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was completed, at present in the Louvre Gallery. . . . He was at work upon the picture four whole years. . . . Francis I paid, a few years later, 4,000 gold florins for the portrait, an enormous sum in those days.'^[1]

Eugene Müntz, in his very able and exhaustive life of Leonardo, lays it down as his belief that:—

'It is hardly probable that the portrait of Mona Lisa was the female portrait ordered by Guiliano de' Medici and seen in Leonardo's studio by the Cardinal d'Aragon in 1516.^[2] However that may have been, it is certain that this artistic gem was acquired by Francis I at the price, we are told, of 4,000 gold crowns—somewhere about ,£8,000.'^[3]

M. Rosenberg, in his monograph on Da Vinci, asserts:—

'When, at a later period, the matchless picture had passed from the ownership of those who had ordered it, into strange hands, Leonardo himself bought it for 4,000 gold ducats (about £1,800 sterling) on behalf of his Royal patron, Francis I of France.'^[4]

Mr. McCurdy, in his dispassionate biography (which is the latest English life of Leonardo published), states:—

'The commission to paint Mona Lisa was given to Leonardo by Francesco del Giocondo. The portrait was one of the first commissions after Leonardo's return to Florence, commenced, according to Milanesi and Ravaisson-Mollien, in 1500. Vasari speaks of his lingering over it for four years and leaving it unfinished; but as this period included his term of service with Caesare Borgia, he can only have worked on it intermittently. The picture, both Vasari and Lomazzo state, was acquired by Francis I, and was at Fontainebleau; since then it has remained in the Royal Collection, ultimately the National Collection of the Louvre.^[5]

Here, be it noted, in six of the leading lives of Leonardo not one of the authors states where, how, or when the picture was bought for Francis the First. They all hold that it was painted for Mona Lisa's husband, with the exception of Mrs. Heaton, who had the

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1. 'Leonardo,' by Jean Paul Richter, Ph.D., London, 1880 (p. 88).
2. Müntz is wrong again in this date, it should be 1517.
3. 'Leonardo da Vinci,' by Eugene Müntz (vol. 2, p. 158).
4. 'Leonardo da Vinci,' Monograph by Adolf Rosenberg (p. 116).
5. 'Leonardo da Vinci,' by Edward McCurdy, M.A., London. George Bell and Sons, 1904.