Michelangelo

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<b>Michelangelo between earthly passions and fear of God</b> <b>During the Renaissance, several great homosexual artists—from </b><b>Leonardo da Vinci and Botticelli to Michelangelo and Raphael—transformed the history of art</b>, striving for ever closer imitation of nature while shaping it to their tastes. In their art ambiguous beings were born, half man, half woman; female breasts were planted on male busts and a young man's gaze peeped out beneath the eyelids of a Madonna. <b> From his earliest youth </b><b>Michelangelo transformed personal torment into exquisite creativity</b>—attempting to reconcile the apparently conflicting forces that inhabited him: <b>his earthly passions and his fear of God</b>. Hence the peerless monuments to beauty, celestial and infernal alike, that Michelangelo raised to the glory of God. His predecessors aspired to Heaven through faith alone; Michelangelo sought absolution through the contemplative exaltation of beauty—even on the ceiling of a papal chapel: the Sistine. This exposed him to a chorus of derision from prudish critics, who accused him of exhibiting paganism in a place of religion, and who clothed his immodest Titans in painted "breeches". <b>It was Michelangelo's curse to remain a colossus outside and apart from his time</b>. It is the birthright of the comet to inspire fear and awe in the spectator; but the spectacle of such glory can sear the tender eye. <b> </b>