All Art Has to Include Iconography to Have Meaning

This article is nigh iconography in fine art history. For religious painting in Eastern Christianity, see Icon.

Branch of art history

Iconography, as a co-operative of art history, studies the identification, clarification and estimation of the content of images: the subjects depicted, the detail compositions and details used to do so, and other elements that are distinct from artistic mode. The discussion iconography comes from the Greek εἰκών ("paradigm") and γράφειν ("to write" or to depict).

A secondary meaning (based on a non-standard translation of the Greek and Russian equivalent terms) is the production or report of the religious images, called "icons", in the Byzantine and Orthodox Christian tradition (encounter Icon). This usage, which many consider only incorrect^{[ citation needed ]}, is mostly institute in works translated from languages such every bit Greek or Russian, with the correct term being "icon painting".

In art history, "an iconography" may also mean a particular delineation of a subject in terms of the content of the image, such equally the number of figures used, their placing and gestures. The term is also used in many academic fields other than art history, for case semiotics and media studies, and in full general usage, for the content of images, the typical depiction in images of a field of study, and related senses. Sometimes distinctions have been made between iconology and iconography,^{[one] [two]} although the definitions, and then the distinction fabricated, varies. When referring to movies, genres are immediately recognizable through their iconography, motifs that go associated with a specific genre through repetition.^[three]

Iconography equally a field of study [edit]

Foundations of iconography [edit]

Early Western writers who took special note of the content of images include Giorgio Vasari, whose Ragionamenti, interpreting the paintings in the Palazzo Vecchio in Florence, reassuringly demonstrates that such works were difficult to empathize even for well-informed contemporaries. Lesser known, though it had informed poets, painters and sculptors for over two centuries subsequently its 1593 publication, was Cesare Ripa'south keepsake book Iconologia.^[4] Gian Pietro Bellori, a 17th-century biographer of artists of his ain fourth dimension, describes and analyses, not always correctly, many works. Lessing's study (1796) of the classical effigy Amor with an inverted torch was an early try to employ a written report of a type of image to explain the civilisation it originated in, rather than the other style round.^[five]

Iconography as an academic art historical subject area adult in the nineteenth-century in the works of scholars such every bit Adolphe Napoleon Didron (1806–1867), Anton Heinrich Springer (1825–1891), and Émile Mâle (1862–1954)^[7] all specialists in Christian religious art, which was the main focus of study in this menstruum, in which French scholars were especially prominent.^[5] They looked back to before attempts to classify and organise subjects encyclopedically like Cesare Ripa and Anne Claude Philippe de Caylus's Recueil d'antiquités égyptiennes, étrusques, grècques, romaines et gauloises as guides to understanding works of art, both religious and profane, in a more scientific manner than the pop aesthetic arroyo of the time.^[seven] These early on contributions paved the way for encyclopedias, manuals, and other publications useful in identifying the content of art. Mâle's l'Art religieux du XIIIe siècle en France (originally 1899, with revised editions) translated into English as The Gothic Image, Religious Art in France of the Thirteenth Century has remained continuously in impress.

Twentieth-century iconography [edit]

In the early-twentieth century Deutschland, Aby Warburg (1866–1929) and his followers Fritz Saxl (1890–1948) and Erwin Panofsky (1892–1968) elaborated the practice of identification and nomenclature of motifs in images to using iconography every bit a means to understanding meaning.^[7] Panofsky codified an influential approach to iconography in his 1939 Studies in Iconology, where he defined information technology as "the branch of the history of art which concerns itself with the subject field thing or meaning of works of art, as opposed to class,"^[seven] although the stardom he and other scholars drew between particular definitions of "iconography" (put merely, the identification of visual content) and "iconology" (the analysis of the meaning of that content), has not been more often than not accustomed, though it is still used by some writers.^[8]

In the United States, to which Panofsky immigrated in 1931, students such every bit Frederick Hartt, and Meyer Schapiro continued under his influence in the discipline.^[7] In an influential commodity of 1942, Introduction to an "Iconography of Mediaeval Architecture",^[9] Richard Krautheimer, a specialist on early medieval churches and another German émigré, extended iconographical analysis to architectural forms.

