Portrait of Salai (Gian Giacomo Caprotti) as Saint Sebastian
Gian
Giacomo Caprotti da Oreno (nicknamed Salai (Little Devil). Gian entered
Leonardo's household around 1490 at the age of 10. Leonardo himself has
recorded in MS. C the precise date of this event. "Giacomo came to live
with me on St Mary Magdalene's day (22 July) 1490, aged ten years. The
second day I had two shirts cut out for him, a pair of hose and a
jerkin, and when I put aside some money to pay for these things he stole
the money (4 lire) out of the purse; and I could never make him confess
although I was quite certain of it. The day after I went to sup with
Giacomo Andrea, and the said Giacomo supped for two and did mischief for
four, for he broke three cruets and spilled the wine." And then in the
margin, ladro, bugiardo, ostinato, ghiotto--thief, liar, obstinate,
glutton.
Self portrait of Salai as Saint John the Baptist
Salai
played the role of adoptive son, protégé, friend, helper, student and
quite possibly, lover to Leonardo da Vinci." He was described by Vasari
as "a graceful and beautiful youth with fine curly hair, in which
Leonardo greatly delighted." The relationship was not an easy one. A
year later Leonardo made a list of the boy¹s misdemeanors, calling him
"a thief, a liar, stubborn, and a glutton." The "Little Devil" had made
off with money and valuables on at least five occasions, and spent a
fortune on apparel, among which twenty four pairs of shoes.
Nevertheless, il Salaino remained his companion, servant and assistant
for the next twenty nine years until the artist death, and Leonardo's
notebooks during their early years contain pictures of a handsome,
curly-haired adolescent.
Salai as Saint John the Baptist
Salai as Bacchus Leonardo da Vinci "Bacchus" 1510 - 1515
Leonardo da Vinci (Salai) as "St. John the Baptist" 1513 - 1516
Leonardo
used the scheming, ambitious and selfish Salai as a model for his St
John the Baptist. Every critic has laboriously pointed out that this is
not a conventional presentation of the Baptist, and we must try to
answer the question why Leonardo, who attached so much importance to the
interpretation of a subject, has created an image almost blasphemously
unlike the fiery ascetic of the Gospels. The exotic Salai with his
feminine face and ringlet curls has a mysterious smile and points up and
over his shoulder. It is believed that the portrait had the cross and
fur pelts painted latter. So Salai as St John the Baptist would have
been
originally nude. Also this portrait was painted for
Leonardo and was not a commissioned piece of artwork. It is believed to
be the last painting Leonardo painted and keep with him at all times. It
is said the portrait was hung along side of the more famous Mona Lisa
in Leonardo's bedroom in France. Salai as Saint John the Baptist is
perhaps most famous for the enigmatic look and smile on Salai's face.
Hes expression and the meaning behind it have survived for 500 years as
one of the greatest mysteries in art history.
Leonardo da Vinci, Drawing of Salai
Leonardo da Vinci, Drawing of Salai
Leonardo da Vinci, Drawing of Salai
Who was the bad adolescent boy with beautiful feminine face that
anyone else would have cast out into the streets? He was a muse for
Leonardo. Salai in the Life of Leonardo is a subject that few critics
& biographers would dare wright about. Today it is still a topic of
Don't ask, don't tell, or the relationship is completely looked over.
Salai was too important in the life of Leonardo to be looked over.
Salai's face appears in Leonardo's paintings, numerous drawings
including erotic drawings. Salai traveled everywhere Leonardo went.
Leonardo spent a fortune on Salai. Salai inherited half of Leonardo's
estate. During Leonardo's life time critics said Salai's work looked
like Leonardo's work. Art critics today say he was not a good artist.
Leonardo
was said to have seen Salai drawing in a field and then approached his
father to train Salai as his assistant and apprentice. Salai would have
only been a peasant whose family was not too dissimilar to Leonardo’s
mothers side. Leonardo saw some potential in the boy and wanted to give
Salai the opportunity to do something with his life. Salai was also like
Da Vinci himself said to be incredibly attractive.
