Sabina Von Steinbach - Doubts About The Existence of Sabina Von Steinbach

Doubts About The Existence of Sabina Von Steinbach

Art historians, over the past few decades, have cast doubt upon the story of Sabina Von Steinback. They base their doubts on a number of discrepancies, including a re-examination of the now lost inscription on scroll held by the figure of St. John, the sculpture attributed to Sabina. Art historian Leslie Ross, in her Artists of the Middle Ages (Greenwood Publishing Group, 2003), argues that Sabina’s story likely was created to further romanticize her supposed father’s story. For while there is no doubt Erwin von Steinback did exist, so little is known about him that he, in fact, had to be "discovered". Ross writes:

"Erwin’s daughter, Sabina von Steinbach, was also ‘discovered’ in the nineteenth century. Based on a (now lost) inscription on one of the sculptures on the exterior of the Strasbourg cathedral (naming a 'Savinae'), a nineteenth-century scholar attributed several famous sculptures both on the exterior and interior of the cathedral to the previously unacknowledged but extremely skillful female sculptor, Sabina von Steinbach, the daughter of Erwin. That the sculptures in question date to a period approximately four decades before Erwin’s work at the cathedral was evidently not recognized then or was seen as being not at all problematic. The name of Sabina von Steinbach continues to occur in studies of medieval female artists."

Another art historian, Natalie Harris Bluestone, in her Double Vision: Perspectives on Gender and the Visual Arts (Associated University Presses, 1995), further explains the misunderstanding:

"The legend of Sabina stems from a misreading and mistranslation of an inscription on the portal, which identifies one 'Sabina' as the donor who made it possible for the sculptures to be cut from 'petra dura' or hard (read 'expensive') stone. 'Steinbach' is not a literal translation of 'petra dura' and probably stems from some desire to elaborate the romantic legend that has grown up around the name of the (documented) Erwin. In fact, the style of the pseudo-Sabian figures, Ecclesia and Synagogue, indicates a manufacture of ca. 1225, some fifty years before the recorded activity of Erwin and long before his death, which, in the legend provides the occasion for Sabina’s intervention."

But she adds:

"The truth that inheres in this legend, however, consists in its example of a Western medieval tradition: the woman artist who learns her craft from an artist-father (or some other male relative, such as husband, brother or uncle). In these circumstances, the woman of the artisan class would have had access to such training. Should the male artist die, on occasion the daughter/wife/sister/niece would inherit and run his workshop. Guild records for the late Middle Ages repeatedly describe wives as business partners and specifically allow for them to inherit and take over their deceased husband’s craft or trade."