Part 5 Leonardo and Lisa Move to France
On December 9, 1515, Francois I arrived in Bologna to meet with Leo X after his recapture of Milan this was the moment that a young French king met the Italian artist. At the time Leonardo’s benefactors were falling out of power and he needed to make a change. Francois I had asked in December 1515 if he wanted to move to France but Leonardo declined, at the time. By the summer of 1516, he changed his mind and accepted the king’s generous offer of a palace to live in, money, and anything he would need.
On August 12, 1516, at 64 years old, Leonardo with his assistants Francesco Melzi, Salai as well as the Ambassador Pallavicini and Battista de Vilanis departed Rome for the long voyage to France. Nothing survives to this day with the exact route or notes on the trip but there are many theories on the path from Italy.
The 270 km journey from Rome to Florence took 9 days on foot with walking around 30km a day. Staying in Florence for a few days to say goodbye to friends and family before moving on to Bologna and Castelnova, another 220 km. By September 6 the group arrived in Milan and remained for two weeks where Leonardo worked on the plans for the Sforza castle. The castle wall had been destroyed by the Swiss army and François asked Leonardo to redesign a new wall.
From Milan, the route gets very murky. Many historians in the last 500 years have come up with different ideas. Traveling in the fall the snow began to fall and some of the routes would have been treacherous for even a young man. Possible ideas include through Switzerland and one sketch has survived of a bridge over the River Rhone. Through the lakeside wonderland of Annecy is also a possible option. Some reports state that Leonardo rode on the back of a mule for the 1500 to 2000 km journey, while other that he was carried in a chair by his two assistants.
Packed in his bag were three paintings. Saint John the Baptist, Sainte Anne, and the Mona Lisa. As Leonardo liked to “meditate” on his paintings and also drift between mechanical sketches and his other pursuits he took forever to finish anything. Lisa was started in 1503 and in 1516 she was still unfinished.
Some researchers believe that the landscape in the background was inspired by his travels through the Alps, but any notes that would back that up were destroyed in the French Revolution.
On October 28, 1516, Leonardo and crew arrived at the Chateau d'Amboise to the delight of François I. Just a few weeks after Ambassador Pallavicini died of a plague, and the traveling companions were all put into quarantine. Leonardo hadn’t added to his journal until a month later at the end of November.
The King gave his beloved artist the nearby Chateau de Clos-Lucé just a short walk away. He even created an underground tunnel linking the two together so he could visit Leonardo anytime.
Francois I was born on September 12, 1494, and was never destined to be king of France. After his father’s death, his mother Louis de Savoy contacted her husband's cousin, King Louis XII, and moved the family to the Palais du Louvre. Without an heir to the throne, the two decided to marry their children and named Francois I as the heir to the throne. Claude de France married Francois I in Saint Germain en Laye on May 18, 1514. On January 1, 1515, Louis XII died and Francois was the new King of France at 20 years old.
Francois I mother, Louis de Savoy loved the Italian Renaissance and at a very early age he was raised with a love of the arts. Known as the Père et Restaurateur des Lettres, (father and restorer of letters) was no doubt due to the influence of his mother. As soon as he took the throne in 1515 he headed off to Italy where he enjoyed the lavish meals and art.
Up until Francois I, the kings didn’t have much of an adoration for art and only a scattering of paintings decorated the medieval castles, but that was all about to change. I think of Francois as the Father of Art for France, the man who loved it so much he brought Leonardo da Vinci back to France with him and began the collection that would later be the building blocks of the Musée du Louvre.
Leonardo da Vinci was only the first of the many artists he would move from Italy to France. The King also invited painter Nicalo Machiavelli, the architect Sebastiano Serlio, and goldsmith Benicento Cellini. While living in France, Leonardo spent more time on party planning and costume designs for the King than a painter. At times he picked up his brushes to work on the three paintings he brought with him but the last three years of his life saw little time with the canvas.
On May 2, 1519, Leonardo da Vinci took his last breath. Dying of a stroke at 67 years old it was long thought that he died in the arms of Francois I as depicted in many paintings that can be seen in the Musée du Louvre and Petit Palais. The king and the artist were great friends and he believed Leonardo to be the smartest man in the world and often called him father. At the time of the death, the King was in Saint Germain en Laye and would not have been at the master’s bedside, but it’s a nice thought.
Leonardo changed his will just 10 days before his death leaving all his works to Melzi, including the three paintings. His close assistant and adopted son Gian Giacomo Caprotti known as Salai also had numerous paintings and sketches in his hands after da Vinci’s death. Salai had met Leonardo at 10 years old and became a trusted member of his atelier.
Salai was killed in a street brawl on January 19, 1524. Without a will, an inventory of his belongings was created on April 21, 1525, and many paintings were listed including “A Joconde”.
What happened to the paintings of da Vinci between his death and the following years is also a bit of a blur. Multiple reports had very different ideas before it was in the hands of François I. The sister of Salai has been said to have had Lisa but he had also created a copy or two of the famed painting under the eyes of da Vinci. With so many copies out there at that time it is hard to say.
In a 17th-century inventory of the royal collection a note that Francois had paid 4,000 gold crowns or 9.7 million dollars today for the famed painting. However, when is a bit harder to find. Many date this to 1518 a year before the death of Leonardo, but if that was the case would she have then left France with Salai?
For close to 20 years the king of the Renaissance kept his prized lady in his Appartement de Bains (bathroom) at the Chateau de Fontainebleau. A lavish collection of rooms that included baths and steam rooms, the last place to keep a painting. Later moved to the Cabinet des Tableaux, renamed the Pavillon des Peintures but damage had already been done. A 16th-century painting on a wood panel with oil paints was not a match for a cold chateau with horrible heating and ventilation. Many of the paintings from the original royal collection were destroyed due to neglect and not knowing the proper way to handle art at this time.
In the early 1600s Jean de Hoey and his son Claude were in charge of the Royal Collection and decided to cover the painting with a thick layer of varnish. In 1650 the majority of the collection of Francois I moved to the Palais du Louvre. However, a 1695 inventory of the Petite Galerie at Versailles mentions that at some point she had moved.
Eleven years later in 1706, she was back in Paris in the Cabinet des Tableaux in the Palais des Tuileries until a return to Versailles in 1709.
For close to another 80 years she stayed tucked away far from visiting eyes until Louis XIV moved her to Versailles and into his bedroom.
After the death of Louis XIV in 1715 she was moved to a small room where she would stay for close to another one hundred years and through the Revolution.
Louis XVI had the idea to give it to the people. Item number 1,601 of the Royal Collection was briefly seen in the halls of the Musée Central in 1798 until another ruler had his ideas.
Once Napoleon took power he began his love affair with the mysterious Florentine woman. On April 2, 1810, Napoleon walked from the Palais des Tuileries through the Grande Galerie to the Salon Carré to marry his second wife Marie Louise d’Autriche, and walked right past Lisa hanging on the wall. Later that day he instructed someone to remove her and bring her to his room. There were two ladies that night in the emperor’s bedchamber and she remained with him until his exile in 1815 when she returned to the Louvre.