a great zest for new palaces.3 But this drawing reveals a design that hews very closely to Italian precedent: flat roofs and symmetrical facades, articulated as uniform bays.
The Manor of Cloux
The travel party that arrived in Amboise in the late summer of 1516 was significantly smaller than the one that Leonardo had led from Milan to Rome. This time, only his pupils and close companions Francesco Melzi and Salaì, as well as a Milanese servant, Battista de Vilanis, accompanied him. It is likely that Salaì returned to Milan in late 1517, for in 1518 he was busy with the upkeep of a small vineyard that had been granted to Leonardo by Ludovico Sforza, the Duke of Milan, many years before.
King François was extremely generous. He installed Leonardo and his party in the charming Manoir de Cloux, known today as Clos Lucé, which was just a ten-minute walk from François’s own residence at the Château d’Amboise. Previously, this manor house had served as a pleasure pavilion of sorts for the French court. Its lush gardens had even been used as lists for summer tournaments. An underground passageway connected the manor to the royal residence; either François or Leonardo could use it in inclement weather—not an unusual occurrence in northern France. “Here you will be free to dream, to think, and to work,” François said as he took Leonardo around his new dwelling. To further assure the comfort of his aging guest, the king endowed Leonardo with an annual pension of 1,000 écus au soleil.4
It is difficult to relate this sum to an equivalent in a modern currency, given the very different rates for food and upkeep in the 16th century. Still, it is probably fair to say that this pension would be worth between $75,000 and $125,000 today—certainly a princely amount for someone who had yet to produce anything of significance for his young royal patron. But perhaps it was sufficient that Leonardo’s fame lent the court of François the type of Italian allure that he so eagerly sought. Indeed, Leonardo was now formally addressed with the title of peintre du Roy, “the King’s painter.” Title aside, everyone must have realized that the old master was no longer able to undertake any new commissions, other than to draw, or to dab on the panels he had brought with him. Leonardo’s actual work was limited to the aforementioned sketch for a palace at Romorantin, as well as designs for masques, and perhaps a system of canals for the Loire.
That obviously did not apply to Melzi and Salaì. Some historians suggest they may have used this pleasant respite in France to work on copies of the paintings that Leonardo brought with him, including the Saint Anne and the Mona Lisa. And there may have been a good reason for this. In return for the king’s generous pension, it is likely that Leonardo agreed to bequeath to François, upon his death, the three works he had brought to Amboise. In that case, Melzi and Salaì would be able to return to Italy with copies of these works, to serve as models for other copies in the future.
And so Leonardo spent the last three years of his life in the quiet of his comfortable home, assisted by his loyal pupil and secretary Melzi, and attended by his servant Battista de Vilanis. Did he receive many visitors? We don’t know. We do know of one very important visit that took place in 1517, with major consequences for our understanding of Leonardo’s later work.
Leonardo’s residence in Amboise, the Manoir de Cloux, known today as Clos Lucé
The visitor in question was an august Italian prelate, Luigi, Cardinal of Aragon, accompanied by his secretary, Antonio de Beatis. Why did the cardinal visit Leonardo in a place so far away from the papal court? The answer is that the prelate had decided to undertake a grand tour of Europe, of the type that became popular with the English aristocracy in the 18th century, before taking up his see at Alessano, in Apulia. It is possible that such a visit had already been discussed in 1516, when the cardinal left his mistress, a young woman named Giulia Campana, to accompany the pope to the Bologna summit. If François did use this occasion to offer Leonardo a retirement in Amboise, it is possible he also extended an invitation to the cardinal.
What makes this visit so important is that the cardinal’s diligent secretary has left us a detailed report. “In one of the suburbs [of Amboise], His Eminence and we others went to visit M. Lunardo [sic] Vinci,” de Beatis writes, “[a] Florentine, over LXX years old, of the most excellent painters of our times.”5
The secretary adds that Leonardo is not just a painter, because “he has also written on the nature of water, on diverse machines and other subjects, according to what he says, an infinite number of volumes, all in vernacular, which if they are to be published, will be beneficial and very delightful.” Here is a powerful and possibly the last attestation of Leonardo’s notebooks. These notebooks soon passed into the diligent hands of Francesco Melzi and thus—though only in part—into posterity.
The most important passage in the diary, however, is still to follow. “It is true that we can no longer expect anything further from him,” de Beatis continues, “because he has been struck by a paralysis on his right side.” This would seem to suggest that Leonardo had suffered a stroke. “M. Lunardo can no longer work with colors as he was accustomed,” the secretary writes, referring to Leonardo’s apparent inability to paint in oils, but “he continues to do drawings and to teach others.” In fact, the cardinal’s secretary adds, “He has trained a Milanese disciple who does quite good work”—no doubt referring to Melzi, which would suggest that by this date, Salaì had already returned to Milan.
The greatest praise, however, is reserved for the three paintings that Leonardo had installed in his home:
One of these was of a certain Florentine lady, done naturally at the request of the late Magnificent Giuliano Medici. The other of Saint John the Baptist, young, and one of the Madonna with the child, seated on the lap of Saint Anne, all absolutely perfect.6
In sum, the secretary is referring to The Virgin and Child with Saint Anne, John the Baptist, and the Mona Lisa, which are all currently in the collection of the Louvre. Why did Leonardo insist on bringing these three paintings to his retirement home in France? What significance did these paintings have for him?
The answer may be quite simple. For Leonardo, these works constituted the true testament of his oeuvre. Indeed, these are the only three surviving works from his mature period, possibly completed in Rome after a long genesis, even though Leonardo may have kept dabbing at them until the very end. Is there something that these three paintings have in common? The answer is yes. They all share one unique Leonardesque feature, the delicate, mysterious smile—what Louvre curator Vincent Delieuvin calls an “expression of grace,” a “touching, ambiguous and deeply hypnotic feature.”
But could there be another link between them? Is it possible that all three conform to some iconographic or allegorical problem that may have been obvious to the 16th-century beholder, but not to us in modern times? Is that the idea behind the enigmatic smiles on the three main protagonists in these paintings?
For us, that idea is difficult to accept. While the Saint Anne and the John the Baptist are sacred works, the portrait of the Mona Lisa is obviously a secular painting. We are creatures of the 21st century, in which the secular and the religious realms are rigidly separated; we expect the people of the Renaissance to have thought the same. But that is a common failing, and we cannot judge Leonardo by the standards of our own modern era. We must try to understand the workings of his mind in the context of his own age, the Renaissance, which in many ways still carried the theological imprint of the Middle Ages. For medieval men and women, religious and secular concerns were interwoven to a far greater degree—not only because of the greater influence of the Church, but also because daily life was governed by a myriad of religious customs, saint days, and celebrations. Christian thought and beliefs permeated the social fabric of Florentine society on all levels. In this context, the idea of an allegorical program governing Leonardo’s three most cherished paintings—a meditation on the coming of Christ as mankind’s most defining moment—is less eccentric than it may sound.