Personal remembrance of art historian Leo Steinberg by Ellen Handler Spitz

Ellen Handler Spitz shares personal memories of art historian Leo Steinberg, who died in March 2011 at age ninety. Steinberg lived in a seventeenth-floor New York City apartment across from Lincoln Center. Spitz recalls his intellectual presence, their conversations about art and psychoanalysis, and his reluctance to accept gifts. Steinberg studied at the Slade School of Fine Art in London and later at the Institute of Fine Arts. He was known for his work on Italian Renaissance masters like Borromini, Michelangelo, Raphael, and Leonardo, as well as on Velasquez, Rodin, Picasso, De Kooning, Pollock, and Johns. His 1972 book Other Criteria contains his essay on Picasso. Spitz mentions Steinberg's encounter with art historian Erwin Panofsky in a café, where Panofsky inscribed a book to him. Steinberg was multilingual, speaking Russian, Hebrew, Latin, German, English, and Italian. He recited Milton's Paradise Lost from memory during one conversation. Spitz saved voice messages from him after his health declined. A version of this tribute will appear in American Imago, published by Johns Hopkins University Press. Steinberg's unfinished work focused on Michelangelo's Doni tondo.