Leonardo di vinci gay
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In 1476, at the age of 24, Leonardo was twice charged with sodomy, even though the charges were common in the Florence of the quattrocento and later dropped for want of witnesses.
As in his life so in his art: Leonardo drew many more male than female nudes, and gave much more careful attention to the male than to the female genitals.
Nor would it have been possible, that he had so thoroughly known men, and human nature to represent it without, by long practice, tinging himself somewhat with human weaknesses.” On the basis of this note by Bossi, some scholars, such as Carlo Pedretti and Charles Nicholl, have tried to attribute to Leonardo an affair with one of his courtesans: in other words, the Vincentian, in order to know human nature so thoroughly, had to know carnal pleasures with the opposite sex as well.
Meanwhile, it is necessary to specify that the discussion of Leonardo’s homosexuality has impassioned few art historians, and most of those few who have tackled the subject have done so mainly to try to deny or downplay the idea of a Leonardo oriented toward people of his own sex, with an attempt, conversely, to attribute to him relationships with women (on the basis, however, of very weak footholds, as will be seen below).
Villata acknowledges that the strongly and overtly sensual character of Saint John the Baptist is one of the aspects most emphasized by scholars: “in no other work, perhaps,” the scholar writes, “does Leonardo seem to give in to the complacency of exhibiting a youthful body of pulsating vitality, whose flesh, almost gilded by the ’lume particulare’ which is reflected on it as on a smooth translucent surface, lies in soft folds and, together with the ’beautiful and curly ringed hair, of which Lionardo took great delight,’ gives the figure an indeterminate feminine character.” To what is such an appearance due?
In the Bible, John 13:23, it is written (presumably by John himself, or else someone close to John), ‘Now there was leaning on Jesus’ bosom one of his disciples, whom Jesus loved.’ And again at 21:20, ‘Then Peter, turning about, seeth the disciple whom Jesus loved following; which also leaned on his breast at supper, and said, Lord, which is he that betrayeth thee?’ In his Spritual Friendship, St Aelred, Abbot of Rievaulx in the 12th century, contrasts St John with St Peter.
There are two elements, however, that do not allow us to clarify whether the charges were true. “But that public shaming may have encouraged Leonardo to turn in on himself.”
The result of this inward gaze, Mills explains, is that “we don’t know much about Leonardo the man. The attentions of scholars have particularly focused on the relationship between Leonardo and the painter Gian Giacomo Caprotti (Oreno, 1480 - Milan, 1524), whom the Tuscan genius nicknamed “Salaì” (the name of a devil in Luigi Pulci’s Morgante ) because of his character (Leonardo himself described him as a “thief, liar, obstinate, greedy” in a note in which he recalled how Caprotti had robbed him of some coins he kept in his bag: the fact dates back to 1497, seven years after Salaì, only ten years old, had entered Leonardo’s workshop).
Et a questo modo à avere a fare di molte cose, cioè servito parecchie dozine di persone delle quali ne so buon data, et alchuno dirò d’alchuno: Bartolomeo di Pasquino orafo, he is in Vacchereccia; Lionardo di Ser Piero da Vinci, he is with Andrea de Verrochio; Baccino farsettaio, he is from Or San Michele in that street that there are two large workshops of cimatori, which goes to the loggia de’ Cierchi: he has opened workshop again of farsettajo; Lionardo Tornabuoni, dicto il teri: he wears black.
Historian Martin Rocke, who has devoted an extensive study to the practice of sodomy in Renaissance Florence, has calculated that during the seventy-year period of the Officers of the Night, between 15 and 16 thousand men accused of entertaining homosexual activities were tried, with over 2.400 convictions (an incredibly high number when one considers that, at the end of the fifteenth century, Florence had a population of about 50 thousand, compared to 80 thousand in Venice where a similar magistracy, that of the “Lords of the Night,” operated, and where, however, only 268 convictions for sodomy were issued between 1406 and 1500).
