3. Leonardo Da Vinci and Fioravante di Domenico
The quintessential Renaissance man, Leonardo may have been his generation’s greatest artist and scientific mind, but in an age when he had to keep his homosexuality repressed, many historians say he also lived a largely celibate existence. But according to Michael White’s Leonardo: The First Scientist, he did find love in the arms of the younger artist Fioravante di Domenico, who studied at the Academia during Leonardo’s time in Florence. The community around the art school was quietly tolerant, White writes.