so devotedly—a solemnity which ranks next to canonization; and Il Beato Angelico is the name by which Fra Giovanni was and is most fondly and reverently remembered. His style survived only in one pupil who assisted him at Orvieto. LEONARDO DA VINCI. Leonardo da Vinci belonged to the Florentine school, the fifteenth century, of which he was the first great example. Leonardo was the son of a notary of Vinci, near Florence, and was born at that place in the year 1452. He became the pupil of Andrea Verrocchio, the Florentine sculptor and painter, and progressed so rapidly that he soon surpassed his master, who is said to have thereupon given up painting in despair. Leonardo’s studies at this time ranged over the whole field of science and art; beside being a painter and a sculptor, he was a practiced architect, engineer, and mechanician; profoundly versed in mathematics and the physical sciences; and an accomplished poet and musician. The famous letter in which he applied to the Duke of Milan for employment, enumerates only a few of his acquirements; he represents himself as skilled in military and naval engineering, offensive and defensive, and the construction of artillery, and as possessing secrets in these matters hitherto unknown; he can make designs for buildings, and undertake any work in sculpture, in marble, in bronze, or in terra-cotta; and “in painting,” he says, “I can do what can be done as well as any man, be he who he may.” He concludes by offering to submit his own account of himself to the test of experiment, at his excellency’s pleasure. He entered the Duke’s service about the year 1482, receiving a yearly salary of 500 scudi. Under his auspices an academy of arts was established in Milan in 1485, and he drew round him a numerous school of painters. Of the many works executed by Leonardo during his residence at Milan, the greatest was the world renowned picture of the “Last Supper,” painted in oil upon the wall of the refectory of the convent of Santa Maria delle Grazie. Whether it was the fault of the wall or the medium used by the painter, the great picture rapidly faded, and by the end of fifty years had virtually perished. It is still shown, but decay and restoration have left little of the original work of Leonardo. The best idea of it is to be got from the old copies, taken while the picture was yet perfect; of these the most valuable is the one executed in 1510 by Marco d’Oggione, now in the possession of the Royal Academy of London. His other important achievement, while at Milan, was a work of sculpture, which unfortunately perished within a few years of its completion. It seems to have occupied him at intervals for eleven years, for the completed model was first exhibited to the public in 1493. All that we now know of it is from the numerous sketches in the Royal Collection at Windsor. The model was still in existence in 1501, after which nothing more is recorded of it.