letters of his lord. Having received him courteously, the master then showed him the Leda; her arm thrown around the swan, and with Castor and Pollux proceeding from the egg; a large picture in tempera. The Duke’s messenger, expecting, from what he had heard of Michelagnolo, to see some great thing, but who was incapable of comprehending the excellence and power of art displayed in that figure, remarked to the master, “Oh, this is but a very trifling affair.” Whereupon our artist, knowing that none have better judgment in a matter than those who had long experience therein, inquired of him what his vocation might he. To which the gentleman, secretly smiling and believing himself not to he known for such to Michelagnolo, replied, “I am a merchant;” at the same time making a sort of jest of the question, and speaking with contemptuous lightness of the industry of the Florentines.
“Aye, indeed,” replied Michelagnolo, who had thoroughly understood the sense of his words; “then you will make a bad bargain for your master this time; he pleased to take yourself out of my sight.” In those days Antonio Mini, the disciple of Michelagnolo, had two sisters to marry, when the master presented the Leda to him, some few days after the conversation just rO' lated, with the greater part of the designs and cartoons which he had made, a most noble gift indeed. When Antonio afterwards took it into his head to go to France, therefore, he carried with him two chests of models, with a vast number of cartoons finished for making pictures, some of which had been painted, while others still remained to be executed. The Leda he there sold, by the intermission of certain merchants, to Francis the King of France; and it is now at Fontainebleau; but the cartoons and designs were lost, seeing that Antonio died before he had been long in France, when those treasures were stolen, and our country was thus deprived, to her incalculable injury, of those admirable works of art. The Cartoon of the Leda*[1] has, however, returned to Florence, and is in the possession of Bernardo Vecchietti. There are four pieces of the Cartoons of the
- ↑ The original Cartoon of the Leda remained for a long time in the possession of the Vecchietti, but was purchased by an Englishman about the middle of the last century, and brought to England. See Borghini, Riposo.