The period from 1940 can exist seen as i where iconography was especially prominent in art history.^[x] Whereas most iconographical scholarship remains highly dumbo and specialized, some analyses began to concenter a much wider audience, for example Panofsky'due south theory (now generally out of favour with specialists) that the writing on the rear wall in the Arnolfini Portrait past Jan van Eyck turned the painting into the tape of a marriage contract. Holbein's The Ambassadors has been the subject of books for a full general market with new theories as to its iconography,^[11] and the best-sellers of Dan Chocolate-brown include theories, disowned by most art historians, on the iconography of works by Leonardo da Vinci.

Technological advances allowed the building-up of huge collections of photographs, with an iconographic arrangement or alphabetize, which include those of the Warburg Establish and the Alphabetize of Medieval Art^[12] (formerly Alphabetize of Christian Art) at Princeton (which has made a specialism of iconography since its early on days in America).^[13] These are now being digitised and made available online, ordinarily on a restricted basis.

With the arrival of computing, the Iconclass organization, a highly complex mode of classifying the content of images, with 28,000 classification types, and fourteen,000 keywords, was developed in kingdom of the netherlands as a standard nomenclature for recording collections, with the idea of assembling huge databases that will allow the retrieval of images featuring particular details, subjects or other common factors. For example, the Iconclass code "71H7131" is for the subject of "Bathsheba (alone) with David'southward alphabetic character", whereas "71" is the whole "Onetime Attestation" and "71H" the "story of David". A number of collections of different types have been classified using Iconclass, notably many types of old main print, the collections of the Gemäldegalerie, Berlin and the German Marburger Index. These are available, usually on-line or on DVD.^{[xiv] [xv]} The organisation can too exist used outside pure art history, for example on sites similar Flickr.^[sixteen]

Brief survey of iconography [edit]

Religious images are used to some extent past all major religions, including both Indian and Abrahamic faiths, and oftentimes incorporate highly circuitous iconography, which reflects centuries of accumulated tradition. Secular Western iconography later drew upon these themes.

Indian religious iconography [edit]

Central to the iconography and hagiography of Indian religions are mudra or gestures with specific meanings. Other features include the aureola and halo, also found in Christian and Islamic fine art, and divine qualities and attributes represented by asana and ritual tools such as the dharmachakra, vajra, chhatra, sauwastika, phurba and danda. The symbolic employ of colour to denote the Classical Elements or Mahabhuta and letters and bija syllables from sacred alphabetic scripts are other features. Nether the influence of tantra art developed esoteric meanings, accessible but to initiates; this is an especially potent characteristic of Tibetan fine art. The art of Indian Religions esp. Hindus in its numerous sectoral divisions is governed by sacred texts called the Aagama which describes the ratio and proportion of the icon, chosen taalmaana besides every bit mood of the fundamental effigy in a context. For instance, Narasimha an incarnation of Vishnu though considered a wrathful deity but in few contexts is depicted in pacified mood.

Although iconic depictions of, or concentrating on, a single figure are the ascendant type of Buddhist epitome, large stone relief or fresco narrative cycles of the Life of the Buddha, or tales of his previous lives, are plant at major sites like Sarnath, Ajanta, and Borobudor, especially in before periods. Conversely, in Hindu art, narrative scenes have become rather more mutual in recent centuries, especially in miniature paintings of the lives of Krishna and Rama.

Christian iconography [edit]

Christian art features Christian iconography, prominently adult in the medieval era and renaissance, and is a prominent aspect of Christian media.^{[17] [18]} Aniconism was rejected within Christian theology from the outset, and the development of early Christian fine art and compages occurred within the first two centuries afterwards Jesus.^{[19] [20]} Pocket-sized images in the Catacombs of Rome show orans figures, portraits of Christ and some saints, and a limited number of "abbreviated representations" of biblical episodes emphasizing deliverance. From the Constantinian period monumental art borrowed motifs from Roman Imperial imagery, classical Greek and Roman organized religion and pop art – the motif of Christ in Majesty owes something to both Imperial portraits and depictions of Zeus. In the Late Antique period iconography began to exist standardized, and to relate more than closely to Biblical texts, although many gaps in the canonical Gospel narratives were plugged with matter from the apocryphal gospels. Eventually, the Church would succeed in weeding most of these out, but some remain, like the ox and donkey in the Nativity of Christ.

