the above-mentioned
things should appear impossible or overstated, I am ready to make
such performance in any place or at any time to prove to you my
power. In humility I thus commend myself to your illustrious house,
and am your servant, Leonardo da Vinci."

And the strange part of all this is that Leonardo could do all he
claimed--or he might, if there were a hundred hours in a day and man
did not grow old.

The things he predicted and planned have mostly been done. He knew
the earth was round, and understood the orbits of the planets--
Columbus knew no more. His scheme of building a canal from Pisa to
Florence and diverting the waters of the Arno, was carried out
exactly as he had planned, two hundred years after his death. He
knew the expansive quality of steam, the right systems of dredging,
the action of the tides, the proper use of levers, screws and
cranes, and how immense weights could be raised and lowered. He
placed a new foundation under a church that was sinking in the sand
and elevated the whole stone structure several feet. But when Vasari
seriously says he had a plan for moving mountains (aside from
faith), I think we had better step aside and talk of other things.

And all this time that he was working at physics and mathematics, he
was painting and modeling in clay, just for recreation.

Then behold the Duke of Milan, the ascetic and profligate, libertine
and dreamer, hearing of him and sending straightway for Leonardo
because he is "the most accomplished harpist in Italy"!

So Leonardo came and led the dance and the tourney, improvised songs
and planned the fetes and festivals where strange animals turned
into birds and gigantic flowers opened, disclosing beautiful girls.

Yet Leonardo found time to plan the equestrian statue of Francisco
Sporza, the Duke's father, and finding the subject so interesting he
took up the systematic study of the horse, and dived to the depths
of horse anatomy in a way that no living man had done before. He
dissected the horse, articulated the skeletons of different breeds
for comparison, and then wrote a book upon the subject which is a
textbook yet; and meanwhile he let the statue wait. He discovered
that in the horse there are rudimentary muscles, and unused organs--
the "water-stomach" for instance--thus showing that the horse
evolved from a lower form of life--anticipating Darwin by three
hundred years.

The Duke was interested in statues and pictures--what he called
"results"--he didn't care for speculations or theories, and only a
live horse that could run fast interested him. So to keep the peace,
the gracious Leonardo painted portraits of the Duke's mistress,
posing her as the Blessed Virgin, thus winning the royal favor and
getting carte-blanche orders on the Keeper of the Exchequer. As a
result of this Milan period we have the superb portrait, now in the
Louvre, of Lucrezia Crivelli, who was supposed to be the favorite of
the Duke.

But the Duke was a married man, and the good wife must be placated.
She had turned to religion when her lover's love grew cold, just as
women always do; and for her Leonardo painted the "Last Supper" in
the dining-room of the monastery which was under her especial
protection, and where she often dined.

The devout lady found much satisfaction in directing the work, which
was to be rather general and simply decorative. But the heart of
Leonardo warmed to the task and as he worked he planned the most
famous painting in the world. All this time Leonardo had many pupils
in painting and sculpture. Soon he founded the Milan Academy of Art.
At odd times he made designs for the Duke's workers in silver and
gold, drew patterns for the nuns to embroider from, and gave them
and the assembled ladies, invited on the order of the Duke's wife,
lessons in literature and the gentle art of writing poetry.

The Prior of the monastery watched the work of the "Last Supper"
with impatient eyes. He had given up the room to the lumbering
scaffolds, hoping to have all cleaned up and tidy in a month, come
Michaelmas. But the month had passed and only blotches of color and
black, curious outlines marred the walls. Once the Prior threatened
to remove the lumber by force and wipe the walls clean, but Leonardo
looked at him and he retreated.

Now he complained to the Duke about the slowness of the task.
Leonardo worked alone, allowing no pupil or helper to touch the
picture. Five good, lively men could do the job in a week--"I could
do it myself, if allowed," the good Prior said. Often Leonardo would
stand with folded arms and survey the work for an hour at a time and
not lift a brush; the Prior had seen it all through the keyhole!

The Duke listened patiently and then summoned Leonardo. The
painter's gracious speech soon convinced the Duke that men of genius
do not work like hired laborers. This painting was to be a
masterpiece, fit monument to a wise and virtuous ruler. So
consummate a performance must not be hastened; besides there was no
one to pose for either the head of Christ or of Judas. The Christ
must be ideal and the face could only be conjured forth from the
painter's own soul, in moments of inspiration. As for Judas, "Why,
if nothing better can be found--and I doubt it much--I believe I
will take as model for Judas our friend the Prior!" And Leonardo
turned to the Prior, who fled and never again showed his face in the
room until the picture was finished.

The Prior's complaint, that Leonardo had too many irons in the fire,
was the universal cry the groundlings raised against him. "He begins
things, but never completes them," they said.

The man of genius conceives things; the man of talent carries them
forward to completion. This the critics did not know. It is too much
to expect the equal balance of genius and talent in one individual.
Leonardo had great talent, but his genius outstripped it, for he
planned what twenty lifetimes could not complete. He was indeed the
endless experimenter--his was in very truth the Experimental Life.
His incentive was self-development--to conceive was enough--common
men could complete. To try many things means Power: to finish a few
is Immortality.

