Again, we find in M. Bonnat's collection a drawing full of "pentimenti," in which the Child plays with a cat; and a larger one, very rough in execution and evidently drawn without models, in which the cat is being tickled. Lower down on this paper are the Virginthe inscrutable Leonardesque smile on her face-and the Child holding a cat, which jumps upon his knees.

The Uffizi possesses a drawing on prepared green paper, showing the Virgin seated and holding before her, on a sort of circular table or stool, the Infant Christ, who grasps a struggling cat. (Braun, no. 447.)

Then we have in the British Museum a washed drawing containing an extremely confused design for the same subject.1

There may be an interval of twenty years between these various designs. While the forms in the Windsor drawing still show an archaic touch (especially in the unsuccessful foreshortening of the Virgin's figure), those in the drawing at the British Museum are quite Raphaelesque in their breadth and freedom.

A theme like this might have led to much in the hands of a virtuoso like Leonardo, but we have no proof that he ever attacked it with the brush. His pupils, of course, poor in ideas as they were, took care not to lose sight of this one. Mantelli engraved a Child Jesus playing with a cat, over the name of Bernardino Luini.2 Another imitator of Leonardo, Bazzi, called Il Sodoma, is said to be the author of a picture now in the Brera, in which the Virgin supports the Divine Child, while he tenderly embraces a cat. Here the cat's head bears a curious resemblance to that of a lamb, or to that of the strange, long-muzzled animal (a weazel?), represented in the unsympathetic female portrait of the Czartoryski Gallery at Cracow.

The idea long bore fruit. Giulio Romano painted a Madonna

among the drawings of horses in the same collection. These same leopards and lionesses re-appear in the Louvre drawing, a man defending himself with a shield from which dart rays of light.

1 Wallis, Art Journal, 1882, p. 33-36. Cf. Müller-Walde, p. 102–103.

2 Raccolta di Disegni

Milan, 1785, pl. xxii.

incisi sugli originali esistenti nella Biblioteca ambrosiana;

3 Published by Frizzoni, Archivio Storico dell' Arte, 1891, p. 279.

del Gatto. Titian varied the conception by leaving us a Madonna with a Rabbit (the Louvre and the Naples Museum).

It may have been during his second stay in Milan, from 1506 onwards, that Leonardo painted the Bacchus of the Louvre. The conception is well known. Seated on a rock, the left leg bent upon the right, the left arm carelessly supporting a thyrsus, and the right hand extended, the vine-crowned god of wine seems to enjoy the beauty of the landscape about him.

The identity of motive between this picture and the S. John the

picture, certainly a S. John the Baptist, identical in every respect with that in the Louvre, save for the crown of vine leaves. The same saint again is represented in the picture from the Penther Collection (sold at Vienna in December 1887), which is a textual reproduction of the Louvre picture.2 The thyrsus must have usurped the place of the reed cross. On the other hand, Leonardo's contemporary, F. A. Giraldi, celebrated the painter's Bacchus in the following distich, published by the by the Marquis Campori:

BACCHUS LEONARDI VINCII:

Ter geminum posthac, mortales, credite Bacchum

Me peperit docta Vincius ille manu.

The Louvre picture is remarkable for its comparatively high

1 Passavant, Raphael d'Urbin, vol. ii., p. 252-253. [Baroccio also painted a Madonna

del Gatto. Ed.]

2 A. Gruyer, Le Salon Carré, p. 36.