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  • The Triumph of the Cross: The Passion of Christ in Theology and the Arts, from the Renaissance to the Counter-Reformation
  • Giancarlo Fiorenza
The Triumph of the Cross: The Passion of Christ in Theology and the Arts, from the Renaissance to the Counter-Reformation. By Richard Viladesau. (New York: Oxford University Press. 2008. Pp. xvi, 350. $49.95. ISBN 978-0-195-33566-8.)

This well-organized and clearly written book is a sequel to the author’s The Beauty of the Cross (New York, 2006) and aims to trace the correlation between the conceptual language of theology regarding Christ’s passion and the visual arts (and, to a lesser extent, music and poetry). Following a brief introduction, each of the three main chapters opens with a sensitive description of a work of art that sets the stage for a detailed discussion on the meaning and status of Christ’s passion in Western Christianity from c. 1400–c. 1600. Viladesau situates verbal and visual meditations on the cross into three epochs: the development of naturalism during the early Renaissance, the questioning of the legitimacy of images and the emphasis on the word of God during the Protestant Reformation, and the call for clarity in the expression of orthodoxy during the Counter-Reformation. Guiding the author’s selection of texts and images is the notion of paradigm, which “designates fundamental ways of thinking that are common within an era” (p. 6). Readers might also find his choice of theologians (including Gabriel Biel, Girolamo Savonarola, Martin Luther, John Calvin, and St. Ignatius of Loyola) and artists (including Fra Angelico, Dürer, Cranach, Michelangelo, and El Greco) as predictable—there are relatively few surprises in the material he covers. Nevertheless, because the target audience for this book is broad—from general readers to scholars— the author is to be commended for a lucid synthesis of a wide range of theological and artistic examples that are often analyzed in separate studies.

Art for Viladesau is largely seen as affective and evoking compassion, and he explores a variety of images portraying the beauty and brutality of Christ’s body that express corresponding theological associations—for instance, divinity, sacrifice, redemption, and substitution. The discussion of Cranach’s shift in style, the artist’s retreat from naturalism in his later works to more “iconic” and didactic images that exemplify Luther’s disdain for the affective dimension of art and its errant potential on viewers, is particularly rewarding, and the author usefully incorporates the studies of Joseph Leo Koerner. But Viladesau struggles to adduce the artificiality of mannerist art comfortably into his thesis, and he finds the paintings of Christ’s passion by Pontormo and Rosso Fiorentino nearly devoid of theological meaning. Even though Viladesau considers their art “subjective” and “elitist” (p. 241), the potential subversion of theology in favor of aesthetic principles (at times highly sensual) by leading Florentine artists demands further analysis with regard to patronage and audience than is afforded here.

At various points in the book the author states that it is “unfortunate” that the cross is connected to the subjugation and persecution of the Jews. This point could be developed in more specific historical contexts, especially in light of various Renaissance depictions of the crucifix as the slayer of the synagogue. [End Page 538] Perhaps the most compelling example is Garofalo’s extraordinary fresco of the Crucifix with Eccelsia and Synagoga of 1523, originally executed for the refectory in the church of Sant’Andrea in Ferrara, once occupied by the Eremitani friars of the Augustinian Order. In this imposing work, the crucifix sprouts arms and slays an allegorical image of synagogue with a spear. According to Dana Katz in The Jew in the Art of the Italian Renaissance (Philadelphia, 2008), this fresco “documents the friars’ precarious relationship with Augustine’s doctrine of Jewish witness, while revealing through its allegorical language the Augustinians’ temporal acceptance of Jews and their faith” (p. 97). As much as the cross signified sacrifice and redemption, it equally signified another kind of triumph, and such imagery had the value of channeling and abating feelings of hostility shared by Christian viewers in the period in question. An appendix...

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