God's masterpiece is the human face. A woman's smile may have in it
more sublimity than a sunset; more pathos than a battle-scarred
landscape; more warmth than the sun's bright ray; more love than
words can say.

The human face is the masterpiece of God.

The eyes reveal the soul, the mouth the flesh, the chin stands for
purpose, the nose means will. But over and behind all is that
fleeting Something we call "expression." This Something is not set
or fixed, it is fluid as the ether, changeful as the clouds that
move in mysterious majesty across the surface of a summer sky,
subtle as the sob of rustling leaves--too faint at times for human
ears--elusive as the ripples that play hide-and-seek over the bosom
of a placid lake.

And yet men have caught expression and held it captive. On the walls
of the Louvre hangs the "Mona Lisa" of Leonardo da Vinci. This
picture has been for four hundred years an exasperation and an
inspiration to every portrait-painter who has put brush to palette.
Well does Walter Pater call it, "The Despair of Painters." The
artist was over fifty years of age when he began the work, and he
was four years in completing the task.

Completing, did I say? Leonardo's dying regret was that he had not
completed this picture. And yet we might say of it, as Ruskin said
of Turner's work, "By no conceivable stretch of imagination can we
say where this picture could be bettered or improved upon."

Leonardo did not paint this portrait for the woman who sat for it,
nor for the woman's husband, who we know was not interested in the
matter. The painter made the picture for himself, but succumbing to
temptation, sold it to the King of France for a sum equal to
something over eighty thousand dollars--an enormous amount at that
time to be paid for a single canvas. The picture was not for sale,
which accounts for the tremendous price that it brought.

Unlike so many other works attributed to Leonardo, no doubt exists
as to the authenticity of "La Gioconda." The correspondence relative
to its sale yet exists, and even the voucher proving its payment may
still be seen. Fate and fortune have guarded the "Mona Lisa"; and
neither thief nor vandal, nor impious infidel nor unappreciative
stupidity, nor time itself has done it harm. France bought the
picture; France has always owned and housed it; it still belongs to
France.

We call the "Mona Lisa" a portrait, and we have been told how La
Gioconda sat for the picture, and how the artist invented ways of
amusing her, by stories, recitations, the luring strain of hidden
lutes, and strange flowers and rare pictures brought in as surprises
to animate and cheer.

That Leonardo loved this woman we are sure, and that their
friendship was close and intimate the world has guessed; but the
picture is not her portrait--it is himself whom the artist reveals.

Away back in his youth, when Leonardo was a student with Verrocchio,
he gave us glimpses of this same face. He showed this woman's
mysterious smile in the Madonna, in Saint Anne, Mary Magdalen, and
the outlines of the features are suggested in the Christ and the
Saint John of the "Last Supper." But not until La Gioconda had posed
for him did the consummate beauty and mysterious intellect of this
ideal countenance find expression.

There is in the face all you can read into it, and nothing more. It
gives you what you bring, and nothing else. It is as silent as the
lips of Memnon, as voiceless as the Sphinx. It suggests to you every
joy that you have ever felt, every sorrow you have ever known, every
triumph you have ever experienced.

This woman is beautiful, just as all life is beautiful when we are
in health. She has no quarrel with the world--she loves and she is
loved again. No vain longing fills her heart, no feverish unrest
disturbs her dreams, for her no crouching fear haunts the passing
hours--that ineffable smile which plays around her mouth says
plainly that life is good. And yet the circles about the eyes and
the drooping lids hint of world-weariness, and speak the message of
Koheleth and say, "Vanity of vanities, all is vanity."

La Gioconda is infinitely wise, for she has lived. That supreme
poise is only possible to one who knows. All the experiences and
emotions of manifold existence have etched and molded that form and
face until the body has become the perfect instrument of the soul.

Like every piece of intense personality, this picture has power both
to repel and to attract. To this woman nothing is either necessarily
good or bad. She has known strange woodland loves in far-off eons
when the world was young. She is familiar with the nights and days
of Cleopatra, for they were hers--the lavish luxury, the animalism
of a soul on fire, the smoke of curious incense that brought poppy-
like repose, the satiety that sickens--all these were her portion;
the sting of the asp yet lingers in her memory, and the faint scar
from its fangs is upon her white breast, known and wondered at by
Leonardo who loved her. Back of her stretches her life, a
mysterious, purple shadow. Do you not see the palaces turned to
dust, the broken columns, the sunken treasures, the creeping mosses
and the rank ooze of fretted waters that have undermined cities and
turned kingdoms into desert seas? The galleys of Pagan Greece have
swung wide for her on the unforgetting tide, for her soul dwelt in
the body of Helen of Troy, and Pallas Athene has followed her ways
and whispered to her the secrets even of the gods.

Aye! not only was she Helen, but she was Leda, the mother of Helen.
Then she was Saint Anne, mother of Mary; and next she was Mary,
visited by an Angel in a dream, and followed by the Wise Men who had
seen the Star in the East.

