Leonardo

A friend asked me about Leonardo Da Vinci being gay. I wrote this back after some investigation inspired by
"The Da Vinci Code"

Three out of the four Ninja named turtles (remember them) Leonardo, Donatello, and Michelangelo were homosexual. Raphael was quite straight and very randy. The bio I have of Leonardo is by one Serge Bramley. It is endlessly detailed, bringing up every scrap of info about not only Leonardo, but his family, his fellow artists, associates and bosses. This was an age of extreme creativity and genius talent. And so much of it was crammed in the city of Florence, the hotbed of the Renaissance. Homosexuality was wide spread, and not much was made of it, in spite of the preachers and Bible thumpers, and laws against it. The ideas of Socrates (Plato and Aristotle his students) were brought back to light, translated into Italian (English Spanish Etc...) And revered. All these philosophers were gay, as you probably know. Aristotle was the tutor of Alexander the Great, who had some male lovers as well as the hottest babes in Jerusalem. or was it Damascas? I was quite shocked to find all this out about the greats in our civilization.

About Da Vinci, according to Bramley, he was accused, along with three other Florentines of having sexual debauchery with a youth of 17, connected to a famous family. The boy was a known prostitute hustler, and the case was finally thrown out of court for lack of evidence, or too much evidence or something like that. It was thought to bring discredit to the Medici family. Leonardo was 24 and still working in Verrocchio's studio, where he had been apprenticed since 15 or so. It caused some embarrassment, and his well to do father and unwed mother, (he was a bastard at that, also).... we do not know how they took it. I was told in an art history course that he was expelled from the studio, but this was not mentioned by Bramley.....

After he left Florence to go to work as chief military engineer for the Duke of Milan, where he designed implements of mass destruction, and entertaining shows with puppets and exploding pumpkins, out of which danced sugarplum fairies.... for the Duke's parties and celebrations .... well almost....

Later he came back to Florence to paint a mural on a wall in the town hall. Michaelangelo was to paint one on the opposite wall. Neither of them were finished, due to rough times. The two were not friends. Ego's clashed. The paintings of battle scenes fell apart, bad paint, poor care or something, and now known only through drawings they made. And other admiring artists who studied the exciting scenes.

It was in Milan that Leonardo hooked up with a partner, who I believe stayed with him after the French conquest of Milan. Which ended his job there, as Lodovico was overthrown. Then, Francis 1st, king of France, invited the aging Leonardo and his servant/lover to come live and paint in one of the famous chateaus. He brought with him the unfinshed Mona Lisa and the other paintings now in the Louvre in Paris. (Henry the 8th was King of England, and played in Jousting Tournaments with Frances, a fierce but friendly rivalry, and I think Henry bought the Leonardo's that hang in the National Gallery in London, and Windsor Castle to this day. There are so few of them around the world.

Your eMail and the Da Vinci Code book sent me into all this last year. You can find other books, biographies, in the library, the more modern ones do not bother to white wash the "sin that dares not speak its name"..... Even Bramley points out in Leonardo's writings, warnings against over doing it sexually, and thinks he was maybe impotent, but liked to hang with pretty boys, for aesthetic reasons. He drew a lot of old men too, and loved to contrast on the same page a handsome youth and a grizzled old fart, warts and all..... And he hid his own handsome face with a long beard.....