ruggling vainly against crushing
oppression. He expressed that which was highest in it, reflecting the
loftiest side of its idealism mingled with deep pessimism in his survey
over life; for, wrapped in austerity, he saw mankind in heroic terms of
sadness. Raphael, on the {xxiv} other hand, found only beautiful
sweetness everywhere. The tragedies of life failed to touch the young
painter, who blotted from view all struggle and sorrow, and, in spite
of the misery which had befallen his nation, could still rejoice in the
sensuous beauty of the world. There was another side to the
Renaissance, dependent neither on beauty nor heroic grandeur, yet
sharing in both through qualities of its own. Titian, who painted the
living man of action, the man of parts, susceptible alike to the
appreciation of ideal beauty and heroic impulse, but guided withal by
expediency, reflected this more practical aspect of life. In his
portraiture he expressed the statecraft for which Italians found
opportunity beyond the Alps, since in Italy it was denied them; and
Titian found even Venice too narrow for the scope of his art.

But before Titian, before Raphael, before Michelangelo, Leonardo
reflected the rationalism and the mystery, the subtlety and the
philosophical speculation, of the age. To find in his work only the
individual thought of genius would be to mistake, perhaps, its most
important side; for the expression of his mind, both by its brilliancy
and its limitations, is typical of the spirit of his time. The Italian
Renaissance was reflected in him as rarely a period has been expressed
in the life-work of a single man. He represented its union of practice
and theory, of thought placed in the {xxv} service of action. He
summed up its different aspects in his own individuality.
Intellectually, he represented its many-sidedness attained through
penetration of thought, and a keenness of observation, profiting from
experience, extended into every sphere. As an artist he possessed a
vigour of imagination from which sprang his power of creating beauty.
But, in spite of his practical nature, he remained a dreamer in an age
which had in it more of stern reality than of golden dreams. His very
limitations, his excess of individualism, his want of long-continued
concentration, his lack of patriotism, his feeling of the superiority
of art to nationality, are all characteristic of Renaissance Italy.

The union in Leonardo of reality to my