The “Ginistrella” Code: James’s Private Signals to John Addington Symonds in “The Author of Beltraffio”

Abstract:With an awareness of their shared ethical aestheticism, Henry James encoded “The Author of Beltraffio” (1884) with an allusive network related to the oeuvre of John Addington Symonds. A recovery project undertaken through the lens of disability theory and sensitive to the erasure of the queer archive finds evidence of James’s hidden appeal to Symonds through his use of esoteric signifiers related to the homosocial cinquecento workshop of Leonardo da Vinci and the paintings of his disciple Giovanni Antonio Beltraffio, and to the authors’ mutual passion for Italy. James’s allusions point as well to the authors’ esteem for Walt Whitman’s “Calamus” poems and his vision of a democracy underpinned by homosocial comradeship.