Dominique Fernandez

Homosexuality has always existed, but for centuries artists have felt compelled to codify its expression in their work, in essence hiding it from the public eye. In this dazzling and highly original book, Dominique Fernandez takes a close look at artistic works from the past centuries — from rites of passage into manhood and representations of the hero, to the pantheon of pagan gods and the image of the lesbian — to show how the most powerful representations of homosexuality have emerged from conditions of secrecy and even repression.

The author takes the reader on a journey that begins in Naples ("Naples is black and bare. Naples, with its din and daualor, appears barbaric to the traveler who comes down from Rome, although no other city on the peninsula is so subtle, ingenious or civilized"), proceeds to Southern Italy, thence to Sardinia, and ends in Sicily ("Have the Sicilians not known everything already? Have they not, from Empedocles to Pirancello, written everything?. . . . They have known such a lot, precisely, and drawn at all the wells of knowledge, that their science has become blurred").

The Medici: a family whose glory is confounded with that of Florence. A line of exceptional bankers and patrons, who embodied the perfection of the human spirit. And yet the last of them with which the race was extinguished, Gian Gastone, who died in 1737, remains enveloped in mystery. He was a prince so extravagant and scandalous that the historians passed his reign in silence. The narrator here is his personal physician, who traces the environment in which he grew up, evokes his first incarnations, then his marvelous marriage with a German princess and his transfer to Bohemia. After the fiasco conjugal, return to Tuscany and beginning of a long decline. Painting and music, so important in the life of Florence, played a major role in the evolution of Gian Gastone.

Liefdestragedie waaraan de ziekte aids een diepere dimensie geeft. De relatie tussen twee Franse homoseksuelen met de buitenwereld verandert ingrijpend, wanneer één van beiden AIDS onder de leden blijkt te hebben.