Little Devil

I fed you with milk like my own son.

Codex Atlanticus, fol. 220v–c

Leonardo was back in Milan by mid-July, as is shown by a note, written in an offhand style which conceals its emotional significance: ‘Jachomo vene a stare cho mecho il dí della madalena nel mille 490’ – ‘Giacomo came to live with me on St Mary Magdalen’s day [22 July] 1490.’³³

‘Giacomo’ was a ten-year-old boy from Oreno, near Monza, a few miles north of Milan. His full name was Giovanni Giacomo (or Giangiacomo) di Pietro Caprotti, but he is better known to the world by his nickname, Salai. Not much is known of his father, Pietro: he was certainly not well-off, and we know of no connection with a trade, but he may not have been quite the humble peasant – nor Giacomo quite the enfant sauvage – that is usually depicted. In a legal document Pietro is described as ‘filius quondam domini Joannis’ – ‘son of the late Master Giovanni’. The honorific ‘dominus’ is loose, but suggests that Salai’s grandfather Giovanni, after whom he was named, owned some land and had some status. At any rate, Pietro was prepared to pay for Giacomo’s upkeep at the studio of the great Leonardo da Vinci – perhaps because the boy showed talent; perhaps because he wanted to be rid of him; perhaps because Leonardo had spotted him and wanted him. Giacomo seems to have been an only son, though there is a pair of greedy sisters who appear later in the story.³⁴

The boy was taken on, presumably, as a famiglio – servant, errand-boy, dogsbody and, frequently, studio model – but also with a view to training him up as a painter, and indeed he became a very competent painter in the ‘Leonardesco’ mould. He was also, in the meantime, what we would nowadays call a handful, or indeed a right little tearaway, and it was not long before he had acquired his lifelong nickname, Salai. It first appears in a note of payment written by Leonardo in January 1494. The name means ‘Little Devil’ or ‘Demon’, or perhaps ‘Imp’ – linguistically it appears to be an import from Arabic; more immediately it occurs in Luigi Pulci’s evergreen comic epic Morgante maggiore, a work which appears in every book-list Leonardo compiled. The diminutive, Salaino, was also used, causing later confusion with the Leonardesco painter Andrea Solario: a mythical ‘Andrea Salaino’ flits through nineteenth-century accounts of Leonardo’s circle in Milan.³⁵

The list of Giacomo’s misdemeanours during his first year of service or pupillage at the Corte Vecchia is probably the longest continuous account of another person’s activities to be found in all Leonardo’s writings. (I exclude his attempts at literary narrative.) Its intention is precisely an account, since it itemizes the expenses arising from the boy’s misdeeds; it also includes a list of his clothing expenses. The last date in it is September 1491, and it seems to have been written at a single sitting – the ink colour is a uniform dark brown – so the whole passage was actually written down about fourteen months after Giacomo’s arrival. It was no doubt intended for the father, who was to foot the bill, but it acquires in extenso a curiously personal coloration, a tone of exasperated fondness, so that what is intended as a rather crotchety list of complaints achieves a quality almost of reverie.

The narrative begins ‘on the second day’, i.e. Monday 23 July:

On the second day I had 2 shirts cut for him, a pair of stockings and a jerkin, and when I put aside the money to pay for these things he stole the money out of my purse, and I could never make him confess, though I was quite certain of it.

4 lire

The day after this I went to supper with Giacomo Andrea, and the aforesaid Giacomo ate for 2, and did mischief for 4, in so far as he broke three table-flasks, and knocked over the wine, and after this he came to supper where I… [sentence unfinished]

Item. On 7 September he stole a pen worth 22 soldi from Marco who was living with me. It was a silverpoint pen, and he took it from his [Marco’s] studio, and after Marco had searched all over for it, he found it hidden in the said Giacomo’s chest.

1 lira

Item. On 26 January following, I was at the house of Messer Galeazzo da San Severino, arranging the pageant for his joust, and certain footmen had undressed to try on costumes for the wild men in the pageant. One of them left his purse lying on a bed, among some clothes, and Giacomo got to it and took all the money he could find in it.

2 lire 4 soldi

Item. At that same house Maestro Agostino da Pavia gave me a Turkish hide to have a pair of short boots made, and within a month this Giacomo had stolen it from me, and sold it to a shoemaker for 20 soldi, and with the money, as he himself confessed to me, he bought aniseed sweets.

2 lire

Item. Again, on 2 April, Giovan Antonio [Boltraffio] having left a silverpoint on top of one of his drawings, this Giacomo stole it. And this was of the value of 24 soldi.

