Page:Monograph on Leonardo da Vinci's Mona Lisa (1915).pdf/16



must have been towards the end of 1500, Leonardo returned to Florence from Milan, having en route paid a visit at Mantua to Isabella d'Este, Marchesa of Mantua, of whom he did two sketches with a view to painting her portrait. One of them he left with her, and the other he kept for himself, and showed it to one of her agents in Venice on March 13, 1500. On hearing that Leonardo had arrived in Florence, the Marchesa wrote on March 22, 1501, to one of her friends in that city, Fra Pietro da Nuvolaria, General of the Order of the Carmelites, about the promised portrait, and his answers to her letters are two of the most important authentic documents we have in connection with the master, both of which I shall give in full:—


 * 'I will apply all my care and haste to the commission, but, according to everything I hear, Leonardo's life is full of variety, and subject to many changes. He seems to be living without care for the morrow. He has only done one cartoon since he has been at Florence. His composition is an infant Christ hardly a year old, slipping from His mother's clasp to catch hold of a lamb and embrace it. The Virgin, rising out of the lap of St. Anne, endeavours to part the Babe from the lamb—the animal must not