What was
the extent of the relationship with Salai and Leonardo? No definite
proof exists of Leonardo's homosexuality, there are plenty of
indications, in his male erotic drawings as well as in his writings,
that he was attracted to males. When he was twenty-four years old,
Leonardo was arrested, along with several young companions, on the
charge of sodomy. Homosexuality was common in Florence. The Office of
the Night (Ufficiali di notte) which was active in Florence from 1432 to
1502, which contains documents about more than 16,000 men implicated in
sodomy, of whom nearly 3,000 were convicted. Thus, in a city of only
40,000 inhabitants, the majority of men were incriminated for
engaging in homosexual relations at least once during their
lifetimes. Several things indicate that Leonardo was probably gay. He
never married or showed any interest in women; indeed, he wrote in his
notebooks that male-female intercourse disgusted him. His anatomical
drawings naturally include the sexual organs of both genders, but those
of the male exhibit much more extensive attention. Finally, Leonardo
surrounded himself with beautiful young male assistants, such as Salai
and Melzi. Leonardo's art reflects an appreciation of androgynous
beauty. It has, therefore, been assumed that he was a homosexual.
Leonardo da Vinci, Drawing of Salai
Leonardo da Vinci, Drawing of Old and Young "Salai"
A drawing of Salai in fancy-dress costume by Leonardo da Vinci
Allegory of Pleasure and Pain / Androgyn corpus with two heads, Leonardo de Vinci and Salai
As
a young man Leonardo was very attractive and one of his first
biographers Vasari writes "there is something supernatural in the
accumulation in one individual of so much beauty, grace, and might. With
his right hand he could twist an iron horseshoe as if it were made of
lead. In his liberality, he welcomed and gave food to any friend, rich
or poor." His kindness, his sweet nature, his eloquence ("his speech
could bend in any direction the most obdurate of wills") his regal
magnanimity, his sense of humor, his love of wild creatures, his
"terrible strength in argument, sustained by intelligence and memory,"
the subtlety of his mind "which never ceased to devise inventions," his
aptitude for mathematics, science, music, poetry. What's more, Leonardo
was a man of "physical beauty beyond compare." In 1466, at the age of
fourteen, Leonardo was apprenticed to the artist Andrea di Cione, known
as Verrocchio whose workshop was "one of the finest in Florence".
Leonardo himself may have been the model for two works by Verrocchio,
including the bronze statue of David in the Bargello, and the Archangel
Michael in Tobias and the Angel.
Young Leonardo is said to have model for this Statue of David by Verrocchio
Young Leonardo is said to have model as Archangel Michael for this painting by Verrocchio with his white dog by his feet
It
is believed that Leonardo Da Vinci painted himself as a young man in
his: Adoration of the Magi (unfinished) - 1481 - 1482. Lower right
corner looking away.
Francesco
Botticini: Tóbiás and the three Archangels with Leonardo da Vinci
painted as the first angel and his white dog by his feet, Galleria degli
Uffizi, Florence Tempera on wood 1470
Young Leonardo 1468
The
new self portrait of Leonardo da Vinci, which was painted between 1475
and 1480 and can be found in Washington, The National Gallery of Art,
Note white dog
In all of Da Vinci's journals, the name 'Salai' was used most. Salaì's
name also appears (crossed out) on the back of an erotic drawing (ca.
