ey be,
But from these create he can
Forms more real than living man,
Nurslings of immortality.

[240] See De Stendhal, _Histoire de la Peinture en Italie_, p. 143, for
this story.

[241] In the _Treatise on Painting_, da Vinci argues strongly against
isolating man. He regarded the human being as in truth a microcosm to be
only understood in relation to the world around him, expressing, as a
painter, the same thought as Pico. (See Vol. II., _Revival of Learning,_
p. 35.) Therefore he urges the claims of landscape on the attention of
artists.

[242] I might refer in detail to four studies of bramble branches,
leaves, and flowers and fruit, in the royal collection at Windsor, most
wonderful for patient accuracy and delicate execution: also to drawings
of oak leaves, wild guelder-rose, broom, columbine, asphodel, bull-rush,
and wood-spurge in the same collection. These careful studies are as
valuable for the botanist as for the artist. To render the specific
character of each plant with greater precision would be impossible.

[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 Ro