Interpreting and re-interpreting

This first chapter focuses on reinterpretation of queer artists and art in the past. It traces them through history to the 20th century, where progressive laws and new LGBTQ+ rights have allowed queer people to increasingly be in the public eye.

Saint Sebastian

Saint Sebastian is emblematic of a gay male reinterpretation of a sacred figure.

The body of an attractive young man and the phallic shape of the arrows that penetrate him, literally, during his torment and martyrdom, is part of a queer aesthetic that originated in the mid-19th century. In the cis-gay aesthetic, the image of Sebastian has been increasingly embellished, aestheticised, and even rejuvenated since the Renaissance. This continuous reinterpretation has made more recent depictions of Saint Sebastian unrecognisable to the middle-aged, bearded soldier in armour he was before.

His image thus becomes increasingly effeminate, with the sculpted body and clothes disappearing. Authors like Oscar Wilde and Marcel Proust have made him a symbol of the ostracism and marginalisation experienced by homosexuals.

The sexualisation of Saint Sebastian could fall under what Whitney Davis considered a case of 'queered beauty', namely a 'reappropriation' and re-signification of artworks by a community. But artworks depicting Saint Sebastian have often been created by artists who, according to chronicles, felt an attraction to men themselves (though not necessarily Bronzino). This is why it has been argued that some Saint Sebastians represent a purely homoerotic take on male beauty by some artists.

Caravaggio

All the young men depicted by Caravaggio are homoerotic subjects, or rather portrayed in a homoerotic manner.

This interpretation has also been attributed to them because perhaps the artist himself was homosexual or bisexual. In any case, he had a special relationship with a variety of his models.

One of the most documented gay relationships is the one between Caravaggio and Mario Minniti (the subject of his Boy with a Basket of Fruit). The relationship between Minniti and Caravaggio has been reshaped several times, as Minniti returned to Sicily and married a woman. However, it must be acknowledged that even this does not denote his heterosexuality. Getting married and having children did not necessarily imply having a specific sexual orientation as codified by today's standards.

Michelangelo

The poems we still have of Italian artist Michelangelo have been purged of their homoerotic references, erased by his nephew who inherited his belongings upon his death.

Fortunately, they have now been reconstructed. Michelangelo dedicates many of these poems to his young patron Tommaso de’ Cavalieri, who does not reciprocate his affection. He also dedicates sketches and drawings to him depicting the myth of Zeus and Ganymede, a myth already in vogue at the time to speak, without explicitly stating, of homosexual attraction.

But Tommaso is not the first he falls in love with - he writes epitaphs and poems to other young collaborators and models. Before becoming famous in Rome, where he worked alone, Michelangelo had matured artistically in Florence, where artists' workshops were exclusively male and constituted homosocial environments.

This phenomenon was so well-known that the German word for 'Florentine' had the meaning of 'homosexual' for centuries until the creation of the word itself. Much of how homosexuality was experienced in Medici Florence has parallels with today (such as the fact that some people experienced it as an identity). Furthermore, Michelangelo constructs his aesthetic canon on an extreme masculinity that has been interpreted retrospectively as his obsession with male musculature.

Scipione Borghese

Cardinal Scipione Borghese had a lasting relationship with Stefano Pignatelli, his childhood friend with whom he was accused and prosecuted by the Holy Inquisition for sodomy.

The charges were dropped but he was never officially acquitted. Many satirical poems were written about Borghese and Pignatelli as lovers. Borghese commissioned Bernini to sculpt a marble mattress for the rediscovered statue of a sleeping hermaphrodite in a sensual pose which he kept in his private bedroom.

Hendrik Andersen and Henry James

The relationship between sculptor Hendrik Andersen and American writer Henry James is renowned. It lasted until death but was mostly lived at a distance.

Henry James wrote many passionate letters to his young lover. In Colm Tóibín's book The Master, James is described as a man saddened by life, who left his country and his beloved family, rejected friendships and ultimately never resolved his sexuality.

He repressed his feelings as much as he could, especially since he lived in England and was shocked by the outcome of the Oscar Wilde case. His inclusion in Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick's book Epistemology of the Closet as a homosexual writer was seen as a revolution that removed James from the Western canon of heterosexual white males and included him in the contemporary world.

Henry James' legacy proves that even in the presence of evidence and feelings that a given community recognises as its own, academia struggles to accept it.

An example of Andersen's work that denotes his interest, almost to the point of obsession, with the athleticism of the male body would be his sculpture titled David. In the work La Notte, Andersen emphasises the physical strength and beauty of the male body, similar to the depiction of the muscular male body that characterises many of Michelangelo's works.

Teatro delle meraviglie

The metadata associated with this object describes ‘female dancers’, while actually the people on the stage are men. The description states that these 'dancers' were actually 'men in disguise'. An example of how easy it is to lose pieces of queer stories in metadata but more generally in collections.