The château of the royal city of Amboise in autumn colors, seen from across the Loire River on a November day. It's such a pretty spot that Leonardo da Vinci, when invited by his mécène and close friend François Premier, decided to spend his final years here. From 1516 through 1519 da Vinci resided in a manor house near the château. He was buried in château's chapel.
The French make a distinction between two different ambers--both of whose colors are in this iPhone photo; one is ambre gris, a creamy gray and smelly intestinal stone coming from sperm whales and once used in the perfume industry (today it's synthesized), and the other is ambre jaune, the name for and the color of the famous golden-orange resin fossil.
photo courtesy of Marianne Lecron
Vocabulary
un mécène: a patron, a sponsor; a patron of the arts
©2013 P.B. Lecron
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