Afterwards the period of Byzantine iconoclasm iconographical innovation was regarded as unhealthy, if not heretical, in the Eastern Church, though information technology still continued at a glacial step. More than in the Westward, traditional depictions were often considered to have accurate or miraculous origins, and the task of the artist was to copy them with as little deviation as possible. The Eastern church also never accustomed the use of monumental high relief or free-standing sculpture, which it plant too reminiscent of paganism. Nigh modernistic Eastern Orthodox icons are very close to their predecessors of a thousand years agone, though development, and some shifts in pregnant, accept occurred – for case, the sometime man wearing a fleece in conversation with Saint Joseph commonly seen in Orthodox Nativities seems to have begun as i of the shepherds, or the prophet Isaiah, only is at present usually understood as the "Tempter" (Satan).^[21]

In both East and Westward, numerous iconic types of Christ, Mary and saints and other subjects were developed; the number of named types of icons of Mary, with or without the baby Christ, was peculiarly large in the E, whereas Christ Pantocrator was much the commonest image of Christ. Especially important depictions of Mary include the Hodegetria and Panagia types. Traditional models evolved for narrative paintings, including large cycles covering the events of the Life of Christ, the Life of the Virgin, parts of the Old Testament, and, increasingly, the lives of popular saints. Especially in the West, a organization of attributes developed for identifying private figures of saints past a standard appearance and symbolic objects held by them; in the East they were more likely to identified by text labels.

From the Romanesque menstruum sculpture on churches became increasingly important in Western art, and probably partly because of the lack of Byzantine models, became the location of much iconographic innovation, along with the illuminated manuscript, which had already taken a decisively unlike direction from Byzantine equivalents, under the influence of Insular art and other factors. Developments in theology and devotional practise produced innovations similar the field of study of the Coronation of the Virgin and the Assumption, Both associated with the Franciscans, equally were many other developments. About painters remained content to copy and slightly modify the works of others, and information technology is articulate that the clergy, by whom or for whose churches most art was commissioned, frequently specified what they wanted shown in great detail.

The theory of typology, by which the meaning of nigh events of the Old Testament was understood as a "type" or pre-figuring of an event in the life of, or aspect of, Christ or Mary was often reflected in art, and in the afterward Middle Ages came to dominate the option of Quondam Testament scenes in Western Christian fine art.

Robert Campin'south Mérode Altarpiece of 1425-28 has a highly complex iconography that is withal debated. Is Joseph making a mousetrap, reflecting a remark of Saint Augustine that Christ'south Incarnation was a trap to grab men's souls?

Whereas in the Romanesque and Gothic periods the great majority of religious art was intended to convey often circuitous religious messages as clearly as possible, with the arrival of Early Netherlandish painting iconography became highly sophisticated, and in many cases appears to be deliberately enigmatic, even for a well-educated contemporary. The subtle layers of meaning uncovered by modern iconographical enquiry in works of Robert Campin such equally the Mérode Altarpiece, and of Jan van Eyck such every bit the Madonna of Chancellor Rolin and the Washington Proclamation lie in small details of what are on first viewing very conventional representations. When Italian painting developed a taste for enigma, considerably afterward, it most often showed in secular compositions influenced by Renaissance Neo-Platonism.

From the 15th century religious painting gradually freed itself from the habit of following earlier compositional models, and by the 16th century ambitious artists were expected to find novel compositions for each subject, and direct borrowings from earlier artists are more than often of the poses of individual figures than of whole compositions. The Reformation before long restricted most Protestant religious painting to Biblical scenes conceived along the lines of history painting, and after some decades the Catholic Council of Trent reined in somewhat the liberty of Cosmic artists.

Roman Cosmic monks painting icons on the wall of an Abbey in France.

Secular Western iconography [edit]

Secular painting became far more than common in the W from the Renaissance, and developed its own traditions and conventions of iconography, in history painting, which includes mythologies, portraits, genre scenes, and even landscapes, not to mention modern media and genres similar photography, cinema, political cartoons, comic books and anime.

Renaissance mythological painting was in theory reviving the iconography of its Classical Antiquity, but in practice themes like Leda and the Swan developed on largely original lines, and for unlike purposes. Personal iconographies, where works appear to take significant meanings individual to, and mayhap merely accessible by, the artist, go back at least as far equally Hieronymous Bosch, just accept become increasingly significant with artists like Goya, William Blake, Gauguin, Picasso, Frida Kahlo and Joseph Beuys.