The centuries, that are but thoughts, found her a Vestal Virgin in
Pagan Rome when brutes were kings, and lust stalked rampant through
the streets. She was the bride of Christ, and her fair, frail body
was flung to the wild beasts, and torn limb from limb while the
multitude feasted on the sight.

True to the central impulse of her soul the Dark Ages rightly called
her Cecilia, and then Saint Cecilia, mother of sacred music, and
later she ministered to men as Melania, the Nun of Tagaste; next as
that daughter of William the Conqueror, the Sister of Charity who
went throughout Italy, Spain and France and taught the women of the
nunneries how to sew, to weave, to embroider, to illuminate books,
and make beauty, truth and harmony manifest to human eyes. And so
this Lady of the Beautiful Hands stood to Leonardo as the embodiment
of a perpetual life; moving in a constantly ascending scale,
gathering wisdom, graciousness, love, even as he himself in this
life met every experience halfway and counted it joy, knowing that
experience is the germ of power. Life writes its history upon the
face, so that all those who have had a like experience read and
understand. The human face is the masterpiece of God.

BOTTICELLI

In Leonardo's "Treatise on Painting," only one contemporary is
named--Sandro Botticelli.... The Pagan and Christian world mingle in
the work of Botticelli; but the man himself belonged to an age that
is past and gone--an age that flourished long before men recorded
history. His best efforts seem to spring out of a heart that forgot
all precedent, and arose, Venus-like, perfect and complete, from the
unfathomable Sea of Existence.
--_Walter Pater_

[Illustration: Botticelli]

One Professor Max Lautner has recently placed a small petard under
the European world of Art, and given it a hoist to starboard, by
asserting that Rembrandt did not paint Rembrandt's best pictures.
The Professor makes his point luminous by a cryptogram he has
invented and for which he has filed a caveat. It is a very useful
cryptogram; no well-regulated family should be without it--for by it
you can prove any proposition you may make, even to establishing
that Hopkinson Smith is America's only stylist. My opinion is that
this cryptogram is an infringement on that of our lamented
countryman, Ignatius Donnelly.

But letting that pass, the statement that Rembrandt could not have
painted the pictures that are ascribed to him, "because the man was
low, vulgar and untaught," commands respect on account of the
extreme crudity of the thought involved. Lautner is so dull that he
is entertaining.

"I have the capacity in me for every crime," wrote that gentlest of
gentle men, Ralph Waldo Emerson. Of course he hadn't, and in making
this assertion Emerson pulled toward him a little more credit than
was his due. That is, he overstated a great classic truth.

"If Rembrandt painted the 'Christ at Emmaus' and the 'Sortie of the
Civic Guard,' then Rembrandt had two souls," exclaims Professor
Lautner.

And the simple answer of Emerson would have been, "He had."

That is just the difference between Rembrandt and Professor Lautner.
Lautner has one flat, dead-level, unprofitable soul that neither
soars high nor dives deep; and his mind reasons unobjectionable
things out syllogistically, in a manner perfectly inconsequential.
He is icily regular, splendidly null.

Every man measures others by himself--he has only one standard. When
a man ridicules certain traits in other men, he ridicules himself.
How would he know that other men were contemptible, did he not look
into his own heart and there see the hateful things? Thackeray wrote
his book on Snobs, because he was a Snob--which is not to say that
he was a Snob all the time. When you recognize a thing, good or bad,
in the outside world, it is because it was yours already.

"I carry the world in my heart," said the Prophet of old. All the
universe you have is the universe you have within.

Old Walt Whitman, when he saw the wounded soldier, exclaimed, "I am
that man!" And two thousand years before this, Terence said, "I am a
man, and nothing that is human is alien to me."

I know just why Professor Lautner believes that Rembrandt never
could have painted a picture with a deep, tender, subtle and
spiritual significance. Professor Lautner averages fairly well, he
labors hard to be consistent, but his thought gamut runs just from
Bottom the weaver to Dogberry the judge. He is a cauliflower--that
is to say, a cabbage with a college education.

Yes, I understand him, because for most of the time I myself am
supremely dull, childishly dogmatic, beautifully self-complacent.

I am Lautner.

Lautner says that Rembrandt was "untaught," and Donnelly said the
same of Shakespeare, and each critic gives this as a reason why the
man could not have done a sublime performance. Yet since "Hamlet"
was never equaled, who could have taught its author how? And since
Rembrandt at his best was never surpassed, who could have instructed
him?

Rembrandt sold his wife's wedding-garments, and spent the money for
strong drink.

The woman was dead.

And then there came to him days of anguish, and nights of grim,
grinding pain. He paced the echoing halls, as did Robert Browning
after the death of Elizabeth Barrett when he cried aloud, "I want
her! I want her!". The cold gray light of morning came creeping into
the sky. Rembrandt was fevered, restless, sleepless. He sat by the
window and watched the day unfold. And as he sat there looking out
to the east, the light of love gradually drove the darkness from his
heart. He grew strangely calm--he listened, he thought he heard the
rustle of a woman's garments; he caught the smell of her hair--he
imagined Saskia was at his elbow. He took up the palette and brushes
that for weeks had lain idle, and he outlined the "Christ at
Emmaus"--the gentle, loving, sympathetic Christ--the worn,
emaciated, thorn-crowned, bleeding Christ, whom the Pharisees
misunderstood, and the soldiers spat upon.

