orm the art temperament of the Renaissance. The practical
side gave it the firm foundation of rationalism and reality on which it
rested; the mystical guided its endeavour to picture the unreal in
terms of ideal beauty.

The first offspring of this union was Leonardo. Since the decay of
ancient art no painter had been able to fully express the human form,
for imperfect mastery of technique still proved the barrier. Leonardo
was the first completely to disengage his personality from its
constraint, and make line express thought as none before him could do.
Nor was this his only triumph, but rather the foundation on which
further achievement rested. Remarkable as a thinker alone, he
preferred to enlist thought in the service of art, and make art the
handmaid of beauty. Leonardo saw the world not as it is, but as he
himself was. He viewed it through the atmosphere of beauty which
filled his mind, and tinged its shadows with the mystery of his nature.
To all this, his birthright as a painter, a different element was
added. A keen desire for knowledge, guiding his action in life,
spurred him onward. Conscious of this dominant impulse, he has
fancifully described himself in a Platonic allegory. He had passed
beneath overhanging cliffs on his way to a great cavern. On bended
knees, peering through its darkness, fear and desire had overwhelmed
him,--fear for the menacing darkness of the cavern; and desire {xi} to
ascertain if there were wonders therein.

From his earliest years, the elements of greatness were present in
Leonardo. But the maturity of his genius came unaffected from without.
He barely noticed the great forces of the age which in life he
encountered. After the first promise of his boyhood in the Tuscan
hills, his youth at Florence had been spent under Verrocchio as a
master, in company with those whose names were later to brighten the
pages of Italian art. He must then have heard Savonarola's impassioned
sermons, yet, unlike Botticelli, remained dumb to his entreaties. He
must have seen Lorenzo the Magnificent. But there was little opening
in the Medicean circle for the young painter, who had first to gain
fame abroad. The splendour of Milan under Il Moro, then the most
brilliant court in Europe, attracted him. He went there, proclaiming
his ability, in a remarkable letter, to accomplish much, but desiring
chiefly to erect a great monument to the glory of the Sforza. He spent
years at that cour