[lbo-talk] Queer Michelangelo

[andie nachgeborenen]

Following up on the issue of whether Michelangelo was
actively homosexual in the sense of having sex with
men ever or often, I see that Ross King, in his fine M
& The Pope's Ceiling, says probably not. Michelangelo
was an ardent advocate of abstinence from any kind of
sex, especially for an artist, which doesn't mean that
he practiced abstinence, of course, but he was pretty
serious about everything. He seems to have developed a
sublimation theory on which having sex would be a
distraction from work. (Mind you, it doesn't seem to
have slowed up the passionately het Raphael, who seems
to have had sex with every attractive woman in Rome,
Florence, Urbino, and points between and beyond. But
things work differently with different people.) 
Michelangelo was also a pretty serious follower of
Savonarola, who disapproved of sex in general and
sodomy in particular. Of course Raphael was an admirer
of Savonarola too, but only up to a point, and
certainly not past the point where it would get in the
way of his enjoying the good things in life, including
sex. Neither King nor (hardly) anyone else doubts that
Michelangelo's sexual orientation was almost
exclusively homosexual, although he wrote neoplatonic
love sonnets to a woman friend.

       
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