维耳廷努斯与波摩娜

Leonardo da Vinci died in France in 1519, and the young Milanese nobleman at his bedside, Francesco Melzi, was the pupil he trusted most. Melzi inherited Leonardo's notebooks and, it seems, his whole way of seeing. A few years later he painted this scene from Ovid: the god Vertumnus, disguised as an old woman, leaning close to whisper to Pomona, a nymph who tended orchards. Everything here speaks Leonardo's language, the soft smoky shadows, the downcast eyes, the tight half-smile. It worked almost too well. When the painting hung in the collection of Frederick the Great of Prussia, it passed for a genuine Leonardo. Only in 1995 did restorers find the remains of Melzi's own signature, two Greek letters on a rock by Vertumnus' foot.