Besides the Mona Lisa, The Last Supper and the Vitruvian Man, it seems we also have Leonardo da Vinci to thank for this penis doodle.
Yes, the same genius who is credited as the archetype of the “Renaissance man” also seems to have had a thing for the men of the Renaissance.
Here’s the drawing that was uncovered in Leonardos’s notebook, which was actually drawn by his apprentice Salai (who was very likely also his lover):
The drawing shows two crudely drawn penises marching towards a mysterious hole. The hole, consequently, is labeled “Salai.” So either he picked an interesting place to sign his masterpiece, or there is much to be read from this historic piece of art.
If you have kids and ever find questionable doodles among their schoolwork, rest assured that some of history’s greatest minds operated the same way.
Here’s some background on Leonardo’s sexuality from author and historian Ross King’s Leonardo and the Last Supper:
According to Lomazzo’s account, Leonardo’s passion for the beautiful Salai therefore reached its peak at about the time work began on The Last Supper in Santa Maria delle Grazie.
In the fifteenth century, Florentines were so well-known for homosexuality that the German word for sodomite was Florenzer. By 1415 the sexual behavior of young Florentine men had caused the city fathers such concern that “desiring to eliminate a worse evil by means of a lesser one” they licensed two more public brothels to go with the one they had opened with similar aspirations a dozen years earlier.When these establishments failed to produce the desired results, and still “desiring to extirpate that vice of Sodom and Gomorrah, so contrary to nature,” the city fathers took further action. In 1432, a special authority, the Ufficiali di Notte e Conservatori dei Monasteri, or Officers of the Night and Preservers of Morality in the Monasteries, was formed to catch and prosecute sodomites. Over the next seven decades, more than ten thousand men were apprehended by this night watch.
According to Vasari, Salai was “a very attractive youth of unusual grace and looks, with very beautiful hair which he wore curled in ringlets and which delighted his master.” Giacomo seems to have served as a model for Leonardo. No definitive image of him exists, but art historians refer to a distinctive face that appears repeatedly in his drawings—that of a beautiful youth with a Greek nose, a mass of curls and a dreamy pout—as a “Salai-type profile.”
Leonardo was almost certainly homosexual by the standards of later centuries. Freud was no doubt correct when he stated that it was doubtful whether Leonardo ever embraced a woman in passion. Two years after the Saltarelli affair, Leonardo wrote a partially legible declaration in his notebook: “Fioravante di Domenico at Florence is my most beloved friend, as though he were my….” A nineteenth-century editor of Leonardo’s writings hopefully filled in “brother,” but the relationship may well have been more intimate.
Here is a video of King discussing the matter more:
via Dangerous Minds
Mr. E. Jones
This is bullshit. I’ve watched DaVinci’s Demons and he was a serious pussy hound. He loved the ladies and the ladies loved him! So says well known heterosexuals Michael Goyer and Tom Riley. Why would they lie?
Ron Jackson
I had to stop watching that DaVinci Demon crap. It was insulting.
Billy Budd
Michelangelo was also gay.
PLAYS WELL WITH OTHERS
Certainly glad we have evolved so our nuts no longer have legs…….. :p
Jim Hlavac
@Mr. E. Jones: Why would heterosexuals lie about a famous man being gay? hahahaha! — why, for a zillion reasons, sir, a zillion — for heterosexuals have been lying about gay men for centuries — surely none of them are innocents.
Meanwhile, Leonardo seems never have gone near a woman and it was noted at the time — many a record exists of the numbers of young men around Leonardo.
And the most obvious young man in the mix was Salai — who was NOT an “apprentice” whatsoever — as the Queerty article has wrong – for there’s no record that Salai painted or drew anything — but he was in Leonardo’s life for 25 years or so — and the notes left behind by Leonardo clearly indicate that he loved the kid — who was a trouble maker, a petty thief, and who caused Leonardo to sigh incessantly “my, my, that boy is trouble, I love him so.”
Of course, Leonardo didn’t use the word “gay” or “homosexual” – the former being from Occitan (aka Old Provence,) and restricted to there and to English, where Eleanor of Aquitaine put it several hundred years before … and the later being a Greco-Roman hybrid from the late 1800s — but there was the word “Bardassi” – which is Medieval/ Renaissance Italian for “gay” or “homosexual” as many a traveler of the times from England to Italy noted — the word shows up often in the travel journals — “all them bardassi … terrible” as the heterosexuals wrote about it …
Furthermore, Leonardo was definitely arrested when he was 25 years old or so in a gay scandal — but only his friendship with the Duke of Milan got him off —
As for Michaeloangelo — even gayer — hell, he was arrested twice while painting the Sistine Chapel ceiling and the pope himself bailed him out …
But, heteros love to hide the obvious — lots of men drawings, paintings, statues, and so few women, just so few — while for, say, Bernini and Titian, it was near the opposite – dozens of women for every man in their works — so weird yes?
Meanwhile, heterosexuals are loathe to admit that King James I of England was gay — because he created the King James Bible – and the fact that a gay man created the Bible is just flummoxing to everyone! — but there it is, the record in Parliament, “Sire, your ministers spiritual and temporal suggest you visit your wife once a month whether you wish to or not” with James answering “Jesus had his John, I have my Robert” _–
But screw history, logic, the record, and such — we have heterosexuals promulgating their “no gays not gay” for everyone forever – as if gayness didn’t occur until 1969 — it is amazing what heterosexuals will say about the issue.
Meanwhile, Leonardo, Michaelangelo, Richard the Lionhearted, James I — all gay — enjoy reality.
Billy Budd
Alexander The Great and Julius Caesar were bisexual, like most men from their times.
bobbyjoe
@Mr. E. Jones
David S. Goyer continues his quest to portray heterosexual, totally 100% non-gay heroes, like (as you note) that great womanizer Leonardo in “Davinci’s Demons,” and this fall, the totally heterosexual Constantine on NBC. Forget that Constantine is portrayed as bisexual in the comics (a recent storyline even hinged on his having once had sex with a current male villain). Now, Goyer tells us, Constantine’s straight, straight, straight. Whatever would we do without David S. Goyer protecting us from accidentally thinking gay or bisexual men exist?