Steinberg was a lecturer, scholar and writer of books including “Other Criteria: Confrontations With Twentieth-Century Art” and “The Sexuality of Christ in Renaissance Art and in Modern Oblivion.” In 1983 he was the first art historian to receive an award for literature from the American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters.

Leo Steinberg

Born Zalman Lev Steinberg in Moscow on July 9, 1920, he was the son of Isaac Nachman Steinberg, a lawyer and government figure in revolutionary Russia, and Anyuta (Esselson) Steinberg, who came from a wealthy Russian family. His father was appointed  commissar of justice by Lenin, but his outspoken views forced the family into exile to Germany. When Hitler came to power, the family moved to England. Leo attended the Slade School of Fine Art at the University of London, receiving his diploma in 1940 for work in sculpture and drawing.
After World War II, his family moved to New York, settling on the Upper West Side of Manhattan. He began concentrating on art history in his mid-30s and received his doctorate from the New York University Institute of Fine Art in 1960 for a thesis on the Baroque architect Francesco Borromini. He later became professor of art history at Hunter College, where he stayed until 1975. He then moved on to the University of Pennsylvania, from which he retired in 1991. He also held positions as Stanford, Berkeley, Princeton, Columbia and Harvard, among others, and lectured at museums and galleries around the country.
He was married for a short time to art editor Dorothy Seiberling, but had no children.