Leonardo da Vinci, the Italian renaissance polymath, genius, is widely reported to be gay, but his portraits of the women in his lifetime have the subtly sexualized charge of a man infatuated. If you stare closely Da Vinci's portrait of Cecilia Gallerani stroking an ermine, as part of series painted in the Court of Milan, is suggestive in and of its hinting of the ermine's phallic symbolism, but also the thematic ambiguous grin of the girl herself. ‘Leonardo da Vinci: Painter at the Court of Milan,’ now on view at the National Gallery in London, is the most complete display of Leonardo’s rare surviving paintings ever held. This unprecedented exhibition – the first of its kind anywhere in the world. On view from November 9 to February 5.
