Remembering Art Historian and Critic Leo Steinberg, 1920-2011

Few scholars in the field of art history have matched Leo Steinberg's breadth of knowledge and perspicacity. He had the ability to tackle the most complex of our Old Masters and Modern artists (Leonardo, Michelangelo, Caravaggio, Pablo Picasso, Robert Rauschenberg and Jasper Johns) and offer up thrilling discoveries.

His colossal talent as an art historian and art critic lay not only in his exhaustive research, but also in his original analyses. He understood artistic techniques and intentionality as integral parts of a whole. (Steinberg's commentary on Raphael's Alba Madonna, ca. 1510, in the National Gallery's collection, listed below under "Sources," provides a brief introduction to his mind.)

Date and Place and Place of Birth

July 9, 1920, Moscow, Russia

 

Guess the Artist

Your clues this week are:

• The artist was English, active in the second half of the 19th-century, and the coddled, precious, only child of two painters.
• The artist had always gotten away with murder, so it must have seemed like a viable plan to elope as a teenager. Alas, the artist had seriously underestimated just how angry parents can be, and was summarily disinherited. Now, I've seen a bit of photographic evidence that strongly suggests -- and in no way is this meant unkindly -- there weren't going to be schools and schools of fish in the Sea of Romance. Eloping? Not the worst decision in this case.
• When the Pre-Raphaelites were all the rage our artist was not a fan, and instead stuck with the history painting, genre scenes, and portraits the Royal Academy (and paying clients) preferred.

And


• The work seen here can best be described as a history painting because it references a 15th-century story involving the sons of the King, the Duke of York, the Earl of March, the Earl of Cambridge, and the Earl of Ulster. Four-hundred years later in the 19th-century, our artist was in the midst of a new story involving royal sons -- and daughters. Her Imperial Majesty The Queen-Empress Victoria was fond of the painter, fond of her nine children, and fond of having their portraits painted ... and painted ... and painted. That may sound extravagant, but remember the woman had one palace, two castles, and a vacation "house" twice the size of the Hotel du Cap-Eden-Roc. Thousands of blank household walls from the Isle of Wight to the Scottish Highlands (all screaming for design solutions) kept a lot of artists gainfully employed.

Guess the Artist

Your clues this week are:

• The artist was German and worked during both the High and Late Northern Renaissances, but stuck like cyanoacrylate glue to the Late Gothic style.
• A highly lucrative and prestigious career was flushed down the drain when our artist backed the wrong side in the German Peasants' War of 1524-26. In the aftermath, personal property including a plush house, vineyards, and a 40-employee workshop was confiscated. The artist, too, was confiscated for a bit: arrested, imprisoned, and as the story goes, tortured by having the bones of both hands thoroughly broken.
• This piece is alabaster, which is fairly easily worked but extremely easily "bruised" (struck by a tool with too much force, leaving an ugly mark). Our mystery artist was clearly Master enough to pay this delicate medium the respect it demands. However, alabaster -- or even those equally perfect marble, or regular and Solnhofen limestone -- sculptures are not why we remember the artist's name. In the art history canon, a towering limewood carving holds pride of place.

And


• The subject here is a Doctor of the Church, shown during a time in his life that he supposedly lived in a biblically-significant town presently governed by the Palestinian National Authority. His animal companion is not now and never has been native to this town, so there tends to be doubt that the subject ever laid eyes on it. It is impossible to believe our artist ever laid eyes on the animal, either. This looks like a clear-cut case of attempting to work from a written description and, as Strother Martin once drawled in Cool Hand Luke, "What we've got here is failure to communicate."

Guess the Artist

Your clues this week are:

• The artist was Greek, lived in the Late Archaic period, and was important in the pioneer generation of Attic red-figure painters. It is worth noting that the artist was also one of the last great Attic black-figure painters.
• We think the artist's teachers must have been Euthymides (fl ca. 515-ca. 500 B.C.) and Euphronios (fl ca. 520-ca. 500 B.C.), while the Berlin Painter (fl ca. 500-ca. 460s B.C.) was a contemporary.
• Our artist had the same surname as did Berlin, above. But, then, so did quite a few other ancient Greek artists.

And


• This is an amphora, but not just any old storage container. It was a specific type of amphora given by the city of Athens to winners in the Panathenaic Games. These amphorae were always painted in the black-figure manner, always depicted Athena (seen here) opposite the sporting event on the flip side, and were filled with oil which, I hasten to add, was a prize in more ways than one. Now, the Panathenaic Games were not as important as the Olympic Games -- even though both were held every four years -- but you wouldn't want to say that out loud in ancient Athens. Or even today, possibly, seeing as the 2,500 year old, refurbished Panathenaic Stadium was used for several events in the 2004 Summer Olympics. Speaking of which, if given a choice would you rather have a gold(-plated) medal or a priceless terracotta artifact?