1 lira 4 soldi

In the margin, summing it all up, Leonardo writes four words: ladro bugiardo ostinato ghiotto – thief, liar, obstinate, greedy. Thus Giacomo’s very bad report. But is there not a twinkle in the maestro’s eye as he delivers it?

The account finishes with a list of clothing expenses, from which it appears that Salai was furnished with one cloak, six shirts, three jerkins, four pairs of stockings, one lined doublet, twenty-four pairs of shoes, a cap and some laces, at a total cost of 32 lire. This list of clothing expenses is headed ‘The First Year’, and like the rest of the document, seems balanced between accountancy and romance.

This picaresque narration of mischief and thievery has almost an air of silent-movie comedy: the artful dodger in action, with suitable tiptoeing music from the piano accompaniment. It is full also of wonderful detail – the aniseed gobstoppers, the Turkish leather, the purse on the bed, the little flasks of oil broken on the floor. But perhaps the most telling entry is the second: ‘I went to supper with Giacomo Andrea, and the aforesaid Giacomo ate for 2…’ This supper was probably at the house of the architect Giacomo Andrea da Ferrara: Leonardo is a guest, and little Giacomo accompanies him. This is two days after his arrival in the studio. What is his status on this summer evening? Leonardo’s diminutive attendant? His amusing mascot? His new little pretty-boy? Despite his unruly behaviour, he is brought along again, on another evening – ‘after this he came to supper where I…’ – but Leonardo lets the sentence trail away. Perhaps best, in this document to be read by Salai’s father, not to dwell on these extramural jaunts. The keynote here is companionship: Giacomo is with him, at his side. Leonardo enters here on the longest relationship of his adult life, for Salai will remain a continuous presence in his inner circle for twenty-eight years. However, it is not quite clear when they last saw one another: Salai was not a witness of Leonardo’s will in 1519. Their last parting may have been a break-up, though if so it did not alter Leonardo’s generous provision in his will.

For Leonardo this rough diamond, this gamin, seems to answer a need. He is ‘Salaino’, his ‘Little Devil’, a sprite of misrule. There is almost a sense of projection: that this part of Leonardo’s own make-up – the practical joker, the wayward idler – is incarnated in the form of impish young Giacomo, and he himself is thus freed of it, that he may devote himself to the more rigorous and ill-humoured business of work, study and experimentation. Bad Giacomo is Leonardo’s scapegrace.

That it was also a homosexual relationship cannot really be doubted, though proponents of an improbably saintly Leonardo have argued that his life was celibate. Vasari comments on Salai’s beauty: ‘In Milan Leonardo took for his servant [creato] a Milanese named Salai, who was extraordinarily graceful and attractive. He had beautiful hair, curled and ringletted, in which Leonardo delighted.’ This says a lot without actually saying it. Lomazzo is blunter, albeit through the literary veil of an imagined ‘dialogue’ between Leonardo and the antique sculptor Phidias. Phidias refers to Salai as one of Leonardo’s ‘favourite pupils’, and asks, ‘Did you ever play with him that “backside game” which Florentines love so much?’ To which Leonardo replies: ‘Many times! You should know that he was a very fair young man, especially around the age of fifteen.’ Lomazzo is a tricky but well-informed source: he seems to be saying that on reaching adolescence Salai became Leonardo’s sexual partner. The Freudian view is that the homosexual’s love of young boys (or boyishly pretty young men) is an unconscious recreation of his own childhood, and thus of the lost emotional climate of maternal love. Again we arrive at an idea of identification: that when he looks at the face of Salai Leonardo half-consciously sees himself as he was when he was a boy. Salai’s mother was also called Caterina: another link in this psychological chain.

And we can surely look at Salai’s face as well. Caution is required, because some drawings have been described as portraits of Salai when they cannot possibly be. The earliest of these, on a Windsor sheet with a Florentine Madonna and Child, were drawn around the time he was born. An epicene young man in profile, also in Windsor, is dated on stylistic grounds to the late 1480s and cannot be him either.³⁶ The portraits which have a real claim to be of Salai are similar to these but have individualizing characteristics. In other words he had a certain look which resembled Leonardo’s often-doodled ideal of male beauty, which is precisely what attracted Leonardo to him.

