A Crack in His Marbles: Michelangelo Used Male Wrestlers as Models for His Females
Yesterday, I sent the following text to my muse, Georgie. And I am sharing a pic her from our recent session, both text and photo are with her permission.
Georgie Leahy, photo by Michael Newberry, 2026.
Dear Georgie, this morning I reviewed all our references from the day you visited and bounced them off the iconic historical paintings—all of them will work beautifully! The Venus, Liberty, and the two Madonnas and child. I catch myself whispering “wow” the lighting works, your body, torso, and face look like they are carved by a heterosexual Michelangelo. And there are beautifully framed shadows that will be transparent celebrating the nebulas behind them. Instead of Liberty leading the people it will be Liberty leading the stars!
A Substack commenter asked: “Michelangelo was gay?”
I thought he deserved a thorough reply:
There is only circumstantial evidence that Michelangelo was gay, which I will share below, but what I find strange is his using male models for female subjects. I love Michelangelo’s art, but that is plain creepy.
For instance the Erythraean Sibyl on the Sistine Chapel ceiling, sibyls are women, but the anatomy is of a male wrestler.
Michelangelo, Erythraean Sibyl on the Sistine Chapel ceiling, 1482.
Another interesting thing is one of his sculptures that conveys sadomasochistic homoeroticism, The Genius of Victory (1532-33).
Michelangelo, Genius of Victory, 1533. Wikipedia.
Michelangelo’s contemporary, artist and theorist Gian Paolo Lomazzo in his 1584 work, Trattato dell’arte della pittura, scoltura et architettura (Treatise on the Art of Painting, Sculpture, and Architecture) wrote: “The Victory, a naked man, is alleged to be Buonarroti’s great love: Tommaso dei Cavalieri. The boy for whom he wrote a love poem and of whom he made drawings.”
The friend and biographer of Michelangelo, Giorgio Vasari in his Lives of the Most Excellent Painters, Sculptors, and Architects (1568) wrote: “Infinitely more than any of the others, he loved Tommaso dei Cavalieri, a Roman gentleman… and truly this young man was the reason for his composing many verses.”
Michelangelo wrote several poems to Tommaso dei Cavalieri. According to James M. Saslow in The Poetry of Michelangelo (Yale University Press), there is a definitive core of 30 poems explicitly addressed to Tommaso dei Cavalieri. Here is one of them, Sonnet 251, that is also dated at the same time as the Victory stature (1533):
“If to be happy, I must be conquered and bound, it is no marvel that I, nude and alone, remain the prisoner of an armed Cavalier (un Cavalier armato). …I am held prisoner by a luminous Cavalier… And if I am to be slain and conquered, it is no wonder, since an armed Cavalier stays my heart.”
My earlier comment about my muse having a body that looked carved from heterosexual Michelangelo, to be clear, was that if Michelangelo had painted/sculpted great female models and showed fidelity to their female forms.
Michael Newberry
Idyllwild, California
Michael Newberry 