See also:

A Salvator Mundi Puzzle

A Salvator Mundi Provenance

Some Salvator Mundi Microstories

Some Salvator Mundi Afterthoughts

Some Salvator Mundi Variations

Some Salvator Mundi Revisions

A Salvator Mundi Geography

Leonardeschi Gold Rush

How To Tell Leonardo From Luini

Index of Leonardiana

Unknown Melzi





(15.5.2021) This is meant to further elucidate the Salvator Mundi saga and its blind spots.
One of these spots is the role of Leonardo’s pupil Francesco Melzi. A person so close to the master
that one would expect that Leonardo-scholarship would have treated him as a VIP. But, as we will see,
this was never the case. More precisely: one did treat him as a VIP, but only as the person who assembled
Leonardo’s treatise on painting. As Leonardo’s assistant, as someone who helped to establish the Leonardesque
paradigm of style, and as a painter in his own right, one did put him in second, third, even fourth place.
As a result: We don’t know Melzi at all as a painter, and we cannot see him, which means here:
we cannot recognize him. Thus we have a problem with Melzi. And reminded of the title of a 1955 Hitchcock movie,
I am inclined to say that we might now have ›Trouble with Melzi‹.





One) The Problem with Melzi: Invisibility and Confusing Visibility

We need a precise definition of what the problem with Melzi is. And it seems to me that the problem has two
equally important sides. First of all we don’t see Melzi since he disappears within the stylistic paradigm
that Leonardo established (with him). We know that Melzi is there – he must be there – but he could be anywhere:
in the Bacchus of the Louvre, in a Leda version (perhaps in the so-called Spiridon Leda), in other high
quality Leonardesque works, and yes, Melzi might be even in some of Leonardo’s late masterpieces.
And as long as we don’t see Melzi, as long as we have no basis to distinguish him from the other Leonardeschi
as well as from the master, it seems to me that we might be destined to struggle to tell a workshop piece
from an autograph work – based on reflections on style.
Now one might say: but we have Melzi-attributed works. And my answer to that is: yes, I know them as well; but I know
also that the Melzi dossier is full of unsolved problems. Actually whoever takes a look into that dossier, its
arbitrariness and, yes, also its shabbyness (since one senses an arrogant disinterest and negligence of mainstream
Leonardo-scholarship), one might also fall into a state of depression: since not one of the Melzi-attributed works
is without problems. On the contrary: not virtually all of them, indeed all of them are problem pictures. And this
is the second side of the Melzi problem: these pictures also do confuse us: did Leonardo indeed inherit his
workshop to the Young Man with a Parrot, as one might ask. Since especially this picture could be a pure
misunderstanding and nobody knows actually if the signatures and inscriptions on Melzi-attributed works (appearing
and disappearing again) are worth anything at all. (The picture cannot be a portrait of Melzi, by the way.)
The same applies to traditional attributions: does anyone know with certainty if the Hermitage Flora (a work
that had been attributed to Leonardo for a long time) is indeed by Melzi, since there might have been also Fontainebleau
copies, not only of works by Leonardo but also of such by Melzi.





Two) The Prado Mona Lisa and the Ambrosiana’s Christ by Salaì

If we look back at the Salvator Mundi saga that took its course, especially after the going public in 2011
and in the years to follow, it is striking that two events took place during these years that especially have a bearing here,
and it also seems to me that these two events got a little bit outshadowed by the saga. The trouble with Melzi,
one might say, might be our own fault.
The Prado Mona Lisa, since the year 2012, exemplifies the Melzi problem. We have learned that one particular
pupil of Leonardo must have been so close to the master that this particular pupil followed Leonardo’s own path,
while creating the Louvre’s Mona Lisa. This particular pupil, as technical art history, our expanded eye, did show,
must have worked in parallel.
The Prado suggested that this pupil was either Salaì or Melzi. But did the Prado actually see and recognize
one of these pupils? On the basis of exclusive stylistic properties? Or does the Prado just believe to know
that no other pupil worked as closely with the master, so that it simply must be one of these two? So that we can identify
what we see with one of these?
In 2012 of course some of the leading Leonardo-scholars did comment on these new insights and on the picture,
but it is striking that in none of the interviews I have seen, anything was said on Melzi, or on the relevance
these new insights might have as regards Melzi and his achievements. No one, brief, did much care for Melzi
or for the question how these new insights might relate to unsolved problems within the aforementioned dossier.

In 2016 the situation was a bit different. Salaì is such notorious a figure within the Leonardo cosmos that a signed
and dated picture (the date is 1511) got some attention. All the more as it was a bust of Christ, related to
the design of the now more and more famous Salvator Mundi. But probably only the specialists, and perhaps
not even the specialists discussed the implications of the two events in 2012 and 2016, in light of the
Salvator Mundi problem, and in the light of the Melzi as well as the Salaì dossier (also the latter
is full of unsolved problems).
While in 2012 a possible Melzi re-discovery might have taken its course, the attention for the Salaì Christ might
further have accentuated the question if Salaì was actually good enough a painter to have contributed to the Prado Mona Lisa,
to the Salvator Mundi or to other pictures associated with his name.