Don't you know how Rembrandt painted the "Christ at Emmaus"? I do. I
am that man.

Shortly after Sandro Botticelli had painted that distinctly pagan
picture, "The Birth of Venus," he equalized matters, eased
conscience and silenced the critics, by producing a beautiful
Madonna, surrounded by a circle of singing angels. Yet George Eliot
writes that there were wiseacres who shook their heads and said:
"This Madonna is the work of some good monk--only a man who is
deeply religious could put that look of exquisite tenderness and
sympathy in a woman's face. Some one is trying to save Sandro's
reputation, and win him back from his wayward ways."

In the lives of Botticelli and Rembrandt there is a close
similarity. In temperament as well as in experience they seem to
parallel each other. In boyhood Botticelli and Rembrandt were dull,
perverse, wilful. Both were given up by teachers and parents as
hopelessly handicapped by stupidity. Botticelli's father, seeing
that the boy made no progress at school, apprenticed him to a
metalworker. The lad showed the esteem in which he held his parent
by dropping the family name of Filipepi and assuming the name of
Botticelli, the name of his employer.

Rembrandt's father thought his boy might make a fair miller, but
beyond this his ambition never soared. Botticelli and Rembrandt were
splendid animals. The many pictures of Rembrandt, painted by
himself, show great physical vigor and vital power.

The picture of Botticelli, by himself, in the "Adoration of the
Magi," reveals a powerful physique and a striking personality. The
man is as fine as an Aztec, as strong and self-reliant as a cliff-
dweller. Character and habit are revealed in the jaw--the teeth of
the Aztecs were made to grind corn in the kernel, and as long as
they continued grinding dried corn in the kernel, they had good
teeth. Dentists were not required until men began to feed on mush.

Botticelli had broad, strong, square jaws, wide nostrils, full lips,
large eyes set wide apart, forehead rather low and sloping, and a
columnar neck that rose right out of his spine. A man with such a
neck can "stand punishment"--and give it. Such a neck is only seen
once in a thousand times. Men with such necks have been mothered by
women who bore burdens balanced on their heads, boycotted the
corsetier, and eschewed all deadly French heels.

Do you know the face of Oliver Goldsmith, the droop of the head, the
receding chin and the bulging forehead? Well, Botticelli's face was
the antithesis of this.

Most of the truly great artists have been men of this Stone Age--
quality men who dared. Michelangelo was the pure type: Titian who
lived a century (lacking one year) was another. Leonardo was the
same fine savage (who in some miraculous way also possessed the
grace of a courtier). Franz Hals, Van Dyck, Rembrandt and Botticelli
were all men of fierce appetites and heroic physiques. They had
animality plus that would have carried them across the century-mark,
had they not drawn checks on futurity, in a belief that their bank-
balance was unlimited.

Botticelli and Rembrandt kept step in their history, both receiving
instant recognition in early life and becoming rich. Then fashion
and society turned against them--the tide of popularity began to
ebb. One reinforced his genius with strong drink, and the other
became intoxicated with religious enthusiasm. Finally, both begged
alms in the public streets; and the bones of each filled a pauper's
grave.

Ruskin unearthed Botticelli (Just as he discovered Turner), and gave
him to the Preraphaelites, who fell down and worshiped him. Whether
we would have had Burne-Jones without Botticelli is a grave
question, and anyway it would have been another Burne-Jones. There
would have been no processions of tall, lissome, melancholy beauties
wending their way to nowhere, were it not for the "Spring." Ruskin
held up the picture, and the Preraphaelites got them to their
easels. At once all original "Botticellis" were gotten out,
"restored" and reframed. The prices doubled, trebled, quadrupled, as
the brokers scoured Europe. By the year Eighteen Hundred Eighty-six
every "Botticelli" had found a home in some public institution or
gallery, and no lure of gold could bring one forth.

At Yale University there is a modest collection of good pictures.
Among them is a "Botticelli": not a great picture like the "Crowned
Madonna" of the Uffizi, or "The Nativity" of the National Gallery,
but still a picture painted by Sandro Botticelli, beyond a doubt.
Recently, J. Pierpont Morgan, alumnus of Harvard, conceived the idea
that the "Botticelli" at Yale would look quite as well and be safer
if it were hung on the walls of the new granite fireproof Art-
Gallery at Cambridge. Accordingly, he dispatched an agent to New
Haven to buy the "Botticelli." The agent offered fifty thousand
dollars, seventy-five, one hundred--no. Then he proposed to build
Yale a new art-gallery and stock it with Pan-American pictures, all
complete, in exchange for that little, insignificant and faded
"Botticelli.". But no trade was consummated, and on the walls of
Yale the picture still hangs. Each night a cot is carried in and
placed beneath the picture. And there a watchman sleeps and dreams
of that portrait of the Duchess of Devonshire by Gainsborough,
stolen from its frame, lost for a quarter of a century, and then
rescued by one Colonel Patrick Sheedy (philanthropist and friend of
art), for a consideration, and sold to J. Pierpont Morgan, alumnus
of Harvard (and a very alert, alive and active man).

