21
Salai
Ray and I decide to have a night out to celebrate his return. We go to a funky cocktail bar in Camden, one of those with high tables that are just big enough for a couple to sit around. We peruse the extensive list of cocktails and even without checking the ingredients, we quickly make a decision. We order a couple of Alien Invasions.
Ray and I chatter non-stop as we sit sipping our bright-green cocktails. I tell him about my family, that my sister is married to Patrick, who’s an I.T. guy, and they have a daughter called Aimee. I explain how, growing up, my parents were quite formal and strict, but now they’re older they’re so much more easy-going. They live in a lovely rambling house—a converted oast house—in a small town in Kent, where my mum works part-time at a bakery and my dad still keeps his hand in at the law practice. They’re comfortably off and enjoying semi-retirement.
The conversation pauses as the waitress deposits the second round of drinks on our table and Ray and I chink glasses again.
“Have you always known?” I ask him.
“You’re going to have to be more specific than that,” he tells me.
“You know what I’m asking.”
He shakes his head. “No, I don’t.”
“When did you first realise you were gay?”
He looks off into the distance, as if he’s recalling something, and then his eyes refocus back on me. “Do you remember our visit to the art gallery, when I told you about Leonardo da Vinci? Well, I’ve known since then.”
I eye him with scepticism. “Really? Only since we visited the art gallery?”
He laughs. “No, I mean since the time I first communed with Leo. When I saw the way he was with Salai, then I understood myself. I knew I felt the same way.”
“You’ve lost me. Who the hell is Salai?”
“He studied under Leo. In those days, you lived with your patron, acting as both apprentice and servant. Leo liked to surround himself with pretty young boys. He and Salai were lovers.”
I gasp. “Leonardo da Vinci was gay?”
“Of course. Didn’t you know?”
I shake my head. “I don’t really know much about art or art history, but still, are you sure? I think I would have remembered something like that if I’d heard it mentioned before.”
“Yes I’m sure. You forget, I studied him the whole of his adult life. He was obsessed with Salai. In fact, Salai was his muse. Why else would he have inherited several of his master’s paintings? Many of Leo’s most famous works were based on sketches of Salai, reworked to be religious figures or portraits of prominent figures of the day. He couldn’t openly admit his relationship with Salai, but in reality Leo was only ever interested in painting his muse. Even the Mona Lisa is based on a sketch of Salai.”
“No way! The Mona Lisa is a woman. Everyone knows that.”
Ray looks me square in the face. “How closely have you studied it? Can you say whether those features are male or female? They’re androgynous, as was Salai himself. Although, to be fair, if you could scratch away the top layers of paint, it did start out as a portrait of a woman called Lisa del Giocondo. Her husband commissioned the original painting, but Leo quickly lost interest in it and went back to sketching nudes of Salai instead. For four years he struggled to finish the commission and when he presented it to his clients they were not impressed. Lisa thought it unflattering and her husband refused to pay.”
“He refused to pay for the Mona Lisa? Wow! That has to go down as the worst investment decision of all time!”
“I’d say so. Anyway, the painting ended up back in the cupboard for another decade until Leo moved to France. Then, a couple of years before his death, he dug the painting out and remodelled the face on an earlier sketch he’d made of Salai. So, you see, when you look at that enigmatic smile, you’re staring into the face of a mischievous troublemaker, who knew how to wrap Leo around his little finger.”
“But if it’s a picture of Salai, why was it named the Mona Lisa?”
“A-ha! A very good question. Like I said, Leo had to keep their relationship under wraps, otherwise he and Salai could both have been executed for sodomy. But Leo was smart enough to accurately name the painting and get away with it. Because he was living in France at the time, he gave it a French title. He called it simply Mon Salai.”
“My Salai?”
Ray nods. “And then he encrypted the name in an anagram. Hence Mon Salai became…” He gestures for me to finish the sentence.
“Mona Lisa,” I say on a gasp.
“And everyone assumed it was the long-awaited painting of Lisa del Giocondo.”
“That’s very clever!”
“Leo was a very clever man. What a man of his intelligence ever saw in someone like Salai, I really don’t know. Even Leo described him as a liar and a thief.”
“Sounds like a touch of jealousy in your voice,” I say with a wry smile.
“Salai was nothing but a good-time boy. Leo was hardly in the ground before Salai had sold the painting.”
“He sold the Mona Lisa?”
“He sold all the paintings Leo bequeathed to him.”
“Who to?”
“The King of France for 4000 gold crowns. Art historians often claim that Leo bequeathed the Mona Lisa directly to the king, but that isn’t true. Not one of his paintings is mentioned by name in his will. In fact, Leo had already bequeathed several of them to Salai a year before his death. The remainder were left as a job lot to his official custodian, along with all his manuscripts.”
“Why did he give them to Salai before he died?”
“So as not to arouse suspicion. He’d already provided for Salai in his will, leaving him a property in Milan with a small plot of land.”
“You know an awful lot of juicy gossip.”
“I could entertain you for an eternity with what I have stored up here,” Ray says, tapping the side of his head. “Did you know that your own royal family once owned a fully-erect nude of Salai?”
I laugh. “You’re making it up now.”
Ray shakes his head. “I’m not. It came to light when the sketch was stolen from Windsor Castle in the nineteenth century.”
“It was stolen?” I say, intrigued. “Do you know where it is now?”
“It did resurface fairly recently, towards the end of the last century, but no one outside the art world took any notice. Probably because when it was reported in the media, they only showed it as a headshot.”
“So there’s no actual proof of this obscene version you mentioned?” I say, still not utterly convinced.
“Oh I’m sure there is,” Ray insists. “Someone will have posted it online by now.”
I grab my phone. “Go on then. Tell me what to search under.”
“You still don’t believe me, huh?”
I open my browser and click on the Images tab. “What’s it called?”
“Angel Incarnate.”
I tap the name into the search field and my jaw drops open.
“Told you!” Rays says smugly as he peers over my shoulder. “That is Salai in all his glory.”