Page:The painters of Florence from the thirteenth to the sixteenth century (1915).djvu/309

1519] varnish, "this man will effect nothing, for he thinks about finishing his picture before he begins it." One small Madonna with a Child of enchanting grace, Vasari tells us, which he painted for the papal official Baldassarre Turini, has disappeared, while the fresco in the church S. Onofrio, formerly ascribed to him, is now recognised to be the work of his pupil Beltraffio. The departure of Giuliano de' Medici decided him to leave Rome, and when, in the summer of 1515, Francis I. entered Italy, Leonardo hastened to meet him at Pavia. The new king received him with the greatest honour, and gave him a pension of 700 crowns. "King Francis," writes Cellini, "was passionately enamoured of the great master's talents, and told me himself that there had never been any man who knew as much as Leonardo." The painter not only accompanied his royal patron to Milan, but followed him to France, and settled in the Hôtel de Cloux, a manor-house near the king's favourite château of Amboise. Salaï refused to leave Milan, but another of his favourite pupils, Francesco Melzi, accompanied Leonardo to France, and watched tenderly over his declining years. His health was beginning to fail, but his brain was as active as ever. He prepared plans for a new palace at Amboise, and for a canal which should connect Touraine with the Lyonnais. A painting of Leda, which was long preserved at Fontainebleau, and another of Pomona, which was also finished in France, have both perished; but one picture of this period remains, the blue-robed Madonna and Child in the lap of St. Anne, with the lamb, now in the Louvre. This charming group,