Vasari tells us how after having painted the faces of Christ and the faithful apostles, Leonardo had stopped without doing that of Judas. The prior of the convent, who considered that the refectory of a convent could not remain indefinitely an art workshop, did not know how he could persuade him to finish and allow him to eat with his monks in the refectory. He complained to Ludovico, who called Leonardo and reproached him for his lateness. Leonardo answered that he was working at least two hours a day on that painting. The duke was reassured. However the prior came back and told his Lordship that Leonardo had not come for over a year, even though only the head of Judas remained to be done. The duke called Leonardo back again. Leonardo told him that the monks did not understand anything about art and that all that remained for him to do was the head of Judas, who was, as his Lordship knew, an utter villain, and as such, needed a face that fit his personnality. His Lordship could be assured that Leonardo was currently occupied with looking for that face, roaming the streets, and particularly the places frequented by villains. To that day, he had not yet found what he wanted, aside from the face of that prior, who would have made a very good Judas, but he hesitated about ridiculing him in his own convent. However, if the said prior could not wait, Leonardo could, as for him, paint his portrait for the face of Judas. The duke began to laugh and released Leonardo. Finally, the face of the villain was found, and the prior was left in peace in his convent.

Adapted, with permission, from La Renaissance en Question, Tome I, Lina Murr Nehme, Aleph et Taw

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Franciscan begging Friars are wont, at certain times, to keep fasts, when they do not eat meat in their convents. But on journeys, as they live on charity, they have license to eat whatever is set before them. Now a couple of these friars on their travels, stopped at an inn, in company with a certain merchant, and sat down with him at the same table, where, from the poverty of the inn, nothing was served to them but a small roast chicken. The merchant, seeing this to be but little even for himself, turned to the friars and said: "If my memory serves me, you do not eat any kind of flesh in your convents at this season." At these words the friars were compelled by their rule to admit, without cavil, that this was the truth; so the merchant had his wish, and eat the chicken and the friars did the best they could. After dinner the messmates departed, all three together, and after travelling some distance they came to a river of some width and depth. All three being on foot--the friars by reason of their poverty, and the other from avarice--it was necessary by the custom of company that one of the friars, being barefoot, should carry the merchant on his shoulders: so having given his wooden shoes into his keeping, he took up his man. But it so happened that when the friar had got to the middle of the river, he again remembered a rule of his order, and stopping short, he looked up, like Saint Christopher, to the burden on his back and said: "Tell me, have you any money about you?"--"You know I have", answered the other, "How do you suppose that a Merchant like me should go about otherwise?" "Alack!" cried the friar, "our rules forbid as to carry any money on our persons," and forthwith he dropped him into the water, which the merchant perceived was a facetious way of being revenged on the indignity he had done them; so, with a smiling face, and blushing somewhat with shame, he peaceably endured the revenge.

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A man wishing to prove, by the authority of Pythagoras, that he had formerly been in the world, while another would not let him finish his argument, the first speaker said to the second: "It is by this token that I was formerly here, I remember that you were a miller." The other one, feeling himself stung by these words, agreed that it was true, and that by the same token he remembered that the speaker had been the ass that carried the flour.

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In the text below, Vasari describes some of Leonardo's fun creations:

Flying figures of animals

A fake dragon to scare his friends

A formless big white thing that squeezed his friends into a corner of the room

"Leonardo, therefore, having composed a kind of paste from wax, made of this, while it was still in a half liquid state, certain figures of animals, entirely hollow and exceedingly slight in texture, which he then filled with air. When he blew into these figures he could make them fly through the air, but when the air within had escaped from them they fell to the earth. One day the vine dresser of the Belvedere found a very curious lizard, and for this creature Leonardo constructed wings, made from the skins of other lizards, flayed for the purpose; into these wings he put quicksilver, so that when the animal walked, the wings moved also, with a tremulous motion: he then made eyes, horns and a beard for the creature, which he tamed and kept in a case; he would then show it to the friends who came to visit him, and all who saw it ran away terrified. He more than once, likewise, caused the intestines of a sheep to be cleansed and scraped until they were brought into such a state of tenuity that they could be held within the hollow of the hand, having then placed in a neighbouring chamber a pair of blacksmith's bellows, to which he made fast one end of the intestines, he would blow into them until he caused them to fill the whole room, which was a very large one, insomuch that whoever was within was forced to take refuge in a corner: he thus showed them transparent and full of wind, remarking that, whereas they had previously been contained within a small compas, they were now filling all space, and this, he would say, was a fit emblem of talent or genius."

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