Genius at Work: Michelangelo
Few artists in the western canon have been venerated as passionately as Italian Renaissance master Michelangelo. And with good reason. Whether depicting secular or religious images in paintings, sculptures, and architecture, he brought to all of it a combination of sensitivity and strength, and in some cases an almost savage power.
But the question for us here isn’t whether Michelangelo was an artistic genius, but whether he was homosexual. The question arose among art historians largely due to how Michelangelo depicted male nudes.
Not since the Classical Greeks had nudes been so sensually and powerfully rendered. The tastemakers of the Italian Renaissance were crazy for all things Classical, the Greeks in particular, and it was well known that the ancient Greek view of love and sex between men was considerably more tolerant than the post-Classical Christian one.
The church, especially in Italy, was not only the primary source of politics and morality, it was also a major sponsor of art and architecture. Thus, while many of Michelangelo’s paintings and sculptures are based on biblical themes, scholars have readily acknowledged the Greek artistic influence on Michelangelo.
Viewing Michelangelo’s famously sensual sculpture of the biblical David, or his numerous and rather erotic male nudes on the ceiling of the Vatican’s Sistine Chapel, one is inclined to accept that the artist was indeed gay. But history demands more than visual confirmation.
It turns out that Michelangelo was not only a visual artist but a literary one as well, specifically a poet. Handwritten notes by Michelangelo’s grand-nephew in the margins of his uncle’s poetry were found in the Buonarotti family archives (Michelangelo’s family name was Buonarotti) in 1863 by historian John Addington Symonds. The grand-nephew’s marginalia stated that the poems should not—indeed must not—be published as Michelangelo originally wrote them since they expressed male/male love. As a result, when the poems were posthumously published in 1623, all references to male/male desire were altered to imply male/female desire.
There is also considerable evidence that Michelangelo engaged in affairs with more than a few of the “ragazzi,” street boys who also earned coin as models for Rome’s and Florence’s many artists. This was not a practice particular to Michelangelo. It is fairly certain that Cellini, Botticcelli, even Leonardo da Vinci, all of whom were charged with sodomy by the authorities at one time or another, indulged in such affairs.
So, it seems that Michelangelo, giant of Renaissance art, painter and sculptor of biblical-themed masterpieces such as David, the epic of the Creation in the Sistine Chapel, the heart-grabbing sensitivity of the Pieta, and all the others, was indeed homosexual. Just looking at his work, at the loving way he fashioned a torso or a hip, the sexually charged positions of male bodies with genitalia exposed, leaves little doubt about his sexual preferences. But though the images are erotic, they are not pornographic. They are too beautiful, too poetic for that.
Well then, it appears that there’s yet another creative genius in our tribe already overflowing with creative geniuses. Bravissimo! ▼
Ann Aptaker is the author of short stories and the Lambda & Goldie award winning Ann Aptaker...Cantor Gold series. The next in the series, A Crime of Secrets, will be released in July 2023.