While debate continues as to whether or not Pope Francis was signalling a new more accepting approach towards gays - I for one, unlike many breathless individuals who are deluding themselves, think that nothing has changed - many remain apparently oblivious to the abject hypocrisy of the Vatican. Vatican City and churches across Rome are filled with remarkable art works done by, you guessed it, "inherently disordered" gays. A piece in The Guardian looks at this disconnect on the part of both Pope Francis and the bitter old queens in dresses in Rome. Here are some excerpts:
If Pope Francis wants to think more about this issue, he could do worse than take a tour of churches and galleries in Rome and the Vatican where, for centuries, gay artists have created the glories of the church.
In the Vatican museum he should contemplate Leonardo da Vinci's St Jerome in the Desert. An ascetic sits in anguished thought in a rocky wilderness in this unfinished masterpiece. It is a great, introspectively spiritual work of religious art whose creator was well known for his love of young men. Leonardo surrounded himself with good-looking assistants and painted a subversively gay icon of male beauty, his bronzed Saint John the Baptist. When da Vinci was in his 20s, he was formally accused of sodomy.
Brooding on these facts, the Pope might walk into the Pauline Chapel, to look upon Michelangelo's frescoes there. This chapel is in a private part of the Apostolic Palace not open to the public, but I don't think the Pope would find entry difficult. There, looking at the suffering of the saints, he might consider how Michelangelo courageously expressed his love for men, even as he created some of the most eloquent art of the church.
Is there no escape from this issue? Remembering that some art historians deny the so-called "calumny" that Caravaggio and his clerical patrons were gay, perhaps the Pope might visit the Roman church of San Luigi dei Francesi to look on this master's paintings of St Matthew. But the demons of desire cannot be suppressed. The naked male flesh in Caravaggio's paintings tells its own story. By the time Caravaggio came to Rome in the 1590s, Leonardo and Michaelangelo – not to mention the aptly named Italian painter Il Sodoma – had already blazed a gay trail through the art of the Holy City. Caravaggio made art dangerous and exciting again by taking that homosexual impulse to new extremes.
The Catholic church in its golden age knew this, and it commissioned the boldest and best, whatever the artist's personal lives.
Perhaps the honesty of Pope Francis will renew art history, for pious timidity blunts understanding of great art. In particular, the myth that gay sex did not exist in the past, or was too risky, or could not be imagined, is nonsense. By the 18th century, gay clubs existed across Europe. The gay scene in Georgian London was intense. Is it really plausible that all this was going on in 1700 but unimaginable in Caravaggio's Rome in 1600?
It is daft to deny the obvious homoeroticism of Leonardo or Caravaggio, and sophistry to claim that it's irrelevant to their art. The British Museum is leading the way by drawing attention to the gay content of its collections. The Pope should urge the Vatican to do the same. Let the church take pride in its gay artists.
A lot of these artworks are definitely homoerotic and give great attention to male bodies (the image below is an Italian painting of the Caravaggio style that hangs in our home). Will what the columnist suggests the Vatican do to high light the works of gay artists happen? Don't hold your breath.
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