ad to adopt.
The triangular arrangement of the figures, the relation of the Virgin
to the children, the simple, childish beauty of the latter, and their
attitude towards each other--all these points suggest the source of
Raphael's similar conceptions. The Virgin's hair falls over her
shoulders entirely unbound, in gentle, waving ripples.

[Illustration: LEONARDO DA VINCI.--MADONNA OF THE
ROCKS.]

We do not need to be told, though the historian has taken pains to
record it, that a feature of personal beauty by which Leonardo was
always greatly pleased was "curled and waving hair." We see it in the
first touch of his hand when, as a boy in the workshop of Verrochio,
he painted the wavy-haired angel in his Master's Baptism; and here,
again, in the Virgin, we find it the crowning element of her
mysterious loveliness. We try in vain to penetrate the secret of her
smile,--it is as evasive as it is enchanting. And herein lies the
distinguishing difference between Leonardo and Raphael. The former is
always mysterious and subtle; the latter is always frank and
ingenuous. While both are true interpreters of nature, Leonardo
reveals the rare and inexplicable, Raphael chooses the typical and
familiar. Both are possessed of a strong sense of the harmony of
nature with human life. The smile of the Virgin of the Rocks is a part
of the mystery of her shadowy environment;[2] the serenity of the
Madonna in the Meadow belongs to the atmosphere of the open fields.

[Footnote 2: That the Leonardesque _smile_ requires a Leonardesque
_setting_ is seen, I think, in the pictures by Da Vinci's imitators.
The Madonna by Sodoma, recently added to the Brera Gallery at Milan,
is an example in point. Here the inevitable smile of mystery seems
meaningless in the sunny, open landscape.]

Among others who were affected by the influence of Leonardo--and chief
of the Lombards--was Luini. His pastoral Madonna has, however, little
in common with the landscapes of his master, judging from the lovely
example in the Brera. The group of figures is strikingly suggestive of
Da Vinci, but the quiet, rural pasture in which the Virgin sits is
Luini's own. In the distance is a thick clump of trees, finely drawn
in stem and branch. At one side is a shepherd's hut with a flock of
sheep grazing near. The child Jesus reaches from his mother's lap to
play with the lamb which the little St. John has brought, a _motif_
similar to Raphael's Madrid picture, and perhaps d