Il testamento di Aurelio Luini e la sua eredità leonardesca (1593)

The essay publishes the testament of the painter Aurelio Luini (1593), accompanied by its analysis within the historical and social context of Milan at the end of the sixteenth century. This document allows us to reconstruct the artist’s network, in particular his relationship with the congregation of the Gesuati as well as with artists such as the founder Giovanni Battista Busca and the painter Andrea Pellegrini. Moreover, the documentation connected to this testament, preserved in a register of the Gesuati, sheds some light on the dismantling of Aurelio’s atelier and the sale of his drawings collection. As Giovanni Paolo Lomazzo records, what made this collection attractive was the presence of some drawings by Leonardo da Vinci. The buyer of the works of art in Aurelio’s studio was Carlo Castaldo, almost unknown to scholarship. A member of an important family of soldiers in the service of Charles V, Castaldo seems to have been well established in the coterie of Leone Leoni, whose son Pompeo owned some Leonardo drawings probably coming from Aurelio’s estate. In this way, an uncharted collecting path is traced, useful for further studies on the history of collecting in Milan and especially of Leonardo’s drawings.