he word iconography comes from the Greek word

εἰκονογραφία in modern usage iconography is a de-

scription andor interpretation of the content of works

of art and therefore its history belongs to the history

of human ideas We propose however to distinguish

between what one could call ldquothe intended (or implied)

iconographyrdquo and ldquointerpretative iconographyrdquo By the

first we understand the attitude of the artist the patron

or the contemporary observer toward the function and

the meaning of visual symbols and images Sometimes

it was formulated in writing in documents like con-

tracts (for example ldquoContract for Painting an Altar-

piece of the Coronation of the Virgin for Dominus Jean

de Montagnac by Enguerrand Quartonrdquo 1453) in

programs (known for several late-baroque ceiling

paintings) in iconographical treatises (for example

Joannes Molanus De picturis et imaginibus sacris

1570) in utterances of the artists (for example Giorgio

Vasaris Ragionamenti written 1567 published 1588)

or of the patrons (for example Abbot Sugers De con-

secratione ecclesiae S Dionysii) Sometimes we can

reconstruct it only by historical methods by adducing

philosophical theological or literary ideas contem-

porary with or current at the time By ldquointerpretative

iconographyrdquo may be understood precisely that branch

of historical study of art which aims at the identifica-

tion and description of representations and at the

interpretation of the content of the works of art (this

last function now preferably called ldquoiconologyrdquo)

Whereas ldquointerpretative iconographyrdquo is a historical

discipline of the study of art the ldquointended or implied

iconographyrdquo is an element of the general outlook and

aesthetic attitude of the period The degree of conscious-

ness in approaching the problem of content in art

varied at different times and places

In order to outline the changing relations of images

and ideas we shall in the present article discuss first

the development of ldquointended iconographyrdquo ie the

attitude toward images and visual symbols as mani-

fested in art and art literature in western Europe the

formation of what may be called ldquosystems of iconogra-

phyrdquo the medieval religious system the Renaissance

and baroque humanistic system the dissolution of

systems around 1800 and finally the new develop-

ments in the last hundred and fifty years In the second

part of the article we shall be discussing the develop-

ment of ldquointerpretative iconographyrdquo ie of art his-

torical studies concerning problems of iconography

with a special stress on recent developments in that

field

I

1 The origins of art are closely connected with

religion and myth The works of art of early civili-

zations were religious symbols idols expressions of

fears and desires An interpretation of meaning con-

nected with these works of art is however uncertain

due to a lack of reliable records It is often impossible

to say to what extent an idol or a religious symbol

was considered as a representation of some divine

525

power and to what extent it was considered as em-

bodying that power The meaning of concepts like that

of image (eikon) and of the corresponding Latin con-

cept (imago) as well as of figura varied greatly in

general it evolved from that of substitution to that of

representation (Auerbach 1959 Bauch 1967)

In classical antiquity due to the Greek tendency to

anthropomorphic depiction of mythical divinities an

art world was created which was divine and human

at the same time Far from producing only repre-

sentative statues of gods suitable for cult worship and

adoration or for the narration of mythical events

classical art soon proceeded to create an allegorical

interpretation of myth (Hinks 1939)

The primitive mind is aware only of a generalized daemonic

force outside itself to which it is subject and which it must

propitiate and as it grows the mythical presentation of

its experience progresses from the undifferentiated dae-

monic power to the personal god and from the personal

god to the impersonal abstraction which is merely for con-

venience imagined in a human shape

(Hinks p 107)

Just as the myth was provided with an aetiological expla-

nation when it had ceased at length to be self-explanatory

so the image came to be interpreted allegorically when it

had lost its self-evident characterAs soon as philosophic

reflection became self-conscious the habit of furnishing

straightforward mythical representations with allegorical

explanations made its appearance in iconographical as in

literary criticism

(Hinks pp 11f)

Hinks devoted a penetrating study to this problem

For the Greeks poetry and myth were more serious

more philosophical than history since myth and poetry

concern general truths whereas history concerns par-

ticular ones (Aristotle Poetics IX 3) Hence there

appeared a tendency to make mythical events express

allegorically particular historical events mythical wars

of Greeks with Amazons or of Lapiths against Cen-

taurs were represented instead of the historical strug-

gle of the Athenians against the Persians Mythical

symbols were always preferred to historical images

This is a particular case of a general polarization which

can be observed in iconography between the general

and the particular the mythical and the secular the

timeless and the historical between the symbol and

the story The symbol corresponds to the mythical

frame of mind the image to the historical

even when during the sixth and fifth centuries before

Christ the Greek mind succeeded in detaching itself from

the object of its contemplation and the mythical and logical

forms of comprehension were theoretically distinguished

this immense intellectual advance did not disintegrate the

plastic vision of the ancient artist in the same way as the

enlargement of the scientific horizon in the nineteenth

century destroyed the coherence of the modern artistic

vision

(Hinks p 62)

