make as cautious an use of light as of a gem, not lavishing it too freely, but reserving it always for the best place. And hence we find in his, and in the best of his disciples' paintings, that fine relief, owing to which the pictures, and in particular the countenances, seem as if starting from the canvass. Footnote 48: Amoretti, Memorie Storiche di Leonardo da Vinci, p. 20. Footnote 49: This work was reprinted at Florence, together with the figures, 1792, an edition taken from a copy in the hand of Stefano della Bella, belonging to the Riccardi library. It was published by the learned librarian, the Ab. Fontani, with the eulogy of Vinci, abounding with information on his life and paintings, as well as on his designs attached to it. To this is added the eulogy of Stefano, and a Dissertation of Lami upon the Italian painters and sculptors who flourished between the tenth and the thirteenth centuries. Footnote 50: Cellini declares that he borrowed a great number of excellent observations upon perspective from one of Vinci's discourses. (Tratt. ii. p. 153.) For a long period past, the art had become gradually more refined, and considered its subjects more minutely; in which Botticelli, Mantegna, and others had acquired great reputation. As minuteness, however, is opposed to sublimity, it ill accorded with that elevation in which the supreme merit of the art would seem to consist. In my opinion Lionardo succeeded in uniting these two opposite qualities, before any other artist. In subjects which he undertook fully to complete, 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; he likewise portrayed each separate garment and every accessary with 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 select face of nature; and to his very leaves he gave a peculiar air, and fold, and position, best adapted to represent them rustling in the wind. While he bestowed his attention in this manner upon the minutiæ, he at the same time, as is observed by Mengs, led the way to a more enlarged and dignified style; entered into the most abstruse inquiries as to the source and nature of expression, the most philosophical and elevated branch of the art; and smoothed the way, if I may be permitted to say so, for the appearance of Raffaello. No one could be more curious in his researches, more intent upon observing, or more prompt in catching the motions of the passions, as exhibited either in the features or the actions. He frequented places of public assembly, and all spectacles in which man gave free play to his active powers; and there, in a small book always ready at hand, he drew the attitudes which he selected; and these designs he preserved in order to