eulogistic criticism may seem to-day to be somewhat excessive, but allowance must be made for the drastic restorations to which the panel has been subjected from time to time. As early as 1625 it is recorded to have been in a bad condition. Tradition says that it was purchased by François I. for 4000 _écus d’or_, equal to-day to about £1800, and hung in the _Cabinet doré_ at Fontainebleau. Cassiano del Pozzo has left it on record that the Duke of Buckingham, in 1625, when he was sent to escort Henrietta Maria to England as the bride of Charles I., expressed the hope that he might be permitted to take the picture back with him as a present from Henri IV. of France, who was with difficulty prevented by his courtiers from acting on the suggestion. The picture was at Versailles during the reign of Louis XIV.., and appeared in the Louvre for the first time at the Revolution. In recent years it has been placed in an excellent frame of the period. By May 1506 Leonardo had returned to Milan, and there entered the service of the French king. About 1508-12 he seems to have worked upon the _Madonna, Infant Christ, and St. Anne_ (No. 1598), which appears to have been in part executed by an assistant, possibly Salaino. This large panel was purchased by Cardinal Richelieu in 1629. A sketch by Leonardo for part of this picture is in the Louvre (Drawing No. 391); other sketches are in the Venice Academy and in the Royal Library, Windsor. The name of Andrea Salaino (fl. 1495-1515) has been put forward as the painter of the mysterious picture entitled _St. John the Baptist_ (No. 1597), which was evidently painted from a female model. It is difficult to accept the view put forward by Théophile Gautier that in this androgynous figure we have “another portrait of _La Joconde_, more mysterious, more strange, freed from material likeness, and showing the soul through the veil of the body.” The picture passed into the collection of Charles I. from Louis XIII. in exchange for Holbein’s _Portrait of Erasmus_ (No. 2715, Plate XXIV.) and a now unrecognisable _Holy Family_ by Titian, but on the dispersal of the English king’s collection was purchased for £140 by Jabach, from whom it ultimately passed to Louis XIV. It is a Milanese production, but not, in all probability, from the hand of Leonardo himself, although officially so regarded. The same criticism applies to the so-called _Portrait of Lucrezia Crivelli_ (No. 1600). Lucrezia was a lady-in-waiting to Beatrice d’Este, and in 1496 Lodovico Sforza became enamoured of her, a historical event which has no bearing on the identity of this portrait or on its official, although uncertain, claim to strict authenticity. It has also been described under the misleading title of _La Belle Ferronnière_, apparently in reference to the wife of one Ferron, a blacksmith, who had according to tradition been the mistress of François I., but was already dead when Leonardo passed into the service of that king and came to France in 1516.