The Sexuality of Christ in Renaissance Art and in Modern Oblivion

By Leo Steinberg

Book Overview

Originally published in 1983, Leo Steinberg's classic work has changed the viewing habits of a generation. After centuries of repression and censorship, the sexual component in thousands of revered icons of Christ is restored to visibility. Steinberg's evidence resides in the imagery of the overtly sexed Christ, in Infancy and again after death. Steinberg argues that the artists regarded the deliberate exposure of Christ's genitalia as an affirmation of kinship with the human condition. Christ's lifelong virginity, understood as potency under check, and the first offer of blood in the circumcision, both required acknowledgment of the genital organ. More than exercises in realism, these unabashed images underscore the crucial theological import of the Incarnation.

This revised and greatly expanded edition not only adduces new visual evidence, but deepens the theological argument and engages the controversy aroused by the book's first publication.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0226771873
• ISBN13: 9780226771878
• Release Date: January 1997
• Publisher: University of Chicago Press
• Length: 426 Pages
• Weight: 2.40 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.0" x 7.7" x 9.3"

Customer Reviews

mind expanding and provocative

this book remains timely for the student of theology or one who wishes to expand the mind beyond the mundane . The art is beautiful even if the premise is uncomfortable. FPB Ann Arbor

Theology of the Divine Phallus through Art

As a visitor enters the nave of the Episcopal church I attend, his gaze is immediately drawn to the stark pentagonal brick wall behind the raised altar, and to the large cross on it with a life-size statue of a crucified Jesus, naked except for the loin cloth about his hips to satisfy the normal decency criteria of the Church. Although we do know that crucifixion victims were stripped of all their clothing, and that the Bible specifically describes the Roman soldiers gambling for Jesus' garments, good taste forbids us to show Jesus naked. Yet there was a time when this was not true. This book examines the Renaissance period (14th to 16th century) when artists presented Jesus either completely naked or covered by a simple loincloth that accentuated a rigidly erect member. Three hundred beautiful plates show this state of undress of both the baby Jesus and of the dying or resurrected Christ. What caused the artists to break the normal decency codes, asks the author, and he advances various theories to answer his own question. The first half of the book was written in 1983 and is divided into two parts: the main analysis and 39 excursuses (appendices to you and me) that amplify various points made. The second half was written thirteen years later and presents the author's newer thoughts plus a detailed refutation of the arguments put forth by his critics. The paintings examined in the book relate to three periods of Jesus' life: his infancy, his baptism, and his crucifixion. Those depicting his infancy show a progressive diminution of worn apparel with passing time: in the 12th century Jesus is shown covered completely by a long philosopher's tunic; in 13th century paintings he appears in short child's dresses; and in the next two centuries he is painted either completely nude, or wearing short, sometimes see-through shifts, that are pulled up by either the baby or his mother to reveal his genitals, while the actions of the surrounding figures direct the viewer's attention to them. Whether it is Mary's mother poking at them (in Hans Baldung Grien's "Holy Family" 1511) or a magus staring at them intently (in Monticello's "Adoration of the Magi," c. 1470), or even the baby himself holding or pointing to them, these treatments of a baby's, let alone baby Jesus' genitals seem to transcend good taste. Steinberg explains it as an effort by the painters to bring to the viewer's attention Jesus' full humanity, and to remind us that as a true Jew he shed his first blood for us during his circumcision. It is, "I, your Creator, have come to share your humanity"; or, "See how I have not delayed to pour out for you the price of my blood." The Magus's almost indecent examination is just an effort to certify the sex or the circumcision status of the child. St Anne's poking, in Grien's woodcut, is explained away as some type of the artist's preoccupation with fecundity and miracle-working spells. The manner in which the adult Jesus was pai

Scandalous and brilliant

Several art historians of my acquaintance, experts in the period, say that this is the best art history book ever written. I'm not an expert, but I can say that it's terrific, and one of the few academic books that, at first reading, had me lying on my back on the floor with my feet in the air, laughing hysterically. Steinberg had the audacity to wonder, looking at a Renaissance painting, why is it that Jesus's male member is so, well, *prominent*? Instead of averting his eyes (which is what most of us would do) he started looking for other paintings with which to compare it, and lo and behold, he discovered lots of them where indeed the painter seems to be deliberately *accenting* a part of the anatomy which normally one would expect to be concealed. He concludes that the painters were trying to show that the son of God had become Incarnate as a man in the most literal sense. In that sense, what seems scandalous to us is simply a manifestation of Renaissance humanism. Beyond the screamingly funny prose lies a serious argument, about the Renaissance, and the way to do art history. Finally, Steinberg teaches the reader's eye how to look at a painting.