In Frederic, Lord Leighton’s The Sluggard, we sense in the young man’s early-morning stretch a kind of languorous mischief that is a long way from the traditional, muscle-bound poses associated with masculine grandeur (as shown, for example, in Antoine-Louis Barye’s taut scene of Theseus slaying the Minotaur).įREDERIC, LORD LEIGHTON, THE SLUGGARD. Correspondingly, a new style of male eroticism began to appear in art. Homosexuality as a label, or a mode of identity, did not appear in Europe until the 19th century. That same sensuality can be seen in the twisted, loin-clothed torso of Marcel Delmotte’s Saint Sebastian, painted a couple of hundred years after Reni’s many attempts at the subject. Wilde, remembering an encounter with such a painting by Guido Reni in Genoa, wrote of the “lovely brown boy, with crisp, clustering hair and red lips” who had evidently entranced him. Most famously, the various versions of St Sebastian’s martyrdom, showing a suspiciously muscular torso punctured by arrows, achieved iconic status among homosexual admirers who responded not only to his physical beauty, but also to his plight as a tortured, yet steadfast, martyr. It did not stop the great painters of the Renaissance, many of whom are today acknowledged as gay, from portraying the sexual allure of men. Christianity disapproved of all erotic art, but particularly anything that hinted at homosexual attraction. It took millennia for such frankness to reappear in western art. (Scenes showing sex between lesbians were much rarer, and are thought to have functioned as erotica for men.) Strong emotional bonds between men, such as that between Achilles and Patroclus, were depicted with great sensitivity and tenderness in Greek art more overtly sexual acts, such as the practice of intercrural, or non-penetrative, sex also featured heavily. Greek art sought to idealise this liaison between worldly mentor and his callow companion by focusing, to the point of obsession, on the beauty of the younger man. None understood this better than the ancient Greeks, who were not shy to depict the various sources of pleasure to be found in the socially acceptable relationships between older man and youth, or erastes and eromenos. Only now can we properly appreciate that Eros comes in many guises. With the growing acceptance of sexual diversity has come a rethinking of the role played by homosexuality in art history. It is only in relatively recent times that the subject of homoeroticism has been able to be addressed with any seriousness at all.
Yet art is never greater than when it questions social convention and exposes hypocrisy. Homosexuality has, for most of history, been a taboo subject.