Pride of the National Gallery

About this tour

Wandering through the enormous collection of world-famous paintings at the National Gallery is awe-inspiring, but it’s not the sort of place you expect to find many queer stories, at least, not very obvious ones. But hidden in plain sight throughout history are the recognisable symbols and themes of a queer community that has always existed, through oppression and persecution. We’ll explore queer artists from the Renaissance to the 20th century; the painters, works and characters that have become LGBTQ+ icons and symbols of queer identity and resistance!

What you'll hear

1. 1

   Stop 1 — Welcome to the National Gallery

   Start this tour once you're inside the foyer of the National Gallery.

2. 2

   Stop 2 — Leonardo: Virgin of the Rocks

   Meet two queer Renaissance giants — Leonardo and Michelangelo — and discover what the androgynous angel Uriel reveals about Leonardo's most defining relationship. ▶️ Room 51

3. 3

   Stop 3 — Veronese: Scorn

   A chaotic mythological scene becomes a window into Venice's underground queer culture — and what carnival masks allowed people to get away with. ▶️ Room 9

4. 4

   Stop 4 — Michelangelo: The Entombment

   Michelangelo's unfinished altarpiece holds clues to his sexuality, and to centuries of deliberate erasure that followed his death. ▶️ Room 2

5. 5

   Stop 5 — Vigée Le Brun: Self Portrait

   A bold self-portrait by one of Europe's leading portrait painters, and a look at the rumours, royal friendships, and gender subversions that surrounded her. ▶️ Room 15

6. 6

   Stop 6 — Van Haarlem: Cadmus and the Dragon

   Grotesque, muscular, and unmistakably homoerotic, this Dutch Golden Age painting hides coded queer symbolism that collectors of the time knew exactly how to read. ▶️ Room 24

7. 7

   Stop 7 — Von Honthorst: Saint Sebastian

   How did a middle-aged Roman martyr become one of art's most enduring queer icons? The answer lies somewhere between devotion, the male body, and sadomasochism. ▶️ Room 24

8. 8

   Stop 8 — Velázquez: Rokeby Venus

   The painting's surprising inspiration — a statue of Hermaphroditus — opens up a fascinating Renaissance anxiety about gender, bodies, and who gets to define them. ▶️ Room 30

9. 9

   Stop 9 — Guercino: Incredulity of St Thomas

   An intensely physical encounter between Christ and Thomas — and a closer look at an artist whose personal life and homoerotic figures were quietly scandalising Rome. ▶️ Room 32

10. 10

    Stop 10 — Caravaggio: Boy Bitten by a Lizard

    Caravaggio invites you in with a dirty-nailed, seductively dishevelled boy, and a painting that was far more transgressive than it appears. ▶️ Room 32

11. 11

    Stop 11 — Gentileschi: Self Portrait as St Catherine

    A survivor who painted herself as a martyr and a conversation about why one traumatic episode shouldn't define an entire extraordinary career. ▶️ Room 32

12. 12

    Stop 12 — Hogarth: Marriage à la Mode

    Buried inside Hogarth's satirical swipe at the aristocracy is a single figure — sipping chocolate, dressed to excess — and a painting-within-a-painting that gives the game away. ▶️ Room 34

13. 13

    Stop 13 — Bonheur: The Horse Fair

    Rosa Bonheur wore trousers, hunted, smoked, and lived with two women across fifty years. One of the 19th century's most celebrated painters was also one of its most openly queer. ▶️ Room 13

14. 14

    Stop 14 — Cézanne: The Bathers

    Eleven desexualised, almost disfigured female nudes, and a question about what Cézanne might have been hiding behind his masks, his rudeness, and his obsessive repetition. ▶️ Room 45

15. 15

    Stop 15 — Degas: Dancers

    The ballet world was far grimmer than the tutus suggest — and Degas himself remains one of art history's most debated figures when it comes to desire, repression, and sexuality. ▶️ Room 43

16. 16

    Stop 16 — Toulouse-Lautrec: Gabrielle

    An unusually tender portrait of a Moulin Rouge dancer and her lesbian relationship, painted by an outsider who found his chosen family among the misfits of Montmartre. ▶️ Room 43