Page:Monograph on Leonardo da Vinci's Mona Lisa (1915).pdf/25

 between this latter date and 1513, when he again went to Rome to settle. Vasari wrote his life of Leonardo simply on the information he obtained from those who had known the master, and from public knowledge in Florence, where it must have been a tradition that the picture was unfinished.

It is evident that Vasari did not get any information about Leonardo's life from his two most intimate friends, Melzi and Salai, who were both with him in Milan from 1506 to 1513, for Vasari has left this period a blank in his life of the master. True, he says, that after the St. Anne cartoon went to France the King importuned Leonardo to paint it in colours; but, 'according to his custom, he kept the King a long time waiting with nothing better than words.' Such information could but come from some one who was very intimate with Leonardo at Cloux, and Melzi seems to have been the only person who could have imparted it. But he did not meet Vasari until 1566, just sixteen years after the issue of the first edition of his 'Lives of the Painters,' in which this reference appeared. Vasari, when he commenced his life of the master, may, of course, have written to Melzi, and have thus received this private and exclusive item. But then, surely, Melzi would have told him that the Mona Lisa in the King's collection was a finished picture, though he would have known nothing about the unfinished Mona Lisa that had gone to the Giocondos in Florence before Leonardo went to Milan, where Melzi joined him when a mere boy. Therefore, it is more probable that this information came from some one connected with the French Court who had knowledge of the King's affairs, more especially as it savours somewhat of the nature of a complaint or rebuke. That Melzi worked on the St. Anne, the Mona Lisa, and other pictures at Cloux is certain, since the Cardinal of Aragon's secretary tells us the master was then (15 17) paralysed, but that his Milanese pupil worked extremely well. Salai could have informed Vasari of the unfinished Mona Lisa, but then he would not have given him the confused particulars about the St. Anne, mixing up the features of the cartoon in Burlington House with those of the cartoon that went to France. Salai again knew nothing about the finishing of the Mona Lisa that Francis I acquired. Thus it will be seen that the two men who knew most about Leonardo's life could not have given Vasari many, if any, particulars; while neither of them knew the complete history of the respective versions of the Mona Lisa portrait, Melzi being ignorant of the history of the one in Florence, and Salai of the fate of the one at Cloux. Leonardo alone knew the complete history of the two versions of the picture.