Leonardo famous gay men
Some unions were more amicable than others, and some sadly included spouses that allegedly had no idea they were being bamboozled.Īs famous as he was for marrying Judy Garland, and fathering superstar Liza Minelli, stage and film director Vincent Minnelli was one of the most (heterosexually) married gay men in Hollywood history. In today's progressive society, it may seem like much ado about nothing, but only 50 or 60 years ago, many gay men married, some multiple times, to keep up appearances they deemed vital to their careers moving forward. This practice also frequently led to gay men and women marrying their beards.
In fact, according to the Oxford Dictionary, the term "beard" was a North American term that referred to "a woman who accompanied a homosexual man as an escort to a social occasion in order to help conceal his homosexuality." The term, which became popular in the 1950s and 1960s, was also used for men who married lesbians for the same type of deception. Marrying women was an easy and common practice to "prove" heterosexuality. With all the flamboyance, adultery, and excessive behavior associated with Hollywood celebrities, actors and musicians, many gay men felt compelled to hide their sexuality for fear of being blackballed and their careers ruined. Others believe that the portrait once had eyebrows and eyelashes, while some are convinced that da Vinci created multiple versions of the painting.įor now, the Mona Lisa remains as enigmatic and mysterious as her smile.Not long before we celebrated the turn of the 21st century in 2000, there was still a stigma in many circles against gay people…and not just in conservative areas of the country. Popular theories about the Mona Lisa abound, with some art lovers claiming that a lost original featured the model nude. “It featured in Leonardo’s work long before Salai came on the scene.” “Giorgio Vasari (a contemporary painter and a chronicler of Renaissance artists) described him as a pretty boy with curly hair, but that was a standard type of the era,” he continued. “The infra-red images do nothing to support the idea that Leonardo somehow painted a blend of Lisa Gherardini and Salai,” he said, adding that too little is known about Salai’s appearance. Martin Kemp, a leading da Vinci expert and professor emeritus of history of art at Trinity College, Oxford, has dismissed the claims as “a mishmash of known things, semi-known things and complete fantasy”. Vinceti has been excavating a covent in Florence for four years with the aim of unearthing Gherardini’s remains.Īs ever with artistic theories, Vinceti’s conclusions have not gone unchallenged. Gherardini married Francesco del Giocondo, whose family owned an extravagant villa during the period in which da Vinci painted the Mona Lisa (between 15). It is thought that Salai began working for da Vinci when he was around 10-years-old, after joining the artist’s household in 1490.
We’ve come up with an answer to a question that has divided scholars for years. “You see it particularly in Mona Lisa’s nose, her forehead and her smile. “The Mona Lisa is androgynous - half man and half woman,” he told The Telegraph, explaining that he studied other paintings based on Salai and found striking similarities.
The famous portrait that hangs in the Louvre in Paris has undergone infra-red analysis to give the art world more insight into one of the world’s most renowned paintings.įollowing his examinations, Silvano Vinceti believes the artwork is an amalgamation of two models: a rich Florentine merchant’s wife, Lisa Gherardini, and da Vinci’s apprentice Gian Giacomo Caprotti, known to the artist as Salai, or Little Devil.
Mona Lisa’s iconic smile was based on Leonardo Da Vinci’s probable gay lover, an art historian has claimed.