Many stories are told of the artist while working on this great painting. Often he worked from early morning until dusk, quite unconscious of the flight of time, of his meals, or of the hushed voices of the monks and visitors who came to watch him paint. Then again he would not paint for several days, but would sit for hours quietly studying his painting. The prior of the monastery began to think he would never finish the picture, and at last he appealed to the duke to speak to Leonardo about it. The artist told the duke that while he sat thinking he was doing his best work, for it was necessary for him to have a complete picture in his mind before he could paint one. Of course he was told to do it in his own way. He completed the painting in two years, which was an unusually short time for so great a masterpiece, when we consider how much study was necessary, and that the figures were larger than life. Leonardo also had other work which had to be done.
Mr. William Wetmore Story has given us the prior’s complaint to the duke in verse, from which we have selected these extracts:
“’Tis twenty months since first upon the wall
This Leonardo smoothed his plaster; then
He spent two months ere he began to scrawl
His figures, which were scarcely outlined, when,
Seized by some mad whim, he erased them all.
* * * * * * * *
“Ah! there he is now—Would your Highness look
Behind that pillar in the farthest nook?