Giovanni Antonio Boltraffio
Giovanni Antonio Boltraffio (or Beltraffio) (1466 or 1467 – 1516) was an Italian painter of the High Renaissance from Lombardy, who worked in the studio of Leonardo da Vinci. Boltraffio and Bernardino Luini are the strongest artistic personalities to emerge from Leonardo's studio. According to Giorgio Vasari, he was of an aristocratic family and was born in Milan.
Also recorded as Giovanni Antonio Beltraffio · Giovanni Antonio Boltrafio · Boltraffio · Antonio Boltraffio
Giovanni Antonio Boltraffio

Giovanni Antonio Boltraffio · Web Gallery of Art: Image Info about artwork wga QS:P11807,"b/boltraff/casio1" · Public domain
- Born
- 1467. · Milan.
- Died
- 1516. · Milan.
- Occupation
- painter and draftsperson.
- Fields
- portrait.
- Teachers
- Leonardo da Vinci.
- Known for
- Virgin and Child with Sts John the Baptist and Sebastian and Narcissus at the Fountain.
VALÉORINE Encyclopedia
VALÉORINE documentary reading
Documentary summary
Giovanni Antonio Boltraffio (or Beltraffio) (1466 or 1467 – 1516) was an Italian painter of the High Renaissance from Lombardy, who worked in the studio of Leonardo da Vinci. Boltraffio and Bernardino Luini are the strongest artistic personalities to emerge from Leonardo's studio. According to Giorgio Vasari, he was of an aristocratic family and was born in Milan.
Admitted source layer · organised and presented by VALÉORINE
Reference Check
Propose documentary evidence for Giovanni Antonio Boltraffio. A contribution is never written directly as fact: identity, source, rights and evidence gates still decide.
Sign in to contribute
Documentary evidence
Documentary basis
Authority files
wikidata · Q442528 · wikipedia · Giovanni Antonio Boltraffio
In this article
Selected works with disputed attribution
Portrait of a Young Woman with a Scorpion Chain, Columbia Museum of Art. Formerly assigned to the Louvre's Master of the Vierge aux Balances, the handsome Portrait of a Young Woman with a Scorpion Chain now in the Samuel H. Kress Collection of the Columbia Museum of Art in Columbia, SC has been reattributed to the hand of Boltraffio and dated to the period 1490–1505. Whether or not Leonardo participated in its design remains uncertain. Madonna Litta, (Hermitage, Saint Petersburg, sometimes attributed to Leonardo da Vinci). Holy family, (National Gallery in Prague, probably a copy after the unknown original). Virgin and child with donor, (Rome, Sant´Onofrio, Museo del Tasso, sometimes attributed to Cesare da Sesto). Portrait of a Man, (Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco), probably by Ambrogio de Predis. Virgin and Child is at the National Gallery in London. The Salvator Mundi from the workshop of Leonardo was attributed wholly to Boltraffio up to 2011 and some scholars continued to believe he contributed to it. By 2017 however, the consensus in the art world was that it was a Leonardo da Vinci work, although art historian Matthew Landrus maintained that the master contributed only about five to 20% of the painting with assistants such as Bernardino Luini producing the balance. Carmen Bambach of the Metropolitan Museum of Art however, continued to maintain that the work was mostly painted by Boltraffio with "small retouchings" by the master.
Paintings
Training under Leonardo da Vinci is recorded. Subjects and genres recorded for the work are portrait. Places of work recorded in the authority are Bologna, Rome and Lierna. Works named in the authority record are Virgin and Child with Sts John the Baptist and Sebastian and Narcissus at the Fountain. Work by Giovanni Antonio Boltraffio is recorded in the collections of Thyssen-Bornemisza Museum, Uffizi Gallery, Gemäldegalerie Berlin, Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco and National Gallery.
His major painting of the 1490s is the Resurrection (painted with fellow da Vinci pupil Marco d'Oggiono and now in the Gemäldegalerie, Berlin). A Madonna and Child in the Museo Poldi Pezzoli of Milan, is one of the high points of the Lombard Quattrocento. His portraits, often in profile, and his half-length renderings of the Madonna and Child are Leonardesque in conception, though the clean hard edges of his outlines lack Leonardo's sfumato. In Bologna, where he remained in 1500–1502, he found sympathetic patrons in the Casio family, of whom he painted several portraits and for whom he produced his masterwork, the Pala Casio for the Church of the Misericordia (Louvre Museum); it depicts a Madonna and Child with John the Baptist and Saint Sebastian and two Kneeling Donors, Giacomo Marchione de' Pandolfi da Casio and his son, the Bolognese poet Girolamo Casio, who mentioned Boltraffio in some of his sonnets. Boltraffio's portrait of Girolamo Casio is at the Pinacoteca di Brera, Milan. His Portrait of a Man in Profile is in the National Gallery, London. The standard monograph is Maria Teresa Fiorio, Giovanni Antonio Boltraffio: Un pittore milanese nel lume di Leonardo. (Milan and Rome) 2000.
Notes from the source article
Cited by Wikipedia
Notes from the source article
These works are cited by the source article, in its own numbering. They are recorded as its citations, not as sources VALÉORINE has verified.
- 1.According to his tombstone he was 49 at his death in 1516.
- 2.Leonardo records a "Gian Antonio" in his studio in 1491.
- 3.Girolamo Casio (1464-1533)
- 4.Mack p. 137
- 5.ImageBase. search.famsf.org:8080.
- 6.The Virgin and Child | Art UK. artuk.org.
- 7.Platonic receptacles, Leonardo and the Salvator Mundi. 3 Pipe Problem. 2011-09-18.
- 8.Salvator Mundi – Newly Attributed da Vinci Painting. Arthistory.about.com.
- 9.Pogrebin, Robin. Leonardo da Vinci Painting Sells for $450.3 Million, Shattering Auction Highs. The New York Times. 15 November 2017.
- 10.Solly, Meilan. Historian Asserts That Leonardo's Assistant Painted Majority of 'Salvator Mundi'. www.smithsonianmag.com. 9 August 2018.
- 11.Leonardo da Vinci expert declines to back Salvator Mundi as his painting, Dr Carmen Bambach believes the polymath likely only did small retouchings to the work. theguardian.com. 2 June 2019.
References
Citations
References
Each reference names the institution holding it, so a reader may go to the document itself.
reference work
Secondary witnessreference work
Secondary witness
The Encyclopedia exists whether or not anything is for sale. Corrections are recorded rather than overwritten, and every version of this record is kept. Published 14 August 2026.
Elsewhere in Paintings
19,261 published records in this field, each with its sources named.
- Giovanni Andrea SiraniArtist
- Giovanni Angelo d'AntonioArtist
- Giovanni Antonio AmatoArtist
- Giovanni Antonio Bellinzoni da PesaroArtist
- Giovanni Antonio BurriniArtist
- Giovanni Antonio CucchiArtist
- Giovanni Antonio da BresciaArtist
- Giovanni Antonio De PieriArtist
Best supported in this field
For owners
Own a work by Giovanni Antonio Boltraffio?
A specialist will read what you send and tell you what the house can establish, what it cannot, and whether the object is suited to sale. There is no charge and no obligation. The object stays with you throughout; nothing is shipped to us unless it is arranged in writing beforehand.