But perhaps a man so scrupulous as Lionardo da Vinci, in the definement of character and expression, and so ardent in his pursuit of them, might have expressed himself unsatisfied, where all others could only see perfection.” DA VINCI’S DISCRIMINATION. Lionardo da Vinci possessed the rare faculty of being able to ascertain the just medium between hasty and labored work; and though very minute in the finishing of his pictures, yet he painted in a free and unrestrained style. The same master who consumed four years on the portrait of Mona Lisa Giocondo, gave one of the earliest and best lessons to the age, in the great style, in his memorable painting of the Last Supper. This power of attending at the same moment to the minutiæ of detail, and to the grand and leading principles of the art or science in which a person may be employed, shows a species of universality of power that may be reckoned among the highest perfections of the human mind; and it places Da Vinci not merely in the rank of the first of painters, but of the greatest of men. DA VINCI’S IDEA OF PERFECTION IN ART. Da Vinci was never satisfied with his works, and Lanzi finds the same fault with him that Apelles did with Protogenes--his not knowing when to take his hand from his work. Phidias himself, says Tully, bore in his mind a more beautiful Minerva and a grander Jove than he was capable of exhibiting with his chisel. It is prudent counsel that teaches us to aspire to the best, but to rest satisfied with attaining what is good. “Vinci,” says Lanzi, “was never satisfied with his labors, if he did not execute them as perfectly as he had conceived them; and being unable to reach the high point proposed with a mortal hand, he sometimes only designed his work, or conducted it only to a certain degree of completion. Sometimes he devoted to it so long a period as almost to renew the example of the ancient who employed seven years over his picture (Protogenes’ Ialysus and his Dog). But as there was no limit to the discovery of fresh beauties in that work, so in the opinion of Lomazzo it happens with the perfections of Vinci’s paintings, including even those which Vasari and others allude to as left imperfect.” Lanzi says it is certain that he left some of his works only half finished. “Such is his Epiphany, in the Ducal Gallery at Florence, and his Holy Family, in the Archbishop’s palace at Milan.” Others he finished in the most exquisite manner. “He was not satisfied with only perfecting the heads, counterfeiting the shining of the eyes, the pores of the skin, the roots of the hair, and even the beating of the arteries; but he likewise portrayed each separate garment, and every accessory, with equal minuteness. Thus in his landscapes, also, there was not a single herb, or leaf of a tree, which he had not taken, like a portrait, from the face of nature; and even to his very leaves he gave a peculiar air, fold, and position best adapted to represent their rustling in the wind.