THE BOYHOOD OF A PAINTER
If we are to believe the proverb, a 'Jack of all Trades is master of none,' and it is mostly true. But here and there even in our own day, we meet with some gifted person who seems to be able to do anything he desires, and during the periods of history when men—and boys—were left more to themselves and allowed to follow their own bent, these geniuses were much less rare than at present.
Now during the last half of the fifteenth century and the first half of the sixteenth there lived in Italy a group of men who were in the highest possible degree Jacks of all Trades, or could have been so if they had chosen. They are known to us principally as painters, but the people amongst whom they lived very soon became aware that more than one of them could arrange you a water supply which would turn your mill wheel if there was no stream handy, or build you a palace if you were a rich citizen and wanted one, or help you to fortify your walls if you were the Lord of Milan or Florence or Ferrara; or fashion you a gold brooch as a present for your wife, if that was what you were seeking. As for making you a statue of yourself on horseback, to adorn the great square of the city over which you ruled—why, it was as easy to do that as to paint your portrait!
Chief among these 'Universal Geniuses,' as we should call them, was one Leonardo, son of the Florentine notary or lawyer, Piero da Vinci. He was born in the year 1452 not far from Florence and near the river Arno, and was declared by everyone to be one of the most beautiful children that ever was seen. As soon as he could crawl, he would
286
