never seen the picture, describing the eyebrows, said: 'They spring from the flesh, their varying thickness, the manner in which they curve according to the pores of the skin, could not have been rendered in a more natural fashion.' This is quoted by nearly all Leonardo's biographers. Müntz gravely informs us that M. Durand-Greville's research has elicited the fact that inter alia 'Every eyelash was carefully studied'; and he (Müntz) then laments that 'the eyebrows and eyelashes are lacking, owing, no doubt, to some bygone restoration. Faint traces of them and of the shadow they cast on the cheek are still discernible through a magnifying-glass'! Now, M. Salomon Reinach,[1] Mr. Louis Zangwill,[2] and M. Andre-Charles Coppier[3] have pointed out as an historical fact that the society ladies in Italy in Leonardo's time, during the Renaissance, shaved or pulled out their eyebrows and eyelashes with an instrument called a 'Pelatoio,' as M. Coppier states, in imitation of the ancients, and of course Leonardo knew this and did not paint them in his portraits. M. Coppier gives several reproductions of old masters of that period without eyebrows in his article in 'Les Arts.'
But in view of the evidence I have so far produced, I maintain that one of the portraits seen by Fra Nuvolaria was the Mona Lisa; and that the other was a second version, I shall endeavour to prove later in these pages, and that they are both still extant.
Now let us further analyse Vasari's statements about this portrait. He distinctly states that it was painted to the order of Francesco del Giocondo, the sitter's husband, and I see no reason for doubting it, nor do I remember any of Leonardo's biographers disputing it, except Mrs. Heaton, who says he ' does not seem to have commissioned this portrait; at least, it remained with the painter until he sold it to the French King.'[4] What reason or authority Mrs. Heaton had for this suggestion, I am at a loss to know. Next, Vasari tells us that Leonardo having ' toiled over the portrait for four years, left it unfinished.'[5] This is an all-important statement, for it sets a limit to the period upon which the master was at work upon the portrait, and its being described then as unfinished distinctly shows that it must then have left his possession, after which he could have had nothing more to do with it. For if the picture
12
- ↑ 'Le Bulletin des Musées de France,' 1909.
- ↑ 'Daily Mail,' December 22, 1913.
- ↑ 'Les Arts,' January, 1914.
- ↑ 'Leonardo da Vinci and his Works,' by Mrs. Heaton (p. 52).
- ↑ 'Et, après quatre ans d'efforts, il jeta ses pinceaux, "e quattro anni penatovi, lo lasciô imperfetto."' M. Gruyer, the eminent French critic in the 'Gazette des Beaux-Arts,' August, 1887.
