OF LEONARDO DA VINCI.

...nature, he always sought excellence upon excellence and perfection upon perfection; not contenting himself with what was already done, however beautiful, he pursued with anxiety that "something more" that could be achieved. While he painted, he was accustomed to have around Lady Lisa Lisa Gherardini, the subject of the "Mona Lisa." people who sang, played music, and laughed, to keep her cheerful and to avoid that common drawback of portraits, which for the most part result in a melancholy air. And truly, in this work one sees a smile original: "gigno" so pleasing that, as Vasari says, it is a thing more divine than human to behold. Also beautiful is another portrait by the same Leonardo which is at Fontainebleau, and is said to be of a Marchioness of Mantua Likely Isabella d'Este.. Most beautiful was that of Ginevra d'Amerigo Benci, a girl of famous beauty in those times. Nor should one omit the "Flora," painted with wonderful charm and a truly divine air; this is preserved in Paris and is in the hands of a private individual.

Having, around the year 1503, to decorate the Council Hall in the palace of Florence, Leonardo was elected by public decree to paint it. To this effect, he created a cartoon A full-scale preparatory drawing for a fresco or mural. full of art and beautiful considerations, in which was expressed a history of Piccinino The Battle of Anghiari, where the Florentine Republic defeated the Milanese forces led by Niccolò Piccinino.. He had already colored the greater part of it in oil when, noticing that due to the priming layer imprimitura: the initial layer of paint or ground applied to a surface. being too thick everything was peeling from the wall, and that his labors were in vain, he abandoned the work.

At that time—which was during the papacy of Pius III, not the second, as one reads in Vasari—Raphael of Urbino, who had barely reached the age of twenty and had recently left the school of Pietro Perugino, came to Florence for the first time, eager to see that famous cartoon and enamored by the fame of Leonardo da Vinci, who was then passing the sixtieth year of his age. He stood amazed at the sight of Leonardo's works, and never had a more powerful stimulus to make him run and swiftly reach 그 high perfection of art, which caused him to be revered by everyone as the god of painting; departing from that time forward from the dry and harsh manner of Perugino to pass into the softness and tenderness of Vinci. The young Raphael was also a spectator, not without profit, of the disputes that later caused such enmity between Leonardo and Michelangelo Buonarroti. Michelangelo was not yet twenty-nine years old, and by public order had created for another wall of the same Council Hall that much-celebrated cartoon of the War of Pisa The Battle of Cascina., filled with various nudes made in competition with Vinci. Until the year 1513, Leonardo remained in Florence and painted many things there. Francesco Bocchi, in the book he wrote on the beauties of Florence "Le bellezze della città di Firenze," published in 1591., mentions a small painting that in his time was seen in the house of Matteo and Giovan Battista Botti, in which a Madonna was painted with supreme art and diligence, with a wonderfully beautiful Christ child who lifted his face with singular grace. By Borghini Raffaello Borghini, author of "Il Riposo.", a head of St. John the Baptist is mentioned as a rare thing, which was in the hands of Camillo degli Albizi.

But upon the elevation to the papacy of Leo X, in whom the love of painting and all the fine arts was an inherited trait, Leonardo hurried to Rome to pay his respects to that prince and patron Mecenate: a generous patron of the arts, named after the Roman advisor Maecenas. of talented men. When the Pope ordered a panel painting from him, Vasari recounts that Leonardo immediately began with great preparation to distill oils and prepare the varnish; and that Leo, being informed of this, said that nothing could be hoped for from one who thought of the finish before having even examined the beginning.