page_title: Francesco Melzi
section_title: Selected works
hierarchical_section_title: Francesco Melzi / Selected works
context_page_description: Francesco Melzi, or Francesco de Melzi, was an Italian painter born into a family of the Milanese nobility in Lombardy. He was one of Leonardo da Vinci’s pupils.
context_section_description: Leonardo da Vinci chose only very handsome boys, as was Francesco, to be his pupils and cared for them considerably as if they were family. In addition to Francesco Melzi, some of his pupils were Cesare da Sesto, Boltraffio and Andrea Salaí. However, as they were chosen based on attractiveness rather than talent, they were not very skilled painters, and therefore it is easy to identify paintings they worked on based on their lower quality. Because of the general workshop practice where multiple artists work on one painting, it has become common practice to ascribe Leonardo's pupils to his less known (or lower quality) works. These might be referenced to as paintings done by his pupils that Leonardo touched up as opposed to the inverse.
  Francesco Melzi, in contrast to his peers, actually does have a handful of completed, high quality paintings attributed to him, as well as drawings and studies. He is responsible for the red chalk portrait, from approximately 1515, of da Vinci's profile which depicts him as very classically handsome and regal. This is most likely the portrait to which Vasari and Anonimo Gaddiano, as well as other later writers, refer to in describing Leonardo as having such "grace and beauty."
  
  There are several other drawings attributed to him in the Biblioteca Ambrosiana in Milan. This includes Head of an Old Man which he signed himself saying "1510 a dí 14 Augusto p.a caveat de relic Franchesco de Melzo de anti 17" which means "on the day 14 August taken from a relief by Francesco Melzi 17 years of age." There is a note on the back sheet that identifies the man in this drawing as Artus Boysi. This drawing is red chalk on paper, and although it highlights the artist's keen ability to render from observation, Francesco's note at the bottom leads us to believe that it was based on a relief, most likely by Leonardo. It is also conjectured that he uses this same head in his Vertumnus and Pomona. He also created the chalk drawing Five Grotesque Heads, in addition to Seven Caricatures and Two Grotesque Heads, all in similar style. There are many drawings attributed to Francesco, however it is often difficult to know definitively if they are his because his style is so influenced by, and therefore similar to, Leonardo's.   
  He is also responsible for some paintings, some of which are relatively well-known. His Vertumnus and Pomona is in the Berlin Museum displayed in the altarpiece, and his Flora, which was attributed to Leonardo until the mid 19th century, hangs in the Hermitage Museum. La Belle Ferronniére is a painting of an unidentified woman whose author is not certain. In the Louvre it is attributed to Leonardo da Vinci, but is sometimes attributed to Francesco Melzi, and even other times to Leonardo's Workshop. Other paintings by or attributed to Francesco are Nymph at the Spring (Washington Gallery of Art), Portrait of a Young Man with a Parrot (Milan, private collection), and Saint Anne with the Virgin and the Child Embracing a Lamb (Gallery degli Uffizi).
  Francesco's Flora appears on the album cover of Mango's Gli amori son finestre.
caption: Five Grotesque Heads, by Francesco Melzi, c.a. 1515
exif: {}