What was the artistic stature of Salaì? It should be premised that the reconstruction of his biography is a very recent affair: more in-depth studies on Gian Giacomo Caprotti began only from 1991, when scholar Janice Shell discovered the inventory mentioned at the opening of this article. Until the early twentieth century, the artist was even confused with a nonexistent “Andrea Salaino” who is mentioned in some ancient sources, and who also appears on the monument to Leonardo da Vinci in Milan’s Piazza della Scala, among the genius’ pupils (the others are Cesare da Sesto, Marco d’Oggiono and Giovanni Antonio Boltraffio: the fourth, the Salaì, is precisely mentioned as “Andrea Salaino”). Art historian Romano Nanni, however, does not even consider him an artist in the strict sense: he calls him a “strenuous copyist rather than an original author.” Indeed, of Leonardo’s best-known pupils, Salaì was the only one who did not launch an independent career, and his poor artistic skills are also, in all likelihood, the reason why his figure was long forgotten.

The only work that bears Salaì’s name was recently discovered (although it had already been known to scholars at least since the early twentieth century, and Wilhelm Suida had already attributed it to Gian Giacomo Caprotti in the 1920s): it is a Christ the Redeemer purchased in 2007, in a Sotheby’s auction (at $656,000 against an initial estimate of $450,000), by Bernardo Caprotti (thus, curiously, a namesake of the painter), patron of Esselunga. In 2012, the entrepreneur donated the painting to the Pinacoteca Ambrosiana in Milan(later also provoking a quarrel), which subjected it, as is often the case with bequests or donations, to diagnostic investigations, thanks to which the artist’s signature was found (“Fe Salai 1511 Dino,” meaning “Salaì painted the work on a November day in 1511”). However, antiquarian Maurizio Zecchini, who was commissioned by Bernardo Caprotti to purchase the painting on his behalf, believes that the word “Salai” that can be read in the painting is not actually the artist’s signature, but is simply an indication of the subject depicted: Zecchini even went so far as to imagine that the work might be a painting by Leonardo, who wanted to portray his pupil in the shoes of Christ. This hypothesis was immediately discarded by Leonardo scholars (starting with Pietro Marani, who rightly pointed out that the quality of the work is very different from that of the master’s paintings), so much so that the Ambrosiana, in presenting the painting, rather espouses the attribution to the hand of Salaì.

In short, even in the presence of a signature it is difficult to reconstruct Salaì’s artistic activity with certainty, which is why the works that can be approached to his name are only attributed, moreover with numerous discordant voices within the scientific community. The best-known work among those attributed to Gian Giacomo Caprotti is a Saint John the Baptist in the Pinacoteca Ambrosiana in Milan, on whose autography, however, critics are far from unanimous, so much so that, even recently, scholarly orientations are moving toward a generic Leonardo painter of the early fifteenth century, although the museum still presents it with the traditional attribution to Salaì. Looking at the painting, Nanni’s judgment is well understood: it is, in fact, a work clearly derived from Leonardo da Vinci’s Saint John the Baptist preserved in the Louvre, albeit with some differences (the most obvious being the landscape above which the author painted the saint). There are also those who have speculated that the Salaì served as a model for the Leonardian Baptist, and that therefore his features are to be found both in the master’s work and in the derived one: the descriptions inferred from the sources have led some to imagine that behind the androgyny of certain Leonardian faces lies the appearance of the Salaì. However, we do not know Salaì’s real appearance because no safe portraits of him survive, so it is highly unlikely, at least at present, to think of finding his portrait in Leonardo’s paintings.

Two other paintings that are usually attributed to Salaì are the so-called Naked Mona Lisa, the work in the Museo Ideale Leonardo da Vinci mentioned above (but even in this case the

association between the painting and the name of Leonardo’s pupil is only presumed) and a copy of Leonardo da Vinci’s Madonna and Child with St. Anne, once in the church of Santa Maria presso San Celso in Milan, and now owned by the University of California. Even in this case, however, there is no certainty. There is, finally, one last painting, which has caused much discussion in 2019 because it was sold at auction, at the Artcurial house, for the high figure of $1,745,000: it is a Penitent Magdalene in which the auction house’s experts wanted to see the hand of Salaì on the basis of the comparison with the Christ the Redeemer in the Pinacoteca Ambrosiana, “the only work of certain attribution of Leonardo’s favorite pupil,” read the file on the painting drafted by Cristina Geddo. “The Penitent Magdalene,” the text further reads, “presents all the characteristics of the Christ of the Pinacoteca Ambrosiana: above all, an obsessive attention to detail, rendered with surprising mastery, close to that of Leonardo. Similarities can be found in the warm tones used for the complexions, the meticulous calligraphy, the eyebrows, and especially the eyes, emphasized in their lower part by a luminous accent of white or pale pink paint. Last but not least, the intense, charismatic gaze in the Ambrosian Christ, which is meant to be seen almost as a signature of the painter.” On this basis, Geddo also retroactively attributed to Salaì another Magdalene, which went to auction at Dorotheum on April 9, 2014, believed by the scholar to be even “closer to the Ambrosiana Christ” (the Artcurial Magdalene would instead be a more mature work). The Viennese auction house, in 2014, referred the work to a “follower of Leonardo da Vinci,” pointing to it as exemplified on a model of the Giampietrino (Giovanni Pietro Rizzoli; Milan, c. 1490 – 1533) of c. 1525, kept in a private collection. In essence, the question of Salaì’s artistic production remains extremely complex and convoluted to this day.