They are the clairvoyants, through whom, as
through delicate instruments, one becomes aware of the subtler forces of
nature, and the modes of their action, all that is magnetic in it, all
those finer conditions wherein material things rise to that subtlety of
operation which constitutes them spiritual, where only the finer nerve
and the keener touch can follow: it is as if in certain revealing
instances we actually saw them at their work on human flesh. Nervous,
electric, faint always with some inexplicable faintness, they seem to be
subject to exceptional conditions, to feel powers at work in the common
air unfelt by others, to become, as it were, receptacles of them, and
pass them on to us in a chain of secret influences.
But among the more youthful heads there is one at Florence which Love
chooses for its own--the head of a young man, which may well be the
likeness of Andrea Salaino, beloved of Leonardo for his curled and
waving hair--belli capelli ricci e inanellati--and afterwards his
favourite pupil and servant.
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