Excerpt from Selected Drawings From Old Masters in the University Galleries and in the Library at Christ Church, Oxford, Vol. 2 Bitter experience of his own might well be supposed, from the word Intollerabile written along the upper margin of the sheet, to have prompted Leonardo thus to illustrate the old motto, Virtutis comes Invidia. But it is on the whole more likely that the sketch belongs to the same cycle as the preceding two, and was done to order as an illustration of the view which Ludovico i] More took of those whom he chose to regard as his enviers and detractors. The frost of intellectual pedantry blights the invention, and but for the text which explains the designs we might imagine that Envy, wounded by the palms and Iaurels of Virtue, was the victim and not the assailant. The actual drawing, nevertheless, is touched with the unfailing fire and magic of Leonardo's hand, and the stealthy amble of Death on four feet is as grim a piece of macabre imagination as can be found. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.