Cesare da Sesto

Cesare da Sesto had the rare luck to stand close to both giants of the High Renaissance. Born around 1477 near Milan, he fell into the circle of Leonardo da Vinci during Leonardo's Milanese years and learned his soft, smoky modelling, the sfumato that blurs every hard edge. That alone would have placed him among the Leonardeschi, the followers who spread the master's manner.

Cesare then travelled south to Rome, where Leonardo's rivals were at work, and there he absorbed Raphael too, so his later paintings carry both hands at once: Leonardo's shadowed tenderness and Raphael's clear, balanced grace. He carried that blend far, all the way to Sicily, where around 1517 in Messina he painted an Adoration of the Magi that left a deep mark on painters across southern Italy.

His elegant Salome, holding the platter for the Baptist's head, was later prized by the Habsburg emperor Rudolf the Second and hangs now in Vienna. Cesare returned to Milan and died there in 1523, still in his forties.