For this change the brilliant complex inquiring mind of Leonardo da Vinci was largely responsible, together with the encouragement and example of Lorenzo de' Medici and such of his cultured sceptical friends as Alberti, Pico della Mirandola, and Poliziano.

But that is a subject too large for this book.

Enough that a worldly splendour and vivacity had come into artistic life and Andrea was an impressionable young man in the midst of it.

It does not seem to have affected the power and dexterity of his hand, but it made him a religious court-painter instead of a religious painter.

His sweetness and an underlying note of pathos give his work a peculiar and genuine character; but he is just not of the greatest.