This article accompanies the fable
Angel Incarnate



Leonardo's Saint John the Baptist

Leonardo's painting St. John the Baptist, which may have been his last, is now in the Louvre. It is a painting that has divided art critics. Martin Kemp chose it as the cover image of his biography and he calls it "androgynously seductive," which I think is supposed to be a compliment. Others however have been openly hostile, arguing that its sexual come-on is blasphemous and does not inspire devotion. Indeed it does not. It inspires something else.

As Leonardo's biographer Charles Nicholl says, "the subtext of this is the troublesome adjacency of homosexuality and spirituality in his depiction of angels and young Christs: the models he used were sexually desirable young men." OK, but is there a problem with that?

It also may be that the objections have to do with the fact that John is looking back directly at the viewer. Curiously they find that unsettling. Something similar can be found in Leonardo's black and white drawing from the same period known as Pointing Lady:

The drawing is in the Royal Collection, Windsor Castle.