It happened that Verrocchio was employed by the brethren of Vallombrosa
to paint the Baptism of Christ, and Leonardo was allowed to finish an
angel in the left hand corner. It was one of those moments in which the
progress of a great thing--here, that of the art of Italy--presses hard
and sharp on the happiness of an individual, through whose
discouragement and decrease, humanity, in more fortunate persons, comes
a step nearer to its final success.
For beneath the cheerful exterior of the mere well-paid craftsman,
chasing brooches for the copes of Santa Maria Novella, or twisting metal
screens for the tombs of the Medici, lay the ambitious desire of
expanding the destiny of Italian art by a larger knowledge and insight
into things, a purpose in art not unlike Leonardo's still unconscious
purpose; and often, in the modelling of drapery, or of a lifted arm, or
of hair cast back from the face, there came to him something of the
freer manner and richer humanity of a later age. But in this Baptism the
pupil had surpassed the master; and Verrocchio turned away as one
stunned, and as if his sweet earlier work must thereafter be distasteful
to him, from the bright animated angel of Leonardo's hand.
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