In ancient art Hermaphroditus, either specifically or as a generalized type, is a common subject. He is either nude or lifts his garment to expose his genitals; alternatively, a satyr, who mistakes him for a woman, assaults him. The most famous portrayal represents Hermaphroditus asleep, lying on his stomach, head turned to the side, and torso twisted just enough to reveal his breast and genitals. (National Museum of the Terme, Rome, and the Louvre, Paris.)

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Hermaphrodites disappear from post-classical art history until the Renaissance, when writers of alchemical treatises rediscovered them as non-erotic symbols for the union of opposites (a potent image for later Jungian psychology), and emblem books portrayed them as symbols of marriage. (For a modern interpretation, see Marc Chagall's Homage to Appollinaire, 1911.)

The tale of Hermaphroditus and Salmacis was portrayed occasionally in Renaissance and Neoclassical art. Among the depictions are the following: Jan Gossaert [Jan de Mabuse], The Metamorphosis of Hermaphroditus and the Nymph Salmacis (1505), Bartholomaeus Spranger, Salmacis and Hermaphroditus (1581), Francesco Albani, Salmacis Falling in Love with Hermaphroditus (ca 1660) and Salmacis Kissing Hermaphroditus in the Water (1660), and François-Joseph Navez, The Nymph Salmacis and Hermaphroditus (1829).

Since the Renaissance, hermaphrodites have most commonly been depicted as medical anomalies or sideshow freaks. However, contemporary scholars, such as Anne Fausto-Sterling, have demonstrated that hermaphrodites represent a naturally occurring alternative to the rigid designation of sex as exclusively male or female.

This new appreciation of hermaphrodites has affected the visual arts. See, for example, the notion of hermaphroditic architecture in Günther Feuerstein's Androgynos and the treatment of in Charles Moffat's paintings, Archive XIV: The Hermaphroditus/Salmacis Series.

Ancient Greek and Roman art represents a variety of homoerotic experience in several different ways.

Homoeroticism is a prominent presence in neoclassicism, an artistic movement noted for its masculine style, its appreciation of male beauty, and its privileging of ancient Greece and Rome as civilizations to be emulated.

The various cultural patterns, especially the conditions of artistic production and the types of subjects and themes represented, provide a great deal of evidence about Renaissance sexuality and art.

Patronage--the sponsorship of artists and the commissioning of artistic projects from them--is of central importance to cultural history.

A figure of uncertain gender in whom identifying sexual characteristics are stylized or combined, the androgyne is a significant and recurrent subject in art, one that has often held special significance for glbtq people.

Scipione Caffarelli Borghese, a seventeenth-century Cardinal of the Roman Catholic Church, was a bold and influential patron and collector of the visual arts.