Page:Monograph on Leonardo da Vinci's Mona Lisa (1915).pdf/54

 There can be no doubt as to what the great historian means here by his reference to Alcina's Island, the life on which is reflected in Joconda's eyes, and described in Ariosto's 'Orlando Furioso.' Mr. T. P. Armstrong, alluding to Michelet's avowal, declares: 'It represents not a person so much as an idea, the bad and the dangerous side of the Italian Renaissance movement.' Referring to Mr. Armstrong's statement, Mr. Louis Zangwill expressed the opinion that 'It is well that this aspect of the Renaissance should not be forgotten; the Pagan revival of those times, like the cruder Pagan revival among us to-day, was also a revival of Pagan vices.'

But this 'step further' of 'over-ripeness' is in none of Leonardo's pre-Cloux drawings, studies, or pictures. Take the drawing for the portrait of Isabella d'Este, and the Female Head (silver-point study on tinted paper) in the Louvre; take the Study of a Girl's Head and the Woman's Head with the Old Man in the Uffizi in Florence; take the Woman's Head (silver-point) at Windsor; take the Portrait Study, and the Girl's Head in Milan; take the study of the Girl's Head for the Bacchus in the Academy at Venice; take the head of the Isleworth Mona Lisa, all from Leonardo's own hand, and compare the beautiful, natural, amiable, smiling, straightforward expressions on all of these with the leer on the Louvre Mona Lisa, and the 'step further' of over-ripeness in the latter becomes most pronounced. I will even venture further: take the head of the Virgin in the picture of The Virgin among the Rocks, in the National Gallery, and compare it with the head of the Virgin in the picture of The Virgin among the Rocks, in the Louvre, and a difference of expression is quite appreciable. While again, take the heads of the Virgin and St. Anne with their smiles in the Saint Anne cartoon in Burlington House, and compare them with those of the St. Anne painting in the Louvre, and you have in a slight degree 'the over-ripeness' distinctly marked in the latter.