Leonardo accepted an invitation from Francis I to settle in France

The St John seems to us a failure, but Leonardo's contemporaries admired it. Being the most dogmatic of his works it was also the most influential, and part of our distaste for it is due to the large number of pupils' copies which it recalls: for to most people the Milanese school is like the Cheshire cat--only the smile remains. Of these monotonously smiling figures I will only mention one, because it occurs in all early literature as an original Leonardo. This is the so-called Bacchus in the Louvre, which, reversing the rôle of Heine's pagan gods, is really a converted St John the Baptist. As such he is described by Cassiano del Pozzo, who saw him at Fontainebleau in 1625; he adds, "it is a most delicate work but does not please much perchè non rende punto di devotione". Presumably for this reason some painter was told to add a crown of vine leaves and change the cross into a thyrsis: and in the 1695 inventory St Jeanclans le désert is crossed out and Baccusdans un paysage written instead. Despite the exalted company which it keeps and its impressive pedigree, the Bacchus is a poor work. Personally, I believe that it is no more than the copy of a Cesare da Sesto, and I even doubt if it goes back to an original design by Leonardo. The frontality of all the planes--legs, chest and head all parallel--is contrary to his principles of design, and none of his drawings has any connection with it.

"The magnificent Giuliano de' Medici", Leonardo notes, "left at dawn on the 9th day of January 1515, to many a wife in Savoy; and in the same day the King of France died." For a year after this his movements are obscure, though we know that he was still attached to the household of Giuliano. Then on 17 March 1516, Giuliano died, and soon afterwards Leonardo must have accepted an invitation from Francis I to settle in France. The King seems to have treated him with the greatest liberality. He gave him the small castle of Cloux, near Amboise, and asked nothing in return but the pleasure of his conversation, which he enjoyed almost every day. Of this we have first hand evidence from Cellini, who twenty years later heard Francis say, "that he did believe no other man had been born who knew as much as Leonardo, both in sculpture, painting and architecture, so that he was a very great philosopher". Free to talk, experiment and dream at will, it is not surprising that Leonardo seems to have produced practically nothing during his stay in France. We have a number of notes and drawings which show him interested in canalising the Loire to Romorantin, and in town planning, and from these we can date certain architectural drawings, in particular a fine study of a turreted fortress. Ingenious attempts have been made to show that he designed the staircase of the Castle of Blois on the plan of a nautilus shell. Such a procedure would be characteristic of Leonardo, but unfortunately there is no evidence for it, except the well-known evidence that Shakespeare was a Scot--that the ability of the design warrants the assumption.

Apart from architecture all attributions of drawings to the period of his residence in France must be pure speculation, because we have no certain evidence of Leonardo's activity in France, no dated drawings and only one documented commission; and this commission has not come down to us, for it was the lion filled with lilies recorded by Vasari and Lomazzo as being one of Leonardo's most ingenious works. The lion is also mentioned independently in contemporary records of a Masquerade at the Château of Blois. These court descriptions do not mention the name of Leonardo, but their account of the lion exactly corresponds to that of Leonardo's biographers. The lion took several steps forward and seemed about to attack the King, when its head opened disclosing a great bank of lilies against a blue background. Much of the true Leonardesque spirit seems to survive in this fancy of his old age, the spirit which made him the inventor of emblem and elegance to the Sforza court.

On 10 October 1517 Leonardo was visited by the Cardinal Louis of Aragon whose secretary Antonio de' Beatis has left us an interesting and puzzling account of him. He says that Leonardo showed the Cardinal three pictures; one of a certain Florentine lady, done from the life, at the instance of the late Magnificent, Giuliano de' Medici; the other of St John the Baptist, as a Young Man; and one of the Madonna and the Child, which are placed in the lap of St Anne, and all of them most perfect: but indeed, on account of a certain paralysis having seized him in the right hand, one cannot expect more fine things from him. He has well instructed a Milanese disciple, who works well enough; and although the aforesaid Messer Leonardo is not able to colour with that sweetness which he was wont, nevertheless he works at making designs and giving instruction to others. This gentleman has compiled a particular treatise of anatomy, with the demonstration in draft not only of the members, but also of the muscles, nerves, veins, joints, intestines, and of whatever can be reasoned about in the bodies both of men and women, in a way that has never yet been done by any other person. All which we have seen with our eyes; and he said that he has already dissected more than thirty bodies, both men and women of all ages. He has, also, written concerning the nature of water, and of divers machines, and other things, which he has set down in an endless number of volumes, and all in the vulgar tongue, which, if they be published, will be both profitable and very delectable.