Leonardo da Vinci, whose ideals as revealed in
his work are so strangely bisexual, lay under homosexual suspicion in his
youth. In 1476, when he was 24 years of age, charges were made against him
before the Florentine officials for the control of public morality, and
were repeated, though they do not appear to have been substantiated. There
is, however, some ground for supposing that Leonardo was imprisoned in his
youth.[60] Throughout life he loved to surround himself with beautiful
youths and his pupils were more remarkable for their attractive appearance
than for their skill; to one at least of them he was strongly attached,
while there is no record of any attachment to a woman. Freud, who has
studied Leonardo with his usual subtlety, considers that his temperament
was marked by "ideal homosexuality."[61]
Michelangelo, one of the very chief artists of the Renaissance period, we
cannot now doubt, was sexually inverted. The evidence furnished by his own
letters and poems, as well as the researches of numerous recent
workers,--Parlagreco, Scheffler, J.A. Symonds, etc.,--may be said to have
placed this beyond question.
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