Ruskin 's assessment Leonardo da Vinci is similar in its essentials to that of Vasari.
Ruskin accepts Leonardo's greatness: his studies have led him 'reverently' to the feet of Leonardo ( MP I:5); Leonardo's works are 'incapable, in their way, of any improvement conceivable by human mind' (MP I:133); Ruskin remarks on Leonardo's finish at MP I:88; and at Works, 21.146 he comments that Leonardo's drawing, like that of Dürer is 'always decisive and always right'.
At Works, 22.311 Leonardo da Vinci is, for Ruskin, the type of the chiaroscurist, and he is there compared with the artists of the Dutch school who were 'laboriously painting, without essential genius for colour', and contrasted with Giotto.
Luini is a 'man ten times greater' than Leonardo da Vinci. Leonardo was 'only a fine draughtsman in black', and he 'depraved his finer instincts by caricature'. He is an example of a lack of 'wise, normal discipline in Art', someone who dissipated his energies in 'capricious ingenuities'. We have 'many anecdotes of him; -- but no picture of importance on canvas, and only a few withered stains of one upon a wall' ( Works, 19.129 and Works, 19.130). His oil painting is 'all gone black, or gone to nothing' ( Works, 22.93).