tioned by anyone. The probabilities are that the
Annunciation is an early work and that the ascription is accurate:
at Oxford is a drawing known to be Leonardo's that is almost certainly
a study for a detail of this work, while among the Leonardo drawings
in the His de la Salle collection at the Louvre is something very
like a first sketch of the whole. Certainly one can think of no one
else who could have given the picture its quality, which increases
in richness with every visit to the gallery; but the workshop of
Verrocchio, where Leonardo worked, together with Lorenzo di Credi and
Perugino, with Andrea of the True Eye over all, no doubt put forth
wonderful things. The Annunciation is unique in the collection, both
in colour and character: nothing in the Uffizi so deepens. There are
no cypresses like these in any other picture, no finer drawing than
that of Mary's hands. Luca's flowers are better, in the adjoining
room; one is not too happy about the pedestal of the reading-desk;
and there are Virgins whom we can like more; but as a whole it is
perhaps the most fascinating picture of all, for it has the Leonardo
darkness as well as light.

Of Leonardo I could write for ever, but this book is not the place;
for though he was a Florentine, Florence has very little of his work:
these pictures only, and one of these only for certain, together
with an angel in a work by Verrocchio at the Accademia which we
shall see, and possibly a sculptured figure over the north door of
the Baptistery. Ludovico Sforza, Duke of Milan, and Francis I of
France, lured him away, to the eternal loss of his own city. It is
Milan and Paris that are richest in his work, and after that London,
which has at South Kensington a sculptured relief by him as well as
a painting at the National Gallery, a cartoon at Burlington House,
and the British Museum drawings.

His other work here--No. 1252--in the grave brown frame, was to have
been Leonardo's greatest picture in oil, so Vasari says: larger, in
fact, than any known picture at that time. Being very indistinct,
it is, curiously enough, best as the light begins to fail and the
beautiful wistful faces emerge from the gloom. In their presence one
recalls Leonardo's remark in one of his notebooks that faces are most
interesting beneath a troubled sky. "You should make your portrait,"
he adds, "at the hour of the fall of the evening when it is cloudy
or misty, for the light then is perfect." In the bac