Iconography in disciplines other than art history [edit]

Iconography, often of aspects of popular civilization, is a business organisation of other bookish disciplines including Semiotics, Anthropology, Sociology, Media Studies, Communication Studies, and Cultural Studies. These analyses in turn have affected conventional art history, especially concepts such as signs in semiotics. Discussing imagery as iconography in this way implies a disquisitional "reading" of imagery that often attempts to explore social and cultural values. Iconography is also used within film studies to draw the visual language of movie theater, particularly within the field of genre criticism.^[22] In the age of Cyberspace, the new global history of the visual production of Humanity (Histiconologia^[23]) includes History of Fine art and history of all kind of images or medias.

Contemporary iconography research often draws on theories of visual framing to address such diverse bug as the iconography of climate change created past different stakeholders,^[24] the iconography that international organizations create well-nigh natural disasters,^[25] the iconography of epidemics disseminated in the printing,^[26] and the iconography of suffering found in social media.^[27]

An iconography study in communication science analyzed stock photos used in press reporting to describe the social issue of child sexual abuse.^[28] Based on a sample of N=i,437 child sexual abuse (CSA) online press articles that included 419 stock photos, a CSA iconography (i.east. a set of typical image motifs for a topic) was revealed that relate to criminal reporting: The CSA iconography visualizes 1. criminal offense contexts, 2. course of the crime and people involved, and 3. consequences of the crime for the people involved (east.g., image motif: perpetrator in handcuffs).

Manufactures with iconographical analysis of individual works [edit]

A not-exhaustive listing:

• Castelseprio frescoes
• The Flagellation by Piero della Francesca
• The Wilton Diptych
• The Mérode Altarpiece past Robert Campin
• Madonna of Chancellor Rolin, Arnolfini Portrait, Annunciation, all by Jan van Eyck
• Virgin and Child Enthroned by Rogier van der Weyden
• The Magdalen Reading past Rogier van der Weyden
• St. Jerome in His Study by Antonello da Messina
• 2 Venetian Ladies and St. Augustine in His Study past Vittore Carpaccio
• Melencolia I by Albrecht Dürer
• Marie de' Medici wheel past Rubens
• William Hogarth paintings and prints
• Ivan Rutkovych

See besides [edit]

• Manga iconography
• Saint symbolism

References [edit]

Citations [edit]

