“Among the young men who became Leonardo’s companions, by far the most important was the scamp known as Salai, who arrived on July 22, 1490, when Leonardo was thirty-eight. “Giacomo came to live with me” is the way he recorded the event in his notebook.6 It is an oddly elusive formulation, formulation, in contrast to saying that the young man had become his student or assistant. Then again, it was an oddly elusive relationship. Gian Giacomo Caprotti was then ten years old, the son of an impoverished peasant from the nearby village of Oreno. Leonardo would soon be referring to him, for good reason, as Salai, or “Little Devil.”7 Soft and languid, with angelic curls and a devilish little smile, he would feature in dozens of Leonardo’s drawings and notebook sketches, and for most of the rest of Leonardo’s life, Salai would be his companion. He was the one, as noted earlier, described by Vasari as “a graceful and beautiful youth with fine curly hair in which Leonardo greatly delighted.” It was not unusual for a servant boy to go to work at age ten, but Salai was something more. probably at some point he became a lover. In one of Leonardo’s notebooks, another of the students in the studio, perhaps a rival, drew a coarse caricature showing a large penis with two legs poking toward an object on which “Salai” is scribbled. In an unpublished “Book of Dreams” written in 1560, Lomazzo, who knew one of Leonardo’s students, imagined a dialogue between the ancient Greek sculptor Phidias and Leonardo, who confesses to loving Salai. Phidias asks bluntly whether they had engaged in sex. “Did you perhaps play with him that backside game that Florentines love so much?” “Many times!” Leonardo merrily Isaacson, Walter. Leonardo da Vinci (pp. 131-132). Simon & Schuster. Kindle Edition. Isaacson, Walter. Leonardo da Vinci (p. 131). Simon & Schuster. Kindle Edition. Isaacson, Walter. Leonardo da Vinci (p. 131). Simon & Schuster. Kindle Edition. ”
