The Ape And The Mystery

The duke found his opportunity to change this subject. "Ah, yes," he said. "Now that you mention it. Speaking of colors, and what not. You are the man who painted that picture of the Madonna Lisa, are you not? I mean the wife of Francesco di Bartolommeo di Zanobi del Giocondo-- that one. Yes, of course you are."

"Yes," said Leonardo.

The duke said: "Remarkable man that you are! Today you make drains. Tomorrow you cast cannon. The day before yesterday you make a sort of Icarus machine, so that a man can fly like a bird. Ah... can you? Did it?"

"No, Magnificence, not yet."

"It would not surprise me if you could transmute metals. They say that you are something of an alchemist. Can you turn base metals into gold, Leonardo?"

"I have never tried."

"Try! try! Who knows? They tell me that the Valentinois has a learned doctor from the Lowlands who--"

"The tank," said Leonardo, making a diagram, "could be of copper, lined with--"

The duke said: "Yes, yes, yes, of course. Mona Lisa was a Neapolitan, or at least she was from the south. Yes, she was a Gherardini. Do you happen to know whether she was related to the Florentine family of that name?"

"No," said Leonardo da Vinci, "I know only that she married del Giocondo-- he bought a picture of Saint Francis from Puligo. I have seen worse pictures. He is something of a connoisseur, Giocondo."

"I saw your picture," said the duke. "Between ourselves, it's not at all bad. La Gioconda is by no means a bad-looking woman. She's his third wife, you know."

"I know. Her predecessors were Camilla di Mariotto Ruccelai, and Tommasa di Mariotto Villana. They both died within four years."

"Ah, yes. There are some queer stories about that," said the duke.

"But to return to the tank, Magnificence."

"To the devil with the damned tank! Tell me, Leonardo-- what was she always grinning about?"

"Madonna Lisa? She never grinned, Magnificence. She smiled, yes. Grinned, no."

"You must have been alone with her for a long time."

"Never for a moment," said Leonardo. "Never for one little moment. There were always waiting-women, secretaries, musicians, dress-makers, and frequently the lady's husband."

"A jealous man, that," said the duke.

"Yes. He is going the way to hell, as I nearly did, trying to find the bottom of a bottomless pit."

"She always struck me as deep," said the duke, ever so deep-- deep as the sea. D'you know what? She isn't by any means what you could call a beautiful woman. But, the few times I met her, I couldn't take my eyes off her. I am not," he said, curling the point of his red-blond beard between two fingers, "I am not altogether undesirable as far as women are concerned, and in any case... well, I should have... however, there was something about that woman that froze me. In a way, she frightened me. She never said anything. You know, I suppose, that if I want to be amusing-- if I go out of my way to be sprightly and entertaining-- I could make St. Bartholomew roar with laughter at the stake. Well, d'you know what? With the Madonna Lisa I had no success whatever. I believe you must have heard that I tell a tolerably good story. I told her three of the raciest and best I ever knew. There was never anything but that strange little pinched-up smile. You caught it perfectly, Leonardo. God knows how you did it, but you caught it. I stood and looked at the picture for nearly five minutes, and I said to myself: 'Aha-- he has caught it. There is the smile. There she is. There is la Gioconda to the life. What is she smiling at? She might be the Mother of God or she might be the devil's wife.' And a sort of cold shiver went up and down my spine. Fortunately, at that time I was... anyway it was lucky for me that I had a certain other distraction just then. But one or two gentlemen I know completely lost their heads over her. Yet I am of the opinion-- tell me what you think, Leonardo, because you have seen all the beautiful women in the world and know everything-- in my opinion the Madonna Lisa is not beautiful."

"No."

"When you say 'no' Leonardo, do you mean 'no, she is not beautiful' or 'no, I disagree with you, she is beautiful'?"

"She is not beautiful," said Leonardo.

"It seemed to me that her hands were coarse and bony, but you painted them as if they had no bones in them. But she must have been an easy person to paint, because she moved less than anyone else I ever met in my life."

"Yes, nothing but the blinking of her eyes told you that she was alive," said Leonardo. "But sometimes she moved her hands. Occasionally she took her right hand from the back of her left hand, and loosely locked her fingers together. But generally she let her hands fall into her lap, where they lay relaxed, with the palms upwards. You see such a disposition of the hands in good old women who have done their work and are content to sit and look at their grandchildren. I have seen hands like hers on deathbeds-- the deathbeds of women who have lived contentedly and died in peace with all their sins forgiven."

"Yes, she must have been easy to draw," said the duke. "She kept so still. Now if you were drawing me, Leonardo, that would be quite a different matter, because I can't keep still. I pick something up, I put something down, I walk here, I walk there, I take hold of a curtain or a piece of tapestry..."

"On the contrary, Magnificence, that would make you all the easier to portray."

The duke, putting forward his right hand, said: "And what do you think of my hand?"

"It is a perfectly good hand," said Leonardo, without enthusiasm. "It will do everything you want it to do. I see by the third and fourth fingers that you are a horseman. The first and second fingers, and the thumb, tell me that you are a swordsman, and the tendons of your wrist tell the same story."

The duke said: "Her hands really were a little too large and hard. What made you draw them so round and soft?"

Leonardo replied: "I softened them to make a symbol of terrible strength."

"I saw no terrible strength," said the duke, "only pretty hands-- pretty, soft, yielding hands."

Leonardo repeated: "Terrible strength. Soft and yielding. What is softer and more yielding than quicksand or a quagmire? And what is stronger? What is more terrible? In the sea, what is stronger and more terrible than those soft, yielding things that lie still in the dark and lay their pliable fingers, or tentacles, upon the diver?"