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NOTES TO THE FIRST BOOK OF THE COURTIER of Urbino, and is known to have been sent by the Marchioness Isabella to re- lieve the tedium of her friend and sister-in-law the Duchess Elisabetta's exile at Venice in 1503. In his time he was among the most prolific and successful composers of profane music, especially of ballads and madrigals, and a num- ber of his popular pieces have been preserved. Note 96, page 50. Leonardo da Vinci, (born 1452; died 1519), was the natural son of a notary, Pietro Antonio, of the village of Vinci, situated about fourteen miles east of Florence. He studied some three years with Donatello's pupil Verocchio at Florence. Meeting small pecuniary success there, he re- moved to Milan about 1483 and entered the service of Duke Ludovico Sforza, who is said to have paid him the equivalent of £4000 a year while painting the " Last Supper, " and for whom he completed in 1493 the model of a co- lossal equestrian statue of Duke Francesco Sforza, never executed in perma- nent form. He was employed by Cesare Borgia as military engineer, and in that capacity visited Urbino in July 1502. His famous portrait known as the " Monna Lisa " or " La Gioconda," upon which he worked at times for four years, was finished about 1504 and afterwards sold by him to Francis I. In 1507, he had been appointed painter to Louis XII, but did not visit France until 1516. On the election of Leo X in 1513, he journeyed to Rome in the company and service of Giuliano de' Medici, who paid him a monthly stipend of ;f 66. Al- though he was received with favour by the new pope and lodged in the Vati- can, his stay in Rome was artistically unprolific, his interest at the time being chiefly confined to chemistry and physics, and nature attracting him more than antiquities, of which he spoke as "this old rubbish" {quest e anticaglie). Three years before his death he was visited at Amboise in France by Cardinal Ludovico of Aragon, who is mentioned later in The Courtier (p. 159), and whose secretary left an interesting account of an interview with him, describ- ing the painter as then disabled by paralysis of the hand. Note 97, page 50. Andrea Mantegna, (born 1431; died 1506), was a native of Vicenza and probably of humble origin. 'When a mere child he became the pupil and adopted son of the noted painter and instructor, Francesco Squarcione of Padua, and was soon enrolled in the painters' guild of that city. In 1449 he began painting for the d'Este at Ferrara, and between 1453 and 1459 he married Niccolosa, a daughter of Squarcione's rival Giacopo Bellini, and sister of the more famous brothers Gentile and Giovanni Bellini. He painted also at Verona, and about 1460 entered the service of the Gonzagas at Mantua, where the remainder of his life was chiefly spent, although he worked for Pope Innocent VIII at Rome about the year 1488, before which date he was knighted by the Marquess of Mantua. By one writer he is affirmed to have cast the fine bust which ornaments his tomb at Mantua, and which is said once to have had diamond eyes. He is known to have understood bronze casting, and besides the brush and the engraver's burin, he handled modelling tools, while a sonnet of his has been preserved. Although praised by Vasari as kindly and in every way estimable, he is shown by contemporary letters to