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Updated: May 10, 2025
It would, however, be hard to persuade us that Leonardo had any hand in this portrait, excellent though it be, which seems rather by Beltraffio, Solario, or another of the Milanese masters; 1602, Bacchus, is another doubtful Leonardo. 1488, L. of 1597, is an admirable work by Sacchi: Four Doctors of the Church with symbols of the Evangelists.
Moreover, the pleasure, if it should occur for I could scarcely believe it was near at hand would be so great that I wished to think of it in advance, to feel it there against my breast, not to mix it with satisfactions more superficial and usual. In the little game of new sensations that I was playing with my ingenuous mind I wished to keep my visit to the author of "Beltraffio" as a trump-card.
Partly to the Parisian, partly to the American element in him we owe the stories that he, and of 'our' great writers he only, has written about books and the writers of books. Here, indeed, in these incomparable stories, are imaginary great books that are as real to us as real ones are. Sometimes, as in 'The Author of "Beltraffio," a great book itself is the very hero of the story.
He was thirty-eight years old at the time Beltraffio was published. He asked me about his friend in America, about the length of my stay in England, about the last news in London and the people I had seen there; and I remember looking for the signs of genius in the very form of his questions, and thinking I found it. I liked his voice.
Ambient was charming my friend the American poet, from whom I had my introduction, had never seen her, his relations with the great man confined to the exchange of letters; but she wasn't, after all, though she had lived so near the rose, the author of "Beltraffio," and I didn't go down into Surrey to call on her.
Salaino brings exquisite delicacy of execution; d'Oggiono, wild and bizarre beauty; Melzi, the refinements of a miniaturist; Beltraffio, hard brilliancy of light and colour; Cesare da Sesto, somewhat of effeminate sweetness; and thus the qualities of many men emerge, to blend themselves again in what is Lionardo's own.
My visit to Italy opened my eyes to a good many things, but to nothing more than the beauty of certain pages in the works of Mark Ambient I had every one of his productions in my portmanteau, they are not, as you know, very numerous, but he had preluded to Beltraffio by some exquisite things, and I used to read them over in the evening at the inn.
"Do you wish me to say this to Alan?" she asked. The girl flushed, but her glance braved the smile. "Would he still care to hear it?" she said fearlessly. Mrs. Quentin took momentary refuge in a renewed inspection of the Beltraffio; then, turning, she said, with a kind of reluctance: "He would still care." "Ah!" broke from the girl.
In this kind of novel the closed door of "The Author of Beltraffio" must be broken open; passion must appear upon the scene and utter its last word; passion is the be-all and the end-all, the plot and the solution, the protagonist and the deus ex machinâ in one.
Before we got up for the homeward stretch, he alluded to his wife's having once or perhaps more than once asked him whether he should like Dolcino to read Beltraffio. I think he was unconscious at the moment of all that this conveyed to me as well, doubtless, of my extreme curiosity to hear what he had replied.
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