FOR YEARS critics have suggested that Michelangelo’s glorification of the naked male form owes more to his sexual orientation than to his aesthetic sensibilities.
That Michelangelo might well have been gay, that we can accept.
That he took his inspiration for the Last Judgmentin the Sistine Chapel from Roman "stew" houses; well it goes against the grain.
The “stew” house was a one-time popular Roman euphemism for a public bathhouse.
Handed down from ancient Roman tradition, the bathhouse by the 16th century had become a place where one could do a lot more than just take a massage or a hot and cold bath.
In short, they had become places of promiscuity where “ladies of the night” plied their oldest of old trades.
According to a new book, Nudity, Art and Decorum: Aesthetic Changes in 16th Century Artby art critic Elena Lazzarini, Michelangelo may well have taken a great deal of the inspiration for the many nude figures in his monumental Last Judgmentfrom his frequent, reportedly well documented, visits to the "stew" house.
Furthermore, other critics have suggested that his peerless and intimate knowledge of the male anatomy did not depend entirely on the fact that he was always an attentive pupil during biology lessons.
For those who, alas, have not seen it, let me recall just what the Last Judgmentfresco entails.
Painted between 1537 and 1541, it is a massive depiction of that grizzly, ultimate red card day when the great ref in the sky hands out the punishment.
There are no one- or two-match bans here. It is a red card for eternity, all the way down to hell.
Treatment tends to be rough. Charon, the ferryman who carries the souls of the dead across the river Styx, seems to be busy pushing people off his boat and down into the depths of Hades.
Some art critics like to say that the Last Judgmentreflects Michelangelo's own tortured relationship with his faith, in particular his belief that suffering is vital to finding faith in God.
There is no light entertainment in this intense masterpiece, one which stretches across the altar wall of the Sistine Chapel, the building traditionally used for papal elections.
It seems almost heretical to link such a masterpiece to a common bathhouse.
However, all that nudity did upset a lot of people back in the 16th century.
Biago da Cesena, master of ceremonies to Pope Paul 111 (1534-1549), called it a painting “fit for the public baths and taverns”, while a later pope, Paul IV (1555-1559), called it a “stew of nudes” in an reference to the bathhouse.
Maybe Ms Lazzarini has a point.
They’ll be telling us Michelangelo was a Lazio fan next.