Table Of ContentMichelangelo’s sculpture
Essays by LEo stEinbErg
Edited by Sheila Schwartz
Michelangelo’s Sculpture
s E L E c t E d E s s ay s
leo steinberg
edited by Sheila Schwartz
thE UnivErsity of chicago PrEss | Chicago and London
The University of Chicago Press, Chicago 60637
The University of Chicago Press, Ltd., London
© 2018 by Sheila Schwartz
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced
in any manner whatsoever without written permission, except in the
case of brief quotations in critical articles and reviews.
For more information, contact the University of Chicago Press,
1427 E. 60th St., Chicago, IL 60637.
Published 2018
Printed in China
27 26 25 24 23 22 21 20 19 18 1 2 3 4 5
isbn- 13: 978- 0- 226- 48257- 6 (cLoth)
isbn- 13: 978- 0- 226- 48260- 6 (E- book)
doi: https://doi.org/10.7208/chicago/9780226482606.001.0001
Library of congrEss cataLoging-in-PUbLication data
namEs: Steinberg, Leo, 1920–2011, author. | Schwartz, Sheila, editor.
| Steinberg, Leo, 1920–2011. Essays. Selections. 2018.
titLE: Michelangelo’s sculpture : selected essays / Leo Steinberg ;
edited by Sheila Schwartz.
dEscriPtion: Chicago ; London : The University of Chicago Press,
2018. | Series: Essays by Leo Steinberg | Includes bibliographical
references and index.
idEntifiErs: Lccn 2017039555 | isbn 9780226482576 (cloth : alk.
paper) | isbn 9780226482606 (e-book)
sUbjEcts: Lcsh: Michelangelo Buonarroti, 1475–1564—Criticism
and interpretation. | Sculpture, Renaissance—Italy. | Sculpture—
Italy—16th century. | Sculpture—Italy—15th century.
cLassification: Lcc nb623.b9 s74 2018 | ddc 709.2—dc23
Lc record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2017039555
This paper meets the requirements of ANSI/NISO Z39.48- 1992
(Permanence of Paper).
co ntents
Preface and Acknowledgments, Sheila Schwartz vii
Introduction, Richard Neer xi
1. The Metaphors of Love and Birth in Michelangelo’s Pietàs 1
2. The Roman Pietà: Michelangelo at Twenty- Three 58
3. The Medici Madonna and Related Works 90
4. Body and Symbol in the Medici Madonna 96
5. The Florentine Pietà: The Missing Leg Twenty Years After 129
6. The Michelangelo Next Door 167
7. Shrinking Michelangelo 170
8. Michelangelo and the Doctors 179
9. What Would You Ask Michelangelo? 184
Notes 185
Leo Steinberg: Chronology 209
Leo Steinberg: Publications (1947– 2010) 213
Photography Credits 219
Index 221
preface and
acknowledgMents
Leo Steinberg greeted the turn of the millennium granted. English was his fourth language, preceded by
with a new venture in mind: the republication of Russian, Hebrew, and German. He arrived in London
about a dozen of his most important Old Master es- from Berlin in May 1933, not quite thirteen years old,
says in a single volume, a companion to Other Criteria, fluent in German, able to mimic half a dozen dialects,
his 1972 compendium on modern art. But, as he passed but without a word of English. He quickly came to re-
eighty, the burden of age began to weigh upon him and sent English as the “instrument of my impotence” and
he opened files on unpublished matter, eager to work “humiliation.”3 At age seventeen, however, he decided
up what had not yet been scripted and engage in fresh that English would be his language and began to school
writing tasks. In the two years before his death in 2011, himself in its literature— Shakespeare, Milton, Thomas
however, another, larger project evolved: the posthu- Browne, Jonathan Swift, Laurence Sterne, Dickens. En-
mous publication of essays in all fields written during glish, he soon realized, was as noble a language as Ger-
his sixty- year career, along with some unpublished lec- man. He memorized Shakespeare sonnets, pages from
tures.1 His hope was that I would bring off what he had Paradise Lost, and long prose passages from other fa-
neither the time nor the inclination to do. The present vorite authors, “reciting them to myself in order to in-
volume is the first in a planned series that will extend ternalize the rhythms of English prose and verse.”4 A
into modern and contemporary art. Next will be a vol- friend gave him a copy of Joyce’s Ulysses, which became
ume on Michelangelo’s painting. his cicerone to English. “I had the naive notion that any
word or turn of phrase in Ulysses that was unfamiliar to
I leave to Richard Neer an explication de texte, address- me was unfamiliar because I was a bloody foreigner, and
ing instead the biographical origins of Steinberg’s art- of course any native English speaker would know words
historical method. like ‘tholsel’ or ‘inkle.’ I would look every one of them
Steinberg had a well- earned reputation as a writer up.”5 Late in life, he still knew pages of Ulysses by heart.
