The only wall decoration was a framed drawing—the cartoon for the Mona Lisa, Leonardo da Vinci’s original sketch. Crowley had bought it from the artist one hot afternoon in Florence, and felt it was superior to the final painting.*
*Leonardo had felt so too. “I got her bloody smile right in the roughs,” he told Crowley’ sipping cold wine in the lunchtime sun, “but it went all over the place when I painted it. Her husband had a few things to say about it when I delivered it, but, like I tell him, Signor del Giocondo, apart from you, who’s going to see it? Anyway … explain this helicopter thing again, will you?”