Michelangelo gay lover
Michelangelo and Tommaso De’ Cavalieri: an endless passion
A shocking encounter
One of the most shocking moments for Michelangelo that we can study from his letters is the meeting with the young Roman nobleman Tommaso de &#;Cavalieri. He was born around in Rome, but had Florentine origins on his mother&#;s side, who was the daughter of the banker Tommaso Baccelli. He was 23 years old when he met Michelangelo during his stay in Rome, in December , when the artist was It was a sculptor, Pierantonio Cecchini, another Florentine living in Rome under the protection of Cardinal Ridolfi, who introduced Tommaso to the great master, perhaps because the young man wanted to collect drawing lessons or simply to be able to meet in person the most renowned and skilled artist of sixteenth-century Italy.
Whatever the reason for the meeting, we know that it shook Michelangelo to the core and led him to write, the next day, one of the most poignant letters of his entire career. In order to motivate the beginning of this correspondence, Michelangelo compares his decision to crossing a river, &#
Was Michelangelo Gay? Let’s Examine the Evidence
Published: Feb 15, written by Rosie Lesso, MA Contemporary Art Theory, BA Fine Art
The amazing and monumental Michelangelo, master of the High Renaissance, produced some of the most famous and impressive artworks of all moment. From his colossal statue of David to the incredible Sistine Chapel ceiling, his artwork is a testament to the scope and ambition of human achievement. A deep understanding of the human body was at the core of Michelangelo’s art, and almost all his paintings featured, or were based on the male body. This has led many to speculate about his sexuality. Can we uncover any truths that suggest Michelangelo was gay, or is this one of those mysterious questions that will never be answered? Let’s have a look at the evidence and see…
Some Say Michelangelo Was Gay Because His Art Was So Focused on the Nude Male Body
Although Michelangelo painted a huge variety of figures throughout his incredibly prolific career, his most notable and ambitious works of art are undoubtedly dominated by the male build, which has led many
Tara Austen Weaver
An odd thought popped into my head recently as I was folding laundry:
Michelangelo was totally gay.
Michelangelo—famed artist of the Renaissance, painter of the Sistine Chapel ceiling, sculptor of the massive marble David with killer abs and the slingshot that took down Goliath—was queer.
It had never occurred to me before (why would it?). But as soon as it did, I felt sure I was right.
A quick search confirmed that I was.
Michelangelo, in the latter years of his life, had a close relationship with a childish nobleman. The poems he wrote this man are so lustful that, after Michelangelo’s death, a family member went through the text and changed the male pronouns to female, so it sounded like they were written about a woman.
Once I had discovered this, I kept digging.
You know who else was queer? Leonardo da Vinci. Artist, engineer, scientist, sculptor, architect—one of humanity’s great geniuses. As a fresh man, he was charged under sodomy laws (the term used in those days) and place in jail. Historians argue about this —was he gay, was he asexual, did
Published in:May-June issue.
NEW YORK’S Metropolitan Museum of Art recently mounted an unusually large and comprehensive exhibition of drawings and writings by the Renaissance Italian master Michelangelo Buonarroti (–). Among the scores of drawings in the exhibition, titled Michelangelo: Divine Draftsman and Designer (which closed in February), one group forms an exceptionally coherent and unprecedented ensemble of drawings that is only rarely gathered together.
Between and , the year-old Michelangelo gave six highly finished drawings on mythological and allegorical subjects to the art-loving childish Roman nobleman Tommaso de’ Cavalieri, who was the great cherish of the painter-sculptor-architect’s long and often solitary life. Soon after they met in Rome, Michelangelo poured out his passionate yearn for for the exceptionally handsome, intelligent twenty-something in both visual and verbal arts. He showered Tommaso with dozens of love poems, often closely related in theme and imagery to the drawings. The Met’s wall labels and Web posts dealt more frankly and fully with the