was left unfinished. Mr. McCurdy tells us in his life of the master that:—
- 'Fra Pietro da Nuvolaria's letter to Isabella d'Este, April 3, 1501,[1] (?) (March 28, 1501), proves the St. Anne cartoon to be the earliest commission since his return to Florence. . . . But about this time he must have commenced the Portrait of Mona Lisa. . . . The commission must have been given to him very soon after his arrival in Florence. ... (p. 47.) The Mona Lisa was one of the first commissions after Leonardo's return to Florence; commenced, according to Milanesi and M. RavaissonMollien, in 1500.' (p. 113.)
Dr. Thiis in his able and exhaustive work, which is also the latest, on Leonardo's early years says: —
- 'In 1501 he executed the famous cartoon for the picture of the Madonna with the St. Anne, intended for the church of the Annunziata. At about the same time he must have begun the portrait of Mona Lisa.'[2]
Thus all these authorities support my theory that the Mona Lisa must have been, at least, one of the portraits seen by Fra Nuvolaria.
The error about the Benci portrait was due, no doubt, to the fact that Vasari wanted to account for two portraits that were known to have been painted by Leonardo at that time. But what was the supposed Benci portrait, and what became of it? It is not accounted for in any of the records of Leonardo's life. We have seen that immediately before this he had made two drawings of Marchesa Isabella d'Este, and I maintain—and I think to any unbiased mind I can prove it—that he acted similarly in this case, and that the wrongly attributed Benci portrait was a second version of the Mona Lisa. We must take into consideration all the circumstances surrounding it, and we must not for a second lose sight of the fact
9
- ↑ This letter, dated April 3 (4), 1501, is Fra Nuvolaria's second letter in which is mentioned the Madonna with the Spindles, but not the St. Anne cartoon, which is mentioned in the first letter of March 28, 1501 (New Style). Müntz gives Yriarte as his authority for this letter at p. 124 of his book, while at page 120 he gives Calvi as his authority, but he gratuitously finds a new date for it as ' April, 1503.' Moreover, Fra Nuvolaria dates his letter April 4th, not 3rd. McCurdy refers to the wrong letter here through Müntz's mistake, no doubt.
- ↑ 'Leonardo da Vinci, the Florentine years of Leonardo and Verrocchio' (p. 36), by Dr. Jens Thiis, translated by Jessie Muir. London, Herbert Jenkins, Ltd., 1913.
