Was Michelangelo gay?

[YosefYosep]

I heard somewhere that he was a homosexual, but I do realize that back then being gay could mean something totally different. Just curious.

 

[jmcrae]

I heard somewhere that he was a homosexual, but I do realize that back then being gay could mean something totally different. Just curious.

I strongly doubt it. The “evidence” for his homosexuality is that he was good at drawing the human body.

Lots of straight people are good at drawing, too.

 

[Auntie_A]

Ah, revisionism. My lesbian sister has taken all the key figures of history and made over half of them gay!

 

[George_Stegmeir]

If you listen to the American Homosexual apologists, you will find they claim every historical figure, including Jesus was gay.
Such is the depth of their perversion that many of them actually believe it, and they have enough sympathetic publicists that these lies have become quite common.
Josef Goebels, the great NAZI propagandist who invented “hype” once said: “If you repeat a lie often enough, it soon becomes the truth”.

 

[CaliLobo]

From looking at his poetry, we know he at least had same-sex attraction, although we don’t know who he dated.

So, it is very plausible he was gay. But then, many straight people do not consider themselves gay but have had same-sex experiences.

But why is this issue so important? Who cares?

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michelangelo#Michelangelo.27s_sexuality:_the_poems

 

[Dakota_Roberts]

I strongly doubt it. The “evidence” for his homosexuality is that he was good at drawing the human body.

Lots of straight people are good at drawing, too.

Based on what he personally wrote it is probable that he was attracted to men on an emotional level, plausible that he was sexually attracted to them, but it doesn’t seem like he engaged in sex with males. Most of his letters to other men contained homoeroticism which while abnormal by today’s standard was common enough to not be unusual in the Middle Ages through the Early Modern Period.

We really shouldn’t project anachronistic concepts like sexual orientation into the past.

 

[PietroPaolo]

It is impossible to read Michelangelo’s poetry and determine he was same sex attracted simply because those same poems written by a 21st c. American would indicate same sex attraction. We have to remember he lived in a different culture, centuries ago, and wrote in a different language. Playing psychoanalyst with someone you’ve never met is a bad idea, especially when they lived so long ago, in a different culture, and you can only diagnosis them via a translator. Think about it like this, if you had a male friend who kissed all his male friends every time he said good-bye or hello to them, you’d have a good case for ssa. Now say he’s an Italian, living in Italy. Evidence of ssa? Not so much. It really depends on the culture - superficially reading a wiki article on someone’s poetry isn’t enough to determine anything.

When asked if he would marry, Michelangelo is reported to have responded, “I have too much of a wife in this art that has always afflicted me, and the works I shall leave behind shall be my children, and even if they are nothing they will live for a long while.” (Vasari, The Lives of the Artists). I’ve always thought it more probable that he was primarily concerned with his art, although some biographers suggest he had relations with Rome’s female prostitutes.

We really shouldn’t project anachronistic concepts like sexual orientation into the past.

This is a great point. There really were no “gay people” in Renaissance Italy, i.e. no one would have identified themselves as being homosexual, rather they would have been seen (and seen themselves) as engaging in sodomy, which was widely held to be disordered and immoral although it was practiced. Asking if Michelangelo was “gay” isn’t entirely dissimilar from asking whether he was a Republican - it just wasn’t a part of the world he lived (and wrote poetry) in.

 

[agnes_therese]

But why is this issue so important? Who cares?

That’s my question as well.

 

[Dakota_Roberts]

It is impossible to read Michelangelo’s poetry and determine he was same sex attracted simply because those same poems written by a 21st c. American would indicate same sex attraction. We have to remember he lived in a different culture, centuries ago, and wrote in a different language. Playing psychoanalyst with someone you’ve never met is a bad idea, especially when they lived so long ago, in a different culture, and you can only diagnosis them via a translator. Think about it like this, if you had a male friend who kissed all his male friends every time he said good-bye or hello to them, you’d have a good case for ssa. Now say he’s an Italian, living in Italy. Evidence of ssa? Not so much. It really depends on the culture - superficially reading a wiki article on someone’s poetry isn’t enough to determine anything.

When asked if he would marry, Michelangelo is reported to have responded, “I have too much of a wife in this art that has always afflicted me, and the works I shall leave behind shall be my children, and even if they are nothing they will live for a long while.” (Vasari, The Lives of the Artists). I’ve always thought it more probable that he was primarily concerned with his art, although some biographers suggest he had relations with Rome’s female prostitutes.

This is a great point. There really were no “gay people” in Renaissance Italy, i.e. no one would have identified themselves as being homosexual, rather they would have been seen (and seen themselves) as engaging in sodomy, which was widely held to be disordered and immoral although it was practiced. Asking if Michelangelo was “gay” isn’t entirely dissimilar from asking whether he was a Republican - it just wasn’t a part of the world he lived (and wrote poetry) in.

Yes, distance from time and culture make it impossible to know.

It could have been sublimation, the channeling of something forbidden into something beautiful and constructive

Well, more of the fact that everything gay minus the sex was fine at the time, indeed, love between men was often encouraged.

 

[rossum]

I strongly doubt it. The “evidence” for his homosexuality is that he was good at drawing the human body.

Rather more specific than that. Compare his male nudes to his female nudes. For example, here is one of his female nudes from the Medici Tomb:

(Please Note: This uploaded content is no longer available.)

Night from the tomb of Lorenzo de Medici

To me that looks very much like a male body with a pair of bumps on the chest. It does not look like a female body. His clothed females are a big improvement, but he certainly did a better job with male nudes than female nudes. Think of the David and others.

rossum

 

[DexUK]

I have to ask, what difference does it make if he was or wasn’t?

