The Old Master Workshop with Model
In the manner of the late Renaissance, which might have been painted c. 1600–1620
Where Chiaroscuro Meets Passion
This composition evokes the workshop of an old master, where the painter engages in dialogue with his nude model amidst fragments of artistic memory: antique statues, Greek vases and early paintings. Balanced between chiaroscuro and erudition, the image spans centuries to recompose a universe where male gazes encounter and respond to one another.
The work presents itself as an ode to masculinity and homosexuality in the art of the past — an aspect too often obscured but here triumphantly reclaimed with pride. It blurs the solemnity of academic tradition by inserting an element of mischievous play, reminding us that the history of art can also be a field of delight and invention.
It is known that the creator of Queering Fine Arts has inscribed his own likeness here, lending his features to the painter. In this imagined museum, Renaissance humanism meets contemporary queer freedom: the old masters rediscover a new complicity and the workshop becomes a space of memory and reinvention, where desire, heritage and cultural affirmation are intertwined.
And after the sessions of posing, what then? Some contemporaries whispered that master and model abandoned themselves to passionate embraces upon the draperies carelessly cast to the floor. Hands wandered over bodies as brushes caressed canvas; sweat replaced the warm paste of paint; rods of manhood took on the hardness of bronze; and the languor of the workshop became the stage of a fusion where art and flesh dissolved into one.
He surrounded himself with trusted advisors, secretaries, and officers of his household, many of them young men from the Castilian or Flemish nobility, several of whom appeared to enjoy a particular closeness with him. Various chroniclers of the time—notably the Count of Fuentes, ambassador in Vienna, and later the memoirist Saint-Simon—remarked on the marked favoritism extended to these companions. One name frequently mentioned is Luis Méndez de Haro y Guzmán, nephew of the Count-Duke of Olivares, who often traveled with Don Juan and remained a loyal member of his inner circle.
In Brussels, Don Juan showed a keen personal interest in the arts, in keeping with the Habsburg tradition. He commissioned works, visited the collections of the Arenberg family and possibly that of David Teniers the Younger, then court painter and curator for Archduke Leopold Wilhelm. His private cabinet was said to contain Italian and Flemish paintings, with a distinct preference for mythological and allegorical subjects—especially those celebrating virtue, devotion, or tragic heroism, where the idealized male body often held a central place. His collection reportedly included representations of Ganymede, Endymion, and Saint Sebastian—ambiguous figures much prized in the Baroque visual culture.
While no known painting by Teniers depicts Don Juan in a gallery setting, it is historically plausible that such a composition—modeled on his famous depictions of Archduke Leopold Wilhelm’s gallery—could have been imagined or even requested. In such a scene, Don Juan might appear standing in an elegant interior, in the presence of young gentlemen admiring artworks, surrounded by depictions of legendary and historical men bound by affection, desire, or unspoken alliance, subtly echoing the atmosphere of idealized companionship.
Such a never realized artwork could have captured the delicate tension between public authority and private intimacy that Don Juan cultivated. In a society where the private lives of the powerful were rigorously policed, courtly codes and aesthetics often served as a discreet veil for intimacies once kept off the record.
Historical Note
No contemporary source explicitly describes Don Juan of Austria as having engaged in homosexual relationships. However, his lifelong celibacy, the total absence of documented relationships with women, the longstanding closeness with certain male favorites, and the suggestions of insufficient masculinity found in hostile accounts (especially after 1660) have led some modern scholars to interpret his life through a queer historical lens—as one marked by sublimation, discretion, and symbolic expression through art, loyalty, and aesthetics.
The Archduke Leopold Wilhelm in his Painting Gallery in Brussels David Teniers le Jeune, c.1647–1651