Gian Giacomo Caprotti da Oreno, also known as Salaì, was Leonardo da Vinci’s long-time apprentice and assistant. Salaì modeled for da Vinci, and his face is believed to be in Bacchus and St. John the Baptist, and even to have influenced the Mona Lisa (“Mona Lisa” is thought to be an anagram for “Mon Salai”).
Some speculate, could’ve Salaì been even more than just an apprentice?
In one of Leonardo’s numerous notebooks, there’s a curious sketch of two phalluses pointed towards a [anal] hole, above which is written Salaì’s name. Nothing more is known about this sketch, so let your imagination run wild.
Archives also reveal a sketch of a naked man with erect penis carrying Salaì’s face which Leonardo did circa 1515. It could’ve been a study for the painting of St. John the Baptist, or a humorous take on the painting.
Leonardo surrounded himself with young men. Salaì was the one who led Leonardo’s youthful household for a long time, and he, some believe, inherited Mona Lisa following the painter’s death. But their relationship was ambivalent. Salaì stole from Leonardo a number of times, and his tutor called him “a liar, a thief, stubborn and a glutton”. After da Vinci’s new favorite became Francesco Melzi, a young man from a noble family, Salaì left Leonardo’s household. Melzi inherited da Vinci’s belongings, including the notebooks.
A patient student of human anatomy, the notebooks show Leonardo’s progression in understanding the human body, including the genitals. In earlier renditions, he made mistakes common of medical beliefs of the 15th century, such as that the penis is attached to the spinal cord, and that there were two tubes entering the penis. He would later correct these mistakes in an anatomically-correct drawing, possibly based on a detailed dissection.
Beyond the anatomical, romantic and entertaining takes on the phallus, the painter also took a phenomenological approach to discerning the nature of the penis. In one of the notes, da Vinci describes it as having
the intelligence of itself, and although the will of the man desires to stimulate it, it remains obstinate and takes its own course, and moving sometimes of itself without a license or thought by the man, whether he is sleeping or waking, it does what it desires; and often the man is asleep and it is awake, and many times the man is awake and it is asleep.