that to whatever difficulties he turned his mind, he solved them
with ease. In him was great bodily strength, joined to dexterity,
with a spirit and courage ever royal and magnanimous; and the fame
of his name so increased, that not only in his lifetime was he held
in esteem, but his reputation became even greater among posterity
after his death.

Truly marvellous and celestial was Leonardo, the son of Ser Piero da
Vinci; and in learning and in the rudiments of letters he would have
made great proficience, if he had not been so variable and unstable,
for he set himself to learn many things, and then, after having
begun them, abandoned them. Thus, in arithmetic, during the few
months that he studied it, he made so much progress, that, by
continually suggesting doubts and difficulties to the master who
was teaching him, he would very often bewilder him. He gave some
little attention to music, and quickly resolved to learn to play the
lyre, as one who had by nature a spirit most lofty and full of
refinement: wherefore he sang divinely to that instrument,
improvising upon it. Nevertheless, although he occupied himself with
such a variety of things, he never ceased drawing and working in
relief, pursuits which suited his fancy more than any other. Ser
Piero, having observed this, and having considered the loftiness of
his intellect, one day took some of his drawings and carried them to
Andrea del Verrocchio, who was much his friend, and besought him
straitly to tell him whether Leonardo, by devoting himself to
drawing, would make any proficience. Andrea was astonished to see
the extraordinary beginnings of Leonardo, and urged Ser Piero that
he should make him study it; wherefore he arranged with Leonardo
that he should enter the workshop of Andrea, which Leonardo did with
the greatest willingness in the world. And he practised not one
branch of art only, but all those in which drawing played a part;
and having an intellect so divine and marvellous that he was also an
excellent geometrician, he not only worked in sculpture, making in
his youth, in clay, some heads of women that are smiling, of which
plaster casts are still taken, and likewise some heads of boys which
appeared to have issued from the hand of a master; but in
architecture, also, he made many drawings both of ground-plans and
of other designs of buildings; and he was the first, although but a
youth, who suggested the plan of reducing the river Arno to a
navi