Milan Pupils.—The painters especially recorded as Leonardo's immediate pupils during this part of his life at Milan are the two before mentioned, Giovanni Antonio Boltraffio and Ambrogio Preda or de Predis, with Marco d'Oggionno and Andrea Salai, the last apparently less a fully-trained painter than a studio assistant and personal attendant, devotedly attached and faithful in both capacities. Leonardo's own native Florentine manner had at first been not a little modified by that of the Milanese school as he found it represented in the works of such men as Braman tino, Borgognone and Zenale ; but his genius had in its turn reacted far more strongly upon the younger members of the school, and exercised, now or later, a transforming and dominating influence not only upon his immediate pupils, but upon men like Luini, Giampetrino, Bazzi, Cesare da Sesto and indeed the whole Lom bard school in the early f 5th century. Of sculpture done by him during this period we have no remains, only the tragically tantaliz ing history of the Sforza monument. Of drawings there are very many, including few only for the "Last Supper," many for the Sforza monument, as well as the multitude of sketches, scientific and other, which we find intermingled among the vast body of his miscellaneous mss., notes and records. In mechanical, scien tific and theoretical studies of all kinds it was a period, as these mss. attest, of extraordinary activity and self-development.
The occurrence of the words "Achademia Leonardi Vinci" on certain engravings, done after his drawings, of geometric "knots" or puzzle-patterns (things for which we have already learned his partiality), does not prove the existence of an Academy at Milan in the sense now attached to the word. His many-sided and far reaching studies in experimental science were mainly his own, conceived and carried out long in advance of his time, and in communion with only such more or less isolated spirits as were advancing along one or another of the same paths of knowledge.
Venice and Florence, 1499.—When Leonardo and Luca Paci oli left Milan in Dec. 1499, their destination was Venice. They made a brief stay at Mantua, where Leonardo was graciously received by the duchess Isabella Gonzaga, the most cultured of the many cultured great ladies of her time, whose portrait he promised to paint on a future day; meantime he made the fine chalk drawing of her now at the Louvre. Arrived at Venice, he seems to have occupied himself chiefly with studies in mathe matics and cosmography. In April the friends heard of the second and final overthrow of Ludovico it Moro, and at that news, giving up all idea of a return to Milan, moved on to Florence, which they found depressed both by internal troubles and by the pro traction of the indecisive and inglorious war with Pisa. Here Leonardo undertook to paint an altar-piece for the Church of the Annunziata, Filippino Lippi, who had already received the com mission, courteously retiring from it in his favour. A year passed by, and no progress had been made with the painting.
Questions of physical geography and engineering engrossed him as much as ever. He writes to correspondents making enquiries about the tides in the Euxine and Caspian Seas. He reports for
the information of the Arte de' Mercanti on the precautions to be taken against a threatening landslip on the hill of S. Salvatore dell' Osservanza. He submits drawings and models for the canali zation and control of the waters of the Arno, and propounds, with compulsive eloquence and conviction, a scheme for trans porting the Baptistery of St. John, the "bel San Giovanni" of Dante, to another part of the city, and elevating it on a stately basement of marble.
Annunziata Cartoons.—The Servite brothers of the Annunzi ata were growing impatient for the completion of their altar piece. In April t soi Leonardo had only finished the cartoon, and this all Florence flocked to see and admire. Isabella Gonzaga, who cherished the hope that he might be induced permanently to attach himself to the court of Mantua, wrote about this time to ask news of him, and to beg for a painting from him for her study, already adorned with masterpieces by the first hands of Italy, or at least for a "small Madonna, devout and sweet as is natural to him." In reply her correspondent says that the master is wholly taken up with geometry and very impatient of the brush, but at the same time tells her all about his just completed cartoon for the Annunziata. The subject was the Virgin seated in the lap of St. Anne, bending forward to hold her child who had half escaped from her embrace to play with a lamb upon the ground. The description answers exactly to the composition of the celebrated picture of the Virgin and St. Anne at the Louvre. A cartoon of this composition in the Esterhazy collection at Vienna is held to be only a copy, and the original cartoon must be regarded as lost.
But another of kindred though not identical motive has come down to us and is preserved in the Diploma gallery at the Royal Academy. In this work St. Anne, pointing upward with her left hand, smiles with an intense look of wondering questioning, inward sweetness into the face of the Virgin, who in her turn smiles down upon her child as He leans from her lap to give the blessing to the little St. John standing beside her. Evidently two different though nearly related designs had been maturing in Leonardo's mind. A rough first sketch for the motive of the Academy cartoon is in the British Museum ; one for the motive of the lost cartoon and of the Louvre picture is at Venice. No painting by Leonardo from the Academy cartoon exists, but in the Ambrosiana at Milan there is one by Luini, with the figure of St. Joseph added. It remains a matter of debate whether the Academy cartoon or that shown by Leonardo at the Annun ziata in 1501 was the earlier. The probabilities seem in favour of the Academy cartoon. This, whether done at Milan or at Florence, is in any case a typically perfect and harmonious example of the master's Milanese manner; while in the other composition with the lamb the action and attitude cf the Virgin are somewhat strained, and the original relation between her head and her mother's, lovely both in design and expression, is lost.