Theology Today - Vol 42, No. 1 - April 1985 - BOOK REVIEW - The Sexuality of Christ in Renaissance Art and in Modern Oblivion"

110 - The Sexuality of Christ in Renaissance Art and in Modern Oblivion

The Sexuality of Christ in Renaissance
Art and in Modern Oblivion
By Leo Steinberg
New York, Pantheon, 1983. 222 pp. + 246 illus. $19.95 ($9.95 paper).

With pervasive respect, the distinguished art historian Leo Steinberg here contributes a significant study of the sexuality of Christ as represented in Renaissance art and understood in Christian theology. As he uses the term, sexuality does not attribute -sexual activity or intercourse to Christ, whom, the author consistently treats as chaste. There are no excursions here into pop psychoanalysis or the politics of so-called sexual liberation.

The "sexuality" of Christ is of course implicit in all orthodox conceptions of the incarnation. Christ could not be human without a sexual dimension. According to the definition of Chalcedon, Christ is "perfect both in deity and also in human-ness, ... actually God and actually man, with a rational soul and a body." Or to put it in the words of Hebrews 4:15, we have a High Priest "who in every respect has been tempted as we are, yet without sinning." Those two quotations define the context in which Steinberg approaches Renaissance artists' representations of the inherent sexuality of the incarnation.

Within that context, he examines how Renaissance artists presented the incarnate one visually "complete in all the parts of a man," to use the words from Augustine's The City of God (XXII.18). Without all the parts of a man, Christ's humanation would have been incomplete and his sinlessness only partial. As Steinberg puts it: "chastity consists not in impotent abstinence, but in potency under check. In Christological terms: just as Christ's resurrection overcame the death of a mortal body, so did his chastity triumph over the flesh…. It was this flesh Christ assumed in becoming man, and to declare him free of its burden, to relieve him of its temptations, is to decarnify the incarnation itself"

(P.17, and see also p. 79).

112 - The Sexuality of Christ in Renaissance Art and in Modern Oblivion

That position is theologically impeccable, once we think of it, but sexuality has been one of the less noted aspects of the incarnation in recent centuries (the "modern oblivion" of the title). Modernity too often either sentimentalizes or sensationalizes sex. On that basis, we have ignored the disciplined sexuality of the Christ, and much else in the Christological tradition, "as the person of Jesus was refined into all doctrine and message, the kerygma of a Christianity without Christ," as Steinberg observes with obvious distaste (p. 45). By contrast, he studies a period in which "the full implications of incarnational faith were put forth in icons that recoiled not even from the God-man's assumption of sexuality."

The sexuality appeared repeatedly in paintings of the Christ child being presented to the viewer by his mother, his small genitalia clearly and unmistakably delineated. Often, too, the genitals are pointed out by the mother's hand or by the child's, demonstrating that this is no docetic or gnostic redeemer. Even in death, Christ's hand is frequently shown by the artists as covering his groin, in a chaste reminder of a chaste acceptance of human sexuality.

Circumcision on the eighth day was taken by the church fathers as proof positive against docetic claims of a merely "seeming" humanity, for this child was not only completely human in all parts but subject to pain and bleeding-indeed, the blood shed here was treated as proleptic of the final shedding of blood on Golgotha. Again, when the Magi come to worship the new born King, their eyes sometimes focused directly upon the navel and genitalia, proofs positive of the full incarnation which the artists wish to declare. "This is, after all, a happy occasion, none happier since the creation of light" (p. 67). And in paintings or sculptures of the crucifixion, artists show blood from the spear wound in the side flowing directly into the genital area, violating the laws of gravity perhaps, but underscoring the theological continuity from childhood circumcision to the final redemptive sacrifice of the redeemer's lifeblood.

In the theological literature and in Renaissance art, these and related themes were subject to what Steinberg calls "inevitable repetitiveness" (he has found a thousand examples) precisely because they represented "the kind of matter that must be repeated-like an oath of allegiance" (p. 49n). Parallel to "the ostentatio vulnerum, the showing forth of the wounds" in feet, hands, and side which have often been observed in Christian art, Steinberg would have us equally conscious of the artists' ostentatio genitalium, the patent signaling of Christ's sex as an inescapable part of incarnational theology (p. 1). Like the fathers of the church, and like the great theologians down to their own time, Renaissance artists were intent upon denying that "the protagonist of the gospels assumed a deceptive disguise like a godling in pagan fable," and upon affirming that "he took real flesh in a woman's womb and endured it until death" (p. 71).

By and large, these artistic representations of one aspect of the

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incarnation are unexceptionable, as are Steinberg's comments. A few problems do arise, most relatively minor, but one presents a large puzzle which the author has been unable to solve. A small number of pictures of Christ as Man of Sorrows, after having endured the flagellation and/or the crucifixion, show him with a phallic tumescence which the author admits "seems to us-and must have seemed to most artists-a miscarried symbol," a failure both of meaning and of art (p. 91). This motif seems to have been largely restricted to the sixteenth century and the Low Countries. The explanation which Steinberg cannot find in theology or in iconography may be found in the science of anatomy, which was being rapidly developed in that area and time: both extreme flagellation and crucifixion apparently can produce an erection, due to pressures on the blood circulation. In flagellation, wounded tissue undergoes swelling; and in crucifixion, the blood flows downwards to fill the lower extremities. Perhaps a few artists, caught up in the new science of anatomy, sought to introduce this naturalistic element, with results that were more shocking than effective.

As a pioneer, Steinberg properly admits that "much of what I have said is conjectural and surely due for revision." It is no reflection upon Steinberg's contribution to say that some of his readings of gestures seem to me incorrect, and some of his explanatory comments unconvincing in ways which later study and discussion will clarify and correct, as he hopes. This is a ground-breaking work, combining art history with incarnational theology to convey notably constructive new insights. It is remarkable to see so much done so well, and to see it presented with such tact and sensitivity.

Roland Mushat Frye
University of Pennsylvania
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania