Talk:Francesco Maria del Monte

LGBT?

I've read the source mentioned in the material I deleted:

It was likely, although not conclusive, that he was homosexual and this may have influenced his tastes in the art he commissioned<ref>Howard Hibbard, "Caravaggio" (1983) ISBN 978-0-06-433322-1</ref>.

The source doesn't explicitly state that Del Monte was gay. Given that that's sort of a "controversial" statement, I would feel a lot more comfortable with it being a) more definitive (remove the 'likely though not conclusive'), and b) backed up by a more concrete source. -- SatyrTN (talk / contribs) 02:54, 10 December 2008 (UTC)

I appreciate your concern to cite robust sources but should we really be worried with stating that Del Monte might have been homosexual because this is potentially "controversial"? Maybe as a Catholic cardinal it might arguably be controversial to state that he was 'actively homosexual' (although this is not historically uncommon), but I wouldn't have thought a big deal to say that he was simply homosexual by nature? In any case looking at the sources, Howard Hibbard was a respected academic and professor of art history so I think we should take what he says with some weight. We should also consider the views of Donald Posner. I've redrafted the section slightly - see what you think. I'm going to see if I can track down the primary sources too. Contaldo80 (talk) 11:43, 10 December 2008 (UTC)

It all began with the Caravaggio scholars, some of whom started arguing that C. was gay because of the early-period paintings of youths. Then other scholars came to C's defence, saying it was all the fault of the wicked Del Monte, who had ordered the paintings and whose taste, not C's, they reflected. And then of course Del Monte himself had to be defended. It was, and is, very much a case of an academic dog chasing it's own scholarly tail. The evidence for a homosexual content to the paintings is pretty solid and is based on their inclusion of common symbols/signs from the place and time - off-the-shoulder shirts, flowers in the hair, etc. To sheet this home to Del Monte rather than Caravaggio is rather more difficult. The primary-source evidence for Del Monte's homosexuality comes from a lawyer, Dirk van Ameyden, who was a contemporary. (Despite the Dutch name, he lived in Rome). Commenting in a letter on Del Monte's last and unsuccessful bid to be elected pope, Ameyden comments that the failure wasn't due to the hostility of the Spanish (Del Monte was pro-French), but because he "was attracted to intimacy with boys." In his earlier years he had concealed this, but in his old age, with no more hope of the highest office, he "relaxed all restraint...and openly indulged his tastes." Ameyden also comments that he believed the attraction not to have been "sinful". This comes from Peter Robb's biography of Caravaggio, "M". Ameyden's reliability has been attacked on the grounds that he was a personal enemy of Del Monte, but I can see no basis for this. Robb himself, however, is less than entirely reliable, and I'd also ask you to look at Catheine Puglisi's "Caravaggio" (Phaidon), page 99.PiCo (talk) 09:04, 13 December 2008 (UTC)

Very helpful indeed - thank you. Helps clarify the issues very well. Puglisi, I assume, dismisses the ameyden account? Contaldo80 (talk) 15:28, 15 December 2008 (UTC)

Puglisi is a standard recent (1998) critical biography of Caravaggio (by which I mean that she discusses the paintings as well as the artist). Talking about The Lute Player and "The Musicians shes says: "The seductive atmosphere of [these two paintings] recalls Caravaggio's earlier works and here too the sexual ambiguity of the male models has raised the issue of homoerotic intent. (Note that she talks of actual "intent" on the part of the artist, not merely later readings into the paintings). As Caravaggio was addressing a particular patron and ambience, Del Monte's personality has come under modern scrutiny, and his presumed homosexuality is repeatedly invoked as justification for the suggestive imagery. However, Del Monte's alleged taste for boys rests on insinuations made by a hostile contemporary who claimed that, as an old man, that is in the 1620s, Del Monte displayed more than paternal love for the boys under his protection. Less tainted evidence from two decades earlier exists for Del Monte's decidedly heterosexual behaviour. On more than one occasion he fondly reminisced with an old friend about the women they had courted in their youth. Once a cardinal, he did not abandon his former gallantries." She goes on to give some examples. She also raises the possibility that Del Monte enjoyed both boys and girls. She does not directly refute this possibility, but notes that there exists a separate report, from 1621, describing the 72 year old Del Monte as a "living corpse" given over to spiritual matters "perhaps so as to make up for the license of his younger days." Her next paragraph draws attention to the danger of interpreting the society and culture of Rome in 1600 as if it were identical to New York in 2000: she notes that at the time women were forbidden to appear as entertainers, with the result that female parts were played by boys: "Thus the often-cited report that Cardinal Del Monte attended a ballet in 1605 at which the dancers were young boys dressed as women records a special but hardly scandalous event, which has parallels in the contemporary Elizabethan and Jacobean stage where the heroines were also played by boys." PiCo (talk) 10:14, 16 December 2008 (UTC)

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