1. ^ Oxford Bibliographies: Paul Taylor, "Iconology and Iconography"
2. ^ Erwin Panofsky, Studies in Iconology: Humanistic Themes in the Art of the Renaissance. Oxford 1939.
3. ^ Giannetti, Louis (2008). Understanding Movies. Toronto: Person Prentice Hall. p. 52.
4. ^ Ripa's full title, rarely used, was Iconologia overo Descrittione Dell'imagini Universali cavate dall'Antichità et da altri luoghi; English language Translations and Adaptations of Cesare Ripa'southward Iconologia: From the 17th to the 19th Century by Hans-Joachim Zimmermann
5. ^ ^{a b} Białostocki:535
6. ^ Alte Pinakotek, Munich; (Summary Catalogue – various authors), pp. 348-51, 1986, Edition Lipp, ISBN 3-87490-701-5
7. ^ ^{a b c d due east} W. Eugene Kleinbauer and Thomas P. Slavens, Inquiry Guide to the History of Western Art, Sources of information in the humanities, no. 2. Chicago: American Library Association (1982): sixty-72.
8. ^ For instance by Anne D'Alleva in her Methods and Theories of Art History, pp. twenty-28, 2005, Laurence King Publishing, ISBN 1-85669-417-viii
9. ^ Richard Krautheimer, Introduction to an "Iconography of Mediaeval Architecture", Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes, Vol. v. (1942), pp. ane-33.Online text Archived April 8, 2008, at the Wayback Automobile
10. ^ Białostocki:537
11. ^ About recently: North, John (September, 2004). The Ambassador'south Clandestine: Holbein and the Globe of the Renaissance. Orion Books
12. ^ Index of Medieval Art website
13. ^ Białostocki:538-39
14. ^ "Iconclass website". Iconclass.nl. Retrieved 2014-03-31 .
15. ^ Illuminated manuscripts from the Dutch purple Library, browsable by ICONCLASS classification Archived 2008-02-20 at the Wayback Motorcar and Ross Publishing - examples of databases for auction
16. ^ website Iconclass for Flickr
17. ^ Freeman, Dr. Evan. "The life of Christ in medieval and Renaissance art – Smarthistory". Smarthistory – fine art history . Retrieved March 2, 2022.
18. ^ Taylor, Justin (July 18, 2013). "All the Known Sound of C.S. Lewis Speaking". The Gospel Coalition . Retrieved March 2, 2022.
19. ^ Kitzinger, Ernst, "The Cult of Images in the Age earlier Iconoclasm", Dumbarton Oaks Papers, Vol. 8, (1954), pp. 83–150, Dumbarton Oaks, Trustees for Harvard University, JSTOR
20. ^ "The Early on Church building on the Aniconic Spectrum". The Westminster Theological Journal. 83 (i): 35–47. ISSN 0043-4388. Retrieved March ii, 2022.
21. ^ Schiller:66
22. ^ Melt and Bernink (1999, 138-140).
23. ^ The get-go Earth Lexicon of Images: Laurent Gervereau (ed.), "Dictionnaire mondial des images", Paris, Nouveau monde, 2006, 1120p, ISBN 978-2-84736-185-8. (with 275 specialists from all continents, all specialities, all periods from Prehistory to nowadays); Laurent Gervereau, "Images, une histoire mondiale", Paris, Nouveau monde, 2008, 272p., ISBN 978-2-84736-362-3
24. ^ Wozniak, Antal (2020). "Stakeholders Visual Representations of Climate change". In Holmes, David C.; Richardson, Lucy 1000. (eds.). Research Handbook on Communicating Climate change. Cheltenham, Gloucestershire: Edward Elgar Publishing. pp. 131–143. ISBN978-ane-78990-040-eight. OCLC 1226584969.
25. ^ Revet, Sandrine (2020). "Disaster Iconography: Victims, Rescue Workers, and Hazards". Disasterland. The Sciences Po Serial in International Relations and Political Economy. Cham: Palgrave Macmillan. pp. 53–80. doi:x.1007/978-3-030-41582-2_3. ISBN978-3-030-41581-v. OCLC 1153066230. S2CID 219010604.
26. ^ Male monarch, Nicholas B. (2015). "Mediating Panic: The Iconography of New Infectious Threats, 1936-2009". In Peckham, Robert (ed.). Empires of Panic: Epidemics and Colonial Anxieties. Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press. pp. 181–203. ISBN978-988-8208-44-9. OCLC 904372902.
27. ^ Johansson, Anna; Sternudd, Hans T. (2015). "Iconography of Suffering in Social Media: Images of Sitting Girls". In Anderson, R. (ed.). World Suffering and Quality of Life. Social Indicators Research Serial. Vol. 56. Dordrecht: Springer. pp. 341–355. doi:10.1007/978-94-017-9670-5_26. ISBN978-94-017-9670-5. OCLC 902846595.
28. ^ Döring, Nicola; Walter, Roberto (2021). "Ikonografien des sexuellen Kindesmissbrauchs: Symbolbilder in Presseartikeln und Präventionsmaterialien". Studies in Communication and Media. 10 (3): 362–405. doi:10.5771/2192-4007-2021-3-362. ISSN 2192-4007. S2CID 242216019.

Sources [edit]

• Alunno, Marco. Iconography and Gesamtkunstwerk in Parsifal's Two Cinematic Settings in ESM Mediamusic. No. 2 (2013).
• Białostocki, Jan, Iconography, Lexicon of The History of Ideas, Online version, University of Virginia Library, Gale Group, 2003
• Cook, Pam and Mieke Bernink, eds. 1999. The Cinema Book. 2nd ed. London: BFI Publishing. ISBN 0-85170-726-ii.
• Schiller, Gertrud. Iconography of Christian Fine art, Vol. I,1971 (English language trans from German language), Lund Humphries, London, ISBN 0-85331-270-2
• Lexicon Iconographicum Mythologiae Classicae (LIMC), Artemis Verlag, 1981-2009 [iconography of aboriginal mythology]

External links [edit]

Wait up iconography in Wiktionary, the free dictionary.

• Warburg Plant Iconographic Database
• Iconography of Deities and Demons in the Ancient Nigh East (Project of the Swiss National Science Foundation at the Universities of Zurich and Fribourg)
• Web site for European Sacred Mountains, Calvaries and Devotional Complexes
• Sacred Icons in Modern Era about the Cult of Great Mother
• LIMC-France—iconography of ancient mythology.
• Christian Iconography
• What iconographers do - case study Archived 2005-08-27 at the Wayback Machine
• "Semiotics and Iconography" from the Handbook of Visual Assay

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Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iconography

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