No one
ever ruled over his subject more entirely than Leonardo, or bent it more
dexterously to purely artistic ends. And so it comes to pass that though
he handles sacred subjects continually, he is the most profane of
painters; the given person or subject, Saint John in the Desert, or the
Virgin on the knees of Saint Anne, is often merely the pretext for a
kind of work which carries one quite out of the range of its
conventional associations.
About the Last Supper, its decay and restorations, a whole literature
has risen up, Goethe's pensive sketch of its sad fortunes being far the
best. The death in childbirth of the Duchess Beatrice was followed in
Ludovico by one of those paroxysms of religious feeling which in him
were constitutional. The low, gloomy Dominican church of Saint Mary of
the Graces had been the favourite shrine of Beatrice. She had spent her
last days there, full of sinister presentiments; at last it had been
almost necessary to remove her from it by force; and now it was here
that mass was said a hundred times a day for her repose.
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