[243] See the series of anatomical studies of the horse in the Royal Collection.

[244] Engraved by Edelinck.  The drawing has obvious Lionardesque qualities; but how far it may be from the character of the original we can guess by Rubens’ transcript from Mantegna. (See above, Chapter VI, Mantegna’s Biography.) De Stendhal says wittily of this work, “C’est Virgile traduit par Madame de Stael,” op. cit. p. 162.

[245] In the Royal Collection at Windsor there are anatomical drawings for the construction of an imaginary quadruped with gigantic claws.  The bony, muscular, and venous structure of its legs and feet is accurately indicated.

[246] See the drawings engraved and published by Gerli in his Disegni di Lionardo da Vinci, Milan, 1784.

[247] Vasari is the chief source of these legends.  Giraldi Lomazzo, the Milanese historian of painting, and Bandello, the novelist, supply further details.  It appears from all accounts that Lionardo impressed his contemporaries as a singular and most commanding personality.  There is a touch of reverence in even the strangest stories, which is wanting in the legend of Piero di Cosimo.

[248] Even Michael Angelo, meeting him in Florence, flung in his teeth that “he had made the model of a horse to cast in bronze, and could not cast it, and through shame left it as it was unfinished.”  See Arch.  St. It., serie terza, xvi. 226.

[249] In the Royal Collection at Windsor there is a whole series of studies for these two statues, together with drawings for the mould in which Lionardo intended to cast them.  The second of the two is sketched with great variety of motive.  The horse is rearing; the fallen enemy is vainly striving to defend himself; the victor in one drawing is reining in his steed, in another is waving a truncheon, in a third is brandishing his sword, in a fourth is holding the sword in act to thrust.  The designs for the pedestals, sometimes treated as a tomb and sometimes as a fountain, are equally varied.

[250] “Concevoir,” said Balzac, “c’est jouir, c’est fumer des cigarettes enchantees; mais sans l’execution tout s’en va en reve et en fumee.”  Quoted by Sainte-Beuve, Causeries du Lundi, vol. ii. p. 353.

[251] See Vol.  II., Revival of Learning, p. 128, 129.

[252] It was finished, according to Fra Paciolo, in 1498.

[253] Signorelli, with his usual originality, chose the moment when Christ broke bread and gave it to His disciples.  In that rare picture at Cortona, we see not the betrayed chief but the founder of a new religion.

[254] The Cenacolo alone will not enable the student to understand Lionardo.  He must give his attention to the master’s sketch books, those studies in chalk, in tempera, on thin canvas and paper, prepared for the stylus or the pen, which Vasari calls the final triumphs of designing, and of which, in spite of the loss of many of his books, the surviving specimens are very numerous.  Some are easily accessible in Gerli, Chamberlaine, and the autotype reproductions.  It is possible that a sympathetic student may get closer to the all-embracing and all-daring genius of the magician through these drawings than if he had before him an elaborate work in fresco or in oils.  They express the many-sided, mobile, curious, and subtle genius of the man in its entirety.