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So grateful were Athenians that they put up statues of the men - the first in the classical world that didn't portray gods but human beings, and to boot "a homosexual couple feted as the founders of democracy," says Navarro. Together they killed one of two tyrants of Athens around 514 BC, an act that eventually ushered in democracy. The Prado's tour takes in 29 already-on-display or never-shown works of art, in a bid to show how the LGBT community has been depicted at times of deep intolerance or societal approval.Ĭue the bust of Aristogeiton - whose sculptures are usually exhibited next to those of Harmodius, his lover as per the ancient Greek custom of sexual relationships between younger and older men. "This is perhaps the earliest known chat-up line in human history, and it is between two men." "In a poem from ancient Egypt, around 1,800 BC, one male god tries to seduce another by saying 'What a lovely backside you have!'," writes the Egyptologist and former British Museum curator.
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Parkinson writes that "same-sex desire certainly seems to have been part of human experience from the earliest recorded times". "In every culture, in every era, homosexuality is very much a reality that goes hand-in-hand with the reality of mankind, despite how it may have been interpreted by morality and religion," says curator Carlos Navarro.
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It includes a bust of Aristogeiton, who with his young lover Harmodius was feted in ancient Athens paintings by Sandro Botticelli, accused of sodomy and work by 19th-century French artist Rosa Bonheur, who openly lived with a woman. That's the message conveyed by Madrid's Prado Museum, which has organised a special tour through its collection to mark WorldPride 2017, one of the globe's biggest celebrations of gay rights, taking place in the Spanish capital. Gays, lesbians and transgender people have been a feature of art - and life - throughout the ages, from the ancient Greeks to the Renaissance, 18th-century Japan to Native American tribes.