Gioconda_ is, in the truest sense, Leonardo's masterpiece, the
revealing instance of his mode of thought and work. In suggestiveness,
only the _Melancholia_ of Duerer is comparable to it; and no crude
symbolism disturbs the effect of its subdued and graceful mystery. We
all know the face and hands of the figure, set in the marble chair, in
that cirque of fantastic rocks, as in some faint light under sea.
Perhaps of all ancient pictures time has chilled it least.[10] As often
happens with works in which invention seems to reach its limit, there is
an element in it given to, not invented by, the master. In that
inestimable folio of drawings, once in the possession of Vasari, were
certain designs by Verrocchio, faces of such impressive beauty that
Leonardo in his boyhood copied them many times. It is hard not to
connect with these designs of the elder by-past master, as with its
germinal principle, the unfathomable smile, always with a touch of
something sinister in it, which plays over all Leonardo's work. Besides,
the picture is a portrait. From childhood we see this image defining
itself on the fabric of his dreams; and but for express historical
testimony, we might fancy that this was but his ideal lady, embodied and
beheld at last. What was the relationship of a living Florentine to this
creature of his thought? By what strange affinities had she and the
dream grown thus apart, yet so closely together? Present from the first,
incorporeal in Leonardo's thought, dimly traced in the designs of
Verrocchio, she is found present at last in Il Giocondo's house. That
there is much of mere portraiture in the picture is attested by the
legend that by artificial means, the presence of mimes and flute
players, that subtle expression was protracted on the face. Again, was
it in four years and by renewed labour never really completed, or in
four months and as by stroke of magic, that the image was projected?

The presence that thus so strangely rose beside the waters is expressive
of what in the ways of a thousand years man had come to desire. Hers is
the head upon which all "the ends of the world are come," and the
eyelids are a little weary. It is a beauty wrought out from within upon
the flesh, the deposit, little cell by cell, of strange thoughts and
fantastic reveries and exquisite passions. Set it for a moment beside
one of those white Greek goddesses or beautiful women of antiquity, and
how would they be troubled by this bea