Title: Meaning and Crisis in the Early Sixteenth Century: Interpreting Leonardo's Lion
Abstract: Bound between folios 16 and 17 of volume F.P. II. IV, 171 in Florence's Biblioteca Nazionale is a scrap of paper. On one side is a hastily penned receipt – obviously never handed over – recording that a certain Vieri from Castiglione gave the writer, Piero Parenti, two Marks on 24th March 1509. The other side contains a note Piero wrote later on that year, perhaps meaning to include it in the history of Florence he was currently writing. This previously unpublished note reads as follows: When the King entered Milan, besides the other entertainments, Lionardo da Vinci, the famous painter and our Florentine, devised the following intervention: he represented a lion above the gate, which, lying down, got onto its feet when the King came in, and with its paw opened up its chest and pulled out blue balls full of gold lilies, which he threw and strewed about on the ground. Afterwards he pulled out his heart and, pressing it, more gold lilies came out, showing how the Florentine Marzocco, represented by such an animal, had his guts full of lilies. Stopping beside this spectacle, [the King] liked it and took much pleasure in it.1
Publication Year: 2006
Publication Date: 2006-02-27
Language: en
Type: article
Indexed In: ['crossref']
Access and Citation
Cited By Count: 13
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