d'Auton and the poet Jean Marot were to describe in prose and in verse. It was a trio of Jeans, a happy diversion for the "intermezzi" of war, if not much of a light for history. By dint of industry Jean de Paris satisfied the demands of his office. He reproduced with the frank fidelity of his time 'the conquered towers and castles, and their sites, the voluble rivers, the capricious mountains, the undulating plains, the order and disorder of battle, the bloody horror of the dead, the misery of the wounded hovering between life and death, the terror of those who fled, the impetuous ardour, exultation, and lightheartedness of those who triumphed!' When Louis came back to France laden with Leonardo's drawings, men looked only at the works of Jean Peréal. The official historiographer made up for the non-arrival of the illustrious painter of the Last Supper, and Parisian vanity exalted Jean de Paris above the best artists to be found beyond the Alps!"

No sooner had the French King withdrawn, however, to his own country than Leonardo set himself anew to cultivate the friendship of his representatives, Florimond Robertet and Charles d'Amboise, to say nothing of his ally, Cæsar Borgia.

On the 30th of May, 1506, he obtained permission from the Florentine government to absent himself, on the condition that he returned at the end of three months, and reported himself to the Signory; default to be punished by a fine of 150 gold ducats. He returned, in fact, more than once to his native city, during the autumn of 1507, and the spring of 1509, as well as in 1511, 1513, and, finally, in 1514.1 But he gave no more thought to his old commissions. For him, as well as for Soderini and the Medici, the Battle of Anghiari was dead and buried.

The Mecænas who summoned Leonardo into Lombardy was no other than the French King's Viceroy, Charles d'Amboise, Lord of Chaumont-sur-Loire (Loire-et-Cher), whence his title of the Maréchal de Chaumont. He belonged to a family which had always concerned itself with art, and was nephew to the famous Cardinal Georges d'Amboise, Archbishop of Rouen, who built the marvellous Château de Gaillon.

Born in 1473, Charles d'Amboise was only twenty when he settled

1 Richter, vol. ii., p. 402-403; September 18, 1507. Leonardo, p. 94.

in Italy. In 1506 he was sent by Louis XII. to the help of Julius II. in his campaign against the Bolognese. The year after he was present at the siege of Genoa, and, in 1509, at the battle of Agnadel. In 1510 he besieged, in Bologna, that Pope Julius II. who from being the ally of the French King, had become his most implacable enemy. In 1511 he died, aged only thirty-eight.

The proofs of admiration lavished by Charles d'Amboise on Leonardo exercised the Florentine government not a little. Hitherto these gentlemen had been accustomed to look upon artists just as they did upon other members of the industrial classes. They considered them honest burghers, greatly attached to their civic duties, and more or less-generally less-taxable. Suddenly they found Popes, Kings, great foreign Princes, disputing their possession among themselves, and setting the whole diplomatic machinery in motion in order to attract this or that painter to their Courts. Julius II. claims Michelangelo, menacing with all kinds of penalties the city which should dare to obstruct his journey to Rome; Louis XII. and the Maréchal de Chaumont make an extension of Leonardo's leave of absence the price of their friendship; the Maréchal de Gié, or Florimond Robertet, intrigued to obtain Michelangelo's David from the Signory. In short, artists are rivalling the great ones of this world in importance! Soderini, brought up in the traditions of the old Florentine Republic, had some difficulty in adapting his ideas to the new conditions. His letters, not only those relating to Leonardo, but even those that concern his own friend Michelangelo, never cease to betray the contempt he felt for those fellow-citizens of his who devoted themselves to handiwork.

The negotiations between the French authorities in the North and the Florentine Republic were endless. On the 19th August, 1506, Jofredus Karoli and the Maréchal de Chaumont wrote from Milan begging the Signory to grant an extended leave at least to the end of September, to Leonardo, with whose assistance the Maréchal could not possibly dispense any sooner.1 Soderini's answer (October 9, 1506) betrays extreme irritation. Leonardo, he declares, has not comported himself towards the Florentine Republic as he should have done. “He has accepted a large sum of money, and in return has 1 Gaye, Carteggio, vol. ii., p. 86-87.