The most conventional object of homoerotic desire was the adolescent youth, usually imagined as beardless. Attraction to liminal masculinity was also evident in the popularity of angels (officially sexless, yet pictured as boyish) and . For many influential writers and artists, the erotic and the beautiful were male, or anybody imbued with qualities perceived to have a crucial element of masculinity.

Thus, in 1542 Aretino praised Michelangelo's painting of Venus because it depicted a goddess whose female body had "the male's musculature, such that she is moved by virile and womanly feelings."

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Toward the end of the next decade, Lodovico Dolce's paean to Titian's painting of Venus and Adonis included the comment that Adonis's face had "a certain fine beauty which could participate in the feminine yet not be remote from virility--an amalgam (mistura) which is hard to achieve and agreeable."

In 1550, Vasari singled out Michelangelo's statue of Bacchus for similar reasons. Carved in 1496-1497, the tipsy youth was said to show "a certain fusion (mistione) in the members that is marvelous, and in particular--both the youthful slenderness of the male and the fullness and roundness of the female."

In a patriarchal, androcentric culture, polymorphous sexuality was primarily a male privilege, but same-sex erotic fantasies and experiences were available to women too.

The goddess of chastity, Diana is frequently depicted with nymphs lovingly caring for her body, thus enacting a considerable degree of physical intimacy.

Since antiquity Ganymede, the beautiful Phrygian youth abducted by Jupiter, has served as an artistic expression for homosexuality.

A complex and multivalent character, Hercules is an exemplary hero whose myths remind us that a supreme manifestation of virility and physicality can also encompass sexual deeds outside the heteronormative.

Although the myth of Narcissus was originally intended as a moral fable against excessive pride, Narcissus has functioned in the arts as a symbol of same-sex passion, as well as of masturbation and effeminacy.

Sebastian's broad and long-standing presence in queer artistic production suggests that he functions as an emblem of the feelings of shame, rejection, inverted desire, and loneliness endured by queer people in a homophobic society.

Renowned for his linear finesse and richly colored, meticulous paintings, Florentine artist Sandro Botticelli produced profound religious works, astute portraits, and poetic adaptations of classical mythology, all of which encourage a suggestively queer response.

Agnolo Bronzino, court painter to Cosimo de Medici, through both his writing and painting, offers significant insight into same-sex desire and relationships in sixteenth-century Florentine society.

Sculptor, goldsmith, memoirist, and flamboyant pederast, Benvenuto Cellini is one of the greatest artists in the history of Western art.

One of the most innovative Italian painters of the sixteenth century, Corregio (Antonio Allegri) devised a highly original manner than anticipates the Baroque style of the seventeenth century.

The varied oeuvre of Renaissance sculptor Donatello includes figures of beautiful male youths imbued with homoerotic sensuality.

One of the greatest graphic artists in history, Dürer elevated printmaking to the level of painting through his unprecedented use of line and value; his works frequently express sexual themes and homoeroticism.

The fifteenth-century Italian philosopher Marsilio Ficino introduced the phrase "platonic love," by which he meant a relationship that included both the physical and the spiritual.

The love of the second-century Roman emperor Hadrian for the beautiful youth Antinous was exceptional not because the lovers were male, but because of its intensity.

One of the greatest painters in the history of art and an outstanding empirical scientist, Leonardo was haunted by his illegitimacy and rumors of homosexuality.

The most famous artist who ever lived, Michelangelo left an enormous legacy in sculpture, painting, drawing, architecture, and poetry; while the artist's sexual behavior cannot be documented, the homoerotic character of his drawings, letters, and poetry is unmistakable.

Although little is reliably known of the private life of sixteenth-century Italian Renaissance painter Parmigianino, his superbly refined and tortuously complex style has often appealed to a gay male audience sensitive to the extremes of taste embodied by Mannerism.

Although his nickname may indicate nothing about his sexuality, Il Sodoma (Giovanni Antonio Bazzi) painted a number of works that depict same-sex intimacy.