The Gay Michelangelo: A Portrait of the Artist’s Lifelong Struggle With Same-Sex Attraction 

There are certain circumstances present in a young man’s early life that often contribute to a later homosexual state in adulthood; I labeled this the “gay boy syndrome.” It usually includes: an absent or domineering parent, in particular - the father, an experience of sexual molestation, and or bullying from male peers. Typically the presence of one of these incidents is enough to help facilitate a swerve towards the eroticization of the same sex; in the case of Michelangelo Buonarroti, they were all in evidence. 

Michelangelo was born in 1474, the second of six children; his mother died after a prolonged illness when he 7 years old. His father was overly preoccupied with money, but demanding and unambitious. Eager to have one less child around the house, in 1488, his father took the not unusual step of having the already artistic Michelangelo apprenticed with Florentine painter Domenico Ghirlandaio. From that point forwards, Michelangelo’s relationship with his father and siblings would remain cold, but distantly cordial. 

At this time, Florence was the nucleus of the Italian Renaissance, a rebirth of classical appreciation for Ancient Greek and Roman thought; most vividly expressed through the medium of sculpture. So extraordinary were the talents of the young Michelangelo, that he caught the attention of Lorenzo de Medici (the Magnificent) the head of a wealthy merchant oligarchy and a famous benefactor to the Arts. At his private villa and gardens, Lorenzo created a highly sophisticated workshop and educational program for aspiring artists. An integral part of this milieu was a revival of Neoplatonic theory which boasted that through the appreciation of beauty, principally the physical beauty of the human body, the male being the utmost example, one could come closer to God; conjoined with this cult of beauty was a similar revival of Athenian boy-love; the practice of older males guiding boys into manhood with this process normally taking on a limited sexual component; symbolized by the near lascivious representation of the Lorenzo de Medici commissioned “David” (1430) by Donatello. 

Far from being sedate and bucolic, the atmosphere at the Medici mansion was highly competitive; quickly, the remarkable work of Michelangelo in sculpture set him apart from the other would-be masters. This inevitably caused envy as some of his fellow pupils mocked him; going as far as to permanently scar him with a severely broken nose; an iconic physical attribute that would remain for the rest of his life. Yet, as his first biographer, Giorgio Vasari, would mention, the young Michelangelo was gifted with an extraordinary “holiness of conduct.” For, from his childhood, Michelangelo was a mystic; in an age when the arts were seen as an extremely viable means to fame and fortune, as more explicitly evidenced in his later career, Michelangelo often went above and beyond the precepts of the commission, for the sake of art, and for his own personal and spiritual consummation.

From his earliest surviving studies and immature works, namely “The Battle of the Centaurs,” the absorption of the Medici preoccupation with a strange sort of chaste homoeroticism is blatantly evident; even reemerging oddly in the background of an early easel painting of the Holy Family – now referred to as the “Doni Tondo;” witnessed by the odd placement of lounging nude males in the background. Yet, the triumph of the nude male body as a vehicle towards salvation acquired its most heroic status in Michelangelo’s “David;” created when he was only in his late-twenties. Unlike the ephebic Donatello version, Michelangelo accentuates the masculine: unnaturally large hands and feet; vascular arms, a protruding and rounded buttock; Here, the tension between Michelangelo’s homosexuality and his faith is subdued - and God is glorified through the beauty of His creation; as “David” goes beyond the antique prototypes as a genuinely Christian work: the deadness of ancient models acquires life - as if the Incarnation (God become Man) has taken the body beyond just a thing of beauty into the world of the divine; yet, David stands alone - a solitary celebration of man and his nearness to God through physical perfection; a stance of such sheer confidence and solidified masculinity that it would not be broached until the American persona of the lone lawman against the brutality of barbarism became realized in 1950s and 60s movie and television Westerns; Michelangelo as originator of the gay macho-man; albeit with the sexual component always in careful check. This preoccupation with manliness would be epitomized in Michelangelo’s borderline grotesque depiction of the rippling male chest and stomach for the much later accomplished Tomb of Lorenzo de Medici. Yet, in his youth, when Michelangelo most believed that the body beautiful was rapturously God-like, did he create in “David” the perfect balance between masculinity and a lithe spirit yearning for heaven.

