We have now reached the great age of the Italian Renaissance, the age in which, not counting for the moment Venice, four arch-angelic natures gathered up all that had been hitherto achieved in art since the days of Pisano and Giotto, adding such celestial illumination from the sunlight of their inborn genius that in them the world for ever sees what art can do.  Lionardo da Vinci was born in Valdarno in 1452, and died in France in 1519.  Michael Angelo Buonarroti was born at Caprese, in the Casentino, in 1475, and died at Borne in 1564, having outlived the lives of his great peers by nearly half a century.  Raphael Santi was born at Urbino in 1483, and died in Rome in 1520.  Antonio Allegri was born at Correggio in 1494, and died there in 1534.  To these four men, each in his own degree and according to his own peculiar quality of mind, the fulness of the Renaissance, in its power and freedom, was revealed.  They entered the inner shrine, where dwelt the spirit of their age, and bore to the world without the message each of them had heard.  In their work posterity still may read the meaning of that epoch, differently rendered according to the difference of gifts in each consummate artist, but comprehended in its unity by study of the four together.  Lionardo is the wizard or diviner; to him the Renaissance offers her mystery and lends her magic.  Raphael is the Phoebean singer; to him the Renaissance reveals her joy and dowers him with her gift of melody.  Correggio is the Ariel or Faun; he has surprised laughter upon the face of the universe, and he paints this laughter in ever-varying movement.  Michael Angelo is the prophet and Sibylline seer; to him the Renaissance discloses the travail of her spirit; him she endues with power; he wrests her secret, voyaging, like an ideal Columbus, the vast abyss of thought alone.  In order that this revelation of the Renaissance in painting should be complete, it is necessary to add a fifth power to these four—­that of the Venetian masters, who are the poets of carnal beauty, the rhetoricians of mundane pomp, the impassioned interpreters of all things great and splendid in the pageant of the outer world.  As Venice herself, by type of constitution and historical development, remained sequestered from the rest of Italy, so her painters demand separate treatment.[235] It is enough, therefore, for the present to remember that without the note they utter the chord of the Renaissance lacks its harmony.

Lionardo, the natural son of Messer Pietro, notary of Florence and landed proprietor at Vinci, was so beautiful of person that no one, says Vasari, has sufficiently extolled his charm; so strong of limb that he could bend an iron ring or horse-shoe between his fingers; so eloquent of speech that those who listened to his words were fain to answer “Yes” or “No” as he thought fit.  This child of grace and persuasion was a wonderful musician.  The Duke of Milan sent for him to play upon his lute and improvise Italian canzoni.  The lute he carried