Portrait of a young man — a disciple in the studio of Leonardo da Vinci -

Portrait of a boy — a disciple in Leonardo da Vinci's studio

17/08/2024

Culture • Literature • Books

By ADELTO GONÇALVES*

Thoughts on the Book of Mario Claudio

A novel that seeks to reconstruct what would have been the close relationship between the Italian painter Leonardo da Vinci (1452-1519) and Gian Giacomo Caprotti (1480-1524), better known as Salaì, his disciple, is what the reader will find in Picture de boy, work by Portuguese writer Mário Cláudio, which has just been translated into Italian with the title HD Portrait say ragazzo. An allievo in the studio of Leonardo da Vinci (Morlacchi Editore).

Picture de boy In the year of its publication, it deserved the Grand Prize for Romance and Novel from the Portuguese Writers Association, which the author had already obtained in 1984 with the book Amadeo. Initially, it starts from a controversial statement by Italian researchers according to which Salaì was the model for the Mona Lisa painting. To this end, they highlighted the similarity of some facial features, especially the nose and mouth, of Gioconda with those seen in a painting depicting the disciple, a conclusion that, however, was contested by experts from the Louvre Museum in Paris, where the painter's masterpiece is on display.

In the introductory text, De Cusatis recalls that Gian Giacomo Caprotti began working as an apprentice in the workshop, in Milan, of the great painter, still very young, in 1490, as stated in the first page of a manuscript annotated by Leonardo da Vinci himself and which Today it is part of the collection of the Institute of France, in Paris.

It is a manuscript that brings together not only notes on the activities of the great Tuscan master but also notes on his daily life and on crimes committed by the young Gian Giacomo, “such as having stolen money from him just one day after his arrival at the workshop ”. It is worth remembering that it was Salaì's own father who sent him to the studio, “still in rags and lice”, so that the great artist, who also exhumed corpses and built flying machines, could try to straighten him out and make him his servant.

Librarian and meticulous researcher, Mário Cláudio, after consulting this codex, tried to recover, sometimes also resorting to imagination, what this often troubled and harmonious relationship between master and disciple would have been. And that, from the beginning, made the great painter call his disciple Salaì, a somewhat grotesque name that, in Arabic, can mean “little devil”, “thief”, “liar”, “stubborn”, “ambitious”, “ irriquieto” and other derogatory words.

However, as can be seen in Mário Cláudio's description, Leonardo da Vinci would have always been indulgent towards the one who would become his disciple, probably attracted by his extraordinary angelic beauty and ambiguous nature. All this without taking into account murmurs that said Salaì was “abusing the innocence of boys and girls, and prostituting toothless priests from this or that confraternity” (page 164).

Whatever the case, Salaì would end up gaining the master's trust, becoming “his first model and his favorite disciple”, accompanying him in everything and even in his changes of residence, at least until 1514, when the master moved to He moved with his workshop from Milan to Venice and then to Florence, to Milan again and, finally, to Rome. In other words, for two decades, Leonardo da Vinci was his “indefatigable protector”, as can be seen in this innovative novel that, although constructed as fiction, uses as characters individuals who, in fact, existed and some passages that would be supported by handwritten documentation.

In an agile, delicate and erudite text, Mário Cláudio shows that, in a game of small mutual betrayals, a complicity is created between Salaì and the painter that will bring them closer, at first, as if they were father and son. And, later, as lovers, which becomes explicit on page 83 in which the author deals with “this aspect, at the same time fundamental, controversial and lurid, of Leonardo da Vinci's life, that is, his sexual inclination”, as observed by De Cusatis at the end of your presentation text. Later on, Three Vicious Graces erupt into the lives of both of them and sow discord and jealousy, in a plot that will captivate the reader through an extremely seductive text.

Picture de boy It is, therefore, a novel about the relationship between master and disciple, not always free from drama and disappointment, and about the creativity of a genius artist in everything, even in managing his feelings.

Mário Cláudio (1941), pseudonym of Rui Manuel Pinto Barbot Costa, born in Porto, is the author of a vast and multifaceted work that encompasses fiction, chronicle, poetry, drama, essays, children's literature and also lyrics for fado and numerous articles published in the press Portuguese and foreign. His works have been translated into English, Castilian, French, Italian, German, Hungarian, Czech, Croatian and Turkish.

The only child of a bourgeoisie family, he completed his primary and secondary studies at Colégio Almeida Garrett, in Porto. Graduated in Law from the University of Coimbra in 1966, he later graduated with the Librarian-Archivist course at the Faculty of Arts of the same University. As a fellow of the National Institute for Scientific Research, he attended the University of London (University College), where he graduated as a Master of Arts in Library and News StudiesIn 1976.

In 1985, he began teaching at the Porto Superior School of Journalism. He was also a guest professor at the Catholic University of Porto and a Creative Writing trainer at the Serralves Foundation and the Porto Polytechnic. He directed the Municipal Public Library of Vila Nova de Gaia and was a senior technician at the Northern Delegation of the State Secretariat for Culture.

Before being mobilized for the colonial war, in 1968, he gave his father, for publication, his first work of poetry, entitled Cycle de cypress, released the following year. He is also the author of Guilhermina (1986) ____ (1988) A Thursday Taj Virtues (1990) Toccata to two clarins (1992) Two equinoxes (1996) O portico da Glory (1997) Pilgrimage de Barnabas Taj indies (1998) Camilo Drill (2006) Boa night, Mr Soares (2008) James Veiga: an biography (2011) Astronomy (2015) and Triptych da salvation (2019), among other works, which earned him several literary awards.

*Adelto Gonçalves, journalist, has a doctorate in Portuguese literature from the University of São Paulo (USP). Author, among other books, of Bocage — the lost profile (Imesp).

Reference

Mário Cláudio. Picture de boy: a disciple in Leonardo da Vinci's studio. Lisboa, Oficina Raquel, 2016, 154 pages. [https://amzn.to/3yECzqt]