Why Is the Study of Iconography Essential to Understanding Christian Art?

This article is about iconography in art history. For religious painting in Eastern Christianity, encounter Icon.

Branch of fine art history

Iconography, as a branch of art history, studies the identification, description and interpretation of the content of images: the subjects depicted, the item compositions and details used to do then, and other elements that are singled-out from artistic style. The discussion iconography comes from the Greek εἰκών ("epitome") and γράφειν ("to write" or to draw).

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

In art history, "an iconography" may too mean a particular depiction of a bailiwick in terms of the content of the image, such as the number of figures used, their placing and gestures. The term is also used in many academic fields other than art history, for example semiotics and media studies, and in full general usage, for the content of images, the typical depiction in images of a subject, and related senses. Sometimes distinctions accept been made between iconology and iconography,^{[1] [2]} although the definitions, and so the distinction made, varies. When referring to movies, genres are immediately recognizable through their iconography, motifs that become associated with a specific genre through repetition.^[3]

Iconography equally a subject area [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 understand fifty-fifty for well-informed contemporaries. Lesser known, though it had informed poets, painters and sculptors for over two centuries afterward its 1593 publication, was Cesare Ripa's emblem volume Iconologia.^[four] Gian Pietro Bellori, a 17th-century biographer of artists of his own fourth dimension, describes and analyses, not always correctly, many works. Lessing'south study (1796) of the classical figure Amor with an inverted torch was an early attempt to use a study of a type of image to explain the culture it originated in, rather than the other style round.^[5]

Iconography as an bookish fine art historical discipline developed in the nineteenth-century in the works of scholars such as 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 report in this menstruation, in which French scholars were peculiarly prominent.^[v] They looked back to earlier attempts to classify and organise subjects encyclopedically similar Cesare Ripa and Anne Claude Philippe de Caylus'south Recueil d'antiquités égyptiennes, étrusques, grècques, romaines et gauloises as guides to agreement works of art, both religious and profane, in a more scientific manner than the popular aesthetic arroyo of the fourth dimension.^[7] 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 French republic (originally 1899, with revised editions) translated into English equally 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 Germany, Aby Warburg (1866–1929) and his followers Fritz Saxl (1890–1948) and Erwin Panofsky (1892–1968) elaborated the practice of identification and classification of motifs in images to using iconography as a means to understanding meaning.^[vii] Panofsky codified an influential approach to iconography in his 1939 Studies in Iconology, where he defined information technology as "the co-operative of the history of art which concerns itself with the field of study affair or pregnant of works of art, as opposed to form,"^[7] although the stardom he and other scholars drew between detail definitions of "iconography" (put simply, the identification of visual content) and "iconology" (the analysis of the meaning of that content), has not been generally accepted, though it is still used past some writers.^[8]

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

The menstruation from 1940 tin be seen equally one where iconography was peculiarly prominent in art history.^[10] Whereas most iconographical scholarship remains highly dense and specialized, some analyses began to attract a much wider audience, for example Panofsky's theory (now generally out of favour with specialists) that the writing on the rear wall in the Arnolfini Portrait by Jan van Eyck turned the painting into the record of a marriage contract. Holbein'due south The Ambassadors has been the subject area of books for a general market place with new theories equally to its iconography,^[eleven] and the all-time-sellers of Dan Brownish 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 organisation or alphabetize, which include those of the Warburg Institute and the Index of Medieval Art^[12] (formerly Alphabetize of Christian Art) at Princeton (which has made a specialism of iconography since its early days in America).^[xiii] These are now beingness digitised and made available online, usually on a restricted basis.

With the arrival of computing, the Iconclass system, a highly complex way of classifying the content of images, with 28,000 classification types, and 14,000 keywords, was developed in the netherlands every bit a standard nomenclature for recording collections, with the idea of assembling huge databases that will allow the retrieval of images featuring detail details, subjects or other mutual factors. For case, the Iconclass code "71H7131" is for the discipline of "Bathsheba (solitary) with David's letter", whereas "71" is the whole "Old Testament" and "71H" the "story of David". A number of collections of different types have been classified using Iconclass, notably many types of old master print, the collections of the Gemäldegalerie, Berlin and the High german Marburger Index. These are available, unremarkably on-line or on DVD.^{[14] [15]} The system tin also exist used exterior pure art history, for example on sites like Flickr.^[sixteen]

Brief survey of iconography [edit]

Religious images are used to some extent by all major religions, including both Indian and Abrahamic faiths, and often contain highly complex 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 art, and divine qualities and attributes represented by asana and ritual tools such equally the dharmachakra, vajra, chhatra, sauwastika, phurba and danda. The symbolic use 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 adult esoteric meanings, accessible but to initiates; this is an especially strong feature of Tibetan art. The fine art of Indian Religions esp. Hindus in its numerous sectoral divisions is governed past sacred texts called the Aagama which describes the ratio and proportion of the icon, called taalmaana also every bit mood of the cardinal figure in a context. For example, 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 dominant blazon of Buddhist prototype, large rock 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, particularly in earlier periods. Conversely, in Hindu art, narrative scenes have become rather more than common in recent centuries, particularly in miniature paintings of the lives of Krishna and Rama.

