1662. He then joined the celebrated nonconformist, the Rev. Thomas Doolittle, and taught with him in a school at Islington, where he also preached whenever he could do so safely. After the plague had broken out, Vincent was so impressed with the necessity of rendering some assistance to the sufferers that he left his school and went back into the city where the plague raged most, and preached to and visited the sick constantly during the whole continuance of it, undeterred either by fear of infection or by the terrors of the law against nonconformity. He continued in perfect health all the while, although seven persons died in the house where he resided. His philanthropic conduct during this period was never forgotten; and although he subsequently took a very active part in the establishment of nonconformity, it does not appear that any one interfered with him. He wrote an "Explanation of the Assembly's Catechism," and "God's terrible voice to the City by Plague and Fire," in which he describes both those events, and which has been frequently reprinted. He also had some controversy with William Penn and Dr. William Sherlock, and published a work upon an eruption of Mount Ætna entitled "Fire and Brimstone," 1670. He died in 1678.—F.
VINCENT, William, a distinguished divine, was born at London in 1739. He was admitted to Westminster school in 1753, and chosen a scholar of Trinity college in 1757. In 1761 he took his degree and was elected a fellow. The year following he was appointed an usher in Westminster school; in 1771 he became second master, and head master in 1788. The duties of this responsible office he discharged with great assiduity till he became dean of Westminster in 1802, as successor to Dr. Horsley. In 1778 he had been made rector of All Hallows the Great and Less, in London. He died at his official residence, 21st December, 1815. His works are—"The Voyage of Nearchus," 1797; the "Periplus of the Erythræan Sea," 1800-1805, both works being joined in a new edition; "The History of the Commerce and Navigation of the Ancients in the Indian Ocean," London, 1817. His "Defence of Public Education" so pleased Addington, the prime minister, that he conferred the deanery on him. His principal book, that on ancient commerce and navigation, is elaborate, full, and interesting. His sermons have been published in two volumes, London, 1817, 1836.—J. E.
VINCI, Leonardo da, was born at Vinci, near Empoli, in the valley of the Arno, below Florence, in 1452. He was the natural son of a notary, Pietro da Vinci, who placed Leonardo, when a boy, with Andrea Verrocchio to learn painting. Leonardo early evinced great versatility: he was painter, sculptor, engineer, architect, and mechanic, and was well versed in anatomy, botany, mathematics, music, and astronomy. He does not appear to have ever confined himself to painting as a profession. He seems to have found no field for his labours in Florence; but about, or soon after the year 1480, he sought and acquired service with Ludovico Sforza, called Il Moro, in Milan. A remarkable letter, written by Leonardo to that prince, is still preserved. He mentions in it all his various qualifications; but alludes somewhat pointedly to his powers as a painter. "I will," he says, "also undertake any work in sculpture, in marble, in bronze, or in terra-cotta; likewise in painting I can do what can be done, as well as any man, be he who he may." Ludovico Il Moro took him into his service at a salary of five hundred crowns per annum, and in 1485 established an art academy in Milan under his direction. He educated several distinguished artists at Milan, and produced also himself some few noble works in sculpture and in painting. In his great picture of the "Cenacolo," or Last supper, in the refectory of the convent of Santa Maria delle Grazie at Milan, he displays a largeness of manner quite unknown at that time. Both Luca Signorelli and Michelangelo were by many years later in developing the great cinquecento style of art, which now gives glory to their names, than Leonardo da Vinci, though both in some respects eventually surpassed him; but Leonardo was the true pioneer of the cinquecento design, in his great work at Milan—which however, through its being painted in oil or some such method, on a damp wall, soon fell into decay, and an adequate notion of its grandeur can now be formed only from the fine copy of it by Marco D'Oggione, at present in the Royal Academy of Arts in London. Leonardo was also the first painter to fully develop and master the mysteries of chiaroscuro. The "Cenacolo" was finished about 1497: in 1491-93 Leonardo had made for the Duke Ludovico an equestrian statue of his father Francesco Sforza, but that was shortly afterwards destroyed