A short time ago, there shot across the artistic firmament a comet
of daring and dazzling brightness. Every comet is hurling onward to
its death: destruction is its only end: and upon each line and
tracery of the work of Aubrey Beardsley is the taint of decay.

To deny the genius of the man were vain--he had elements in his
character that made him akin to Keats, Shelley, Burns, Byron, Chopin
and Stephen Crane. With these his name will in brotherhood be
forever linked. He was one made to suffer, sin and die--a few short
summers, and autumn came with yellow leaves and he was gone. And the
principal legacy he left us is the thought of wonder as to what he
might have been had he only lived!

Aubrey Beardsley's art was the art of the ugly. His countenances are
so repulsive that they attract. The psychology of the looks, and
leers, and grins, and hot, hectic desires on the faces of his women
is a puzzle that we can not lay aside--we want to solve the riddle
of this paradox of existence--the woman whose soul is mire and whose
heart is hell. Many men have tried to fathom it at close range, but
we devise a safer plan and follow the trail in books, art and
imagination. Art shows you the thing you might have done or been.
Burke says the ugly attracts us, because we congratulate ourselves
that we are not it.

The Madonna pictures, multiplied without end, stand for peace,
faith, hope, trustfulness and love. All that is fairest, holiest,
purest, noblest, best, men have tried to portray in the face of the
Madonna. All the good that is in the hearts of all the good women
they know, all the good that is in their own hearts, they have made
to shine forth from the "Mother of God." Woman has been the symbol
of righteousness and faith.

On the other hand, it was a woman--Louise de la Ramee--who said,
"Woman is the instrument of lust." Saint Chrysostom wrote, "She is
the snare the Devil uses to lure men to their doom." I am not quite
ready to accept the dictum of that old, old story that it was the
woman who collaborated with the serpent and first introduced sin and
sorrow into the world. Or, should I believe this, I wish to give
woman due credit for giving to man the Fruit of the Tree of
Knowledge--the best gift that ever came his way. But the first
thought holds true in a poetic way: it has always been, is yet, and
always will be true, that the very depths of degradation are sounded
only by woman. As poets, painters and sculptors have ever chosen a
woman to stand for what is best in humanity, so she has posed as
their model when they wanted to reveal the worst.

This desire to depict villainy on a human face seems to have found
its highest modern exponent in Aubrey Beardsley. With him man is an
animal, and woman a beast. Aye, she is worse than a beast--she is a
vampire. Kipling's summing up of woman as "a rag and a bone and a
hank of hair" gives no clue to the possibilities in way of subtle,
reckless reaches of deviltry compared with a single, simple, outline
drawing by Beardsley. Beardsley's heroines are the kind of women who
can kill a man with a million pin-pricks, so diabolically, subtly
and slyly administered that no one but the victim would be aware of
the martyrdom--and he could not explain it.

As you enter the main gallery of statuary at the Luxembourg, you
will see, on a slightly raised platform, at the opposite end of the
room, the nude figure of a man. The mold is heroic, and the strong
pose at once attracts your attention. As you approach closer you
will see, standing behind the man, the figure of a woman. Her form
is elevated so she is leaning over him and her face is turned so her
lips are about to be pressed upon his. You approach still closer,
and a feeling of horror flashes through you--you see that the
beautiful arms of the woman end in hairy claws. The claws embrace
the man in deadly grasp, and are digging deep into his vitals. On
his face is a look of fearful pain, and every splendid muscle is
tense with awful agony.

Now, if you do as I did, you will suddenly turn and go out into the
fresh air--the fearful realism of the marble will for the moment
unnerve you.

This is the piece of statuary that gave Philip Burne-Jones the cue
for his painting, "The Vampire," which picture suggested the poem,
by the same name, to Rudyard Kipling.

Aubrey Beardsley gloated on the Vampire--she was the sole goddess of
his idolatry.

No wonder it was that the story of Salome attracted him! Salome was
a woman so wantonly depraved that Beardsley, with a touch of pious
hypocrisy, said he dared not use her for dramatic purposes, save for
the fact that she was a Bible character.

You remember the story: John the Baptist, the strong, fine youth,
came up out of the wilderness crying in the streets of Jerusalem,
"Repent ye! Repent ye!" Salome heard the call and looked upon the
semi-naked young fanatic from her window, with half-closed, catlike
eyes. She smiled, did this idle creature of luxury, as she lay there
amid the cushions on her couch, arid gazed through the casement upon
the preacher in the street. Suddenly a thought came to her! She
arose on her elbow--she called her slaves.

They clothed her in a gaudy gown, dressed her hair, and led her
forth.

Salome followed the wild, weird, religious enthusiast. She pushed
through the crowd and placed herself near the man, so the smell of
her body would reach his nostrils, and his eyes would range the
swelling lines of her body.