of fine prose, which won him both praise and blame This internalized vocabulary— and syntax, styles,
from fellow art historians. He often recalled Walter and structures— of great English literature became a
Friedlaender’s judgment at a faculty conference during vast linguistic resource. And writing, he taught me in
his graduate studies at the Institute of Fine Arts: “I the more than four decades we worked together, was
don’t trust Leo Steinberg, he writes too well.”2 Any- thinking. Ideas and narrative structures evolve and are
one concerned with style could not be concerned with refined— or forsaken— in the search for the most pre-
scholarship; if it doesn’t sound like art history, it isn’t. cise and expressive locution. Put into the service of
Steinberg’s dedication to English style was that of a art history, his prose illuminated the subject, reveal-
foreigner who had to learn what native speakers took for ing what a more pedestrian style would keep hidden.
PrEfacE and acknowLEdgmEnts
[viii] Richard Shiff put it well: “Leo’s writing has the fresh- engraved copies of the Roman Pietà: he saw these alter-
ness of speech, even though he fussed over choice of ations not as incompetence, but as negative criticism,
word, syntax, and meter, just as a painter might fuss visual corrections of perceived flaws that serve to reveal
over nuances of color and the rhythms of strokes, with- the intentionality of the original.
out detriment to the overall picture. His models in- Comprehending an artwork extended beyond two-
cluded Shakespeare and Joyce, writers who took delight dimensional replication. Steinberg often said that he
in sound without losing the deeper reaches of sense. . . . didn’t trust art historians who’d never drawn and never
Such sonorous writing risks striking its reader as self- danced.9 He didn’t mean those who’d never waltzed,
indulgent, too finely orchestrated, leaving the impres- but rather those who never tried to translate looking
sion that the rhetoric is the message. . . . [But] his de- into physical equivalencies, to animate static art with
scriptive terms and analytical concepts bore an organic gestural simulations. He taught his students that mere
relationship to whichever art objects he brought under looking was never enough. They had to hold the figure’s
investigation. He set eye and mind to the immediate pose “till the strains of it become an inward intuition.”
task, as opposed to administering a fixed vocabulary, a “At stake is the identity of an action, its feel and import.
fashionable method, or a hierarchy of values.”6 It has to be danced to be known.”10
The roots of Steinberg’s art history lie equally in his Drawing, writing, dancing painted and sculpted
training as an artist. He enrolled in the Slade School of figures— all this built the foundation for Steinberg’s
Fine Art, London, age sixteen. At graduation four years art history. We see it in the indefatigable conjunction
later, a skilled draftsman with prizes in hand for draw- of form and content. Nearly everything Steinberg wrote
ing and sculpture, he “had the good sense to know” that includes passages of old- fashioned formal analysis. “The
a career as a professional artist was not for him.7 But he very distinction of form and symbol, insofar as it sug-
continued to draw from the model and sculpt portraits gests different things, appears as an imposition, a projec-
of friends. In 1948, looking for a way to support himself tion from habits of language.”11 Looking long and hard,
in New York, he got a job teaching life drawing at Par- reaching into his verbal storehouse, he describes what is
sons School of Design, adding art history lectures to seen— and drawn and danced. But in Steinberg’s work,
his course load in 1951. He taught at Parsons through such description becomes the basis for interpretative er-
the 1950s, drawing along with the students, even while udition. However learned his footnotes or discussions
studying art history at the Institute of Fine Arts, writ- of difficult theological and critical issues, these textual
ing contemporary exhibition reviews for Arts Magazine, reinforcements always followed visual analysis. He went
and becoming renowned for his lectures at the 92nd to the museum before he went to the library.
