January 2014
The Sexuality of Christ in Byzantine Art and in Hypermodern Oblivion
by Matthew J. Milliner (Wheaton College)
Leo Steinberg’s controversial 1983 book, The Sexuality of Christ in Renaissance Art and in Modern Oblivion, argued that Renaissance artists depicted Christ’s genitalia in order to underline his full humanity. Steinberg’s argument invoked Byzantine art as a foil: the absense of Christ’s penis from Byzantine art reflected according to Steinberg a “puritanical ethos.” Byzantine artists managed to “decarnify the Incarnation itself.” In this month’s Religion and Culture Web Forum, Matthew Milliner uncovers the theological motives behind the Byzantine refusal to depict Christ’s penis–a refusal “grounded in the comparatively less essentialized Eastern view of gender.” “[I]f Steinberg’s Renaissance penises ‘regained for man his prelapsarian condition,'” Milliner argues, “the exact same rationale” lay behind “Byzantine demurral.” On the other hand, according to Milliner, the Byzantines did offer a “somatic highlight to drive home the humanity of Jesus,” but one shared by men and women–namely, the foot.
Read The Sexuality of Christ in Byzantine Art and in Hypermodern Oblivion.
Read the invited responses by:
Rachel Fulton Brown (University of Chicago);
Robert Nelson (Yale University); and
Glenn Peers (University of Texas at Austin)*.
*Images referenced in Dr. Peers’ response are available here.
Image: Panagia tou Arakou, Lagoudera, from Wikimedia Commons.