Three) What Follows?

I am aware of the Melzi problem, and still I have attributed the Salvator Mundi to Melzi and Leonardo
in my Salvator Mundi Puzzle. Based on historical and stylistic reflections, but not based – as I am off course conceding –
on finding something exclusively Melzi, stylistically, in that picture. I am ruling out Salaì, again based
on historical and stylistic reflections, but I would concede that it could be possible that Salaì might have been
responsible also for the apparently rather hasty completion of that picture. I am not ruling that out,
but it remains a rather theoretical possibility. What I am conceding to Melzi is a high level accomplishment
as a painter, be it that it shows in the Prado Mona Lisa (if Melzi indeed is ›in it‹) or in other pictures,
be it that it can be assumed, based on the fact that Melzi inherited Leonardo’s workshop.
The Melzi dossier is still full of unsolved problems. And while trying to solve these problems, all the pictures
shown here are to be taken into consideration. The Salvator Mundi, in my view, remains an extraordinary picture
with probably an equally extraordinary history. And it is to be hoped that the ›trouble with Melzi‹ might lead
to further elucidation of the Melzi dossier within the Leonardo cosmos, of the Salvator Mundi’s history,
and last but not least, to a better understanding of the whole Salvator Mundi saga. What I tried to do here
is simply to give to the Melzi problem the attention it deserves.

1998: This is the reference for Melzi-scholarship: Pietro C. Marani’s account (with literature) in the 1998 Skira book The Legacy of Leonardo (picture: Amazon.com). But what follows below adds insights as well as problems to that account. And central to the Melzi problem, in 2021, is not only the Prado Mona Lisa, but also the Salvator Mundi.



2011ff.: The Salvator Mundi saga takes its course, while the re-discovery of the Prado Mona Lisa is still to come.



2012: The Prado presents its findings in relation of the so-called Prado Mona Lisa: A pupil worked ›in parallel‹ with Leonardo. The Prado suggests that this pupil might have been either Salaì or Melzi.



2016: A Bust of Christ, dated 1511 and signed by Salaì is given to the Bibliotheca Ambrosiana. The picture’s general quality raises questions as to Salaì’s accomplishment as a painter.

2017: Rossana Sacchi, in an essay dedicated to Melzi’s biography (and geography), also and for the very first time publishes Melzi’s last will.

2021: The question is raised if the Salvator Mundi might be basically Melzi’s work, with Leonardo, who was with Melzi in France, contributing his ›last words as a painter‹ (see here).

It is an amusing fact that this beautiful rendition of the Vertumnus and Pomona motif is attributed to Melzi, since the story, as rendered by Ovid, is a mythology about disguised and revealed identity – as also the attributional history of this painting (and as the attributional history of almost any painting in the Leonardo cosmos) is (for the attributional history, with many of the usual suspects appearing, see here). The god Vertumnus – his office are the four seasons – tries to convince the dryad Pomona to love him. Men and lovers are actually excluded from her garden (and the garden is all she cares about), and Vertumnus arrives in guise of an old woman. But this is not enough. Vertumnus tries to use the power of rhetoric: the old woman speaks as an advocate for Vertumnus, and we might notice already the slightly amused Leonardesque smile of Pomona, while the god’s identity reveals due to her/his speaking. But perhaps Vertumnus has already arrived at telling her a (rather threatening) story: A woman refusing to love might also be turned into stone (this part of the story, perhaps, would be less suitable for a wedding picture). And we note: this picture is also about the power (or lacking power) of rhetoric. Rhetoric as in ›attributional rhetoric‹, perhaps, and we come full circle. (Yes, it is also about botany, but this, on the level of the story, is less relevant as it is on the level of the picture’s attribution.) Ovid, surprisingly and as far as this story is concerned, seems less convinced of Vertumnus’ power of rhetoric, since what finally seems to convince Pomona to love her god is rather his appearence after having turned back to his actual appearance. Or was it all together – which would mean here: the whole show? The god Vertumnus, however, does not show in his actual bodily appearance here (at least not explicitly; compare the later renderings by Rubens and Van Dyck). But he is there, as Melzi might be there – but only as far as we actually do know of Melzi (compare also the landscape in this picture, including the bridges, with the landscape in the Prado Mona Lisa).

See also:

A Salvator Mundi Provenance

Some Salvator Mundi Microstories

Some Salvator Mundi Afterthoughts

Some Salvator Mundi Variations

Some Salvator Mundi Revisions

A Salvator Mundi Geography

Leonardeschi Gold Rush

How To Tell Leonardo From Luini

Index of Leonardiana

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