Construct · 1 fields · 2 citations

iconography: a standalone construct

One name. One construct. A landmark on the map.

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iconography1 CONSTRUCTIconographic methodRIPA · SYMBOLIC MEANING

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Art history

Reading a picture's subject and symbolic content

In art history, iconography is the identification, description, and classification of the subject matter and conventional symbolic content of images: working out what a picture depicts and what its figures, objects, and gestures were understood to mean. Cesare Ripa's Iconologia (1593) supplied an early reference for this reading, cataloguing hundreds of allegorical personifications and the attributes by which each was recognised. Erwin Panofsky's Studies in Iconology (1939) later formalised the approach, separating iconography, the identifying of motifs and stories, from iconology, the interpreting of their deeper cultural meaning. Here iconography is an interpretive scholarly method applied to any image, not a religious craft for making sacred pictures and not a designed set of buttons on a screen.[1][2]

Unit
One image or motif analysed for its subject and conventional meaning
Recovery means
Not applicable
Measured by
Assessed by identifying the depicted subjects and matching figures and attributes to documented textual and pictorial conventions

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Nearby constructs

icon2 fields · 3 citationsjingle · one word, two constructsimage4 fields · 5 citationsjingle · one word, four constructssymbol3 fields · 4 citationsjingle · one word, three constructs

References

  1. Ripa, C. (1593). Iconologia. Rome.
  2. Panofsky, E. (1939). Studies in iconology: Humanistic themes in the art of the Renaissance. Oxford University Press.

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