Page:The painters of Florence from the thirteenth to the sixteenth century (1915).djvu/307

1519] mêlée of dead and dying, of stamping and rearing horses, and the different expressions on the faces of victors and vanquished, that we realise all that we have lost in Leonardo's Battle of the Standard.

A better fate has attended the portrait of Mona Lisa, the fair Neapolitan wife of the Florentine Prior, Francesco del Giocondo, which he painted about this time. After working at the picture for more than four years, Leonardo took it with him to France, where it was bought by Francis I. for 4000 gold crowns. A document of the last century, which M. Durand Gréville has lately brought to light, confirms the truth of Vasari's well-known description, and proves that before varnish and repainting destroyed the surface of the picture, the sky was of a delicate blue, the lady's complexion of dazzling fairness, and her eyes of liquid and brilliant lustre.

The crimson of the lips has faded and the lustre of the eyes is dim, but that wonderful face with the haunting smile, and the everlasting rocks behind, has not yet lost its charm. For us, in her mystic beauty, Mona Lisa remains the symbol of the divine Idea which Leonardo was ever seeking, the secret which lies hidden at the heart of Nature.