DOI Seite / Zitierlink:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.42861#0213
ADMIRES LEONARDO’S DRAWING 173
me a portrait of Your Highness, which is exactly
like you, and is so well done that it is not pos-
sible for it to be better.’’1
Leonardo, it appears, took a copy of his car-
toon to Venice, and left the other at Mantua, for,
a year afterwards, the Marchesa sent a message
to him in Florence, begging him to send her a
replica of his drawing, since the Marquis had given
away the copy which she had kept. But he never
painted her portrait in colours, as he had promised
on that brief and memorable visit, and not all
Isabella’s efforts and entreaties were able to ob-
tain a picture by his hand for her studio.
In this same year, when Leonardo came to
Mantua, Isabella was intent on a new scheme, the
erection of a statue to Virgil in the square in front
of the Castello. Early in the century, Carlo Mala-
testa, acting as regent for his nephew, the young
Gianfrancesco Gonzaga, had, in a fit of misguided
piety, thrown a statue of Virgil which adorned the
Piazza di S. Pietro into the Mincio, saying that the
people of Mantua paid the Roman poet a homage
only due to a saint. The Marquis Lodovico, who
had learnt from his great teacher, Vittorino da Feltre,
how to reverence Virgil, had been very anxious to
restore this statue, but had never been able to carry
out his pious intention. Now the discovery of an
antique bust which Battista Fiera, a learned Mantuan
physician, pronounced to be the true effigy of Virgil,
fired Isabella with ambition to raise a monument to
the Mantuan poet. She naturally proposed to entrust
the work to the artist of all others best fitted for the
task, Andrea Mantegna. A letter which her hus-
1 A. Bascliet, Aide Manuce.
me a portrait of Your Highness, which is exactly
like you, and is so well done that it is not pos-
sible for it to be better.’’1
Leonardo, it appears, took a copy of his car-
toon to Venice, and left the other at Mantua, for,
a year afterwards, the Marchesa sent a message
to him in Florence, begging him to send her a
replica of his drawing, since the Marquis had given
away the copy which she had kept. But he never
painted her portrait in colours, as he had promised
on that brief and memorable visit, and not all
Isabella’s efforts and entreaties were able to ob-
tain a picture by his hand for her studio.
In this same year, when Leonardo came to
Mantua, Isabella was intent on a new scheme, the
erection of a statue to Virgil in the square in front
of the Castello. Early in the century, Carlo Mala-
testa, acting as regent for his nephew, the young
Gianfrancesco Gonzaga, had, in a fit of misguided
piety, thrown a statue of Virgil which adorned the
Piazza di S. Pietro into the Mincio, saying that the
people of Mantua paid the Roman poet a homage
only due to a saint. The Marquis Lodovico, who
had learnt from his great teacher, Vittorino da Feltre,
how to reverence Virgil, had been very anxious to
restore this statue, but had never been able to carry
out his pious intention. Now the discovery of an
antique bust which Battista Fiera, a learned Mantuan
physician, pronounced to be the true effigy of Virgil,
fired Isabella with ambition to raise a monument to
the Mantuan poet. She naturally proposed to entrust
the work to the artist of all others best fitted for the
task, Andrea Mantegna. A letter which her hus-
1 A. Bascliet, Aide Manuce.