Gay renaissance paintings
Ganymede was 'the fairest of mortal men; wherefore the gods caught him up on high to be cupbearer to Zeus by reason of his beauty, that he might dwell with the immortals.'
So says Homer in the Iliad. Throughout antiquity, there was a fascination with the tale of how Zeus, king of the gods, fell in love with a human boy. The scene of Zeus swooping down from Olympus to rob away Ganymede, acknowledged as 'The Rape of Ganymede', appeared on pottery, frescoes, statues and mosaics.
Zeus and Ganymede
c.475–425 BC, Attic red-figured kylix, attributed to the Penthesilea Painter. Ferrara Archaeological Museum
While many ancient depictions from Greece exhibit two humans in the tale of Ganymede, the Romans favoured a version more in keeping with Zeus' fondness for wooing mortals in zoological shape. According to the Roman poet Ovid:
'The king of the gods was once fired with devote for Phrygian Ganymede, and when that happened Jupiter set up another shape preferable to his have. Wishing to rotate himself into a bird, he nonetheless scorned to transform into any retain that which can carry his thunderbolts. Then without suspend, beating the breeze on borrowed pinions, he snatched away the
Two of the greatest artists of the era, da Vinci and Michelangelo, were male lover. This isn't one of those guessing games people sometimes play about known figures of the past, but is copiously well documented. It is adequately documented because in Florence around 1500 people within the charmed circle where art intersected with money and influence wrote quite openly about it. The two artists were, incidentally, gay in quite different ways. Leonardo was heterodox in his religious beliefs (see his famous painting of Saint John the Baptist above, which fuses spirituality with androgynous sexuality) and a cheerful person besides, and he seems to hold been quite cheerful with his identity.
Michelangelo was a devout and much more conventional Catholic who suffered from inner torment throughout his life, which some people think he channeled into his astonishing portrayals of the male build. He was famously ascetic a
Queer Storytelling in Visual Media
The Renaissance through the 17th Century
The Renaissance saw a resurgence of the Classical arts and the birth of humanism (Smalls 2008). The humanists were interested in reconnecting the Classical stories they were familiar with their pederastic origins, as well as with the conservative Christian and Catholic themes that had prevailed in art and society for the past millennium. In Italy, one of the hearts of the Renaissance, humanism led to the increasing toleration of hedonism and bisexuality as Classical values. Classical myths dignified homosexual intercourse, and artists were both privately and publically homosexual.
As the prevalence of public homosexuality increased, so did the repression of homosexuality. In Venice, the Signori di Notti and then the Council of Ten prosecuted cases of sodomy and sentenced those found guilty to corporal punishment and execution (Ruggiero 1985). Religious fundamentalists increased with the Protestant Reformation, during whi
Featuring works from 1539–1992 relating to Homosexual identities and Homoerotic appearances within art. Under the umbrella term of 'art and identity', sexuality resides within its control category. Queer Art explores how artists expressed themselves in a time when established assumptions about gender and sexuality were organism questioned and transformed. Taking a roughly chronological view of the most important shifts and themes when it comes to the slow incline of acceptance of homosexuality. It is important to understand historical context when viewing these works, and the transforming laws and views on homosexuality around the world
Artists featured in this Curation:Derek Jarman (1942–1994), John David Yeadon (b.1948), Colin Hall (b.1952), David Hockney (b.1937), Francis Bacon (1909–1992), Henry Scott Tuke (1858–1929), Ethel Walker (1861–1951), William Strang (1859–1921), Duncan Grant (1885–1978), Simeon Solomon (1840–1905),