d work he left but little to the world; while
his sketches and designs, the teeming thoughts of his creative brain, were
an inestimable heritage. The whole of this rich legacy of masterpieces,
projected, but not executed, was characterised by a feeling for beauty
which has fallen to no other painter. When we examine the sketches in the
Royal Collection at Windsor, we perceive that the exceeding sense of
loveliness possessed by Lionardo could not have failed to animate his
pupils with a high spirit of art. At the same time the extraordinary
variety of his drawing--sometimes reminding us of German method, sometimes
modern in the manner of French and English draughtsmen--by turns bold and
delicate, broad and minute in detail--afforded to his school examples of
perfect treatment in a multiplicity of different styles. There was no
formality of fixed unalterable precedent in Lionardo, nothing for his
scholars to repeat with the monotony of mannerism.

It remained for his disciples, each in his own sphere, with inferior
powers and feebler intellect, to perpetuate the genius of their master.
Thus the spirit of Lionardo continued to live in Lombardy after he was
dead. There alone imitation was really fruitful, because it did not imply
mere copying. Instead of attempting to give a fresh and therefore a
strained turn to motives that had already received consummate treatment,
Lionardo's successors were able to execute what he had planned but had not
carried to completion. Nor was the prestige of his style so oppressive
through the mass of pictures painted by his hand as to check individuality
or to prevent the pupil from working out such portions of the master's
vein as suited his own talent. Each found enough suggested, but not used,
to give his special faculty free scope. This is in fact the reason why the
majority of pictures ascribed to Lionardo are really the production of his
school. They have the excellence of original work, but not such excellence
as Lionardo could have given them. Their completion is due, as searching
criticism proves, to lesser men; but the conception belongs to the
greatest.

Andrea Salaino, Marco d'Oggiono, Francesco Melzi, Giovanni Antonio
Beltraffio, and Cesare da Sesto, are all of them skilled workmen, losing
and finding their individuality, as just described, in the manner of their
master. Salaino brings exquisite delicacy of execution; d'Oggiono, wild
and bizarre beauty; Melzi, the refinements of a