by the French. He left Milan in 1499, and returned to Florence; here, about 1503, the Gonfaloniere Soderini commissioned him to paint one end of the council-hall of the Palazzo Vecchio, the other being intrusted to Michelangelo. Leonardo prepared a cartoon of the "Battle of Anghiari," but only a small portion was painted—now well known from the print by Edelinck, after a sketch by Rubens, as the "Battle of the Standard." In 1507-9 Leonardo was again in Milan, and it was at this period that Louis XII. of France appointed him his painter. He appears to have lived occasionally at Florence and at Milan; but in September, 1514, he went with Giuliano de Medici to Rome, where Leo X. gave him some work in the Vatican; but a want of courtesy in the pope, and a disagreement with Michelangelo, caused him very soon to leave Rome in disgust, and he returned to the north, where at Pavia he was presented to Francis I. of France, who thoroughly appreciating his great abilities, took him into his service, with a salary of seven hundred crowns a year. He accompanied the king to France in 1517, and there spent the short remainder of his life, working but little; his laborious career having apparently rendered him somewhat prematurely old. He died at Cloux, near Amboise, on the 2nd of May, 1519, aged about sixty-seven. Vasari has reported that Leonardo da Vinci died in the arms of Francis I.; but the king was on the 2nd of May at St. Germain, and no journey was performed on that day, so that this pretty story seems more than doubtful. Leonardo was unmarried; he left his personal effects to his favourite pupil, Francesco Melzi, a young Milanese gentleman who accompanied him to France. Among his many scholars, the most distinguished are Bernardino Luini, Andrea Salaino, and Marco D'Oggione; and among his imitators, Gaudenzio Ferrari is perhaps the most eminent. Authentic works of this great painter are exceedingly rare, the majority of those attributed to him being most probably school pictures only. Among some genuine works may be mentioned his own portrait at Florence, in the Uffizi gallery; Modesty and Vanity, in the Barberini palace at Rome; a signed Madonna, in the Sanvitali collection at Parma; Ludovico Il Moro, in the Ambrosian library at Milan; Mona Lisa del Giacondo, and La Vierge aux Rochers, in the Louvre; a cartoon of St. Anne, in the Royal Academy, London; and three volumes of anatomical drawings in the royal library at Windsor. All these works are minutely executed, and remarkable for their effect of chiaroscuro; but Leonardo never achieved great excellence in colouring. He was, however, in every sense an extraordinary man: his writings are as remarkable as his paintings. His treatise on painting, "Trattato della Pittura," translated into many languages, is well known, but there are many unpublished works by him quite unknown. Mr. Hallam, in his "Literature of Europe," says of him:—"If any doubt could be harboured, not as to the right of Leonardo da Vinci to stand as the first name of the fifteenth century, which is beyond all doubt, but as to his originality in so many discoveries, which probably no one man, especially in such circumstances, has ever made, it must be on an hypothesis, not very untenable, that some parts of physical science had already attained a height which mere books do not record." Though Leonardo's anatomical studies at Windsor can be of no use to artists, they well define some portions of the human body, supposed in the history of anatomy not to have been known even to anatomists till a century later than their date, about 1490. Leonardo is supposed to have studied with Marcantonio della Torre at Pavia about that time. A selection from the Windsor drawings was published by Chamberlain in 1812.—R. N. W.
VINDING, Erasmus, a learned Dane, was born on the 19th March, 1615, at Vinding, a village in Zealand, whence he took his name, that of his father having been Paul Janus Colding. He was rector of the church of Sora from 1640 till 1645. Some time after the latter date, the king gave him the appointment of professor of Greek in the university of Copenhagen. In 1660, when the change which took place that year in the government had been effected, Vinding was nominated by Frederick III. one of the assessors of the supreme tribunal of justice. Being in great repute for his legal knowledge, he was appointed, along with Peter Lasson, Peter Scavenius, and others, to make a codification of the laws of Denmark. The precision and purity of style which distinguishes the code of Christian V. are traceable, it is said, to the elegant and accomplished mind of the Greek professor. He died on the 4th of September, 1684. The most interesting of his learned writings are the following—"Oratio
