undertaking.

He was so pleasing in conversation, that he attracted to himself the
hearts of men. And although he possessed, one might say, nothing,
and worked little, he always kept servants and horses, in which
latter he took much delight, and particularly in all other animals,
which he managed with the greatest love and patience; and this he
showed when often passing by the places where birds were sold, for,
taking them with his own hand out of their cages, and having paid to
those who sold them the price that was asked, he let them fly away
into the air, restoring to them their lost liberty. For which
reason nature was pleased so to favour him, that, wherever he turned
his thought, brain, and mind, he displayed such divine power in his
works, that, in giving them their perfection, no one was ever his
peer in readiness, vivacity, excellence, beauty, and grace.

It is clear that Leonardo, through his comprehension of art, began
many things and never finished one of them, since it seemed to him
that the hand was not able to attain to the perfection of art in
carrying out the things which he imagined; for the reason that he
conceived in idea difficulties so subtle and so marvellous, that
they could never be expressed by the hands, be they ever so
excellent. And so many were his caprices, that, philosophizing of
natural things, he set himself to seek out the properties of herbs,
going on even to observe the motions of the heavens, the path of the
moon, and the courses of the sun.

He was placed, then, as has been said, in his boyhood, at the
instance of Ser Piero, to learn art with Andrea del Verrocchio, who
was making a panel-picture of S. John baptizing Christ, when
Leonardo painted an angel who was holding some garments; and
although he was but a lad, Leonardo executed it in such a manner
that his angel was much better than the figures of Andrea; which was
the reason that Andrea would never again touch colour, in disdain
that a child should know more than he.

[Illustration: ANDREA VERROCCHIO: THE BAPTISM IN JORDAN

(_Florence: Accademia, 71. Panel_)]

He was commissioned to make a cartoon for a door-hanging that was to
be executed in Flanders, woven in gold and silk, to be sent to the
King of Portugal, of Adam and Eve sinning in the Earthly Paradise;
wherein Leonardo drew with the brush in chiaroscuro, with the lights
in lead-white, a meadow of infinite kinds of herbage, with some
animals, of which, in truth