Literary and Philosophical Fragments

tinguish Completes the word "extinguish" from the previous page.. Gascon soldiers destroyed the model of the statue of Francesco Sforza A massive clay model for an equestrian monument that was used for target practice by French (Gascon) soldiers in 1499. with their arquebuses An early type of long-barreled firearm.; time, with its incessant transformation, has faded the Last Supper original: Cenacolo; artistic criticism, with its sharp gaze, dismantles the pictorial work of Vinci. That which neither the arquebuses of the Gascon soldiers, nor time, nor artistic criticism can destroy is the gigantic construction of nature which, having arisen in Leonardo’s mind at the dawn of the modern era, reached completion in him through those very forms by which it would later be organized in the centuries preceding our own and in our own time as well.

In 1513, when Leonardo went to Rome with Giuliano de’ Medici—" who devoted himself much to philosophical matters and especially to Alchemy, *"—the artist was nearly dead, and the scientist loomed large in the full consciousness of his own value. Before acting, one must know and think. The fertility of theory is founded upon the condi-

* VASARI, The Lives original: Le Vite — Giorgio Vasari's famous biographies of Renaissance artists., vol. IV, page 46.