account. Under all these circumstances, is it surprising that Giocondo received the painting of his wife unfinished? And where, in the name of literary truth, do Müntz, Rosenberg, McCurdy, and others get their authority for stating that the master himself said the Mona Lisa was unfinished in the sense that it was not perfect? They have to resort to this interpretation to in any way account for Vasari's deliberate statement. It was a physical impossibility that Leonardo could have told Vasari any such thing, as they had never seen each other, and the latter must have heard it from some one who had not seen the Louvre Mona Lisa, since this left Leonardo's, or his pupil's, hands highly finished as it now is.
Thus everything tends to show that Leonardo did not finish the Mona Lisa portrait that he painted for Giocondo, and which portrait there is no reason to doubt went to its owner before Leonardo left for Rome in 1505, or at latest before he left for Milan in 1506.
In view of this it is an interesting fact that the Isleworth Mona Lisa has a quite unfinished background.
But now let us see what Leonardo's biographers say about the acquirement by Francis I of the Mona Lisa. I give their statements in the order of the dates of publication. John William Brown, after long residence in Italy and great labour and research, wrote the first English life of Leonardo; and though his opinions and conclusions may be as faulty as those of others, his translations from the Italian are very accurate. He asserts:—
- 'Francis the First bought this picture for his collection at Fontainebleau, and paid 4,000 gold crowns to the family for whom it was painted, a sum that would be equal to 45,000 francs in the present day. It is now in the Louvre.'[1]
Mrs. Heaton very ingeniously surmises that:—
- 'Francesco del Giocondo, the husband of Mona Lisa, does not seem to have commissioned this picture; at least, it remained with the painter until he sold it to the French King for 4,000 gold crowns, an enormous sum at that time.'[2]
J. P. Richter, who is unquestionably one of the greatest authorities on Da Vinci, deliberately expresses his opinion on this point in his short life of the master in the following words:—
- 'It was about the year 1504 that the portrait of Mona Lisa
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