For many years Leonardo ventured little on his own account, following with docility the directions of his master. The single painting which we may with certainty ascribe to Verrocchio, the Baptism of Christ, Figure 146a, in the Uffizi, already bears traces of Leonardo’s hand. The general composition is borrowed from an insignificant panel of Baldovinetti’s. The stalwart ugly forms derive from Pollaiuolo. Delightful features added in oils by Leonardo are the exquisite angel at the left, Figure 146, and the vaporous distance and mountain skyline. We may surmise that these improvements were added about 1470 to a picture started several years earlier. One other picture was designed by Verrocchio and finished after his death in 1488 by his assistant, Lorenzo di Credi. This Madonna, in the cathedral of Pistoia, affords an excellent contrast between the puffy forms of Lorenzo and the firm and living contours of Leonardo. The famous Annunciation in the Uffizi, Figure 147, seems a kind of joint product, the actual painting being by Leonardo, the badly balanced composition and intrusive heavy lectern, as well as the rather cheap attitude of surprise of the Virgin, representing a perfunctory mood of Verrocchio. The vista of remote mountains hanging pale in the blue sky is such as only Leonardo could have created. The delightful Gabriel also seems wholly his invention. The composition again rests on one of Baldovinetti’s, at S. Miniato, and the date of the picture may be about 1475. Of about the same date is a Madonna with an Angel in the National Gallery, which may well be a composition of Verrocchio interpreted by Leonardo. The note of sweetness is a little forced, as in most work of this kind. We meet Leonardo in his own right a little earlier, in a pen sketch of a broad landscape dated in midsummer summer of 1473, Figure 148. Its spaciousness and schematic handling of horizontals ally it to the landscape backgrounds we have been considering. The last work of this Verrocchian character is the Portrait of a Girl, in the Liechtenstein Gallery, Vienna. Here we are in a field where Leonardo and his master are almost indistinguishable, but the picturesquely broken background, the bit of landscape, and the ease of the contours, speak for the younger man. As late as 1476, his twenty-fifth year, Leonardo was still with Verrocchio. He probably set up his own _bottega_ a year or so afterwards. [Illustration: FIG. 148. Leonardo da Vinci. Landscape. Pen Drawing.—_Uffizi._ ] [Illustration: FIG. 149. Leonardo da Vinci. Annunciation.—_Louvre._ ]