LEONARDO DA VINCI. This great genius, whose works in painting arc classed with those of Raphael and Michael Angelo, was also a sculptor, architect, and engineer, and he cultivated successfully anatomy, botany, mathematics, astronomy, poetry, and music. He was born, in 1452, at Vinci, in the Val d'Arno, near Florence; his father, Pietro da Vinci, notary to the signiory of Florence, placed him in good time with Andrea Verroc chio, who was an able sculptor, and a good painter; hut in painting, his pupil soon sur passed him. In 1483 he went to Milan, and the duke Lodovico it Moro conferred on him an annual pension of 500 dollars. Besides performing various services for the duke, particularly as an engineer, he instituted an academy of arts in 1485. This academy, of which he was mimed director, was attended by many eminent artists, and influenced most beneficially the Lombard school of painting. It was in 1497, when 45 years of age, that lie executed his famous picture, "The Last Supper," which was painted in oil on the wall in the refectory of the Dominican convent of Santa-Maria-delle-Gracie. He remained in Milan till 1500, when, on its occupation by the French, he returned to Flor ence, and in 1502 was appointed architect and chief engineer to Cesare Borgia. eapegen, of the pope's army. In 1503 he was employed by Soderini Gonfaloniere of Florence to paint one end of the council-hall of the Palazzo Vecchio. For this Leonardo only con pleted the celebrated cartoon called the "Battle of the Standard ;" another cartoon for a painting in the same apartment, the equally celebrated design called the " Cartoon of Pisa," having been executed at the same time by Michael Angelo. He returned to Milan in 1506. In 1513 lie visited Rome in the train of Giuliano de' _Medici, who went there to assist at the coronation of his brother, Loo X.; and in 1515 accompanied Francis L to Bologna, where he signed the concordat with Leo X. On the pressing invitation of Francis, he accompanied that monarch, to France in 1516, along with his pupils Sa]ai and Melzi. In bad health during the whole period he was in France, he executed no paint ings there, being chiefly occupied in engineering. His death occurred at Amboise, May
2, 1519. The genius of Leonardo was universal: painting was not his sole occupation. He imparted to his works certain qualities of the highest kind, for his drawing evinces very great delicacy and elevation .of style, not modeled on the antique, but formed on a profound knowledge of nature;' and in his treatment of light and shadow he infused a degree of power, combined with softness, into his productions that invests them with a peculiar charm; while the influence of his style has operated powerfully on the schools of Milan and Parma. Leonardo's treatise on painting, &attato dellu Pittura, has been published in several lanmuages. The principal edition is that published at Paris, in folio, by Du Fresne, illustrated with drawings by Nicolas Poussin; the best, as regards the text, was published at Rome in 1817. Mr. Hallam says, in his introduction to the Litera ture of Europe.• " Leonardo's greatest literary distinction is derived from those short fragments of his unpublished writings that appeared not many years since, and which, according, at least, to our common estimate of the age in which he lived, are more like revelations of physical truths vouchsafed to a single mind, than the superstruc ture of its reasoning upon any established basis. The discoveries which made Gali leo and Kepler and Maestlin and Maurolicus and Castelli, and other names illustrious, the system of Copernicus, the very theories of recent geologists, are anticipated by•Da Vinci, within the compass of a few pages, not, perhaps, in the most precise language or on the most conclusive reasoning, but so as to strike us with something like the awe of preternatural knowledge." reasoning, things were published by Venturi (Paris, 1797), entitled: ES:tai stir les Ouvrages Physico-Nathematigncs de Leonard da Vinci, avec des _Pay mens tires des 3fanuserits apportes de l' Italie. The MSS. were afterwards returned to Milan. Sec Leonardo da Vinci and his Works, with Life, by Mrs. C. Heaton (London, 1874).