Il Moro as representing Good Fortune, with hair, and robes, and his hands in front, and Messer Gualtieri taking him by the robes with a respectful air from below, having come in from the front [5].
Again, Poverty in a hideous form running behind a youth. Il Moro covers him with the skirt of his robe, and with his gilt sceptre he threatens the monster.
A plant with its roots in the air to represent one who is at his last;—a robe and Favour.
Of tricks [or of magpies] and of burlesque poems [or of starlings].
Those who trust themselves to live near him, and who will be a large crowd, these shall all die cruel deaths; and fathers and mothers together with their families will be devoured and killed by cruel creatures.
[Footnote: 1—10 have already been published by Amoretti in Memorie Storiche cap. XII. He adds this note with regard to Gualtieri: “A questo M. Gualtieri come ad uomo generoso e benefico scrive il Bellincioni un Sonetto (pag, 174) per chiedergli un piacere; e ’l Tantio rendendo ragione a Lodovico il Moro, perche pubblicasse le Rime del Bellincioni; ciò hammi imposto, gli dice: l’humano fidele, prudente e sollicito executore delli tuoi comandamenti Gualtero, che fa in tutte le cose ove tu possi far utile, ogni studio vi metti.” A somewhat mysterious and evidently allegorical composition—a pen and ink drawing—at Windsor, see PL LVIII, contains a group of figures in which perhaps the idea is worked out which is spoken of in the text, lines 1-5.]
Taken from The Notebooks of Leonardo da Vinci edited by Jean Paul Richter, 1880.