Leonardo gay

On 9 April , Leonardo da Vinci was accused of sodomy in an anonymous report to the Florentine authorities. Leonardo, then just short of his 24th birthday, was one of four men said to have had sex with the year-old Jacopo Saltarelli. In Leonardo, the character is shown to be gay – something that chimes with the current academic consensus. The subject of da Vinci’s sexuality has been discussed for decades, with historians.

Historian Elizabeth Abbott argues that understanding Leonardo da Vinci’s sex life, or lackthereof, provides a rare glimpse into how sexuality and male love was understood and practised in. The artist was twice publicly accused of having gay sex, his youthful male protege was removed because of the “wicked life he had led” with Leonardo, and his own writings repeatedly mused on his own attraction to men – and borderline revulsion to sex with women.

In the paper, titled Leonardo da Vinci and a Memory of his Childhood, the renowned psychoanalysis argues that the artist was celibate but was secretly gay, and that he sublimated these. Leonardo is always described in all sources as extremely handsome and elegant. His character was also considered to be extremely sociable and entertaining.

It is therefore surprising that he remained unmarried. That he was gay is only one possibility. He could have been asexual as well. It is also possible that he had affairs with ladies-in-waiting that were not in keeping with his status and were therefore clandestine. There are no contemporary historical sources proving Leonardo's homosexuality. There is evidence of a court case in for sodomy homosexuality.

The cause was an anonymous complaint. Leonardo and others involved were acquitted. Due to the circumstances, it was probably a slander with the aim of harming the ruling Medici family, whereby Leonardo was caught in the crossfire.

how did leonardo da vinci die

Leonardo took the Milanese boy Salai as a pupil when he was about 10 years old. Both of them accompanied the master painter until his death. There are no contemporary historical sources that suggest a relationship between Leonardo and Salai. There is evidence, however, that Salai was married to a Blanca de Anono. Leonardo was a native of Florence.

Florence was a republic in the Middle Ages and was not subject to any noble house. Moreover, the banking houses of Florence in the 15th century were the largest in Europe e. The banks had many debtors and therefore many enemies. These circumstances led to hostility, even warlike. It is a typical insult in Italy to insult someone sexually e.

It therefore became fashionable to accuse the Florentines in general of homosexuality. The poet Lomazzo was then instrumental in spreading the legend of a gay Leonardo. Well after Leonardo's death, he published a stage work that has Leonardo saying he did it with Salai. The work became very popular and the legend managed to persist. Although the play is a work of fiction, it is still cited as a historical source today cf.

Besides Lomazzo, the famous psychologist Sigmund Freud claimed in his essay "A Childhood Memory of Leonardo da Vinci" that Leonardo must have been passively homosexual.

His work is popular science and lacks any historical basis, as he himself states several times. Thus, it served rather to illustrate his psychoanalytical method than to prove Leonardo's homosexuality. Nevertheless, Freud's essay is also frequently cited as evidence. When I made the domeneddio putto, you put me in prison. Now, when I make it big, you will do even worse to me.