Page:Monograph on Leonardo da Vinci's Mona Lisa (1915).pdf/10



Monograph has been written in consequence of the deliberate opinion expressed by a great connoisseur to the effect that the Isleworth Mona Lisa can genuinely be ascribed to Leonardo da Vinci. To have undertaken such a task upon the ipse dixit of an ordinary expert would have been credulous, if not rash. But it was not so. For it was on the unequivocal opinion of one of the greatest of living judges of the works of the old masters: one who, to my own knowledge, bought at public auction, during the years 1913 and 1914, eight old masterpieces, at nominal prices, most of which, when cleaned, bore initials or signatures, and of which one was a Rubens, that was sold afterwards for eighty times its auction price, through the agency of one of the greatest of European art authorities. Yet all these pictures had passed, unrecognized, under the close scrutiny of home and foreign experts of repute, and of dealers the most astute. All this I mention merely in justification of the value which I have placed upon the opinion of an authority whose judgment is thus substantiated. And when this opinion was endorsed by an art critic of Mr. 's standing, I felt convinced there was at least good ground for investigation. True, at the outset it appeared almost hopeless to attempt to shake the tradition of four centuries, which had decreed that the Louvre picture was the one and only version of Leonardo's world-famous portrait. But the closer I investigated the small amount of incontrovertible and contemporaneous evidence we have regarding the painting of the portrait, the plainer and more evident became the invalidity of the tradition and the almost culpable credulity of those writers on Da Vinci, who unhesitatingly accepted this tradition as truth beyond question.

J. R. E.


 * March 17, 1915.
 * March 17, 1915.