- it to the Cardinal of Aragon, assured him that it was executed at the instance of Julien de Medicis.'1[1]
Then he points out that Julien (Italian, Giuliano) had not always had the good fortune to be master of the City of Florence and brother of a Pope, and generalissimo of his armies. He had been exiled, with his elder brothers, in 1494, from Florence, and had to enter the service of different Italian princes for a livelihood. The youngest of the Medicis was not therefore in a position to take Leonardo into his service, nor yet to give him an order for any work of art whatever, before the month of September, 1512, when he was able to re-enter Florence at the rear of the army of Antonfrancesco degli Albizzi, who, at the head of his Spanish troops, had come to prepare the solemn entry of Julien's brother the Cardinal. The latter did not appear until September 14th, accompanied by a thousand lances and escorted by Julien and their cousin, 'Jules de Medicis.' Two days later they forced the 'Gonfalonier Ridolfi' (Pietro Sodoreni?)[2] to resign, and Julien was appointed head of the Republic of Florence. Having regained their power and possessions, confiscated in 1494, the Medicis immediately took up the tradition of their illustrious father in Florence, and Julien at once attached Leonardo to his person. Here, I think, M. Coppier is again wrong, for did not Leonardo return to Milan in 1511?[3] And he asks, is it suggested that during the few months[4] he was in Florence, Leonardo would have asked his intimate friend Giocondo to permit him to paint his wife's portrait, and that the friend would have accorded the request? Is it to be suggested, he says, that the artist had recourse to this model for the picture he had promised Prince Julien de Medici? He then discourses upon her birth, her marriage, etc., and shows that in 1512 she must have been at least thirty-five years old, while the portrait is that of a woman of from twenty-six to twenty-eight. Moreover, he states that after leaving Florence in 1513, Leonardo would no longer have had Giocondo's
34
- ↑ 'Les Arts,' January, 19 14. The italics and capitals are not mine. See Appendix 3.
- ↑ I think M. Coppier is in error here, as Gonfalonier Pietro Soderini held the office from 1502, when he was appointed for life, until the return of the Medicis in 1512.
- ↑ In his draft letters already quoted he says he will be in Milan before Easter (1511). Brown, in his 'Life of Leonardo,' says: 'Accordingly, in 1512 he set out with his scholar Salaino (Salai) and his friend Lomazzo for his old residence, where he principally employed himself in hydraulical researches in order to perfect the canal by which he had brought the Adda to the walls of the city' (p. 130). Brown took the dates of the letters to be 1512, but they are now accepted by Richter and other authorities as 1511. Richter says: 'In the December of 1511 Leonardo was again in Milan. There is evidence of this in the Windsor manuscripts.'
- ↑ Leonardo was only in Florence for a few days, instead of months, in October, 1513.
