PeterRS Posted 6 hours ago Posted 6 hours ago A somewhat ridiculous title, I know, but it rather nicely praphrases a long article in today's Guardian. We all know that Caravaggio is one of the gay world's favourite painters. We know that he himself was gay, at least for most of the time. We know that Caravaggio painted the model used in the painting Victorious Cupid which arrives at London's Wallace Collection tomorrow in three very different paintings and that he was his lover. We know this because the British traveller Richard Symonds saw the painting in 1649 and was told its subject has “the body & face of [Caravaggio’s] owne boy or servant that laid with him”. The name of this boy was Cecco. It was painted around 1600 for a well-known art collector. We know, too, that in those days it was not uncommon for artists to have sex with their models. It is claimed that Donatello was madly in love with his apprentice which to many seems obvious when they see his statue of David. The art historian Vasari claims that Leonardo da Vinci “took for his assistant the Milanese Salaì, who was most comely in grace and beauty, having fine locks curling in ringlets, in which Leonardo greatly delighted”. We do have to realise, though, that the latest historical studies illustrate that same-sex relationships in much of Italy in Caravaggio's time, depite the prohibition of the Church and the Courts, were far from uncommon. One historian has discovered that over a 70-year period in 15th century Florence, 13,000 men were convicted of sodomy - this in a city with just 40,000 inhabitants! Most were merely fined and continued with their sexual encounters. Across the channel in England, Caravaggio's slightly older contemporary the playright Christpher Marlowe is reported to have said “They that love not Tobacco and Boys are fools.” The painting is being lent to the Wallace Collection from its permanent home in Berlin and it can be viewed until April 12. There is no special entry fee. And what of Cecco? He went on to become a painter using the name Cecco del Caravaggio but of only average talent. One of his works is to be seen in Oxford's Ashmolean Museum. As the Guardian article ends, it writes this - Four hundred years on, we might make more sense of the incredible painting that is coming to the Wallace Collection if we simply use that old word, sin. Caravaggio’s paintings shudder and provoke with sin – the supposedly sinful pleasures of sweet grapes, red wine and sex. https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2025/nov/24/caravaggio-victorious-cupid-model-muse-wallace-collection vinapu and Ruthrieston 1 1 Quote
