Michelangelo between earthly passions and fear of God During the Renaissance, several great homosexual artists-from Leonardo da Vinci and Botticelli to Michelangelo and Raphael-transformed the history of art, striving for ever closer imitation of nature while shaping it to their tastes. In their art ambiguous beings were born, half man, half woman; female breasts were planted on male busts and a young man's gaze peeped out beneath the eyelids of a Madonna.