Page:A Treatise on Painting.djvu/50

 ble, only a coloured drawing, we are not informed.

The picture, however, on which he bestowed the most time and labour, and which therefore seems intended by him as the completest specimen of his skill, at least in the branch of portrait-painting, was that which he did of Mona Lisa, better known by the appellation of la Gioconda, a Florentine lady, the wife of Francisco del Giocondo. It was painted for her husband, afterwards purchased by Francis the First, and was till lately to be seen in the King of France’s cabinet. Leonardo bestowed four entire years upon it, and after all is said to have left it unfinished.

This has been so repeatedly said of the works of this painter, that we are here induced to inquire into the evidence of the fact. An artist who feels by experience, as every one must, how far short of the ideas of perfection he has formed in his own mind, his best performances always fall, will naturally be led to consider these as but very faint expressions of his own conceptions. Leonardo’s disposition to think nothing effected while any thing remained to be done, and a mind like his, continually suggesting suc- Rh