some laughing feminine heads out of lime, which have been reproduced in plaster, and some heads of children, which were as beautiful as if modeled by the hands of a master. . . .”
Thus we discover that his practice of art began with the representation of two kinds of objects, which would perforce remind us of the two kinds of sexual objects which we have inferred from the analysis of his vulture phantasy. If the beautiful children's heads were reproductions of his own childish person, then the laughing women were nothing else but reproductions of Caterina, his mother, and we are beginning to have an inkling of the possibility that his mother possessed that mysterious smile which he lost, and which fascinated him so much when he found it again in the Florentine lady.[1]
The painting of Leonardo which in point of time stands nearest to the Monna Lisa is
- ↑ The same is assumed by Merejkowski, who imagined a childhood for Leonardo which deviates in the essential points from ours, drawn from the results of the vulture phantasy. But if Leonardo himself had displayed this smile, tradition hardly would have failed to report to us this coincidence.
