Artist Spotlight Frederic Leighton

History often buries the important sexual facets of artists and writers. Sir Frederick Leighton left a few clues.

The systematic destruction of LGBT art and history has been going on for as long as men and women have had same-sex relationships. Historians often disregard the gay elements of a subject's life as irrelevant — but irrelevant to whom?

Sappho wrote love poems to women that historians say were misinterpreted. Men create ravishing works of art depicting the male nude, and it gets justified as representing an "ideal" rather than the desired.

But no matter how many religious denialists try to deny and destroy LGBT culture, it persists. Perhaps that is why so often the Victorian artists chose classic mythological figures. So many gods from the classic world were casually bisexual — as well as winged, hoofed, horned, and superhumanly strong and beautiful.