The most plausible portraits are the twinned profiles in Windsor, the one to the right in a mixture of red and black chalk on pinkish prepared paper, the other to the left (illustrated here) in black chalk on white paper. He differs from what Clark calls ‘the Verrocchiesque boys of Leonardo’s early work’ in the rounder, more sensual chin, and in the hairstyle, which is shorter and more tightly curled – precisely the feature Vasari singles out: ‘He had beautiful hair, curled and ringletted, in which Leonardo delighted.’ Particularly idiosyncratic is the smooth line of his brow – that undented flow between the forehead and the bridge of the nose. On stylistic grounds, such as the subtle handling of the chalk, the drawings are dated around 1508, the beginning of Leonardo’s second sojourn in Milan. They would show Salai in his late twenties – a languorous, rather exquisite young man who retains a deceptively boyish look. He has heavy-lidded eyes, registering halfway between amusement and boredom. You can see him today lounging in the piazza or nipping through narrow streets on a motorino.

Earlier versions of this distinctive profile are found in a drawing attributed to Boltraffio, showing a young man crowned with a garland of oak leaves, and in an engraving of an androgynous figure in profile in the British Museum.³⁷ The latter bears the logo ‘ACHA. LE. VI.’ (i.e. Achademia Leonardi Vinci), which points to the late 1490s: I will look at this elusive Milanese ‘academy’ in a later chapter. These works emanate from Leonardo’s studio, and may possibly be versions of a lost Leonardo drawing of Salai done at this time. Boltraffio’s moody Narcissus, known in two versions (Uffizi and National Gallery, London), has the same browless profile and ringletted hair.

The Salai look. Profile portrait in black chalk at Windsor (above), and the Narcissus by Boltraffio.

Old man gazing on beautiful youth, c. 1497–1500.

If these are based on Salai, so too is the young man in the double portrait in red chalk by Leonardo at the Uffizi: the characteristic line of the brow is just visible beneath a fringe of thick curls. He is gazed on intently by an old bald man with the characteristic toothless profile. The old man’s right hand seems to rest on the youth’s shoulder, but the forearm has not been drawn, so the two bodies merge into a single torso, recalling the allegorical drawings of Pleasure and Pain. This drawing is also dated to the late 1490s, showing Salai in his late teens. There is an overtone of rueful comedy, as in that first memorandum of misdeeds, but now the humour has self-deprecation and pathos in it. The old man gazes across a gulf of time at this boy whom he loves, this boy who is a mirror of his own lost boyhood. Leonardo was at this point in his mid-forties, a man still in his prime, but here (as elsewhere) he cartoons himself as this geriatric ‘nutcracker man’. This may be an imagery of sexual uncertainty: the man who wishes to be a lover finds himself instead a superannuated father-figure. The tone of the drawing suggests the wistful fondness of a sugar-daddy for his arrogant toyboy.

Salai grew up from the artful dodger of 1490 to become the stylish and not entirely trustworthy young man whom one sees in these portraits. The documents support the sugar-daddy notion, as the usually frugal Leonardo splashes out on finery for his spoiled young protégé. A note headed ‘Salaino expenses’, dated 4 April 1497, records the gift of a particularly snazzy cloak:

After totting these up, Leonardo adds, ‘Salai stole the soldi,’ presumably meaning he kept the change. Later Salai gets three gold ducats ‘which he said he needed in order to buy a pair of rose-coloured stockings with their trimmings’. Leonardo also notes loans of money to Salai, and sometimes there are smaller sums lent by Salai to Leonardo. In October 1508 ‘I lent thirteen crowns to Salai to complete his sister’s dowry.³⁸ And then there was the saga of the house outside the Porta Vercellina, given to Leonardo by the Moor in about 1497, leased to Salai’s father after Leonardo’s departure from Milan, and by degrees seeming to become Salai’s own property or usufruct, which he rents out and refurbishes, and which is formally bequeathed to him and his successors ‘in all perpetuity’ in Leonardo’s will.³⁹

Gifts are the currency of this relationship. One can see Salai as a rather avaricious young man: he milks the generosity and fondness of his master. There are quarrels, too, and reconciliations. On a sheet of the Codex Atlanticus we read the following: ‘Salai, I want to rest, so no wars, no more war, because I surrender.’ (The words are not in Leonardo’s hand; they are oddly appended to a shopping-list, as if the person writing the list had at that moment heard or overheard them.) ⁴⁰ But other qualities shine through their long relationship. Salai is pupil, servant, copyist, catamite, companion, factotum, favourite, confidant – providing the ‘good and kind services’ for which he is remembered in Leonardo’s will. From the moment of his arrival in the summer of 1490 this bad boy with the face of an angel is an inseparable part of Leonardo’s retinue: his shadow.