Leonardo da Vinci modelled the “Mona Lisa” on the face of his young male apprentice and lover, an Italian art historian has claimed.
Most scholars believe Leonardo’s most famous portrait depicts Lisa Gherardini, the wife of a wealthy Florentine silk merchant. But Silvano Vinceti, the head of a team of researchers, believes instead that the painting was inspired by Gian Giacomo Caprotti, who began working with the Renaissance master as a child and became one of his most trusted companions.
He said several of Leonardo’s works, including two paintings of St John the Baptist and a lesser-known drawing called “Angel Incarnate,” were based on Caprotti.
All of them portray a slim, rather effeminate youth with curly hair.
There were striking similarities between those works and that of the Mona Lisa, particularly in the depiction of mouths and noses, said Mr Vinceti, the head of the National Committee for the Preservation of Cultural Heritage.
“Salai was a favourite model for Leonardo,” he said. “Leonardo certainly inserted characteristics of Salai in the ... Mona Lisa.”
Caprotti is thought to have entered Leonardo’s household around 1490, when he was about 10 years old.
Working as Leonardo’s assistant for the next 20 years, he acquired the nickname Salai, or Little Devil. He was the subject of several erotic drawings produced by the Renaissance genius.
“Salai was very handsome and probably Leonardo’s lover,” said Mr Vinceti. “He stole from Leonardo and caused him many problems, but the artist always forgave him.”
Other art historians were sceptical about the theory, however.
Pietro Marani, a Leonardo authority and the author of several books on the artist, called the theory “groundless.” Previous scholars have claimed that Leonardo painted the Mona Lisa as a disguised self-portrait, or based the work, with its famously enigmatic smile, on his mother.
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