wife as a model for the portrait. And all this is to try and prove that the history of the Mona Lisa is a fairy tale, because the picture of the 'Florentine Lady' shown to the Cardinal at Cloux, and now in the Louvre, could not have been painted until after 1512, and, consequently, could not have been the Mona Lisa. M. Coppier would do well to study carefully Raphael's drawing in the Louvre. I, however, agree with him that the portrait in the Louvre is the same portrait as shown by Leonardo to the Cardinal at Cloux, also that it was not painted, or rather finished, until after 1512, though commenced in 1500—the same as was the St. Anne—but I believe it to be the second version of the Mona Lisa, a very simple, possible, and probable solution that does not require false or fantastic theories to support it.
Another great French art critic, M. Gruyer, informs us that every one who has seen the Mona Lisa portrait for close upon four centuries, has lost his head over it, and that it is the most precious gift from Francis I to the gallery of the Louvre. But he goes further, and states:—
- 'From the moment that it was painted, until our own day, one can trace it without losing sight of it for a single instant. Leonardo painted it between 1500 and 1504, and it was he him self who purchased it for 4,000 "écus d'or" (about 45,000 francs) on behalf of the King of France. It entered the "Cabinet doré" at Fontainebleau, where Father Dan still found it in 1642. Louis XIV transferred it to Versailles, where Bailly noticed it in the " Petite Galerie du Roy " in 1709. The Revolution caused it to be brought to Paris and placed in the National Museum. From those days, in fact, it took its place in the "Salon Carré," which it holds to-day.'[1]
M. Gruyer is here inaccurate in three of his principal details. Firstly, the picture cannot be traced from the moment it was painted as we have seen above; secondly, the price paid for it is founded on gossip; and, thirdly, it was not transferred direct from Versailles to the Salon Carré of the Louvre. For Richardson, the son of the well-known English painter, collector, and connoisseur, saw it in Coypel's house in Paris during the first quarter of the eighteenth century, when he made a tour of Europe to see all the art treasures of the Continent. In his itinerary he says:—
'The French King's pictures in Coypel's house: L. da Vinci. The "Jocunda" spoken of at large by Vasari in the life of this
- ↑ 'Gazette des Beaux-Arts,' August 1, 1887. See Appendix 4.
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