The Passionate Triangle (review)

The Passionate Triangle begins with Zorach’s assertion that, while the triangularly structured composition is common to many Renaissance paintings, the deeper meanings of this form are rarely pondered. Zorach suggests that the triangle was both an important mathematical form and a tool that aided viewers’ contemplation of the divine. Zorach’s study of the triangle embarks with the ambitious goal of making her readers think differently about the triangle, which is to do nothing less than to change the way we see Italian Renaissance painting. While Zorach writes in a flowing and at times almost conversational style, her work grapples with complex, erudite, and challenging ideas.

The first part of The Passionate Triangle is devoted to the period before 1450, and begins with Zorach’s analysis of Leon Battista Alberti’s De pictura. Zorach carefully places her discussion of Alberti within a broader art-historiographical context, examining the process by which Modernist concerns shaped art-historical interpretations of Alberti. Zorach describes how the per-spectival triangle was seen as placing the viewer in a hegemonic position vis-à-vis a painting: the triangle established a central, single-point perspective that granted the viewer this privileged standpoint. Zorach then proposes a rethinking of this perspective triangle: she argues that, instead of establishing the viewer’s hegemony over the image, Alberti’s triangle positions the viewer as the equal of the image. The triangular relationship between the viewer, the image, and the artist encourages the viewer’s participation in the work and modifies the notions of Renaissance subjectivity embedded in the prior hegemonic model. In shifting the way that such seemingly basic concepts of Renaissance art are interpreted, Zorach’s observations and their implications are profound.

Zorach proceeds to move her analysis from the more practically oriented, Albertian view of the triangle to its more mystical, symbolic function as a sign of the holy Trinity (God the Father, Christ, and the Holy Spirit). Looking to influential medieval writers such as Saint Augustine and Nicolas of Cusa, Zorach grounds their exploration of triads in the attempt to find an expression of the divine. In the search for a more concrete, material image of a tripartite deity—a representation of an immaterial concept—the triangle visualized an idea and served an important pedagogical function as well. Turning to the example of Fra Angelico’s San Marco Altarpiece (ca. 1439–42), Zorach discusses the use of triangular composition in the creation of a hierarchically ordered space. She argues that, in this square-shaped panel, the compositional triangle unifies the figures by containing them within its structure. It creates a hierarchy, its apex at the Virgin, with the saints and other figures positioned below her. Zorach observes that the triangle is not a shape that inherently embodies such a hierarchical structure. In support of this point, she offers numerous examples of how this shape was often represented with its two points on top and its single point on the bottom, opposite of how we most typically portray the triangle today. Zorach reminds us that the seemingly natural representation of this form was in fact the result of a conscientious process.

The second half of The Passionate Triangle delves into the sixteenth century. Zorach describes how thinkers like Marsilio Ficino and Charles de Bovelles used the triangle to structure complex philosophical concepts, such as the representation of the relationship between the individual and God, and the acquisition of knowledge. She also details how the form of the triangle was used to express a symbolic connection to the earth, coming to represent fecundity. She links this expression to the triangular form of painted portrayals of the Virgin, indicative of both her maternal status and her fertility, visible in images such as Giovanni Bellini’s Madonna of the Meadow (ca. 1500). Zorach also links the connection between the triangular form and the earth to images of melancholy like Albrecht Dürer’s Melencolia I (1514). She goes on to examine the complicated relationship that the triangle creates between the viewer and the image. Looking to different...