I want Master Leonardo

With the Battle of Anghiari still unfinished Leonardo could not stay away from Florence for long, and when, in September 1506, Charles d'Amboise wrote asking for a prolongation of his visit to Milan, the Signoria sent a stiff answer. "May your excellency excuse us from coming to an agreement about a day with Leonardo da Vinci who has not borne himself as he ought to have done towards this republic, in that he has received a good sum of money and has made little beginning of a great work which he is under obligation to execute, and has already comported himself as a laggard, out of deference to your Excellency." There is no evidence that Leonardo was in the least disturbed by these accusations, and he continued to work in Milan for another year. His return to Florence in the autumn of 1507 was occasioned solely by a lawsuit with his brothers following the death of his father, and he does not seem to have added another stroke to the Battle of Anghiari. During the whole of the year 1507 Leonardo was working for the King of France and we know that amongst other things he executed a Madonna and Child. Pandolfini, the Florentine ambassador at the Court of Louis XII, who was trying to effect Leonardo's recall to Florence, describes how the King's admiration of him was occasioned by " a little picture from his hand which has lately been brought here, and is held to be a most excellent work". Pandolfini then gives an account of an interview with the King which shows in a vivid way the esteem and affection in which Leonardo was held.

Being this morning in the presence of the most Christian King (he writes), his Majesty called for me and said: "Your Government must do something for me. Write to them that I want Master Leonardo, their painter, to work for me. And see that your Government are firm with him and command him to serve me at once, and not to leave Milan until I come there. He is a good master and I wish to have several things from his hand." I then asked his Majesty what works he desired from Leonardo, and he answered, "Certain small panels of Our Lady and other things as the fancy shall take me; and perhaps I shall also cause him to make my own portrait."

The King and the Ambassador then went on to speak of "the perfection and the other qualities of Leonardo".

His Majesty asked (says Pandolfini) if I knew him. I replied that he was a close friend of mine. "Then write him some verses", said the King, "telling him not to leave Milan at the same time as your Governors are writing to him from Florence", and for this reason I wrote a verse to the said Leonardo, letting him know the good will of his Majesty and congratulating him on the news.

The letters were written, the Signoria were forced to give up their claim, and Leonardo became in a sense court painter to the King of France. His immediate patron, however, was d'Amboise, who looked after his interests, and had disposal of his pictures. Amongst these were the little panels of Our Lady, which are mentioned in a letter from Leonardo to Chaumont dated in the spring of 1508. "I send Salai to inform your Excellency", he writes, "that I am almost at the end of my lawsuit with my brothers and hope to be in Milan by Easter and bring with me two pictures in which are two madonnas of different sizes which I have begun for the most Christian King, or for whoever shall please you." In an earlier draft of the letter Leonardo wrote "which are finished" instead of "which I have begun", and in a letter written shortly after he speaks of them as condotti in assai bon punto. Even allowing for Leonardo's usual dilatoriness we may presume that the pictures were finished from the very fact that we have no further correspondence about them, and it is sad to think that both are lost. We have not even the academic consolation of knowing for certain what these Madonnas were like since no drawings of the subject date from the period. But I think it probable that one of them was the original of a composition known to us in a very large number of copies, and referred to as the Madonna of the Cherries. Many of these are of fine quality--and to have had such authority a Leonardesque design must have been by the master himself. All are by Flemish artists, which proves that the picture was sent out of Italy almost as soon as it was painted. My reason for identifying the original with one of Leonardo's Madonnas of 1508 is that the Virgin's head-dress is of a type which only became fashionable at about this time.