Michelangelo between earthly passions and fear of God

During the Renaissance, several great homosexual artists—from Leonardo da Vinci and Botticelli to Michelangelo and Raphael—transformed the history of art , 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.

From his earliest youth Michelangelo transformed personal torment into exquisite creativity —attempting to reconcile the apparently conflicting forces that inhabited him: his earthly passions and his fear of God . 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".

It was Michelangelo's curse to remain a colossus outside and apart from his time . 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.