How Hunter persuaded Steadman to stay Welsh

Billy’s story ended very curiously in

August 1876, and Walker died two months later. He was seventy-seven years old. The cause of death, says Bil Gilbert, was nothing more or less than ‘having lived long enough’. How to distil that life into six lines, containing

Throughout his career, Leonardo would repeatedly and lovingly draw Salai. We see him age slowly while remaining, at each stage, soft and sensuous.

Along the way, he and his traveling party stopped in Milan. Salai decided to stay there, at least temporarily. He was then thirty-six, solidly middle-aged and no longer playing the role of Leonardo’s pretty-boy companion or competing for attention with the aristocratic Melzi, who was still only twenty-five and remained at Leonardo’s side. Salai wou