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HIGH GEAR

OCTOBER 1976

Although

Michelangelo Buonarroti is known primarily as a splendid sculptor and as per the ceiling of The Sistine Chapel in St. Peter's Cathedral, a brilliant painter, Italians also know him as an accomplished poet. His sonnets, written to his lover, Tommaso dei Cavalieri, are described by biographers as "some of the most beautiful love poetry in the Italian language."

Michelangelo first met Cavalieri, a Roman nobleman, on a jouney to Rome in the autumn of 1533. Cavalieri was a connoisseur of Rennaisance art and a collector and patron of the fine arts as well. He was also a very attractive man and the famous sculptor fell in love with him instantly. He remarked, "When I met Messer Tommaso Cavalieri at Rome he was not only of incomparable beauty but possessed such grace of manner, such a distinguished mind and such nobility of conduct that he well merited being loved, and all the more so as one got to know him."

Michelangelo's love for Cavalieri never diminshed. Nor was he ever abandoned by this foremost lover who even following his death dutifully carried out the artist's every wish. Michelangelo expressed his uncompromising affection for Cavalieri in this first poem to him:

"My dear lord, do not be irritated by my love, which is addressed only to what is best in you. For the spirit of the one ought to be enamoured of the spirit of the other. That which I desire, that which I learn in your beautiful face, cannot be understood by ordinary men. He who wishes to understand it must first of all die."

a

Cavalieri provided reassuring emotional balm for the master which carried him, through his most difficult experiences. One of these was the period during which the painting of the vaults of the Sistine Chapel commissioned.

was

The murals on the ceiling and

THE POET

AND

THE MAN

S'un casto amor, s'una pieta superna, S'una fortuna infra dua amanti equale, S'un' aspra sorte all'un dell' altro cale, S'un spirto, s'un voler duo cor governa, S'un' anima in duo corpi è facta ecterna, Ambo levando al cielo e com pari ale, S'amor d'un colpo e d'un dorato strale Le viscier di duo pecti arda e discierna, S'amar l'un l'altro e nessun se medesmo D'un gusto e d'un dilecto a tal mercede, C' a un fin voglia l'uno e l'altro porre, Se mille e mill' altri non sarien centesmo A tal nodo d'amore, a tanta fede,

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sol l'isdegnio il puo rompere e sciorre ?

upper walls of the Sistine Chapel are among the greatest monuments to homosexual love. The immense project was undertaken by Michelangelo with the assistance of some of his paramours and was constantly plagued by scandal. Many of the masterpiece's critics were offended by the preponderance of male nudity, describing the paintings as "more appropriate for a bathhouse than for a church."

It is generally believed that the figure of Christ in The Last Judgement scene above the altar was modeled after Cavalieri and that The Creation of Adam actually represents the older artist himself reaching out to the younger nobleman.

Details of the chapel's illustrations show countless paired nude men interacting with each other. In many areas Cupid-like males are shown hugging or in other ways intimately posed. The Last Judgment features two men voraciously kissing each other. The theme of The Creation of Adam is cleverly and more graphically reiterated in The Deluge scene, the focal point of which is occupied by an unidentified bearded man tightly. embracing a younger male.

The artist betrays a homosexual Oedipal conflict in his depiction, The Drunkeness of Noah in which Ham, the son of Noah, is cursed for having witnessed the nakedness of his father. In this version, all three sons are shown nude with one grasping Ham.

All of the representations in the Sistine Chapel were selected by Michelangelo himself. They are generally obscure biblical characters and events which bore particular meaning for the artist. (The Pope had originally requested the twelve apostles, the stations of the cross or some similar sequence).

The Chapel's triumph is hardly the only exposition of Michelangelo's homoeroticism. In his famous circular painting.

called "The Holy Family," Mary, Joseph, and the infant Christ fill the foreground, but in the background five young men have just undressed each other and are busily cruising.

Michelangelo's most famous work, the statue of David, is sensuous in itself, but another statue of his called "The Victory" shows an identical character in the same pose straddling another man.

Michelangelo had little use for women whom he banned from his domestic staff. His only female acquaintance was one who posed no sexual threat to himself or his lovers, Vittoria Colonna. She was an intelligent and pious woman who later entered a convent. He could not, however, be branded a "womanhater." On the contrary, he respected strong-willed and independent women as is evidenced by his portrait of Colonna as a "Young Woman Wearing a Helmet" or his Sistine depiction of Judith beheading Holofernes.

Monogamy was no moral ideal for the artist. While maintaining

a

close relationship with Cavalieri, he also began relationships with Febo di Poggio in 1533 and Cecchino dei Bracci in 1544. These were more than transient affairs. When Bracci died prematurely in 1544, Michelangelo composed 48 very beautiful funeral epigrams for him, some full of idolatrous idealism. In one of his more tranquil verses for Bracci he lamented:

"The earthly flesh, and here my bones deprived Of their charming face and beautiful eyes, Do yet attest for him how gracious I was in bed When he embraced, and in what the soul doth live."

Yet as Michelangelo's colleague Vasari noted, "Far above all others, without comparison, he loved Tommaso dei Cavalieri." So transcendental was Cavalieri's form for the master that he painted only one portrait of him which he considered inadequate. He was very