Street Y and the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Long The primacy of the visual is a credo of Steinberg’s
after he was an established art historian, he would now thinking about art. He titled the series of six Norton
and then join artist friends for drawing sessions with Lectures he delivered at Harvard in 1995– 96 “The Mute
a live model.8 Image and the Meddling Text,” pleading against what
Steinberg brought his artist’s eye to the study of art he elsewhere called the “tyranny of the written word.”
history. To understand a painted composition, sculpted His writings are punctuated with such statements as
figure, or building, to follow the creator’s thought, he “let thinking take off from what comes in at the eye.” Or
drew it, in whole and in part, over and again. He re- “the primary problem is simply our educated reluctance
spected every inch of a work as the product of an art- to take seeing seriously; for it is easier to read and rely
ist’s decision. Nothing, even if unsuccessful, was acci- on one’s reading than to keep vision alerted and trust
dental or casual. Thus too the alterations made to great appearances. Reading discursive prose we feel confident
works of art by copyists—i n this volume, sculpted and that the vehicles of signification are guaranteed, that
PrEfacE and acknowLEdgmEnts
meaning is promoted . . . by dint of words. . . . In parsing The texts incorporate notes and revisions Steinberg [ix]
a painting one stoops to inferior orders of certainty, and made in the years subsequent to each publication. In
it is understandable that folks who seek surety while the case of lectures, I have added endnotes from ma-
looking at art reach for collateral reading.”12 Finally, at terial in his files.
the end of The Sexuality of Christ in Renaissance Art A word about these previously unpublished lectures,
and in Modern Oblivion, he explains one of the reasons of which there are two in this volume. From the early
why he risked hypothetical interpretations: “to remind 1950s on, Steinberg was a sought- after lecturer in muse-
the literate among us that there are moments, even in ums and institutions here and abroad. He used the oc-
a wordy culture like ours, when images start from no casion of a lecture to work out and test new ideas, in the
preformed program to become primary texts. Treated expectation of eventually publishing them. Sometimes
as illustrations of what is already scripted, they with- he did manage to publish; but more often, his speaking
hold their secrets.” schedule as well as teaching obligations kept important
lecture material from reaching the printed page.
Peppering the critical objections to Steinberg’s art his- Steinberg poured as much effort into lectures as he
tory is the accusation of overinterpretation, of claiming did into published books and essays, though such ef-
more than the artist could have intended. Let Steinberg fort took time away from writing. But he felt a sense of
again speak for himself: “A word needs to be said about responsibility to his listeners, a conviction that they de-
the limits and license of interpretation. I am aware of served his very best. Even when a lecture was repeated
the position that frowns on excessively free speculation over the years, he revised it for each venue, updating and
at the expense of the masters. But there are, after all, two improving it. Moreover, he treated the spoken word dif-
ways to inflict injustice on a great work of art: by over- ferently from the written: “I try to write the lecture not
interpreting it, or by under- estimating its meaning. If as publishable prose, but as speech to a living audience.
unverifiable interpretations are rightly regarded as dan- It’s written the way a playwright might write dialogue,
gerous, there is as much danger of misrepresentation to sound spontaneous.”15 Small wonder that he usually
in restrictive assertions that feel safe only because they played to packed houses. Lecture texts originally took
say little. . . . [T]he probity of resisting interpretation is the form of typed notes on small cards, with much ad-
not the virtue to which I aspired. Michelangelo’s idiom libbed. But around 1980, with his reputation as a lec-
is so highly charged and so impregnated with thought turer secure, he began to write out his lectures in full,
that nothing would seem to me more foolhardy than to every word, every impromptu aside, with notations for
project upon his symbolic structures a personal prefer- emphasis and pace— all so as not to disappoint the au-
ence for simplicity.”13 dience’s expectations, no less than to avoid the clichés
born of improvisation.16 It is these lectures that he au-
thorized me to include in the present series.
Notes to the Texts
The volume begins with the 1970 essay “The Meta- The literature cited or discussed by Steinberg reflects
phors of Love and Birth in Michelangelo’s Pietàs,” which what was relevant to him at the time of publication. If
ranges from the early Roman Pietà to the late, unfin- his postpublication notes contained comments on or
ished Rondanini marble.14 The rest of the essays and references to later literature, they have been included.
lectures follow Michelangelo’s chronology of creation. The attentive reader will observe that some literature
At the end are three other pieces on Michelangelo: a which Steinberg must have known goes unmentioned.
serious book review, a lighthearted look at Michelan- These omissions were intentional, for they often in-
gelo and the medical profession, and, finally, the shortest volved text-b ased interpretations completely at odds
work Steinberg ever published. with his image- based principles. No point, he felt, in
