Leonardo Couldn't Let Go

In 1517 a visitor found an old painter at Cloux with a portrait he had been paid for fourteen years earlier. He had never handed it over. It's the Mona Lisa, and the man who ordered it never got it. This is Leonardo da Vinci told through the letters of the people who paid him: the job letter he sent the Duke of Milan, a giant bronze horse that was never cast, the friar who reported he had no fondness for the paintbrush, Isabella d'Este begging for a painting she never received, a battle that ran off the wall in Florence, and the three pictures he carried with him until he died. Why the most sought-after painter in Europe couldn't let go of his own work. Chapters 0:00 Intro 1:20 I. The Pitch 5:22 II. The Horse 9:53 III. The Bronze 12:27 IV. The Brush 18:03 V. The Lizard 21:25 VI. The Room Sources Giorgio Vasari, Lives of the Most Eminent Painters, Sculptors and Architects (1550/1568), trans. Gaston du C. de Vere Jean Paul Richter, The Literary Works of Leonardo da Vinci (1883), from the Codex Atlanticus, Codex Arundel and other notebooks Antonio de Beatis, travel diary of Cardinal Luigi d'Aragona's journey (1517) Charles Nicholl, Leonardo da Vinci: The Flights of the Mind (2004) D. S. Chambers, Patrons and Artists in the Italian Renaissance (1971), for Isabella d'Este's letters Heidelberg University Library, Agostino Vespucci's marginal note on the Mona Lisa, October 1503 (announced 2008) Royal Collection Trust, Leonardo da Vinci drawings at Windsor Musée du Louvre, collection record for the Mona Lisa (INV 779)