Their eyes met. She half-smiled and gave him that look which had
snared the soul of many another. But he only gazed at her with
passionless, judging intensity, and repeated his cry, "Repent ye,
Repent ye, for the day is at hand!"

Her reply, uttered soft and low, was this: "I would kiss thy lips!"

He turned away and she reached to seize his garment, repeating, "I
would kiss thy lips--I would kiss thy lips!" He turned aside and
forgot her, as he continued his warning cry, and went his way.

The next day she waylaid the youth again; as he came near she
suddenly and softly stepped forth and said in that same low voice,
"I would kiss thy lips!"

He repulsed her with scorn. She threw her arms about him and sought
to draw his head down near hers. He pushed her from him with sinewy
hands, sprang as from a pestilence, and was lost in the pressing
throng.

That night she danced before Herod Antipas, and when the promise was
recalled that she should have anything she wished, she named the
head of the only man who had ever turned away from her--"The head of
John the Baptist on a charger!"

In an hour the wish is gratified. Two eunuchs stand before Salome
with a silver tray bearing its fearsome burden. The woman smiles--a
smile of triumph--as she steps forth with tinkling feet. A look of
pride comes over the painted face. Her jeweled fingers reach into
the blood-matted hair. She lifts the head aloft, and the bracelets
on her brown, bare arms fall to her shoulders, making strange music.
Her face presses the face of the dead. In exultation she exclaims,
"I have kissed thy lips!"

The most famous picture by Botticelli is the "Spring," now in the
Academy at Florence. The picture has given rise to endless inquiry,
and the explanation was made in the artist's day, and is still made,
that it was painted to illustrate a certain passage in Lucretius.
This innocent little subterfuge of giving a classic turn to things
in art and literature has allowed many a man to shield his
reputation and gloss his good name. When Art relied upon the
protecting wing of the Church, the poet-painters called their risky
little things, "Susannah and the Elders," "The Wife of Uriah," or
"Pharaoh's Daughter." Lucas van Leyden once pictured a Dutch wench
with such startling and realistic fidelity that he scandalized a
whole community, until he labeled the picture, "Potiphar's Wife."

When the taste for the classics began to be cultivated, we had "Leda
and the Swan," "Psyche," "Phryne Before the Judges," "Aphrodite
Rising From the Sea," and, later, England experienced quite an
artistic eruption of Lady Godivas. Literature is filled with many
such naive little disguises as "Sonnets From the Portuguese," and
Robert Browning himself caught the idea and put many a maxim into
the mouth of another, for which he preferred not to stand sponsor.

Botticelli painted the "Spring" for Lorenzo the Magnificent, to be
placed in the Medici villa at Castello. The picture, it will be
remembered, represents seven female figures, a flying cupid, and a
youth. The youth is a young man of splendid proportions; he stands
in calm indifference with his back to the sparsely clad beauties,
and reaches into the branches of a tree for the plenteous fruit.
This youth is a composite portrait of Botticelli and his benefactor,
Lorenzo. The women were painted from life, and represent various
favorites and beauties of the court. The drawing is faulty, the
center of gravity being lost in several of the figures, and the
anatomy is of a quality that must have given a severe shock to the
artist's friend, Leonardo. Yet the grace, the movement and the
joyous quality of Spring are in it all. It is a most fascinating
picture, and we can well imagine the flutter it produced when first
exhibited four hundred years ago.

Two figures in the picture challenge attention. One of these
represents approaching maternity--a most daring thing to attempt.
This feature seems to belong to the School of Hogarth alone--a
school which, let us pray, is hopelessly dead.

Cimabue and several of his pupils painted realistic pictures
representing Mary visiting Elizabeth, but the intense religious zeal
back of them was a salt that saved from offending. Occasionally, the
staid and sober Dutch successfully attempted the same theme, and
their stolidity stood for them as religious zeal had done for the
early Italians--we pardon them simply because they knew no better
than to choose a subject that is beyond the realm of art.

The restorers and engravers have softened down Botticelli's intent,
which was originally well defined, but we can easily see that the
effect was delicate and spiritual. The woman's downcast gaze is full
of tenderness and truth. That figure when it was painted was
history, and must have had a very tender interest for two persons at
least. Had the painter dared to suggest motherhood in that other
figure--the one with the flowered raiment--he would have offended
against decency, and the art-sense of the world would have stricken
his name from the roster of fame forever, and made him anathema.
More has been written and said, and more copies made of that woman
in the flowered dress in the "Spring" than of any other portrait I
can remember, save possibly the "Mona Lisa."

The face is not without a certain attractiveness; the high cheek-
bones, the narrow forehead, and the lines above her brow show that
this is no ideal sketch--it is the portrait of a woman who once
lived. But the peculiar mark of depravity is the eye: this woman
looks at you with a cold, calm, calculating, brazen leer. Hidden in
the folds of her dress or in the coil of her hair is a stiletto--she
can find it in an instant--and as she looks at you out of those
impudent eyes, she is mentally searching out your most vulnerable
spot. In this woman's face there is an entire absence of wonder,
curiosity, modesty or passion. All that we call the eternally
feminine is obliterated.