Christian iconography [edit]

Christian fine art features Christian iconography, prominently developed in the medieval era and renaissance, and is a prominent aspect of Christian media.^{[17] [18]} Aniconism was rejected within Christian theology from the get-go, and the development of early Christian fine art and architecture occurred inside the commencement two centuries afterward Jesus.^{[19] [20]} Small 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 religion and popular 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 closely to Biblical texts, although many gaps in the canonical Gospel narratives were plugged with matter from the apocryphal gospels. Somewhen, the Church would succeed in weeding most of these out, simply some remain, like the ox and ass in the Birth of Christ.

After the period of Byzantine iconoclasm iconographical innovation was regarded as unhealthy, if non heretical, in the Eastern Church, though information technology still connected at a glacial step. More than in the Due west, traditional depictions were often considered to accept accurate or miraculous origins, and the job of the artist was to re-create them with equally little deviation as possible. The Eastern church also never accustomed the apply of monumental high relief or free-standing sculpture, which it found too reminiscent of paganism. Virtually modernistic Eastern Orthodox icons are very shut to their predecessors of a thousand years ago, though development, and some shifts in meaning, take occurred – for example, the old man wearing a fleece in conversation with Saint Joseph ordinarily seen in Orthodox Nativities seems to have begun as one of the shepherds, or the prophet Isaiah, but is now unremarkably understood as the "Tempter" (Satan).^[21]

In both East and W, 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 babe 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 Former Testament, and, increasingly, the lives of popular saints. Especially in the Due west, a organisation of attributes developed for identifying individual figures of saints by a standard appearance and symbolic objects held by them; in the Due east they were more likely to identified by text labels.

From the Romanesque flow sculpture on churches became increasingly important in Western fine art, and probably partly because of the lack of Byzantine models, became the location of much iconographic innovation, forth with the illuminated manuscript, which had already taken a decisively different direction from Byzantine equivalents, under the influence of Insular fine art and other factors. Developments in theology and devotional practice produced innovations like the subject of the Coronation of the Virgin and the Assumption, Both associated with the Franciscans, equally were many other developments. Most painters remained content to copy and slightly change the works of others, and it is clear that the clergy, by whom or for whose churches most art was commissioned, frequently specified what they wanted shown in great item.

The theory of typology, past which the significant of most 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 later Middle Ages came to boss the selection of Erstwhile Attestation scenes in Western Christian art.

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

Whereas in the Romanesque and Gothic periods the slap-up bulk of religious art was intended to convey oftentimes complex religious messages as clearly as possible, with the arrival of Early on Netherlandish painting iconography became highly sophisticated, and in many cases appears to exist deliberately enigmatic, even for a well-educated contemporary. The subtle layers of meaning uncovered by mod iconographical enquiry in works of Robert Campin such as the Mérode Altarpiece, and of Jan van Eyck such every bit the Madonna of Chancellor Rolin and the Washington Annunciation lie in pocket-size details of what are on beginning viewing very conventional representations. When Italian painting developed a sense of taste for enigma, considerably later, it almost often showed in secular compositions influenced by Renaissance Neo-Platonism.

From the 15th century religious painting gradually freed itself from the addiction of following before compositional models, and by the 16th century aggressive artists were expected to find novel compositions for each discipline, and direct borrowings from earlier artists are more than often of the poses of individual figures than of whole compositions. The Reformation soon restricted almost Protestant religious painting to Biblical scenes conceived along the lines of history painting, and later some decades the Catholic Council of Trent reined in somewhat the freedom of Catholic artists.

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

Secular Western iconography [edit]

Secular painting became far more common in the West from the Renaissance, and adult 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 like photography, movie theater, 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 different purposes. Personal iconographies, where works appear to have significant meanings individual to, and maybe only accessible past, the creative person, go back at least as far equally Hieronymous Bosch, but take go increasingly significant with artists similar Goya, William Blake, Gauguin, Picasso, Frida Kahlo and Joseph Beuys.

Iconography in disciplines other than art history [edit]

Iconography, oft of aspects of popular culture, is a concern of other bookish disciplines including Semiotics, Anthropology, Sociology, Media Studies, Communication Studies, and Cultural Studies. These analyses in plough have afflicted conventional art history, especially concepts such as signs in semiotics. Discussing imagery as iconography in this style implies a critical "reading" of imagery that often attempts to explore social and cultural values. Iconography is also used within picture studies to describe the visual language of cinema, particularly within the field of genre criticism.^[22] In the historic period of Internet, the new global history of the visual production of Humanity (Histiconologia^[23]) includes History of Art and history of all kind of images or medias.

