Leonardo he made the following entry in his diary: “The duke has lost state, wealth, and liberty, not one of his works will be finished by himself.”[1] It is remarkable and surely not without significance that he here raises the same reproach to his benefactor that posterity was to apply to him, as if he wanted to lay the responsibility to a person who substituted his father-series, for the fact that he himself left his works unfinished. As a matter of fact he was not wrong in what he said about the Duke.
However, if the imitation of his father hurt him as an artist, his resistance against the father was the infantile determinant of his perhaps equally vast accomplishment as an artist. According to Merejkowski's beautiful comparison he was like a man who awoke too early in the darkness, while the others were all still asleep. He dared utter this bold principle which contains the justification for all independent investigation: “Chi disputa allegando l'autorità non adopra l'ingegno ma piuttosto la memoria” (Whoever refers to authorities in disputing ideas, works with his memory rather
- ↑ V. Seidlitz, l. c, II, p. 270.
