. Leonardo da Vinci, artist, thinker and man of science;. umanityalso applied himself, longbefore Grandville andCallot, to the reproductionot the most monstrousdeformities, caricatureswhich show the interme-diate degree between theman and the beast, or,rather, man degraded be-low the level of the beast, by a hideous hy-bridism. In some , the nose is flattened, while the upper lipprotrudes like those of the felidae : in others, the nose is hooked andprominent as a j^ A thoughtful enquirer,himself an authority on theart of caricature, has left us adefinition of what he calls
. Leonardo da Vinci, artist, thinker and man of science;. umanityalso applied himself, longbefore Grandville andCallot, to the reproductionot the most monstrousdeformities, caricatureswhich show the interme-diate degree between theman and the beast, or,rather, man degraded be-low the level of the beast, by a hideous hy-bridism. In some , the nose is flattened, while the upper lipprotrudes like those of the felidae : in others, the nose is hooked andprominent as a j^ A thoughtful enquirer,himself an authority on theart of caricature, has left us adefinition of what he calls theanatomy of ugliness that Imay offer to the attention ofmy reader. Leonardo, said(hampfleury, was of the raceof those who have sought todemonstrate tlie gradual tran-sitions which lead from theApollo to the frog. He con-cerned himself both with thetraits that divide man frombrute, and those which con-nect them. Occupied withsuch a train of thought,Leonardo must often havepondered the order of jirimalorganisms. He inclined per-haps to the ideas of the. STUDY OF AN OLD MAN. (Trivuizi Library.) DRAWINGS AND CARICATURES 217 But here again we may ask, was Leonardo a realist, or did hedistort nature by dwelling exclusively on exceptions ? Realism, as weunderstand it in our own times, is either platitude or an exclusive pre-occupation with what is ugly. From this grovelling point of view,proud, free spirits such as Leonardo can never be realists. Has notthe master shown us by his example that art must be either subjectiveor non-existent ? Take any one of his heads of old men : even whenhe seems to be givinghimself up to the workof mechanical reproduc-tion, he eliminates, per-haps unconsciously,everything opposed tothe type that rises be-fore his imagination, in-terposing between hiseyes and the ends by giving us,not a photographicallyfaithful image of someindividual, but an idealof his own, which hasincorporated itself insome face, seen, per-haps, by chance. Underhis penci
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