"Mona Lisa" is infinitely wise, while this woman is only cunning.
All the lure she possesses is the lure of warm, pulsing youth--grown
old she will be a repulsive hag. Speculation has made her one of the
Borgias, for in the days of Botticelli a Borgia was Pope, and Cesare
Borgia and his court were well known to Botticelli--from such a
group he could have picked his model, if anywhere. Ruskin has linked
this unknown wicked beauty with Machiavelli. But Machiavelli had a
head that outmatched hers, and he would certainly have left her to
the fool moths that fluttered around her candle. Machiavelli used
women, and this woman has only one ambition, and that is to use men.
She represents concrete selfishness--the mother-instinct swallowed
up in pride, and conscience smothered by hate. Certainly sex is not
dead in her, but it is perverted below the brute. Her passion would
be so intense and fierce that even as she caressed her lover, with
arm about his neck, she would feel softly for his jugular, mindful
the while of the stiletto hidden in her hair. And this is the
picture that fired the brain of Aubrey Beardsley, and caused him to
fix his ambition on becoming the Apostle of the Ugly.

To liken Beardsley to Botticelli, however, seems indeed a sin. The
master was an artist, but Beardsley only gave chalk talks. His work
is often crude, rude and raw. He is only a promise, turned to dust.
Yet let the simple fact stand for what it is worth, that Beardsley
had but one god, and that was Botticelli. Most of the things
Beardsley did were ugly; many of the things Botticelli did were
supremely beautiful.

Yet in all of Botticelli's work there is a tinge of melancholy--a
shade of disappointment. The "Spring" is a sad picture. On the faces
of all his tall, fine, graceful girls there is a hectic flush. Their
cheeks are hollow, and you feel that their beauty is already
beginning to fade. Like fruit too much loved by the sun, they are
ready to fall.

Botticelli had the true love nature. By instinct he was a lover,
proof of which lies in the fact that he was deeply religious. The
woman he loved he has pictured over and over again. The touch of
sorrow is ever in her wan face, but she possessed a silken strength,
a heroic nature, a love that knew no turning. She had faith in
Botticelli, and surely he had faith in her. For forty years she was
in his heart; at times he tried to dislodge her and replace her
image with another; but he never succeeded, and the last Madonna he
drew is the same wistful, loving, patient face--sad yet proud,
strong yet infinitely tender.

In that piece of lapidary work, "How Sandro Botticelli Saw Simonetta
in the Spring," is a bit of heart psychology which, I believe, has
never been surpassed in English.

Simonetta, of the noble house of Vespucci, was betrothed to
Giuliano, brother of Lorenzo the Magnificent. Simonetta was tall,
stately--beautiful as Venus, wise as Minerva and proud as Juno. She
knew her worth, realized her beauty, and feeling her power made
others feel it, too.

On a visit to the villa of the Medici at Fiesole she first saw
Sandro Botticelli at an evening assembly in the gardens. She had
heard of the man and knew his genius. When they suddenly met face to
face under the boughs, she noted how her beauty startled him. His
gaze ranged the exquisite lines of her tall form, then sought the
burnished gold of her hair. Their eyes met.

First of all this man was an artist: the art-instinct in him was
supreme: after that he was a lover.

Simonetta saw he had looked upon her merely as a "subject." She was
both pleased and angry. She, too, loved art, but she loved love
more. She was a woman. They separated, and Simonetta inwardly
compared the sallow, slavish scion of a proud name, to whom she was
betrothed, with this God's Nobleman whom she had just met.
Giuliano's words were full of soft flattery; this man uttered an
oath of surprise under his breath, on first seeing her, and treated
her almost with rudeness.

She fought the battle out there, alone, leaning against a tree,
listening to the monotonous voice of a poet who was reading from
Plato. She felt the disinterested greatness of Sandro, she knew the
grandeur of his intellect--she was filled with a desire to be of
service to him. Certainly she did not love him--a social abyss
separated them--but could not her beauty and power in some way be
allied with his, so that the world should be made better?

"Shame is of the brute dullard who thinks shame," came the resonant
voice of the reader. The words rang in her ears. Sandro was greater
than the mere flesh--she would be, too. She would pose for him, and
thus give her beautiful body to the world--beauty is eternal! Her
action would bless and benefit the centuries yet to come. She was
the most beautiful of women--he the greatest of artists. It was an
opportunity sent from the gods! Instantly she half-ran, seeking the
painter. She found him standing apart, alone. She spoke eagerly and
hotly, fearing her courage would falter before she could make known
her wish: "Ecco, Messer Sandro," she whispered, casting a furtive
look about--"who is there in Florence like me?"

"There is no one," calmly answered Sandro.

"I will be your Lady Venus," she went on breathlessly, stepping
closer--"You shall paint me rising from the sea!"

Very early the next morning, before the household was astir, Sandro
entered the apartments of the lady Simonetta. She was awaiting him,
leaning with feigned carelessness against the balustrade, arrayed
from head to toe in a rose-colored mantle. One bare foot peeped
forth from under the folds of the robe.

Neither spoke a word.

