Born around 1455 in Milan, the youngest of Leonardo de Predis’s six sons across three marriages, he grows up in a Milanese family of painters and miniaturists in which each brother specialises in a different medium: Bernardino in medals, Evangelista in wood carving, and Cristoforo, deaf and mute, in miniature painting. Trained within this family workshop tradition, he begins as an illuminator around 1472-1474 before becoming, from 1482, responsible for Milan’s mint.

He entered the service of the Sforza court as a portraitist in the 1480s: a portrait of Bianca Maria Sforza, betrothed and then wife of the future Emperor Maximilian I, is attributed to him, and he wins the emperor’s patronage on a trip to Innsbruck in 1493-1494. Around 1483 he joined forces with Leonardo da Vinci and his own brother Evangelista to paint the altarpiece of the Immaculate Conception for a Milanese confraternity, executing the side panels depicting angels; the commission’s final settlement sparked a dispute that dragged on for more than twenty years.

His mature style blends traditional Lombard painting with Leonardesque influences, in a somewhat archaic rendering. His exact date and place of death remain uncertain: the last documented trace of his activity dates to 1509, though some sources have him living until 1522. What survives of his work nonetheless makes him one of the few direct witnesses to Leonardo’s years in Milan.