Leonardo da Vinci is universally recognized as one of the greatest minds of the Renaissance. Painter, scientist, engineer, architect, inventor, and visionary thinker, he embodied the spirit of an era that placed knowledge, observation, and beauty at the center of human experience.

Driven by an insatiable curiosity, Leonardo sought to understand and explain natural phenomena through constant study and experimentation. Although admired and protected by Renaissance courts across Italy, his private life was often the subject of suspicion and scrutiny, particularly regarding his relationships with young male pupils in his workshops (botteghe) in Florence and Milan.

Among these figures, the most significant was Gian Giacomo Caprotti, known as Salaì, who entered Leonardo’s household as a teenager and remained close to him for nearly twenty-five years. Described by contemporaries as handsome, unruly, and charismatic, Salaì deeply fascinated Leonardo, who tolerated his excesses and turbulent behavior. Salaì is widely believed to have served as a model for several of Leonardo’s works, including Saint John the Baptist, and possibly influenced the artist’s idealized representations of beauty.

In the final years of his life, Leonardo lived with Francesco Melzi, a devoted student and companion who later inherited his master’s notebooks and drawings. Melzi played a crucial role in preserving Leonardo’s intellectual legacy, organizing his writings and artistic theories—later known as the Treatise on Painting. In Vaprio d’Adda, where Leonardo spent time at Villa Melzi, his presence is still remembered today, and historical dinners inspired by Renaissance traditions are occasionally recreated.

Leonardo’s sexuality has long been a complex and debated subject. While some of his anatomical studies, drawings, and legal records are often cited in attempts to deny queer interpretations, many scholars approach the topic through a broader cultural and psychological lens. In 1910, Sigmund Freud, in Leonardo da Vinci and a Memory of His Childhood, analyzed Leonardo’s writings and a childhood memory recorded in the Codex Atlanticus, interpreting it as a key to understanding the artist’s emotional life and sublimated desires.

More recently, Pietro Marani’s book The Pink Stockings of Salaì (2011) revisits the relationship between Leonardo and Salaì through a fictionalized narrative voiced by Francesco Melzi, highlighting gestures of affection and generosity—such as the famous gift of pink stockings—that suggest an intimate bond beyond conventional master-pupil relations.

This gay-friendly cultural tour traces Leonardo’s life in Milan, visiting the Ambrosiana Gallery to admire the Codex Atlanticus and Salaì’s portrait, continuing to Sforza Castle, and concluding at Leonardo’s Vineyard, one of the oldest sites associated with Candia Aromatica Malvasia in Europe.

Rather than offering definitive answers, this experience invites visitors to explore Leonardo da Vinci’s life through a queer historical lens, embracing complexity, nuance, and the many layers of one of history’s most extraordinary figures.

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