Life to my thoughts within your heart is given
Your will includes and is the lord of mine Heavenward your spirit stirreth me to strain Į'en as you will, I blush and blanch again,įreeze in the sun, burn 'neath a frosty sky. Which my lame feet find all too strong for me 'With your fair eyes a charming light I see,įor which my own blind eyes would peer in vain Here is one of the many poems Michelangelo wrote to Tommaso dei Cavalieri, one of the many younger men he adored: It was 19th-century gay critic John Addington Symonds who brought the truth to light in his 1893 translations. It was Michelangelo’s descendent, grandnephew Michelangelo The Younger, who re-wrote his famous forebearer’s gay poetry in 1623 to read as if they were written by a woman.
Yet for centuries, Mikey’s sexuality was obscured-as homosexuality so often is. Was Michelangelo gay? The writing’s on the wall, or on the ceiling, in museums, in notebooks, and ledgers and everywhere else the Renaissance artist’s work can be found.
