
We all know that the Renaissance was queer, with hot, shirtless men appearing in paintings and sculptures everywhere. But did you know even the man who wrote the literal book on heterosexual marriage and the nuclear family, Leon Battista Alberti, couldn’t help but get a little queer?
I libri della famiglia (On the Family) is a treatise about marriage, the nuclear family, how to raise children, and the role of the head of the household. While sexuality was complicated in the 15th century, so we can’t definitively pin a rainbow flag on this talented Renaissance fellow, he’s the definition of queer-coded. Renaissance scholars who focus on Alberti’s writings have frequently discussed his likely homosexuality.

By modern standards, Alberti is a misogynist. Alexa play “Another White Boy With A Podcast.” But social bonding and gender roles were vastly different in the Renaissance, formally coded by men like him, whose writing has long impacted how society thinks about marriage and family.
Art historian Laurie Schneider suggests that even this misogyny may be reflective of his homosexuality. In a series of episodes in one of his books, Intercenales, there is a particularly poignant story where a husband develops a friendship with his wife’s lover. That book also features stories about a love affair and marriage with distinctly homoerotic undertones.
According to Schneider, Alberti’s homosexual identity was deeply connected to a difficult relationship with his father and his family’s exile from Florence for many years. That may be the queerest thing about him.
You know how you have that friend that’s a lawyer and interior designer and life coach and shaman and aspiring hotelier? Alberti was one of those. His list of accomplishments is long. He was an author, artist, architect, poet, linguist, philosopher, and cryptographer.
Oh, and a priest.
His standing as a priest only gave him more authority in writing about the family in, as Trixie Mattel would say, “a God-honoring way.”

If you were queer in the Renaissance, taking a holy order was the best way to get out of your obligation to carry on your family line. At least in devoting one’s life to God, a Renaissance priest could safely love and admire another man, y’know? The Renaissance was not ready for Ariana Grande’s “God is a Woman.”
But God was often not the only man that men found themselves worshipping. The pain and abuse of the Catholic church are real and ongoing, but it was already pronounced in 15th and 16th century Florence. According to historian Michael Rocke, churches were prevalent locations for homosexual dalliances in the Renaissance. Shocker.
There is no direct evidence that Alberti was involved in any sodomy at church or elsewhere, but scholars have repeatedly identified that his writing was filled with homosexual bias, including in his book on family. For instance, Alberti suggests on page 57 of I libri that young boys avoid “female idleness” and “to be bold… about appearing among men.”
Boys were often compared to women and in 1492, so many grown men were having sex with young, beautiful boys that the Florentine governing council actually had to issue a decree specifically asking bathhouse owners to turn away good looking boys to try and curb the problem.

Alberti was tough on young males, claiming that “the volatile youths always pursue their desires; the appetites of youths are insatiable.” This reflected broader social thoughts about boys and young men, believed to be driven by lust from about 14 to 25. In reality, they were shackled to the patriarchal culture of the time, where their fathers decided most of their lives, including who they married and their profession.
Sex with other men wasn’t just a young man’s game. According to Rocke, 1 in 4 cases of sodomy in Florence involved married men, 44% of those cases involving men over 30. It’s hardly surprising, though.
Young, fit men were seen as the epitome of human beauty by people like Alberti and his peers, so the harsh condemnation of his younger counterparts may be because he held them responsible for his and other older men’s attraction towards them.
Alberti was also obsessed with secrets. Like, really obsessed. In I libri, the main character, Gianozzo (Alberti’s metaphorical voice in the text), goes on for pages about the perils of sharing secrets with one’s wife.
According to the narrator, the family’s finances and a husband’s letters are never to be shared with one’s wife because these personal writings and accounts contain many secrets. The other male characters are warned to be weary of wives who want to concern themselves too much with their husband’s affairs. What’s so secret that a man’s wife can’t know?

The polymath even invented his own cipher, the Alberti Cipher, for communicating secret information to trusted confidantes. Clearly, he was a little paranoid about who knew his business. Although Alberti devised the cipher to convey military and religious information, it’s not out of the realm of possibility to think that ciphers could have been used for personal communication between male lovers about meetups or proclamations of love. Parchment, after all, was easily flammable.
I don’t know about you, but I’d watch a two-hour historical romance movie about it on a streaming service.
ShaverC
“According to Schneider, Alberti’s homosexual identity was deeply connected to a difficult relationship with his father and his family’s exile from Florence for many years. That may be the queerest thing about him.” – What does this mean?
Why does everyone have to be gay?
abfab
Oh that’s easy! It’s done for the benefit of GOP TROLLS such as yourself. They’re all out to get you.
Openminded
Shaver, Many gay guys have/had difficult relationships with their father. As for “exile”, IDK of any connection between being gay and being in a family that relocated in your youth. As for your question of everyone being gay, the writer clearly states that it is not known for sure if Alberti was actually gay or not, and hence the statement “queerest thing about him”. I applaud the queerty writer for not sensationalizing the story like they typically do.
dbmcvey
Also, he totally would have supported an anti-gay fascist politician in Florida. What does that mean Shaver? I mean, we know you’re not gay.
inbama
” ‘The appetites of youths are insatiable.’ This reflected broader social thoughts about boys and young men, believed to be driven by lust from about 14 to 25.”
Actually, a recent neurological study confirms this. Newly flush with hormones, the brains of males and females are at their most divergent at puberty – which is why whatever fantasies they may imagine as children, most gender-nonconforming kids come to grips with their sexual orientation at of shortly after puberty.
mateo
The bit about gay people (both men AND women) finding a kind of sanctuary as priests and nuns is still true today, at least in certain cultures. It’s a way they can still remain in the closet, while apparently having made a great personal sacrifice (a vow of chastity). They get away from the pressures to marry someone of the opposite sex and subsequently have children. Probably some of them are actually surprised to find that there are so many others who are like them within those monastery and convent walls, and then gay and lesbian affairs are the results of this discovery. It’s the more sexually conflicted and frustrated among these folk who turn to children as an outlet for their sexual desires and we all know what the results of THAT can be.
inbama
I agree with everything you said although I don’t doubt the sincerity of their mistaking a lack of attraction for the opposite sex for a calling. I knew a number of gay priests in my younger life, and they were not unlike the gay men who were rushed into marriage, had children, and only came to understand themselves after it was too late.
Now with the tax-exempt nonprofit “Catholic Laity and Clergy for Renewal” spending millions spying on and exposing gay priests, their lives must be hell.
Squeak
“Sex with other men wasn’t just a young man’s game. According to Rocke, 1 in 4 cases of sodomy in Florence involved married men, 44% of those cases involving men over 30.” As a resident of Florence for the past 30 years I can attest that at least 50% of my gay encounters have been with married men over 30 . . . old customs die hard in Florence !