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If the expression "gay art" could really be applied to a work of art, it would be most fitting for the autodidact Elisar von Kupffer. In the Berlin years before 1902, he was in close contact with Adolf Brand. From 1902 to 1915, he lived in Florence due to health problems, and there he met with Sascha Alexander Schneider. In their artistic endeavours, they had similar interests regarding the male subject. While Schneider emphasized on the male physicality, Elisar von Kupffer centered on androgynous youthful self-portraits whose "kitsch" beauty is the expression of his longing for a gay paradise, a place and time of harmony.

From 1915, von Kupffer lived in Switzerland, together with his longtime companion, Eduard von Mayer. In 1925, they could realize their life-long ambition, the building of the temple "Sanctuarium Artis Elisarion" in Minusio. In this palace which still exists nowadays but is in dear need of restoration, a huge panoramic portrait of the youths in the four seasons was integrated as well as many older works.

The young man portrayed above who was called Fino was one of the models living in the Sanctuarium Artis Elisarion.