But among the more youthful heads there is one at Florence
which Love chooses for its own--the head of a young man, which
may well be the likeness of Andrea Salaino, beloved of Leonardo
for his curled and waving hair--belli capelli ricci e inanellati--
and afterwards his favourite pupil and servant. Of all the
interests in living men and women which may have filled his life
at Milan, this attachment alone is recorded. And in return
Salaino identified himself so entirely with Leonardo, that the
picture of Saint Anne, in the Louvre, has been attributed to him.
It illustrates Leonardo's usual choice of pupils, men [117] of
some natural charm of person or intercourse like Salaino, or men
of birth and princely habits of life like Francesco Melzi--men
with just enough genius to be capable of initiation into his secret,
for the sake of which they were ready to efface their own
individuality. Among them, retiring often to the villa of the
Melzi at Canonica al Vaprio, he worked at his fugitive
manuscripts and sketches, working for the present hour, and for a
few only, perhaps chiefly for himself. Other artists have been as
careless of present or future applause, in self-forgetfulness, or
because they set moral or political ends above the ends of art; but
in him this solitary culture of beauty seems to have hung upon a
kind of self-love, and a carelessness in the work of art of all but
art itself. Out of the secret places of a unique temperament he
brought strange blossoms and fruits hitherto unknown; and for
him, the novel impression conveyed, the exquisite effect woven,
counted as an end in itself--a perfect end.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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