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I do not hope to get in to an argument about pederasty. In the wikipedia entry of Leonardo, I certainly find no evidence to substantiate the claim made in this article. While it is certainly possible, I would defer in this regard until there is evidence. If not this tagging has the appearance of suggesting that pederasty has an accepted lineage or legitimacy in the Western world.
Bottom line, if the editor in question can not have such incendiary points substantiated by anything other than rumor then I do not believe it meets the criteria for being included in this article. I would like to add a further criteria for its inclusion here: if the prior comments about pederasty were true, then have them pass the muster of acceptance in the Da Vinci entry, which is likely to have far more editors. If it does not meet criteria to be there, then I do not believe it should be quoted or alluded to here. CARAVAGGISTI 01:06, 26 February 2007 (UTC)
Again, if you can make such a statement clear the criteria for inclusion in the Leonardo article, then I would concur. It is not a universally accepted fact. It is not mentioned in many biographies of Leonardo. Again, just because you want it to be true, does not make it true. CARAVAGGISTI 18:40, 26 February 2007 (UTC)
Additionally, my recommendation is that you seek administrator competence in this regard. CARAVAGGISTI 18:40, 26 February 2007 (UTC)
While it is clear that some have argued that Leonardo and Melzi had a homosexual relationship, the proof for this is lacking. I will make some points:
We know of Melzi from Vasari and from scanty documentation of the youngman. Vasari does state that Leonardo found the young man dashing. We have strong evidence that Leonardo had homosexual tendencies, if not the 15-16th century equivalent of a homosexual. We know that Melzi stated that Leonardo was very endeared of the young man. We know that Melzi inherited much from Leonardo. What we don't know is whether Melzi had a "love-relationship", in the ways we would understand today, or whether he was a dear valet to the elder Leonardo. It is possible, but based on the available evidence, it remains hypothetical. The term love in the 1500s was used to describe the close amity of two males, without always having a romantic or sexual nature.
I have strong dislike for the term "life-long relationship" when Leonardo met the young man for the first time when he was 54 yrs old, or for the last 13 years of his life. Since we cannot say with certainty it was "love" in the way we would evision today, we certainly can not say there was "love at first sight". Therefore, we cannot say it started when he was 15.
I know that Wikipedia frowns on editors casting personal assessments on contributors, but I have made this assessment before of Haiduc's many edits. One of the main focus of his contributions has been to underscore pederastic relationships between the mighty and the minor or vice versa. There is no doubt such encounters have occurred, but he finds them even when the data is minimal, and the source questionable as is true for the text of forbidden friendships and Louis Crompton's book. He will string statements like: "Florence during the Renaissance was a place and time of renewed interest in arts and sciences...Pederasty was very common in Renaissance Florence". The suggestion appears to be that pederasty is a fountain for a healthy renewed interest in arts and sciences. That is not a neutral point of view. In addition, promotion of pederasty, despite Haiduc's claims in the pederasty article that there is nothing sexual to it, is highly troublesome, given the illegal nature of such sexual relationships. In Haiduc's case, this is not an inadvertant comment, but a main focus of his contributions. As I stated before, if Haiduc had evidence of a "life-long love relationship" between Melzi and Leonardo, then by all means, insert it into the [Leonardo da Vinci] article. The fact that such claims can not be inserted with his language into that article, because they would be rejected by other authors, supports my point.
CARAVAGGISTI (talk) 00:22, 17 June 2008 (UTC)
The recent edits do nothing to address the questions above. AnotherSolipsist, who reverted my edit, was blocked for unspecified pro-pederasty edits. The statement "life-long love relationship" is unsubstantiated; the source provided only hypothesizes this. I recommend you to read Vasari's few line entry on Melzi:
"who was a child of remarkable beauty, much beloved by him and is now a handsome and amiable old man, who sets great store by these drawings and treaures them as relics, together with a portrait of Leonardo of blessed memory."
Again, there is no need to read those 10-15 years Melzi spent with Leonardo as a life-long love relationship, since Vasari also claims that:
- Fra Giovanni da Fiesole was so greatly "beloved" by Cosimo de' Medici (page 25)
- Lorenzo de Credi was "beloved" by Andrea Verrochio.
or
- "Luca Signorelli that he had a son killed in
Cortona, a youth of singular beauty in face and person, whom he had tenderly loved." CARAVAGGISTI (talk) 20:02, 3 July 2008 (UTC)