which it was painted, was sold by Piero secretly for one
hundred ducats to a merchant, who carried it to Milan, and sold it to
the duke for three hundred. To the poor peasant, thus cheated of his
"Rotello," Piero gave a wooden shield, on which was painted a heart
transfixed by a dart, a device better suited to his taste and
comprehension. In the subsequent troubles of Milan, Leonardo's picture
disappeared, and was probably destroyed as an object of horror by
those who did not understand its value as a work of art.

During this first period of his life, which was wholly passed in
Florence and its neighborhood, Leonardo painted several other pictures
of a very different character, and designed some beautiful cartoons of
sacred and mythological subjects, which showed that his sense of the
beautiful, the elevated, and the graceful was not less a part of his
mind than that eccentricity and almost perversion of fancy which made
him delight in sketching ugly, exaggerated caricatures, and
representing the deformed and the terrible.

Leonardo da Vinci was now about thirty years old, in the prime of his
life and talents. His taste for pleasure and expense was, however,
equal to his genius and indefatigable industry; and anxious to secure
a certain provision for the future, as well as a wider field for the
exercise of his various talents, he accepted the invitation of
Ludovico Sforza il Moro, then regent, afterward Duke of Milan, to
reside in his court, and to execute a colossal equestrian statue of
his ancestor, Francesco Sforza. Here begins the second period of his
artistic career, which includes his sojourn at Milan, that is from
1483 to 1499.

Vasari says that Leonardo was invited to the court of Milan for the
Duke Ludovico's amusement, "as a musician and performer on the lyre,
and as the greatest singer and _improvisatore_ of his time;" but this
is improbable. Leonardo, in his long letter to that prince, in which
he recites his own qualifications for employment, dwells chiefly on
his skill in engineering and fortification; and sums up his
pretensions as an artist in these few brief words: "I understand the
different modes of sculpture in marble, bronze, and terra-cotta. In
painting, also, I may esteem myself equal to anyone, let him be who he
may." Of his musical talents he makes no mention whatever, though
undoubtedly these, as well as his other social accomplishments, his
handsome person, his winning address, his wit an