Freud’s study of Leonardo’s sexuality starts with the memory of a dream that Leonardo recorded in the Codex Atlanticus: ‘To write so clearly of the kite would seem to be my destiny, because one of the earliest memories I recall is that, while in the cradle, a kite flew to me and opened my mouth with its tail and struck me many times with its tail inside the lips.’18 Leonardo recorded this memory long after the events mentioned in it and Sigmund Freud interpreted it as a homosexual fantasy, in particular a fantasy of oral sex, a reading that he supported by appeal to the strong ancient symbolism that, in Latin countries, associates the male member with birds; and indeed in Italian the word ‘bird’ [uccello] is the most commonly used slang term for ‘cock’. The analysis also relies on a graphic slip in an anatomical drawing of copulation made by Leonardo in which the man’s foot is not in the right position – a striking omission for such an acute observer.
From these details Freud identified a clear homosexual tendency in the artist; but, being himself a victim of his times, he presented constant excuses for having examined so vile a matter, which he feared might despoil the image of a man who was perhaps the most beloved western genius of modern times; and he came to rather dubious conclusions regarding the way these inclinations were effectively manifested. According to Freud, Leonardo sublimated his homosexual inclination and renounced any ‘action’, using the inclination instead as the driving force of his creativity. In adolescence his libido translated into an impulse for knowledge, investing nature itself and therefore his painting with its erotic charge. Freud went even further by relating the dream, or fantasy of oral coitus, to Leonardo’s love of his mother, because in the German translation that Freud used the word ‘kite’ had been translated as ‘vulture’, and this bird was seen by the Egyptians as a symbol of maternity. Freud put considerable effort into showing that Leonardo was aware of the ‘mother–vulture’ symbolism and that his dream therefore invoked a homosexual drive and merged it into his desire for maternal love.
The translator’s mistake led Freud to draw even more ambiguous conclusions by interpreting the shape of one of the artist’s greatest masterpieces (Saint Anne, in the Louvre) as the outline of a vulture, a reference used by the artist to evoke his maternal desire. (In order to substantiate this hypothesis, Freud was obliged to bring the date of the painting forward, before the Gioconda, a chronology that is now decisively rejected by the documentary evidence.) In the correct interpretation of Leonardo’s ‘dream’, this association between mother and vulture has no place, as Freud himself realized, to his great disappointment, when he discovered his misunderstanding. If Freud had been able to read the exact name of the bird, without resorting to ancient Egyptian symbolisms, which were perhaps unknown to Leonardo himself, Freud would have found traces in the Codex Atlanticus of a much more worrying association: that between the kite and the father, Ser Piero, who was by no means a positive model for the artist.
By appropriating an ancient symbolic tradition summarized in a book called Fior di virtù, Leonardo noted that the kite was the symbol of paternal egoism in that the bird does not tolerate the happiness of its offspring and, when it see them thrive, it pecks at them cruelly and makes them suffer. ‘Of kite it is said that, when it sees its offspring grow too fat in the nest, it pecks at their sides and keeps them without food.’19 In the light of this passage, Freud’s intuitions regarding the homosexual fantasy seem more fitting when directed at Leonardo’s relationship with his father, which was undoubtedly very difficult, as is confirmed by the almost complete absence of documentation on this relationship in the huge mass of writing and daily notes left by Leonardo. The fact that Ser Piero paid no attention to his illegitimate son provoked an unrequited desire for love and attention that might have underlain the boy’s homosexual orientation. Indeed, one of the most accredited interpretations relates homosexuality to the father’s distance and hostility, which prevents the son from identifying with a paternal model and prompts him towards the female model, one that offers protection and perhaps too much love, as the elderly grandmother Lucia might have given to the child entrusted to her care.
