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.
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
Old man gazing on beautiful youth, c. 1497–1500.
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:
4 braccia of silver cloth
15 lire 4 soldi
green velvet for the trim
9 lire
ribbons
9 soldi
small rings
12 soldi
for the making
1 lira 5 soldi
ribbon for the front stitching
5 soldi
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.
HUNTING BEARS
On Sunday 15 April 1492 Leonardo celebrated his fortieth birthday. What he felt about this, if anything, is unrecorded. On 12 October 1492 Columbus sighted land – probably Watling’s Island in the Bahamas – on his westward journey across the ‘Ocean Sea’, and thereafter landed at Haiti and Cuba. No trace either of this momentous news, which buzzed through Europe after Columbus’s return in March 1493.
That Leonardo left no comment on the discovery and exploration of the New World is curious in one so committed to other kinds of discovery.41 His interest in exotic travel was remarkably slight, and his own ambit was small – he did not travel much further south than Rome, and he left Italy for the first and only time when he was sixty-four. (It used to be thought he had visited Constantinople in c. 1502–3, but the evidence does not add up.) One could counter this by saying he was a voyager of the mind; or, less rhetorically, by saying he was an intensive traveller of relatively short journeys, each of them for a man of his curiosity a lungissima via of impressions and experiences – raw empirical data to be noted and pondered. Leonardo loved to be physically on the move, on foot or on horseback. One recalls his clarion-call to the painter: you must ‘quit your home in town, and leave your family and friends, and go over the mountains and valleys into the country’ – words written down around this time, and preserved in Melzi’s transcription in the Trattato.
Looking north from the roof of Milan’s cathedral, or from the towers of the Corte Vecchia, his eye would trace the dramatic peaks of the Alpine mountain-range called Le Grigne. On at least three occasions, and probably more, Leonardo journeyed up into the Alps: the earliest of these treks can be dated to the early 1490s. There are probably engineering contexts for these trips – the study of water-courses for canalization projects; the surveying of mineral deposits; the perennial search for timber – but a fascination with mountains was evident in the Madonna of the Carnation of the early 1470s, and is so much a feature of his late work, so we can guess that these treks were experiences he valued for their own sake: an adventure, an escape from the city, an immersion in pure natural forms.
The transit point was the lakeside town of Lecco. The old road between Lecco and Milan is known as the Carraia del Ferro, the Iron Road, because it brought down ore from the quarries of the Valsassina. Views from this road looking north-east to the Grigne compare closely with drawings of a mountain range in the Windsor collection, and Lecco itself may be depicted in a dramatic, stormy drawing which is a kind of Alpine equivalent of the sweeping Tuscan landscape of the ‘Madonna of the Snow’ sheet. A town is seen in the middle distance, framed by forbidding peaks; a lake – perhaps the Lago di Lecco – is glimpsed beyond, half-hidden in the cloudburst. In the Trattato della pittura, among the subtle effects which the painter can represent and the sculptor cannot, is listed ‘rains behind which can be discerned cloudy mountains and valleys’.42
These drawings belong to later trips, but from Lecco northward we have the remnants of Leonardo’s own travel-notes from a journey or journeys made in the early 1490s.43 They were probably written up afterwards – the paper shows no sign of having been carried through the mountains. This is a brisk topographical report on the Alpine region around Lake Como, but just beneath the surface of the text we sense Leonardo da Vinci on the trail: a tall figure, punctiliously kitted out, part of an expedition, probably, but somehow solitary within it. He walks with an easy rhythm, pausing often to note and to sketch in one of those little books he had always ‘at his belt’. The terseness of the text in part reflects its status as a report, but catches also the highly focused acuity of his observations.
Above Lecco looms the southern range of the Grigne, dominated by Mount Mandello: ‘The largest bare rocks that are to be found in this part of the country are on Mount Mandello… It has at its base an opening towards the lake, which goes down 200 steps. Here at all times there is ice and wind.’ The 200-step descent he describes is a mule-trail which can still be seen.44 It snakes along the side of the mountain above Rongio, following the course of the Meria river. Where the river forks it goes up steeply, on steps, to a grotto which is probably the ‘opening towards the lake’ described by Leonardo.
North and east of the Grigne massif, the party enters the Valsassina:
In Val Sasina, between Vimognio and Introbbio, on the right-hand side as you go in by the road from Lecco, you find the Troggia river, which falls from a very tall rock, and where it falls it goes underground and the river ends there. Three miles further on there are mines of copper and silver near a place called Prato Santo Pietro, and mines of iron, and fantastical things… Here mapello grows abundantly, and there are great rock-falls and waterfalls.
This mapell
o is a variety of aconite, Aconitum napellus, still common in the area, and known locally as mapel.45 The plant appears in the Virgin of the Rocks, at the left shoulder of the Virgin, and mapello also occurs in Leonardo’s recipe for ‘deadly smoke’.
Higher and deeper he goes, into the Valtellina, north-east of Lake Como.
The Valtellina, as it is called, is a valley enclosed in high and terrible mountains… This is the valley through which the Adda flows, having first run more than 40 miles through Germany. In this river the fish called temolo breed; they live on silver, of which there is plenty be found in its sands…
At the head of the Valtellina are the mountains of Bormio, terrible and always covered with snow. Here there are ermines [ermellini, but more probably, at this altitude, marmots]…
At Bormio are hot springs, and about 8 miles above Como there is the Pliniana, which swells and ebbs every six hours, and its swell provides power for two mills, and its ebb makes the water dry up.
He later recalls this Fonte Pliniana (whose strange behaviour was first noted by Pliny the Elder, a native of Como) in the Codex Leicester. ‘I have seen it myself,’ he writes: ‘when the water ebbs it falls so low that it’s like looking at water down in a deep well.’46
Leonardo’s notes touch on something other than the prodigious natural phenomena of the region. He is struck by the austere but well-adapted lifestyle of the upland people: the land is tough but fertile, and things taste good. In the Valtellina ‘they make strong wine, in good quantities, but there are so many cattle that the locals will tell you they make more milk than wine.’ And there are ‘good inns’ where you can dine well for a few soldi – ‘The wine costs no more than one soldo a bottle, and a pound of veal one soldo, and salt ten denari, and butter the same, and you can get a basketful of eggs for one soldo.’ Add some bread (which ‘everyone here may sell’, not just licensed bakers) and we have the ingredients of a delicious and recuperative Alpine dinner after a hard day’s hiking. Good portions too: ‘The pound up here has thirty ounces.’
Leonardo Da Vinci Page 33