Leonardo gay

On 9 April , Leonardo da Vinci was accused of sodomy in an anonymous report to the Florentine authorities. Leonardo, then just short of his 24th birthday, was one of four men said to have had sex with the year-old Jacopo Saltarelli.

In Leonardo, the character is shown to be gay – something that chimes with the current academic consensus. The subject of da Vinci’s sexuality has been discussed for decades, with historians.

Historian Elizabeth Abbott argues that understanding Leonardo da Vinci’s sex life, or lackthereof, provides a rare glimpse into how sexuality and male love was understood and practised in.

The artist was twice publicly accused of having gay sex, his youthful male protege was removed because of the “wicked life he had led” with Leonardo, and his own writings repeatedly mused on his own attraction to men – and borderline revulsion to sex with women.