Steinberg was born in
Moscow,
Russian SFSR, the son of
Isaac Nachman Steinberg, a Jewish lawyer and
Socialist Revolutionary Party politician who was People's Commissioner for Justice under
Vladimir Lenin from 1917 to 1918. His family left the
Soviet Union in 1923, and settled in
Berlin, Germany. In 1933, after the Nazis came to power, the Steinbergs were forced to move again, this time to the United Kingdom. Intending to become an artist, Steinberg studied at the
Slade School of Fine Art (part of the
University of London). In 1945, encouraged by his older sister and her husband, Steinberg moved to
New York City. For years he made a living writing art criticism and teaching art, including at the
Parsons School of Design. In 1957,
William Kolodney invited Steinberg to give a lecture series at the
Metropolitan Museum of Art. "Change and Permanence in Western Art" focused on ten periods of art, dealing with problems or solutions with special relevance to modern thought and taste. The importance of his criticism of modern art was proven by his being included in
Tom Wolfe's 1975 book
The Painted Word, in which Steinberg,
Harold Rosenberg, and
Clement Greenberg were all labeled the "kings of Cultureburg" for the influence of their criticism. Steinberg eventually moved away from art criticism and developed a scholarly interest in such artists and architects as
Francesco Borromini,
Michelangelo, and
Leonardo da Vinci. In 1960, he earned his
PhD at
New York University's
Institute of Fine Arts with a dissertation on the architectural symbolism of Borromini's
San Carlo alle Quattro Fontane in Rome. Subsequently, he taught at
Hunter College of the
City University of New York. In 1975, he was appointed Benjamin Franklin Professor of the History of Art at the
University of Pennsylvania, where he taught until retiring in 1991. From 1995 to 1996, Steinberg was a guest professor at
Harvard University, delivering the
Charles Eliot Norton lectures on "The Mute Image and the Meddling Text." Steinberg approached the history of art in a revolutionary manner, helping to move it from a dry consideration of factual details, documents, and iconographic symbols to a more dynamic understanding of meaning conveyed via various artistic choices. For example, in 1972, Steinberg introduced the idea of the "flatbed picture plane" in his book
Other Criteria, a collection of essays. The whole of the Summer, 1983, issue of the journal
October was dedicated to Steinberg's essay
The Sexuality of Christ in Renaissance Art and in Modern Oblivion, later published as a book by
Random House and by publishers in other countries. In that essay, Steinberg examined a previously ignored pattern in Renaissance art, which he named
ostentatio genitalium: the prominent display of the genitals of the infant Christ and the attention also drawn to that area in images of Christ near the
end of his life, in both cases for specific theological reasons involving the concept of the
Incarnation – the word of God made flesh. Steinberg died on March 13, 2011, in New York City at the age of 90. Steinberg's collection of 3,200 prints is held at The Leo Steinberg Collection, Blanton Museum of Art,
University of Texas, Austin. His papers are held at the
Getty Research Institute. ==Personal life==