Gian Giacomo Caprotti – known as Salai, “little devil” to many – won Leonardo’s attention as a young boy of ten, showcasing his slightly feminine features and lean musculature for the pleasure of the forty-year-old artist who was always seduced by the human form. While learning the art of painting as an apprentice, Salai also modeled for the other artists – assuming the identity of male and female forms depending on the subject of the composition.
Salai’s artistic abilities were not the reason for his twenty-year association with Leonardo. The great man tolerated the boy’s ambitions as a painter while he admired Salai’s physical form, often enduring behavior that he would not excuse from other apprentices in his studio. Salai would frequently be absent from the workshop without explanatio
