Page:The painters of Florence from the thirteenth to the sixteenth century (1915).djvu/297

1519-] ness of the sum is the best proof that the picture was not held to be a genuine Leonardo, since the great master's works were held in the highest estimation at Milan, and Charles I. had vainly offered 300 ducats for any one of his manuscripts in that city. A series of original studies for the children-heads and the angel with the outstretched finger, are still to be seen at Windsor and Paris, and bear witness to the genuineness of the Louvre painting, while the slight improvements in the composition of the National Gallery picture seem to indicate that it was a later work, probably executed under Leonardo's own eye.

But if England cannot claim to possess an oil-painting by the hand of this rare master, we have a priceless treasure in the cartoon of the Virgin and St. Anne, which is the property of the Royal Academy. In this drawing, which Leonardo probably designed towards the close of his Milanese period, we have the first idea of the picture which he afterwards painted for Francis I. It is drawn in black chalk on white paper, and both the hands and feet of St. Anne and the stones in the foreground are quite unfinished, but the modelling of the forms and the expression of the heads display the full perfection of the master's art. The Child in his Mother's arms springs joyously forward to reach St. John, and St. Anne, on whose lap the Virgin rests, turns to her daughter with a glad smile and points upwards, as if to show that she is aware of her son's divine birth. But the charm of the picture lies in the face of Mary, with the strange, wonderful smile that tells of a joy beyond mortal dream. Nowhere else has Leonardo succeeded in