IV
The final piece of direct contemporaneous evidence we have about the life of Leonardo is the Cardinal of Aragon's visit to him at Cloux, near Amboise, in France, where in tranquillity, almost seclusion, he spent his last years in the house granted to him by Francis I. Mr. McCurdy, in his life of Leonardo, refers to this interview, thus:—
- 'The only contemporary account of his life at Cloux is that of a visit paid to him by the Cardinal of Aragon on October 10, 15 17, as described by the Cardinal's secretary ... "a certain paralysis has," he says, " attacked his right hand which forbids the expecting of any more good work from him, but he has given a very good training to a Milanese pupil who works extremely well, and although Leonardo can no longer colour with that sweetness with which he was wont, he is still able to make drawings and to teach others." '
Again, in 'Leonardo da Vinci's Notebooks' (p. 27), Mr. McCurdy says:—
- 'The manuscripts as a whole are picturesquely described in the diary of a certain Antonio de Beatis, the Secretary of the Cardinal of Aragon, who, with his patron, visited Leonardo at Amboise in October, 1517. The many wanderings of the painter's life were then ended, and he was living with Francesco Melzi and his servant Battisda de Villenais in the Manor House of Cloux, the gift of Francis I. The diary relates that he showed his guests three pictures, the St. John, the Madonna with St. Anne, and the portrait of a Florentine lady, painted at the request of Giuliano de' Medici, which cannot now be identified.'
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