Leonardo never showed any interest in women and even wrote that heterosexual intercourse disgusted him. Beyond the fact that a similar assumption could be made to prove the opposite thesis as well, one understands how a writing by an author who lived three centuries after Leonardo da Vinci, and who does not even mention the name of his source, is such a weak piece of evidence that it cannot be taken into any consideration when trying to prove Leonardo da Vinci’s orientation.
Know that masculine love is the work only of virtue, which, by joining men together, with diverse affections of friendship, so that from one tender ettà come in the virile more fortified friends.” These are the elements that led Zöllner to assert that in the 16th century Leonardo’s homosexuality was taken for granted.
| The incarnate angel, preserved at the Rossana & Carlo Pedretti Foundation in Lamporecchio |
In conclusion, while it is true that there is no granitic evidence to establish that Leonardo was a sodomite (everyone will make up his own mind based on the above), there is also no evidence to attribute relationships with women to him.
The most recent theory has it that Leonardo had been accompanied by a courtesan, a certain "Cremona,“ named after the city from which she came. Perhaps unsurprisingly, he never married, and chose instead to surround himself with beautiful young men, in particular Salai (a nickname meaning ‘little devil’) and Melzi, both of whom Leonardo included in his last will.
However in an attempt to control the practice, the city government encouraged citizens to denounce it. However, it is generally understood that it is in fact St John who occupied this position. Consider that he was a beautiful young man, and maximally in his fifteenth year.” Phidias replies, “Are you not ashamed to say this?” And Leonardo: “How ashamed?
The first instance (kicking the dog) is an example of displacement, the redirection of uncomfortable feelings towards someone or something less important, which is an immature ego defense. “That’s what opera is so good at doing: it speaks to the unconscious.”
For Clayton, who this year curated a series of exhibitions based on the Royal Collection’s outstanding holding of Leonardo drawings, the opera takes us into territory that is often beyond the scope of a museum.
“In my earliest recollection of my childhood,” Leonardo da Vinci writes, “it seemed to me that, I being in the cradle, a kite came to me and opened its mouth with its tail, and many times beat me with its tail inside my lips.” In essence, Leonardo recalls having a dream in which a kite repeatedly struck his mouth with its tail.
His art and his life, Suwa Culture Center, 1983
Warning: the translation into English of the original Italian article was created using automatic tools.
John we can perceive “the effusion of a homosexual elderly man” (a thesis supported by another great Leonardo scholar, Martin Kemp), and on the other hand, also an interpretation in a neo-Platonic key, with alleged meanings that refer to the thesis of the androgyny of the original and perfect man: according to the scholar, the conturbance of St.
John, which we find in other works of Leonardo (such as Leda and the Swan: we do not, however, perceive the same erotic charge from it due to the fact that the Leonardo image has come down to us only through copies and reproductions) is peculiar to figures that make themselves bearers of “an all too disconcerting naturalness seen first and foremost as generative and metamorphic power (but also as necessity),” and is explained “on the basis of his theoretical speculation.” The idea that the sensuality of certain of his subjects is therefore to be traced back to Leonardo’s highly inquisitive attitude may not convince many, but it is enough to give the reader an idea of how complicated, if not impossible, it is to infer Leonardo’s sexual orientation simply by looking at his works, without taking into account the historical and cultural context in which he operated and especially without taking into account his ideas, which we know extensively thanks to his notes.
| Francesco Melzi, Portrait of Leonardo da Vinci (c.
Dall’Orto also points out that while it is a given that Salaì entered Leonardo’s workshop in 1490, mentions of him in the genius’ notes do not appear until 1494: “if fourteen years old seems decidedly young for a partner to us today,” the scholar writes, “Leonardo was a child of his time, and those were times when a twelve-year-old girl could be given in marriage to a made man, even with the blessing of the Church.” Consequently, even without wanting to imagine that Leonardo had relations with a ten-year-old boy, the age of fourteen was not considered disreputable to the morals of the time. “Relationships like this between adult men and teenage boys were actually quite common in the world Leonardo moved in,” says Mullin. Salaí by contrast ended up in possession of more paintings than Leonardo left him, which suggests that he either stole or faked them. |