What is worth underlining here is that, unlike in Freud’s hypothesis, the clues left by Leonardo point to a homosexuality that was transposed into real life and proved satisfying. Leonardo was a man of courage not only in his scientific observations but also in his way of life, and among the great artists of the Renaissance he seems to have had the most mature and open relationship with his own sexuality, expressing it without too many problems. He studied it as a scientist and as an anthropologist, as is borne out by his drawings and by the notes in the codices, written in ironic, idiomatic language, as was the custom of the time, without too much false modesty: ‘The man desires to know whether the woman will concede to his lust, and understanding that she will and that she desires the man, he asks her and enacts his desire, but he cannot know this without confessing, and by confessing he fucks.’20 This ease enabled him to talk about sex with the same detachment that he shows towards all natural phenomena, often with an ironic complacency about the desire that moves the world, which he displays in some of his witticisms:
A woman was washing clothes and the cold had made her feet very red. A priest who was passing by asked with admiration where such redness came from. The woman immediately answered that it happened because she was on fire below. Then the priest put his hand on the member that made him more of a priest than a nun and, approaching the woman, he asked her, in gentle and submissive tones, whether she would be kind enough to bring a little light to that candle.21
Unlike many other artists who were tormented by their homosexuality, for example Michelangelo, who never allowed himself to make comments or be open in this respect, Leonardo seems to have readily understood the impulses that prompted both him and others; and, as we shall see later, it cannot be ruled out that one of the reasons for his fierce conflict with Michelangelo was this very different way of experiencing the artistic condition, part of which was their own sexual orientation. In this, too, Leonardo was well ahead of his time, as he appears to have had a clear awareness of sexual impulses and of the darkest inclinations. He alludes to this with extreme frankness in one of the passages written for his treatise on painting, the Libro della pittura, in which he shows full awareness of the erotic power of images, including those apparently intended for worship. This awareness did not lead him to avoid such power; instead it seemed to prompt him to render sacred images, like that of Saint John, deliberately seductive. This painting became a despairing focus of Catholic criticism in past centuries because, unable to ignore the strongly homoerotic power of the image, it could not understand how an artist in fear of God, as Leonardo had been portrayed, could be persuaded to paint such provocative works of art. This criticism overlooked the fact that, without such sentimental ambiguity, Leonardo would never have created the masterpieces in the first place.
The sole purpose of this long digression on Leonardo’s sexual orientation is to set in a more realistic context the life of the young artist at the time of the anonymous denunciation that defamed him in the eyes of the city and his family and to make more comprehensible that free and easy-going lifestyle, which seduced contemporaries almost as much as the beauty of his paintings. While Michelangelo was reputed to be ‘fearsome’ on account of his churlish manner no less than for the greatness of his art and intimidated even his friends and acquaintances, who would not dare to approach him, Leonardo was always welcoming and pleasant to talk to, showing his peaceful nature and a predisposition to enjoy life to the full.
In a city like Florence, which was focused on the accumulation of power and money, Leonardo came across as an eccentric nature lover, a young man who, despite not having much ready cash, thought nothing of buying caged birds in the marketplace simply for the pleasure of setting them free and watching them take flight. He did not hesitate to renounce meat dishes out of the love he felt towards animals, a feat that was truly unique at the time; it was in fact so singular that a well-to-do Florentine merchant journeying to India had no qualms about comparing ‘his’ Leonardo with the gentle inhabitants of that region, who would not eat the flesh of animals out of conviction that in their lifetime those animals had embodied the souls of the dead. Leonardo’s way of life, his eccentricity – and even his sexual habits, which were deemed so aberrant by the anonymous writer of the accusation – in no way diminished the admiration that had spread through the city for his early works. The merchants of Florence were too cultured and pragmatic to be influenced by abstract moral rules and too well acquainted with human nature, whether in artists, in popes, or in condottieri, to make harsh judgements about their sexual preference.
Florence was a free city where every action was weighed mainly against its consequences for the common good, and Leonardo was destined more than anyone else to increase the city’s glory in the eyes of the world.
Almost as if to reiterate the complete confidence placed in this eccentric and brilliant young man by the city government, just over a year after that accusation, the Florentine Signoria commissioned him to produce a painting for the chapel of San Bernardo in the Palazzo della Signoria, the city’s most iconic building. Without having accomplished any other public works, which would surely have been recorded, Leonardo won the challenge against his fellow artists, Sandro Botticelli, Domenico Ghirlandaio, Antonio del Pollaiolo, and even Verrocchio, all of whom were working in the city during this period but none of whom, as far as the Signoria was concerned, could match the talent of this original youth.