Leonardo as homosexual
October 20 2011
Picture: Wikipedia
It's started - just when you thought the art world had covered every Leonardo angle in the run up to the National Gallery show, now the 'he was gay' headlines. From Jonathan Jones in The Guardian:
The idea that Leonardo could be aroused by a woman at all is a bit of a surprise. This is not the image of him that has come down to us. Ever since Renaissance witnesses recorded that he loved to surround himself with beautiful young men, his homosexuality has been an open secret. As a youth, he was twice accused of sodomy, though never prosecuted (apparently because the young men who were charged with him came from powerful and wealthy families). Yet Leonardo, as Vasari's account of his life and the artist's own notebooks confirm, went on to live openly with a household of youths led by Salai, his handsome, thieving apprentice – to whom he eventually left the Mona Lisa.
Jones makes much of Sigmund Freud's analysis of Leonardo's sexuality. Since Freud's theory was built partly on the nutty notion of finding hidden symbols (a vulture, above) in Leonardo's Virgin and Child with St Anne, I can't give it much time. Jones goes onto identify the central problem with the gay Leonardo theory - why is his (known) output dominated by so many portraits of beautiful women? Indeed:
The artist had a theory about art and sex [...] In his notebooks, he argues that painting is the greatest of all the arts because it can set a picture of your lover before you. A pastoral painting can remind you, in winter, of summer in the country with your beloved. He goes further, into blasphemy. He boasts that he once painted a Madonna so beautiful that the man who bought it was haunted by unseemly thoughts. Even after it was altered, perhaps with the addition of crosses and saintly symbols (as was done in Leonardo's second version of The Virgin of the Rocks), it still gave him an erection when he tried to pray. So in the end he returned the painting to Leonardo, who delighted in this pornographic triumph.
In which case, where are the similarly erotic paintings of boys? Now, I'm not at all trying to argue that Leonardo either was or wasn't gay. He probably liked a little of both, so to speak, and, well, why not? But it will be a shame if the coming crescendo of Leonardo coverage is dominated by ill-informed speculation over his sexuality. He was a genius first, and epic artist second. Shagger probably comes some way down the list.
Update: It's spreading - check out the 'phallic animal' caption here.
