Print collector's quarterly (6.1916)

oured wax, and to behold these portraits all so lifelike
and so carefully finished was an astonishing thing —
era cosa di stupore.”
These waxen effigies have gone the way of time, and
the paintings which testified to his versatility have long
since been lost and forgotten, so that Lodovico is known
to-day only for his medals in bronze. But in his day he
enjoyed such credit for his portraits, that when his
son grew up, the father, realizing the advantages of this
metier of portraits a la minute-—in which he had come to
rival by sheer force of talent the charms of instantane-
ous photography, ■—prudently set Ottavio in this path.
Working in wax, however, he seems to have recognized
as a talent peculiarly his own, and his son contented
himself with the more normal medium of crayons.
Ottavio seems to have adopted much the same expedi-
tious methods as his father’s. Baglione says that he
too worked alia macchia, but does not specifically say
that Ottavio continued the feat of making his portraits
from memory after a single glimpse of his sitter; and
the character of his drawings — the precision of line
and the convincing accuracy of likeness — does not
suggest any such method of work. By way of keep-
ing up the family reputation as a virtuoso, Leoni did not
confine himself to portraits, but ventured on religious
paintings for various Roman churches. Baglione enum-
erates a number of them, and pronounces them well
enough done, — assai bene condotti, — the same pru-
dent phrase with which he had passed judgment on the
father’s efforts in painting. But this was only an inci-
dental side of Ottavio’s career; his “line” was his
crayon portraits, and it was by them almost entirely
that he was known.

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