1513) by the artist, The Incarnate Angel, at one time in the collection
of Queen Victoria. It is seen as a humorous and revealing take on his
major work, St. John the Baptist, also a work and a theme imbued with
homoerotic overtones by a number of art critics. Another erotic work,
found on the verso of a foglio in the Atlantic Codex, depicts il
Salaino's behind, towards which march several penises on two legs
(Augusto Marinoni, in "Io Leonardo", Mondadori, Milano 1974, pp.288,
310). Salai stole things, broke things, lied, and was generally a devil;
if he were a mere student or servant he would have been fired. Instead
of punishing him Leonardo showered him with finest of clothes–this would
have been unusual behavior toward a servant or pupil. It's not hard to
see how this bad boy would be attractive to Leonardo. Modern critics
contend that Leonardo's love of boys was well-known even in the
sixteenth century. Rocke reports that in a fictional dialogue on l'amore
masculino (male love) written by the contemporary art critic and
theorist Gian Paolo Lomazzo, Leonardo appears as one of the protagonists
and declares, "Know that male love is exclusively the product of virtue
which, joining men together with the diverse affections of friendship,
makes it so that from a tender age they would enter into the manly one
as more stalwart friends." In the dialogue, the interlocutor inquires of
Leonardo about his relations with his assistant, Salai, "Did you play
the game from behind which the Florentines love so much?"
In 1499 he accompanied him to Mantua, Venice and Florence. By 1505 he
had achieved some fame as a painter; Alvise Ciocha, an agent of Isabella
d'Este, Marchioness of Mantua, described him as 'very able for his
years' and invited him to advise Pietro Perugino who was working for
her. He accompanied Leonardo to Rome in 1513 and three years later to
France, with Francesco Melzi. In 1519, following his master's death,
Salai settled in Milan on property that Leonardo had bequeathed him. He
died a violent death. An inventory of his possessions shows that he
inherited many works by Leonardo, including the Mona Lisa and the Infant
St John the Baptist (both Paris, Louvre). No signed works by Caprotti
are known; documents mention two paintings of the Penitent St Jerome
(untraced) in the monastery of S Gerolamo in Milan. It is assumed that
his work adheres closely to that of Leonardo. According to this
hypothesis, the Virgin and Child with St Anne (Los Angeles, UCLA, Wight
A. G.) and St John the Baptist (Milan, Ambrosiana), copies of paintings
by Leonardo (both Paris, Louvre), have been attributed to him.
The Incarnate Angel
Il
Salaino's name also appears (crossed out) on the back of an erotic
drawing (ca. 1513) by the artist, The Incarnate Angel, at one time in
the collection of Queen Victoria. It is seen as a humorous and revealing
take on his major work, St. John the Baptist, also a work and a theme
imbued with homoerotic overtones by a number of art critics such as
Martin Kemp and James Saslow (Saslow, 1986, passim). Drawn late in
Leonardo's life, probably between circa 1513 and circa 1515 when he was
living at the Vatican in Rome (he died in France in 1519 at age 67), the
black chalk or charcoal rendering shows an angelic adolescent with
deep-set doe eyes, pouty collagen lips and a cascade of fluffy hair. The
feminine boy, vaguely tipsy, looks like he might have just rolled out
of bed -- which, given the crude rendering of an erect phallus in the
torso's sketchier lower extremities, is entirely possible. (Leonardo's
student and reputed boyfriend, Salai, may have been the drawing's
model.) A poorly foreshortened -- and unfinished -- right arm is raised
to point toward heaven, a gesture that adds a funny homoerotic twist to
Leonardo's lascivious depiction.
Another erotic work, found on the verso of a foglio in the Atlantic
Codex, depicts il Salaino's behind, towards which march several penises
on two legs (Augusto Marinoni, in "Io Leonardo", Mondadori, Milano 1974,
pp.288, 310). Some of Leonardo's other works on erotic topics, his
drawings of heterosexual human sexual intercourse, were destroyed by a
priest who found them after his death.
Salaì as Narcissus School of Leonardo
Portrait of Salai School of Leonardo
The Mona
Lisa nude. The naked portrait – titled the Monna Vanna, and complete
with the model’s famous enigmatic smile – was painted in 1515 by
Leonardo da Vinci’s pupil, Andrea Salai. Art historians say that it was
not only inspired by Leonardo, but is almost certainly based on a lost
original by the artist himself. Looking at the Monna Vanna you can
clearly see a connection between Salai's face and the face in the
portraits. The Monna Vanna has Salai's eyes, distinctive nose, lips, the
shape of his face as well as his ringlet curls. When you look at the
anatomy of the portrait it is the anatomy of a man except the breast.
