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 But the two portraits mentioned by Fra Nuvolaria, what became of them? Müntz declares: 'What they were is unknown.' Surely this seems incredible in the light of Vasari's record, and, though they are supposed to have completely disappeared, I think they are as traceable as is the Saint Anne. Let us see what the first great Art historian, Vasari, says about them; but, unfortunately, he is not always quite accurate about details. His description of the St. Anne includes features of the Paris Picture, as well as the London Cartoon, showing that his informant had seen both. Then he distinctly states:—


 * 'This Cartoon was subsequently taken to France. Leonardo then painted the portrait of Ginevra, the wife of Amerigo Benci, a most beautiful thing, and abandoned the Commission (the St. Anne) entrusted to him by the Servite Monks, who once more confided it to Filippino. . . . For Francesco del Giocondo, Leonardo undertook to paint the portrait of Mona Lisa, his wife, but after loitering over it for four years, he finally left it unfinished. This work is now in the possession of King Francis I and is at Fontainebleau.'

This statement, written fifty years later, corroborates Fra Nuvolaria's to the effect that the St. Anne and two portraits were painted simultaneously. Yet Vasari could not have seen Fra Nuvolaria's letter.

But here we have the two portraits distinctly specified by Vasari as being—the Benci and the Mona Lisa—painted at the same time as Leonardo was drawing the cartoon of the St. Anne; but he was quite wrong in describing one as that of the wife of Amerigo Benci, since that lady died in 1473, nearly thirty years previously. The second, Vasari states, was the Mona Lisa, which