There can be no doubt as to what the great historian means here by his reference to Alcina's Island, the life on which is reflected in Joconda's eyes, and described in Ariosto's 'Orlando Furioso.'[1] Mr. T. P. Armstrong, alluding to Michelet's avowal, declares: 'It represents not a person so much as an idea, the bad and the dangerous side of the Italian Renaissance movement.'[2] Referring to Mr. Armstrong's statement, Mr. Louis Zangwill expressed the opinion that 'It is well that this aspect of the Renaissance should not be forgotten; the Pagan revival of those times, like the cruder Pagan revival among us to-day, was also a revival of Pagan vices.'[3]
But this 'step further' of 'over-ripeness' is in none of Leonardo's pre-Cloux drawings, studies, or pictures. Take the drawing for the portrait of Isabella d'Este, and the Female Head (silver-point study on tinted paper) in the Louvre; take the Study of a Girl's Head and the Woman's Head with the Old Man in the Uffizi in Florence; take the Woman's Head (silver-point) at Windsor; take the Portrait Study, and the Girl's Head in Milan; take the study of the Girl's Head for the Bacchus in the Academy at Venice; take the head of the Isleworth Mona Lisa, all from Leonardo's own hand, and compare the beautiful, natural, amiable, smiling, straightforward expressions on all of these with the leer on the Louvre Mona Lisa, and the 'step further' of over-ripeness in the latter becomes most pronounced. I will even venture further: take the head of the Virgin in the picture of The Virgin among the Rocks, in the National Gallery, and compare it with the head of the Virgin in the picture of The Virgin among the Rocks, in the Louvre, and a difference of expression is quite appreciable.[4] While again, take the heads of the Virgin and St. Anne with their smiles in the Saint Anne cartoon in Burlington House, and compare them with those of the St. Anne painting in the Louvre, and you have in a slight degree 'the over-ripeness' distinctly marked in the latter.[5]
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- ↑ Neither Dr. Smith nor Lempriere mention Alcina in their Classical Dictionaries, but the Rev. Dr. Brewer, in his 'Dictionary of Phrase and Fable,' says: 'Alcina. The personification of carnal pleasure in " Orlando Furioso"; the Circe of the Greeks and Labë of the Arabians. She enjoyed her lovers for a time, and then changed them into trees, stones, fountains, or beasts, as her fancy dictated.'
- ↑ 'Daily Mail,' December 20, 1913.
- ↑ 'Daily Mail,' December 22, 1913.
- ↑ Waagen says 'this picture cannot have been the work of Leonardo . . . the heads of the Virgin and angel are without expression and display a surprising feebleness of design . . . folds of drapery are false and stiff appearance.' Theophile Gautier thinks: 'The mouth a little large, it is true, but smiling with a deliriously enigmatic expression that Da Vinci gives to his female faces, a tiny shade of mischief mingling with the purity and goodness.'
- ↑ Waagen attributes the St. Anne to a pupil, 'So much is the usual smile of his figures here exaggerated and affected.' Rosini believed it to be a work of Salai, perhaps retouched by Leonardo, unless it be by Luini. M. Delécluze supports Rosini's theory. Referring to the St. Anne cartoon in the Royal Academy, Dr. Gronau says: 'The staid, calm expression of the heads could not easily be surpassed' (p. 137). Of the Louvre St. Anne he asks you to 'Mark carefully how finely-toned is the smile in these three figures, in keeping with the age of each. In the case of the older woman, it is calm and faintly visible, as in the portrait of Mona Lisa' (p. 141). Kugler, in his 'Handbook of Painting,' says: 'The St. Anne is erroneously ascribed to Leonardo. The smile, sometimes approaching to a coquettish expression, is rather mannered in this picture, though the original cartoon is free from all such tendency, and is of the highest nobility of sentiment.' (Part 2, p. 286, 3rd Edition, London, 1855.) Rosenberg declares: 'The picture has been sadly injured. The majority of art students are, however, of opinion that the hand of the master may still be recognized in it, and that it was at any rate painted under his supervision and with his help.' Monograph (p. 96).
