Leonardo da Vinci | Page 6

dwell With our
good Prior--they to him would be Mere nonsense; he must touch and
taste and see, And facts, he says, are never mystical."
[Illustration: PLATE VI.--THE HEAD OF CHRIST
In the Brera Gallery, Milan. No. 280. 1 ft. 0-1/2 ins. by 1 ft. 4 ins. (0.32
x 0.40)]
The copy of the "Last Supper" (Plate V.) by Marco d'Oggiono, now in
the Diploma Gallery at Burlington House, was made shortly after the
original painting was completed. It gives but a faint echo of that
sublime work "in which the ideal and the real were blended in perfect
unity." This copy was long in the possession of the Carthusians in their
Convent at Pavia, and, on the suppression of that Order and the sale of
their effects in 1793, passed into the possession of a grocer at Milan. It
was subsequently purchased for £600 by the Royal Academy on the
advice of Sir Thomas Lawrence, who left no stone unturned to acquire
also the original studies for the heads of the Apostles. Some of these in
red and black chalk are now preserved in the Royal Library at Windsor,
where there are in all 145 drawings by Leonardo.
Several other old copies of the fresco exist, notably the one in the
Louvre. Francis I. wished to remove the whole wall of the Refectory to
Paris, but he was persuaded that that would be impossible; the
Constable de Montmorency then had a copy made for the Chapel of the
Château d'Ecouen, whence it ultimately passed to the Louvre.
The singularly beautiful "Head of Christ" (Plate VI.), now in the Brera
Gallery at Milan, is the original study for the head of the principal
figure in the fresco painting of the "Last Supper." In spite of decay and
restoration it expresses "the most elevated seriousness together with
Divine Gentleness, pain on account of the faithlessness of His disciples,

a full presentiment of His own death, and resignation to the will of His
Father."

THE COURT OF MILAN
Ludovico, to whom Leonardo was now court-painter, had married
Beatrice d'Este, in 1491, when she was only fifteen years of age. The
young Duchess, who at one time owned as many as eighty-four
splendid gowns, refused to wear a certain dress of woven gold, which
her husband had given her, if Cecilia Gallerani, the Sappho of her day,
continued to wear a very similar one, which presumably had been given
to her by Ludovico. Having discarded Cecilia, who, as her tastes did
not lie in the direction of the Convent, was married in 1491 to Count
Ludovico Bergamini, the Duke in 1496 became enamoured of Lucrezia
Crivelli, a lady-in-waiting to the Duchess Beatrice.
Leonardo, as court painter, perhaps painted a portrait, now lost, of
Lucrezia, whose features are more likely to be preserved to us in the
portrait by Ambrogio da Predis, now in the Collection of the Earl of
Roden, than in the quite unauthenticated portrait (Plate VII.), now in
the Louvre (No. 1600).
On January 2, 1497, Beatrice spent three hours in prayer in the church
of St. Maria delle Grazie, and the same night gave birth to a stillborn
child. In a few hours she passed away, and from that moment Ludovico
was a changed man. He went daily to see her tomb, and was quite
overcome with grief.
In April 1498, Isabella d'Este, Beatrice's elder, more beautiful, and
more graceful sister, "at the sound of whose name all the muses rise
and do reverence" wrote to Cecilia Gallerani, or Bergamini, asking her
to lend her the portrait which Leonardo had painted of her some fifteen
years earlier, as she wished to compare it with a picture by Giovanni
Bellini. Cecilia graciously lent the picture--now presumably
lost--adding her regret that it no longer resembled her.

LEONARDO LEAVES MILAN
Among the last of Leonardo da Vinci's works in Milan towards the end
of 1499 was, probably, the superb cartoon of "The Virgin and Child
with St. Anne and St. John," now at Burlington House. Though little

known to the general public, this large drawing on carton, or stiff paper,
is one of the greatest of London's treasures, as it reveals the sweeping
line of Leonardo's powerful draughtsmanship. It was in the Pompeo
Leoni, Arconati, Casnedi, and Udney Collections before passing to the
Royal Academy.
In 1499 the stormy times in Milan foreboded the end of Ludovico's
reign. In April of that year we read of his giving a vineyard to Leonardo;
in September Ludovico had to leave Milan for the Tyrol to raise an
army, and on the 14th of the same month the city was sold by
Bernardino di Corte to the French, who occupied it from 1500 to 1512.
Ludovico may well have had in mind the figure of the