The Sexuality of Christ in Renaissance Art and in Modern Oblivion

This significant monograph by art historian Leo Steinberg might be more accurately titled The Phallus of Christ in Renaissance Art and Its Modern Concealment. The text, with its abundant demonstration through black-and-white reproductions of paintings and sculpture, explores the former artistic conspicuousness of Jesus' tallywacker in a serious and perceptive way. The visual motif is found in a myriad of representations of the infant Christ and the condemned Jesus suffering and slain.

Steinberg is persuasive at reconstructing an intellectual and cultural context for these images in terms of late medieval and Renaissance theologies of incarnation. "Christ's necessary exemption from genital shame follows from the theological definition of show more shame as the penalty of Original Sin" (17, n 17). The sermons and exegeses that serve as documentation here are sometimes hilariously self-regarding, as each act of Christ has for its divine intention the disproof of a then-future heresy (57, 63-4).

The main text was developed out of a seminar given by Steinberg in 1981, where the "discussants" included fellow art historian Julius S. Held and Jesuit scholar John W. O'Malley. Perhaps surprisingly to some readers, the churchman proved much more receptive to Steinberg's thesis than the secular academic did. The bulk of O'Malley's sympathetic reply is reproduced at the end of the book, and it also influenced revisions of the main text to draw on Renaissance sermons regarding the circumcision of Christ for theological orientation.

Held's positions are cited chiefly in the form of counter-argument in the "Excursuses" which form the second half of the book: forty digressive short essays, talmudically tied to the primary monograph by capital Roman numerals in the page margins. Besides responses to Held, these supplementary texts range widely over such topics as the erotic chin-chucking motif, historical depictions of nudity in baptism, the role of church sermons in Renaissance culture, phallic icons on ancient Egyptian monuments, and modern modes and motives of iconoclasm.

Despite the "Sexuality" in the title, the book never questions the traditional imputation of chaste virginity to the character of Jesus Christ. It is concerned to provide reflections on the significance of the ostentio genitalium (i.e. pointing out the penis) in the context of spiritualized sexual continence. Previous art historians had satisfied themselves that such anatomical explicitness was mere artistic exuberance in the rediscovery of classical models, giving quotidian detail to the bodily form in order to assert its reality. By contrast, Steinberg observes that "What the Christian art of the Renaissance took from pagan antiquity was the license to plumb its own mythic depths" (49).

The Sexuality of Christ is a mere two hundred pages, and perhaps half of it is illustrations. I was expecting it to be a pretty quick read, but it demanded and earned my sustained attention over several weeks. I recommend it to anyone interested in the subject matter. show less

Incarnational theology taken seriously.