# He Fa on Leonardo da Vinci

The Portrait Takes the Day Off

Canonical: https://hefa.p4theater.cn/en/hefa-on/encounters/leonardo-1504

He Fa · Created with AI collaboration

1504 / Florence, workshop

![He Fa squeezes through a small door painted inside a portrait as Leonardo steps back with his brush and neighbouring portraits stretch their limbs outside their frames.](https://hefa.p4theater.cn/hefa-on/encounters/media/leonardo-1504-283d7856259aec57.webp)

The woman in the painting put one foot out first, stepped on Leonardo's palette, lifted her skirt and left. He followed her to the door. Your face is not finished, he called. By the time you finish, she said, I will not need lunch any more.

Florence, 1504. I had only just pushed through the wrong backstage door in my own theatre. Before I could ask directions, the empty frame inhaled and sucked me in. My shoulders flattened, then my stomach. My glasses refused and stuck out beyond the surface. My first successful attempt at losing weight had left me unable to turn sideways.

Leonardo returned and looked me over. This will not do. I agreed and asked him to get me out. He picked up his brush, intending to deal with my nose first.

“I am alive.” “So was the last one.”

Every stroke removed another movement I could make. My left hand was fixed, then my right. I tried shouting, but my voice came out of a small portrait next door. The unfamiliar gentleman frowned at the noise. Sorry, I said. First time using this.

Leonardo asked me to keep smiling. Having worked in theatre, I knew “a little longer” seldom had a defined limit. Until what year? I asked. He dipped his brush. Without waiting, I stretched my mouth as wide as it would go and sent my eyebrows off in opposite directions. The frame creaked. Gold leaf fell from a corner into the paint bowl.

“Do not move!” he shouted. Every portrait in the workshop froze. Even the half-painted horse in the corner stopped with a foreleg in the air. He looked from me to his own hand, apparently discovering a new application for instructions.

I reached for the red ticket stub in my pocket. Halfway out, it flattened into paint too. I stuck it over my mouth as an enormous tongue. The gentleman next door laughed. A crack opened in his frame. Laughter travelled along the wall. A saint's shoulders shook. The horse reached out of its painting and kicked over a bucket.

Leonardo did not tell us to stop again. He painted a very small door in the bottom right corner of my picture. I pulled in my stomach, folded myself twice and squeezed through. How was it? he asked. Portraits ought to have fire exits, I said.

The woman returned with her flatbread. Finding her place occupied, she looked at me, then at him. Are we still painting? Before Leonardo could answer, the empty frame on the floor had crept up to his feet.

Leonardo worked in Florence from 1500 to 1506.

The time travel, transformations and all dialogue are fiction; the image is contemporary AI-assisted work.

- [Musée du Louvre · Leonardo da Vinci](https://presse.louvre.fr/leonardo-da-vinci/?lang=en)
- [Petit Louvre · Le vol de la Joconde](https://petitlouvre.louvre.fr/contes/i/44522643/le-vol-de-la-joconde)