Sandro arranged his easel, spread his crayons on the table, and
looked about the room making calculations as to light.

He motioned her to a certain spot. She took the position, and as he
picked up a crayon and examined it carelessly she raised her arms
and the robe fell at her feet.

Sandro faced her, and saw the tall, delicate form, palpitating
before him. The rays of the morning sun swept in between the
lattices and kissed her shoulder, face and hair.

For an instant the artist was in abeyance. Then from under his
breath he exclaimed: "Holy Virgin! what a line! Stay as you are, I
implore you--swerve not a hair's breadth, and soon you shall be mine
forever!"

The pencil broke under his impetuous stroke. He seized another and
worked at headlong speed. The woman watched him with eyes dilated.
She was agitated, and the pink of her fair skin came and went. Her
face grew pale, and she swayed like a reed.

All the time she watched the artist, fearfully. She was at his
mercy!

Ah God! he was only an artist with the biggest mouth in all
Florence! She noted how he tossed the hair from his eyes every
moment. She saw the heavy jaw, the great, broad-spreading feet, the
powerful chest. His smothered exclamations as he worked filled her
with scorn. What had she done? Who was she, anyway, that she should
thus bare her beauty before such a creature? He had not even spoken
to her! Was she only a thing? She grew deadly pale and reeled as she
stood there. Two big tears chased each other down her cheeks. The
painter looking up saw other tears glistening on her lashes. He
noted her distress.

He dropped his crayon and made a motion as if to advance to her
relief.

A few moments before and he might have folded her mantle about her
and assisted her to a seat--then they would have talked, reassured
each other, and been mutually understood. To be understood--to be
appreciated--that is it!

It was too late, now--she hated him.

As he advanced she recovered herself.

She pointed her finger to the door, and bade him begone.

Hastily he huddled his belongings into a parcel, and without looking
up, passed out of the door. She heard his steps echoing down the
stairway, and soon from out the lattice she saw him walk across the
court and disappear. He did not look up!

She threw herself upon her couch, buried her face in the pillows and
burst into tears.

In one short week word came to Sandro that Simonetta was dead--a
mysterious quick fever of some kind--she had refused all food--the
doctors could not understand it--the fever had just burned her life
out!

Let Maurice Hewlett tell the rest:

"They carried dead Simonetta through the streets of Florence, with
her pale face uncovered and a crown of myrtle in her hair. People
thronging there held their breath, or wept to see such still
loveliness; and her poor parted lips wore a patient little smile,
and her eyelids were pale violet and lay heavy on her cheek. White,
like a bride, with a nosegay of orange-blossoms, and syringa at her
throat, she lay there on her bed, with lightly folded hands and the
strange aloofness and preoccupation all the dead have. Only her hair
burned about her like molten copper.

"The great procession swept forward; black brothers of Misericordia,
shrouded and awful, bore the bed or stalked before it with torches
that guttered and flared sootily in the dancing light of day.

"Santa Croce, the great church, stretched forward beyond her into
the distances of gray mist and cold spaces of light. Its bare
vastness was damp like a vault. And she lay in the midst listless,
heavy-lidded, apart, with the half-smile, as it seemed, of some
secret mirth. Round her the great candles smoked and flickered, and
mass was sung at the High Altar for her soul's repose. Sandro stood
alone, facing the shining altar, but looking fixedly at Simonetta on
her couch. He was white and dry--parched lips and eyes that ached
and smarted. Was this the end? Was it possible, my God! that the
transparent, unearthly thing lying there so prone and pale was dead?
Had such loveliness aught to do with life or death? Ah! sweet lady,
dear heart, how tired she was, how deadly tired! From where he stood
he could see with intolerable anguish the somber rings around her
eyes and the violet shadows on the lids, her folded hands and the
straight, meek line to the feet. And her poor wan face with its
wistful, pitiful little smile was turned half-aside on the delicate
throat, as if in a last appeal: Leave me now, O Florentines, to my
rest. Poor child! Poor child! Sandro was on his knees with his face
pressed against the pulpit and tears running through his fingers as
he prayed.

"As he had seen her, so he painted. As at the beginning of life in a
cold world, passively meeting the long trouble of it, he painted her
a rapt Presence floating evenly to our earth. A gray, translucent
sea laps silently upon a little creek, and in the hush of a still
dawn the myrtles and sedges on the water's brim are quiet. It is a
dream in halftones that he gives us, gray and green and steely blue;
and just that, and some homely magic of his own, hint the commerce
of another world with man's discarded domain. Men and women are
asleep, and as in an early walk you may startle the hares at their
play, or see the creatures of the darkness--owls and night-hawks and
heavy moths--flit with fantastic purpose over the familiar scene, so
here it comes upon you suddenly that you have surprised Nature's
self at her mysteries; you are let into the secret; you have caught
the spirit of the April woodland as she glides over the pasture to
the copse. And that, indeed, was Sandro's fortune. He caught her in
just such a propitious hour. He saw the sweet wild thing, pure and
undefiled by touch of earth; caught her in that pregnant pause of
time ere she had lighted. A