Contemporary iconography enquiry often draws on theories of visual framing to address such diverse issues as the iconography of climate change created past dissimilar stakeholders,^[24] the iconography that international organizations create nearly 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 advice science analyzed stock photos used in printing reporting to depict the social outcome of kid sexual abuse.^[28] Based on a sample of N=1,437 child sexual abuse (CSA) online press articles that included 419 stock photos, a CSA iconography (i.e. a set of typical image motifs for a topic) was revealed that relate to criminal reporting: The CSA iconography visualizes i. criminal offence contexts, 2. form of the crime and people involved, and three. consequences of the crime for the people involved (e.g., epitome motif: perpetrator in handcuffs).

Manufactures with iconographical analysis of private works [edit]

A non-exhaustive list:

• 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 Kid Enthroned by Rogier van der Weyden
• The Magdalen Reading by Rogier van der Weyden
• St. Jerome in His Report by Antonello da Messina
• Ii Venetian Ladies and St. Augustine in His Report past Vittore Carpaccio
• Melencolia I by Albrecht Dürer
• Marie de' Medici cycle past Rubens
• William Hogarth paintings and prints
• Ivan Rutkovych

See also [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 Fine 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's 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 three-87490-701-5
7. ^ ^{a b c d e} W. Eugene Kleinbauer and Thomas P. Slavens, Research Guide to the History of Western Art, Sources of information in the humanities, no. 2. Chicago: American Library Clan (1982): 60-72.
8. ^ For instance by Anne D'Alleva in her Methods and Theories of Art History, pp. 20-28, 2005, Laurence Rex Publishing, ISBN i-85669-417-eight
9. ^ Richard Krautheimer, Introduction to an "Iconography of Mediaeval Compages", Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes, Vol. 5. (1942), pp. 1-33.Online text Archived April eight, 2008, at the Wayback Machine
10. ^ Białostocki:537
11. ^ Most recently: North, John (September, 2004). The Administrator's Secret: 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 royal Library, browsable by ICONCLASS nomenclature Archived 2008-02-xx at the Wayback Machine and Ross Publishing - examples of databases for sale
16. ^ website Iconclass for Flickr
17. ^ Freeman, Dr. Evan. "The life of Christ in medieval and Renaissance art – Smarthistory". Smarthistory – art history . Retrieved March 2, 2022.
18. ^ Taylor, Justin (July 18, 2013). "All the Known Audio of C.Due south. Lewis Speaking". The Gospel Coalition . Retrieved March 2, 2022.
19. ^ Kitzinger, Ernst, "The Cult of Images in the Historic period before Iconoclasm", Dumbarton Oaks Papers, Vol. viii, (1954), pp. 83–150, Dumbarton Oaks, Trustees for Harvard University, JSTOR
20. ^ "The Early on Church building on the Aniconic Spectrum". The Westminster Theological Periodical. 83 (ane): 35–47. ISSN 0043-4388. Retrieved March 2, 2022.
21. ^ Schiller:66
22. ^ Melt and Bernink (1999, 138-140).
23. ^ The first World Dictionary 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 Alter". In Holmes, David C.; Richardson, Lucy M. (eds.). Research Handbook on Communicating Climate change. Cheltenham, Gloucestershire: Edward Elgar Publishing. pp. 131–143. ISBN978-1-78990-040-8. OCLC 1226584969.
25. ^ Revet, Sandrine (2020). "Disaster Iconography: Victims, Rescue Workers, and Hazards". Disasterland. The Sciences Po Serial in International Relations and Political Economic system. Cham: Palgrave Macmillan. pp. 53–80. doi:10.1007/978-3-030-41582-2_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 Academy Press. pp. 181–203. ISBN978-988-8208-44-nine. 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 Enquiry Series. Vol. 56. Dordrecht: Springer. pp. 341–355. doi:10.1007/978-94-017-9670-5_26. ISBN978-94-017-9670-five. 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:ten.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. ii (2013).
• Białostocki, Jan, Iconography, Dictionary of The History of Ideas, Online version, University of Virginia Library, Gale Group, 2003
• Cook, Pam and Mieke Bernink, eds. 1999. The Movie theatre Volume. 2nd ed. London: BFI Publishing. ISBN 0-85170-726-2.
• 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 ancient mythology]

External links [edit]

Wait upwards iconography in Wiktionary, the gratuitous dictionary.

• Warburg Constitute Iconographic Database
• Iconography of Deities and Demons in the Aboriginal Near East (Projection 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 well-nigh the Cult of Smashing Mother
• LIMC-France—iconography of ancient mythology.
• Christian Iconography
• What iconographers practise - example study Archived 2005-08-27 at the Wayback Machine
• "Semiotics and Iconography" from the Handbook of Visual Analysis

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

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