Despite his love of the male body, Michelangelo’s endeavors at female representation results oftentimes in an incongruous man with breasts attached; his women are misshapen and clunky; they are hideous drag-queens; one critic described his image of “Night” as a female bodybuilder with implants; renowned art historian Kenneth Clark called Michelangelo’s female breasts “humiliating appendages.” These strange women are seen throughout the Sistine Chapel: on both the ceiling and his mid-career work “The Last Judgment.” Their uninspiring presence heightens the triumphalism of the men; in particular the Ignudi (the 20 figures of athletic males that were placed in each corner of the five narrative scenes running along the center of the ceiling.) These unbelievably beautiful bodies are demonstrations of the Lord’s perfect creation before the Fall of Man; God’s supreme Love for Man: as also shown in the stunning body of the newly made Adam; yet, also the Ignudi are blissfully self-contained, somewhat unaware, and wholly glamorous – worthy of their own admiration; they exist for beauty’s sake. This again reveals the underlying tension in Michelangelo: the Ignudi as pagan idols of beauty now infused with a soul, somewhat weighted down and made frantic by their new found responsibility of restored humanity. In contrast, at mid-career, Michelangelo would go over the edge, in the near pornographic “Dying Slave;” where the sublime has been taken over by the erotic. The Sistine is balanced; a victory of controlled physicality over lust. 

The Sistine ceiling, besides the painting itself, also reveals the fullness of Michelangelo’s commitment to his art, and, the means by which he dealt with his homosexuality. From the near onset, the commission, though huge, requiring several assistants, was taken on solely by Michelangelo after he became frustrated with the so called experts – as he was not by trade or training a painter, but a sculptor. For four years he labored; almost entirely alone. The stress and strain ruined his health. He said of the process: “Somehow my loins have climbed into my gut, and as a counterweight I use my arse, and where my feet are going eyes don’t know.” Despite the destruction to his own body, he created a vision of manly beauty that would serve as an artistic model for centuries; and, this was more than a desire for artistic perfection, but a need to grasp the celestial through the creation of male physical splendor. For that, to even slightly grasp the divine – Michelangelo was willing to sacrifice so much; And, in his slavish workmanship, he transferred all his personal longings into his Art: through total commitment to labor, fasting, and a general disregard for his own basic comforts – by means of artistic creation, he mortified his senses while glorifying his deepest compulsions: the pure admiration for beauty in the masculine. Interestingly, the History of Art is strewn with similar same-sex afflicted artists who submerged desire with overwork: Caravaggio, American illustrator Joseph Leyendecker, Hollywood designer William Haines, film director James Whale, and even Andy Warhol; to varying degrees, unlike Michelangelo, they were unable to fully transfer their sexual infatuation to their art; a desire for heavenly perfection that got misplaced in the purely sexual; a yearning for the transcendent that sometimes fell back down to earth with a thud; a sensitive artistic temperament and a need to create beauty that became corrupted -giving way to decadence, pornography, and madness. With the exception of Caravaggio, these men were sons of a more godless time; when the heavenly had been supplanted by the greatness of Man; creating an idea of salvation through expression - where lofty and noble aspirations turned to excess. Michelangelo is the ultimate example of the personal will displaced by the moral imperative.

Michelangelo’s obsession with male nudity, contrasted with the gentle handling of femininity by his contemporary Raphael, combined with his perpetual bachelorhood, and the lack of any women in his life, caused some gossip – perhaps so widespread that Vasari felt it necessary to defend him in print: “Michelangelo’s religious sense has always been evident in his way of life; and, as an admirable example of this, he has avoided court society as much as possible…Certainly one may judge that he has never been surpassed for benevolence, prudence and wisdom in the practice of his art. And all those who attributed his departures from convention to mere caprice or oddity should forgive him because in truth one may see that whoever wishes to reach perfection in art is obliged to flee conventions, because, instead of having the mind distracted by such things, genius requires thought, solicitude and time for reflection.” Here, Vasari painted the portrait of the artist-monk; unlike several of his contemporaries, for instance, the more socially well connected and personally fearless, Leonardo da Vinci (he was charged with sodomy in 1476), Michelangelo always remained aloof. In 1521, a relative of the artist must have also heard the rumblings about Michelangelo’s private life and stepped forward to warn him; or, to simply inquire; a certain Lionardo wrote Michelangelo, stating somewhat cryptically: “…to abandon practices harmful to the body and the mind, in order that they may not hurt the soul.” Michelangelo’s response has not survived, but the follow up letter from Lionardo does exist; he wrote: “I am delighted you are free of a malady dangerous to the soul and body.” Since no other rumors, besides that of homosexuality, ever swirled around Michelangelo, the practice of which is written here is very clear; and, to the delight of his correspondent – apparently, Michelangelo was uncontaminated by any such activity.

