past bearing, but
Leonardo did not notice it, so great was the love that he bore
towards art. The work being finished, although it was no longer
asked for either by the countryman or by his father, Leonardo told
the latter that he might send for the buckler at his convenience,
since, for his part, it was finished. Ser Piero having therefore
gone one morning to the room for the buckler, and having knocked at
the door, Leonardo opened to him, telling him to wait a little; and,
having gone back into the room, he adjusted the buckler in a good
light on the easel, and put to the window, in order to make a soft
light, and then he bade him come in to see it. Ser Piero, at the
first glance, taken by surprise, gave a sudden start, not thinking
that that was the buckler, nor merely painted the form that he saw
upon it, and, falling back a step, Leonardo checked him, saying,
"This work serves the end for which it was made; take it, then, and
carry it away, since this is the effect that it was meant to
produce." This thing appeared to Ser Piero nothing short of a
miracle, and he praised very greatly the ingenious idea of Leonardo;
and then, having privately bought from a pedlar another buckler,
painted with a heart transfixed by an arrow, he presented it to the
countryman, who remained obliged to him for it as long as he lived.
Afterwards, Ser Piero sold the buckler of Leonardo secretly to some
merchants in Florence, for a hundred ducats; and in a short time it
came into the hands of the Duke of Milan, having been sold to him by
the said merchants for three hundred ducats.

Leonardo then made a picture of Our Lady, a most excellent work,
which was in the possession of Pope Clement VII; and, among other
things painted therein, he counterfeited a glass vase full of water,
containing some flowers, in which, besides its marvellous
naturalness, he had imitated the dew-drops on the flowers, so that
it seemed more real than the reality. For Antonio Segni, who was
very much his friend, he made, on a sheet of paper, a Neptune
executed with such careful draughtsmanship that it seemed absolutely
alive. In it one saw the ocean troubled, and Neptune's car drawn by
sea-horses, with fantastic creatures, marine monsters and winds, and
some very beautiful heads of sea-gods. This drawing was presented by
Fabio, the son of Antonio, to Messer Giovanni Gaddi, with this
epigram:

Pinxit Virgilius Neptunum, pinxit Homerus,
Dum maris undisoni p