the Annunziata. In the
court of the same convent is his famous Riposo (or rest of the Holy
Family on their way to Egypt), which is known as the 'Madonna of the
Sack,' from the circumstance of Joseph in the picture leaning against a
sack. This picture has held a high place in art for hundreds of years.

CHAPTER IV.

LIONARDO DA VINCI, 1452-1519--MICHAEL ANGELO, 1475-1564--RAPHAEL,
1483-1520--TITIAN, 1477-1566.

We have arrived at the triumph of art, not, indeed, in unconsciousness
and devotion, but in fulness and completeness, as shown in the works of
four of the greatest painters and men whom the world ever saw. Of the
first, Lionardo da Vinci, born at Vinci in the neighbourhood of
Florence, 1452, it may be said that the many-sidedness which
characterized Italians--above all Italians of his day--reached its
height in him. Not only was he a painter, a sculptor, an architect, and
engineer, but also one of the boldest speculators of the generation
which gave birth to Columbus, and was not less original and ingenious
than he was universally accomplished--an Admirable Crichton among
painters. There is a theory that this many-sidedness is a proof of the
greatest men, indicating a man who might have been great in any way,
who, had his destiny not found and left him a painter, would have been
equally great as a philosopher, a man of science, a poet, or a
statesman. It may be so; but the life of Lionardo tends also to
illustrate the disadvantage of too wide a grasp and diffusion of genius.
Beginning much and finishing little, not because he was idle or fickle,
but because his schemes were so colossal and his aims so high, he spent
his time in preparation for the attainment of perfect excellence, which
eluded him. Lionardo was the pioneer, the teacher of others, rather than
the complete fulfiller of his own dreams; and the life of the proud,
passionate man was, to him self mortification. This result might, in a
sense, have been avoided; but Lionardo, great as he was, proved also one
of those unfortunate men whose noblest efforts are met and marred by
calamities which could have hardly been foreseen or prevented.

Lionardo da Vinci was the son of a notary, and early showed a taste for
painting as well as for arithmetic and mathematics. He was apprenticed
to a painter, but he also sedulously studied physics. He is said,
indeed, to have made marvellous guesses at truth, in chemistry, botany,
astronomy, and particularly,