Later in life, Michelangelo fell in love with a young Roman gentleman over 30 years his junior: the cultured and virtuous Tommaso de’ Cavalieri. Michelangelo described Cavalieri as: “[the] light of our century, paragon of all the world.” Although there is only one definitive surviving portrait of him, a superb drawing of Cavalieri that veers into decadence - the beautiful boy as harlot dressed in female clothes; anticipating the modern phenomena of shocking pop-culture gender confusion; Cavalieri encapsulated Michelangelo’s idea of masculine beauty. He was Antinous to Michelangelo’s Hadrian; the homosexual Roman Emperor Hadrian fell in love with the beautiful slave boy Antinous; after his drowning, Hadrian plastered the Empire with the image of his dead obsession. In one of his many poems to Cavalieri, Michelangelo surmised his belief in beauty as the route to God: “Here in your lovely face I see, my lord, what in this life no words could ever tell; with that, although still clothed in flesh, my soul has often already risen up to God.” In this young man, for Michelangelo, art met life: the image of the perfect man on the ceiling of the Sistine came alive. Yet, like his approach to art, Michelangelo mixed desire with religious fervor: beauty as the path to deliverance.

As Michelangelo advanced from middle-age into an artist of advanced years, a radical change took place: in his art and in his thought. His obsession with masculine beauty faded and then disappeared altogether. During this period, he maintained a correspondence with the only woman he ever had a serious relationship: the widowed poetess Vittoria Colonna. As with many gay men, his connection was too emotionally close as would be typical between a heterosexual man and a heterosexual woman; for them, it was a spiritual and artistic bond, rather than a physical one, reflected in the many poems they exchanged. Hence, after her death in 1547, Michelangelo became even more introspective; in 1555 he wrote: 

Written roughly 10 years before his death, Michelangelo seems resolved to the lasting oppression of his same-sex attraction: a sin which he has failed to act upon, but which still haunts his every waking moment. Almost in recompense, Michelangelo becomes obsessed with the Crucifixion, in drawings, and in his final pieces of sculpture. Unlike the homoerotic “Slave,” openly taking a sort of masturbatory pleasure in his own exquisiteness, Christ in Michelangelo’s late-phase works seems to defy the body; in one spectacular drawing, the body literally dissolves; there is no longer a need for a reliance upon the beauty of male nudity - for, the body has ceased, and the aspirations of Man become truly spiritual. Michelangelo only once before broached such near perfection: inspired by the incredibly handsome neo-classicism of Cavalieri, Michelangelo focused his attention on Christ’s Resurrection in a series of masterful drawings that he sent as gifts to his young paramour; the artist remakes Jesus as the Christian Apollo - echoing back to the earliest Roman catacomb mosaics of a beardless Christ blazing like the Greek sun-god. Yet, in old age, Michelangelo lost confidence in this mode of artistic and religious expression; like many homosexual men who begin to confront their mortality - the world of the purely physical begins to fall apart as the afterlife looms ahead.

In his final incomplete work, The Rondanini, Michelangelo finally dies to his self, the same-sex attraction that he made a life-long attempt to contain is finally conquered; the beautiful young men of the past are gone forever: all that remains is Christ and the artist - Michelangelo as Joseph of Arimathea, cradling the body of the dead Savior; in a slightly earlier version, the head of Joseph is clearly a self-portrait. The suffering Michelangelo is joined forever to the Passion; all that was material is lost; only love remains. The bodies and forms are reduced to an almost Romanesque sort of symbolism: beauty has been given over to emotion. It’s a fulfillment of what St. John of the Cross expressed in words, Michelangelo created in stone: “Their goal…transcends all of this, even the loftiest object that can be known or experienced. Consequently they must pass beyond everything to unknowing.”