Gian Giacomo Caprotti, called Salaì Oreno, near Monza circa 1480 - 1524 Milan

Gian Giacomo Caprotti was one of Leonardo da Vinci’s most faithful pupils and the chief propagator of his art. He came to be called ‘Salaì’ after Salaino, the name of a demon, largely due to his petulant and irascible character.¹ Leonardo himself described him in his notebooks as a liar and a thief – ‘ladro, bugiardo, ostinato, ghiotto’ – but admired him greatly for his artistic talent.² 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.³ Salaì must have been striking in appearance for he was described by Vasari as being both graceful and handsome, with beautiful curly hair (“vaghissimo di grazie e di bellezza, avendo begli capelli ricci e inanellati”). He entered Leonardo’s workshop in 1490, at the age of ten. In 1499 Salaì accompanied Leonardo to Mantua, Venice and Florence, travelling once again with him to Milan and Florence in 1507 and 1508, and to Rome in the company of Francesco Melzi in 1513, just two years after this picture was painted. 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.⁴

The appearance of this painting at auction is extremely important, for it is the only known signed and dated work by Salaì, and not much else is certain about his artistic career. 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’.⁵ The only ‘documented’ works by Salaì are two representations of St. Jerome apparently in the monastery of San Gerolamo in Milan, but these were only recorded there at the end of the 16th century (considerably after they were painted) and have yet to be identified.⁶ A painting of Saint John the Baptist in the Pinacoteca Ambrosiana, Milan, which is a variant of Leonardo’s painting of the same subject in the Musée du Louvre, Paris, has been attributed to Salaì for stylistic reasons but its attribution is undocumented (although it does resemble the present painting in both technique and handling).⁷ An inventory of Salaì’s property and household goods drawn up on April 2, 1525, lists numerous paintings including a Leda and ‘Joconda’ and whether these were originals by Leonardo left to his pupil or copies or variations of Leonardesque themes by Salaì himself remains a mystery. Shell and Sironi have convincingly argued for the former of these hypotheses, noting that the high values assigned to some of the works would suggest that they were Leonardo’s originals.⁸ Amongst the works listed there is a painting of Christ, valued at considerably less (25 scudi), which Shell and Sironi therefore assume was not executed by Leonardo but by Salaì and represented a Christ as Salvator Mundi because it is described as ‘Uno Cristo in modo de uno Dio Padre’ (‘Christ as God the Father’). The fact that Christ is not shown in the act of benediction here, as for example in the Leonardesque painting formerly in the De Ganay collection in Paris,⁹ means that it is unlikely though not impossible to be identified with the painting in Salaì’s inventory.

The style and iconography of this painting fit well with the production of Leonardo and his workshop. The reddish tone and soft modelling of Christ’s face are essentially ‘Leonardesque’ and find parallels in the painting technique adopted by Giampietrino. The soft curls of His hair, the fall of His ringlets resembling the motion of water, as exemplified by numerous Leonardo drawings, are also characteristic of the Leonardeschi.¹⁰ The iconography of the painting and the frontality of the design closely follow Leonardo’s invention of Christ as Salvator Mundi,¹¹ although here Salaì has omitted His raised right hand and the sphere He holds in His left. By reducing the design to Christ’s head and shoulders only, Salaì’s Christ alludes to Veronica’s veil and the painting thus takes on a greater iconic quality.

1  Gerolamo Calvi was the first to identify Caprotti with Salaì in “Il vero nome di un allievo di Leonardo: Gian Giacomo de’ Caprotti ditto ‘Salaj’”, in Rassegna d’Arte, 1919, pp. 138-141.
2  See J.P. Richter, The Literary Works of Leonardo da Vinci, 3rd ed., London 1970 (1st ed., 1883), vol. II, p. 363 (‘a thief, a liar, obstinate, gluttonous”).
3  “…certi lavori, che in Milano si dicono essere di Salaì, furono ritocchi da Leonardo” [“…certain works, which in Milan are said to be by Salaì, were retouched by Leonardo”]: G. Vasari, Le vite de’ più eccellenti pittori, scultori ed architettori…, ed. Bettarini & Barocchi, Florence 1976 (1550 ed.), vol. IV, pp. 28-29.
4  A document of March 10, 1524, records his death during the French siege of Milan: ASM, Fondo Notarile, not. Pasio Isolani, 6808, first published by G. Calvi, “Contributi alla biografia di Leonardo da Vinci”, in Archivio Storico Lombardo, vol. XLIII, 1916, pp. 472-73.
5  J. Shell & G. Sironi, “Salaì and Leonardo’s legacy”, in The Burlington Magazine, vol. CXXXIII, no. 1055, February 1991, p. 106.
6  Cited by P. Morigia, La Nobiltà di Milano, Milan 1595, p. 277.
7  For Leonardo and Salaì’s paintings see Shell & Sironi, op. cit., p. 105, reproduced figs. 51 and 52 respectively.
8  The Leda, valued at 200 scudi, remains untraced; the ‘Joconda’, valued at 100 scudi, is almost certainly the ‘Mona Lisa’ in the Musée du Louvre, Paris. The list is published and transcribed by Shell & Sironi, ibid., p. 96 ff.
9  Sold New York, Sotheby’s, May 28, 1999, lot 20, for $300,000.
10  See, for example, Leonardo’s sheet in the Royal Library at Windsor, inv. 12579.
11  Many derivations of Leonardo’s design exist, in both painted and engraved form; for which see J. Snow-Smith, The Salvator Mundi of Leonardo da Vinci, Seattle 1982,  pp. 12-17, various reproductions.