said that this work is painted in a manner well designed to make the boldest master tremble, and astonish all who behold it, however well accustomed to the marvels of

art.

Mona Lisa was, indeed, exceedingly beautiful, and while Leonardo was painting her portrait he took the precaution of keeping some one constantly near her to sing or play on instruments, or to jest and otherwise amuse her, to the end that she might continue cheerful and so that her face might not exhibit the melancholy expression often imparted by painters to the likenesses they make.

In this portrait of Leonardo, on the contrary, there is so pleasing an expression and a smile so sweet that while gazing at it one thinks it rather divine than human, and it has ever been esteemed a wonderful work, since life itself could exhibit no other appearance.

Certain later French editions of Vasari's work have, after the first paragraph, this sentence interpolated: "This picture is now in the possession of the King Francis of France and is at Fontainebleau." Seventeenth-century editors were notorious for interjecting phrases of their own where modern editors would have added foot-notes. In the edition of Vasari's work of 1878, however, there is a footnote, adding that, according to the French ecclesiastic, Le Père Dan, Francis I purchased the picture from Leonardo for 4000 gold florins.

But which "Mona Lisa" did Vasari have in mind or eye when he penned the foregoing famous passage? Palomino, his Spanish colleague in the useful avocation of diffusing artistic knowledge, as we have seen, took it for granted that he wrote about the Prado portrait. But did Palomino depend entirely upon a comparison of the two pictures with Vasari's original text? Probably not, although to-day a comparison of photographs leaves little doubt in one's mind.

Vasari was five years of age when Francis I departed from Italy with Leonardo and the "Mona Lisa" of the Louvre. The portrait never after left France, and Vasari never visited that country. One can hardly conceive the future art historian at the age of five possessed of a precocious connoisseurship which would have enabled

him to write the precise, critical, and intimate words he did thirty-odd years later. It is quite likely that Palomino knew all this, or was acquainted with equally convincing proofs that Vasari did not describe this particular portrait.

It was different with the "Mona Lisa" of the Prado. That picture, which Charles V obtained from the heirs of the painter, could not have left Italy until after 1529, the year of Charles's first visit, and probably not until 1540-43, when he removed most of his Italian art treasures to Madrid, and at which period Vasari began his "Lives of the Artists."

We have seen that the authorities give 1500 and 1503 respectively as the dates of the painting of the Prado and the Louvre panels, although the date of the second is usually designated as 1503-06 in order to account for a phrase in Vasari, which has merely the significance of tradition: “But after loitering over it for four years, he finally left it unfinished." Traditional, too, are the biographer's story of the means the artist took to amuse the sitter, and the later fictitious scandal of Leonardo's love-affair with the lady.

After an absence of sixteen years at Milan, where he painted his famous "Last Supper," Leonardo returned to Florence in 1499. He remained there until May, 1502, when he traveled over a great part of central Italy as the engineer of Cesare Borgia, Duke of Valentinois. He returned to Florence in March, 1503, when he began his famous, but fruitless, competition with Michelangelo for the decoration of the council-hall of the Palazzo Vecchio. So much we know from Leonardo's own writings, in which, however, there is not a word about Mona Lisa in either pigment or the flesh.

Nevertheless, the archives of Florence furnish us with data for filling in these dates. The friendship between Leonardo da Vinci and Mona Lisa's husband, Francesco del Giocondo, is established beyond all dispute. In the Uffizi Gallery of Florence there is a pencil drawing of the husband by the artist.

In 1495, Francesco married Lisa Gherardini, then sixteen years of age, and of ancient, but not noble, lineage. After her marriage, possibly owing to her personal beauty and popularity in society, she was spoken and written about as "La Gio