Francesco Melzi

Francesco Melzi came from a noble Milanese family and joined Leonardo da Vinci as a young pupil around 1506. He stayed with Leonardo for the rest of the master's life, following him to Rome and then to France, and painted in close imitation of his style. Leonardo left him his notebooks and drawings, and Melzi compiled from them the Codex Urbinas, the basis of the Treatise on Painting. After his death his heirs let the papers be dispersed.