The neck is large. The arms are males arms. I believe this portrait is actually a 'self portrait' but he depicted himself as a woman! Copied from a new lost Leonardo.
Some people say that the Mona Lisa, is a disguised self-portrait of
Leonardo. The Monna Lisa was bequeathed to Salaì by Leonardo. King
François I bought the painting for 4,000 écus and kept it at Château
Fontainebleau,
Nude Mona Lisa Attributed to Salai after
the lost original of Leonardo? This painting was supposed to originate
from Leonardo's workshop. Some experts claim that this picture was
painted after Leonardo's original
Nude Mona Lisa Attributed to Salai after
the lost original of Leonardo? This painting was supposed to originate
from Leonardo's workshop. Some experts claim that this picture was
painted after Leonardo's original
Nude Mona Lisa Attributed to Salai after
the lost original of Leonardo? This painting was supposed to originate
from Leonardo's workshop. Some experts claim that this picture was
painted after Leonardo's original
This
naked portrait once belonged to Napoleon's uncle, Cardinal Joseph Fesch
(1763-1839) and was ensconced within the wood walls of Fesch's private
library for nearly a century, before trading more hands within the
Napoleon family.
NUDE
GIOCONDA: There were more than 60 alleged Mona Lisas, as is known, and
here,a seminude portrait of "La Belle Gabrielle," which is currently in
the collection of Lord Spencerof Northamptonshire, England, and is
"attributed to the school of Da Vinci."
Monna Vanna Attributed to Salai about 1515 Cartoon, 72.4 x 54 cm Chantilly, Musee Conde
Copy of the Mona Lisa said to be by Salai shows how vibrant the Mona Lisa supposedly was at the time it was painted
Copy of the Mona Lisa School of Leonardo
Vasari considered Salaì to be Leonardo’s most faithful
follower and he even went so far as to say that some of their works were
confused. Unlike the other Leonardeschi - such as Giovanni Antonio
Boltraffio, Marco d’Oggiono, Andrea Solario, Cesare da Sesto - Salaì did
not embark upon an independent artistic career but seemed content in
copying and interpreting his master’s works, thus disseminating
Leonardo’s inventions throughout the first quarter of the 16th century.
As Shell and Sironi have observed, ‘Salaì represents another kind of
Leonardesco; the faithful replicator of Leonardo’s models and, by his
own lights, executor of Leonardo’s intentions’.In 1516 Salaì went on a
journey once again with Melzi but this time to France, as part of
Leonardo’s household. Salaì continued to work for Leonardo until the
latter’s death and in his master’s will of April 23, 1519, Salaì is
named as joint heir to half of Leonardo’s vineyard, where Salaì built
his home and lived extremely comfortably (considering he was a painter
who had worked as a shop assistant for thirty years). In June 1523 Salaì
married Bianca Coldiroli d’Annono but six months later, on January 19,
1524, his life came to an abrupt end after a shooting. An inventory of
Salaì’s property and household goods drawn up on April 2, 1525, lists
numerous paintings including a Leda and ‘Joconda’ . The inventory of his possessions shows that he inherited many works by Leonardo, including the Mona Lisa and the Infant St John the Baptist (both Paris, Louvre). The high values assigned to some of the works would suggest that they were Leonardo’s originals
Gian Giacomo Caprotti Head of Christ, 1511
This
is the only singed painting by Gian Giacomo Caprotti "Salai". It sold
in New York city for $650,000. The head of Christ looks like the head of
Salai
The Virgin and Child with Saint. Peter and Paul; Gian Giacomo Caprotti
Madonna and Child with St Anne by Gian Giacomo Caprotti. Oil on board, 72x99 cm.
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