2025 Theses Doctoral

Leonardeschi in Wartime: Giovanni Antonio Boltraffio, Giovanni Agostino da Lodi, and Andrea Solario after the French Occupation of Milan, 1499-1510

Miller, Caitlin

Giovanni Antonio Boltraffio, Giovanni Agostino da Lodi, and Andrea Solario belong to a group of early modern artists referred to collectively as the “Leonardeschi,” so named because they worked in the orbit of Leonardo da Vinci (d. 1519) either directly (as pupils) or indirectly (as associates or followers). The dissertation reconsiders these three artists as products of their proximity not only to Leonardo and his first Milanese workshop, but also to a broader context of conflict and emergency in early sixteenth-century Milan.

Like Leonardo, they were subject to the pressures, upheavals, and opportunities that accompanied the deposing of Duke Ludovico Sforza in 1499/1500 and the subsequent French occupation, which, in its first stage, lasted until 1512. The Leonardeschi, as the appellation implies, are typically analyzed through the prism of Leonardo and his influence.

My dissertation orients instead around a group of thematic pressure points (material scarcity, disguise, and spoliation) that informed Leonardesque painting and drawing during the first decade of the French incursion. A different emphasis allows for new understandings of the early Leonardeschi, their artworks, and the turbulent world in which their artistic personalities developed.