The only evidence that Michelangelo leaves is his body of work. That is his legacy. What, if anything, he did in his private life is destined to stay unknown in the mists of history. Speculation does nobody any good and simply borders on the prurient.

 

[PietroPaolo]

Rather more specific than that. Compare his male nudes to his female nudes. For example, here is one of his female nudes from the Medici Tomb:

http://www.wallcoo.net/paint/michel.../Michelangelo_Buonarroti_sculpture_ml0009.jpg

Night from the tomb of Lorenzo de Medici

To me that looks very much like a male body with a pair of bumps on the chest. It does not look like a female body. His clothed females are a big improvement, but he certainly did a better job with male nudes than female nudes. Think of the David and others.

rossum

His specialty was certainly the heroic male nude in imitation of Ancient Greek art, but it hardly follows that he wanted to have sex with men. I shutter to think of the conclusions you’d draw if he specialized in horses, perhaps that would indicate a penchant for bestiality? The whole idea of “discovering” his “sexuality” in the manner you are suggesting is absurd and can bring forth no conclusions. Simply put, we will never know and, in the end, who cares?

 

[fix]

Ah, revisionism. My lesbian sister has taken all the key figures of history and made over half of them gay!

Standard practice in some circles for many years. It is about affirmation.

 

[Dakota_Roberts]

Standard practice in some circles for many years. It is about affirmation.

Claiming major figures is standard practice for every non-mainstream group that wants to be so, for example see Italians rallying around Christopher Columbus, a Genovese, to show that they could be Americans.

 

[fix]

Claiming major figures is standard practice for every non-mainstream group that wants to be so, for example see Italians rallying around Christopher Columbus, a Genovese, to show that they could be Americans.

And that is the same as claiming one is a homosexual?

 

[Dakota_Roberts]

And that is the same as claiming one is a homosexual?

I am making a comparison as claiming major figures allows a group to become mainstream. To claim Columbus was Italian is also anachronistic to a wide degree.

 

[WildCatholic]

I’ve heard that Michaelangelo was gay in orientation, but lived with almost “the chastity of a monk” according to one churchmen (I wish I could find the source, but I can’t). So my thought is this. He probably wasn’t, but IF he was it sounds like he followed the church teaching in that he had SSA, but did not engage in homosexual acts.

BTW, I agree that all this historical revisionism on who was gay and who was not is pretty silly. I think its because we oversexualize the culture. For example, there are many writers who never married and because they had close friendships with those of the same sex, they were seen as being “gay”. Sadly I’ve even heard this about Cardinal Newman, the poet and Jesuit Gerard Manley Hopkins, and a few other churchmen. I think its hogwash. People today don’t get that some people just aren’t interested, or in some cases actually give up sex and that if you aren’t you are strange. This even affects middle school aged kids. How many times have people been called “gay” simply because they don’t have a relationship of the opposite sex. What’s sad is now the media pushes this agenda and some otherwise good folks who just aren’t interested in relationships might think they are gay and end up in sin.

Sorry for the rant, but I just hate that people assume that so many historical figures were gay. Seriously, if they were we’d here about in documents at the time.

 

[Deo_Volente]

Grace & Peace!

And that is the same as claiming one is a homosexual?

There is a lot of evidence from Michelangelo’s poems to suggest that he was attracted to other men–there is also evidence to suggest that he was indeed attracted to women. But there is no reason to claim that Michelangelo was “gay” or even “bisexual” because there’s no reason to impose on him terms which he would both not understand and by which he would not likely understand himself. A post-Foucaultian sexual identity simply will not work for anyone before Foucault.

We can only go as far, therefore, as Michelangelo himself would go–that is, we can only go by what he himself said. Clearly he was ravished by both male and female beauty (he wrote of both in terms that were passionate and sensual). Clearly he did not think such ravishment something of which he need be ashamed. It is more likely that he would have styled himself a lover of beauty in all its forms as opposed to…“gay.”

So while honesty must prevent us from ascribing to Michelangelo the term “gay,” honesty would also require that we not cover up or ignore what Michelangelo himself says about his own passions and attractions simply because we may find them inconvenient.

Under the Mercy,
Mark

All is Grace and Mercy! Deo Gratias!

 

[PietroPaolo]

I am making a comparison as claiming major figures allows a group to become mainstream. To claim Columbus was Italian is also anachronistic to a wide degree.

I would hesitate to suggest “being Italian” is anachronistic to Columbus, especially in the same way as “being gay” is to Michelangelo. The idea of “being gay” i.e. defining your identity by your sexual attraction to members of one sex or the other is entirely foreign to cinquecento Italy, thus it is anachronistic. “Being Italian” would certainly not have been the first way Columbus would have defined himself, but it wasn’t a concept he would have been totally unfamiliar with (as Michelangelo would have been with “being gay”) and it was one he would have, most certainly, assented to. Obviously, Columbus wouldn’t have identified as an “Italian citizen” as there was no Italian State to be a citizen of, but Italians in his day recognized a shared culture and ethnic identity (“being Italian”). See chapter 26 of Machiavelli’s The Prince, where Machiavelli calls for the liberation of Italy from “the barbarians” i.e. non-Italians or the insistence that the Pope be Italian (not just Roman) for two of many examples contemporary examples of a shared sense of “being Italian.”

 

[livingwordunity]

Homosexual activists trying to project their sin onto others is rumors, gossip, detraction and calumny and is an example of how one sin leads to another. When people don’t have the truth they turn to the father of lies for their inspiration.

2479 Detraction and calumny destroy the reputation and honor of one’s neighbor. Honor is the social witness given to human dignity, and everyone enjoys a natural right to the honor of his name and reputation and to respect. Thus, detraction and calumny offend against the virtues of justice and charity.

Source
Catechism of the Catholic Church