The sculptor lived at a time when you could be burned at the stake for homosexuality. Yet, as an exhibition of his work hits London, the evidence that he was openly gay seems increasingly convincing
, this tale suggests he is an artist who can speak directly to our time. For it means Donatello, who was born circa 1386 and died in 1466, was the first artist in history to express a gay or queer identity.
So is a word of this bold tale actually true? It was, after all, recorded in a 15th-century manuscript of jokes and anecdotes calledwhich roughly translates as “pleasant things people said”. When I came across the story I thought it was illuminating, even if entirely fictional. For it surely suggests a lot about how Donatello’s contemporaries saw him.
So this is the first reason for taking Poliziano’s claims about Donatello’s turbulent love life seriously: he was privy to the innermost secrets of the Medici. Donatello’s patron Cosimo de’ Medici, “the elder”, was the grandfather of Poliziano’s protector Lorenzo. When Cosimo died Lorenzo was 15, old enough to pick up adult gossip.
“are enormously in your debt for pricking them at all. Yes, who wouldn’t want to die on the receiving end of that sword of yours?” Another reason to trust Poliziano is that, almost uniquely for a 15th-century intellectual, he respected and understood artists. Traditionally, artists were seen as mere manual workers with none of the high status of a poet like Poliziano. But Poliziano is on record as someone who ignored that social stratification.
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