In this way forms of iconography originated which

were to have a long life in European art viz those

of personification and allegory The classical gods re-

ceived new allegorical functions denoting natural

phenomena or abstract concepts On the other hand

abstract notions received personified form

There also appeared in classical art mixed transi-

tional forms for example what Hinks calls ldquomythistor-

icalrdquo representations in which heroes andor gods

participated beside mortal humans and allegorical

representations (Paacutenainos Battle of Marathon) Since

for the Greeks the essential meaning of an event was

its moral sense the only way to bring this out in art

was to represent it in an allegorical way ldquothe moral

situation must be personalized the dramatic conflict

of ethical principles must be represented by the con-

certed action of their symbolsrdquo (ibid p 66) The

greatness of the Greeks consisted in that they knew

how ldquoto construct a mythical framework within which

the movements of the planets and the passions of the

heart are converted into symbols not merely compara-

ble but actually to some extent interchangeablerdquo (ibid

p 94)

In the later periods of antiquity when irrational

Orphic and Dionysiac religious movements prevailed

over the reasonably organized world of Olympian gods

and when the Imperial Roman form of the state pre-

vailed over the tradition of small democratic Greek

states there appeared new forms of iconography

which were to remain influential in the Christian pe-

riod Tomb decoration began to flourish based on the

allegorical interpretation of mythical imagery Seasons

Bacchic myths Venus Anadyomene Sea-Thiasos

(Cumont 1942) imperial ceremonies gave form to

elaborate triumphal iconography and they decisively

influenced Christian symbolism Late classical art

elaborated also the representation of the internal dia-

logue of a man with his soul or conscience in the form

of an external dialogue with an allegorical person often

acting in an inspiring way a Muse a Genius an Angel

thus giving shape to a long-lived representation of

inspiration or of conversation with superhuman pow-

ers current in art until modern times (Saxl 1923

Hinks 1939)

2 The history of iconographical attitudes in post-

classical times is to a considerable degree a history of

accepting or rejecting the classical tradition Every-

thing which recalled a heathenish idol-cult was re-

jected and the meaning of imago was limited mainly

to painted images which being flat and therefore not

similar materially to what they represented suggested

only the shape of divine figures Nevertheless Christian

art adopted various images and functions of images

from the pagan tradition developing as it did an

526

allegorical imagery of its own a historical narration

and icon-portraits of Christ of the Virgin and of the

Saints The cult of the images seems to go back to a

pagan tradition (images of the emperors portraits of

the deceased) and most probably existed among the

first generations of Christians (Grabar 1968) That cult

which rose to greater importance in the fifth and sixth

centuries and the belief in the part of the holiness of

their saintly prototypes being inherent in these images

became the object of a long theological quarrel as a

result of which attitudes towards religious iconography

were differentiated in the West and in the East

In the Byzantine Empire the problem of religious

images acquired an exceptional importance as the

object of violent theological and political discussions

and of decisions of the Church Councils (Grabar 1957)

At the Councils of 730 754 and 815 images were

prohibited but at those of 787 (Nicaea) and of 843

they were again allowed Although the partisans of the

images triumphed a very strict iconographic doctrine

was established which provided extremely precise

regulations concerning religious imagery in the decor-

ation of East-Christian churches These regulations

have been followed in the Eastern Church ever since

The traditional character of Byzantine iconography is

demonstrated by the fact that the iconographic hand-

book by Dionysius of Fourna Hermeneia tes zograph-

ikes technes published by A N Didron (1845) was for

a long time considered as a document of an early

period of Byzantine art and it was only in 1909 that

A Papadopoulos Kerameus proved it to be a work of

the eighteenth century obviously reflecting a very old

tradition In this static world of iconographical think-

ing little change is noticeable although Eastern Chris-

tian art had its important artistic evolution and often

absorbed Western influences sometimes even in icono-

graphic respects (eg the influence of German prints

on the wall paintings in the Athos monasteries)

3 For medieval Christian thought everything in the

world was a symbol Things persons and events actual

and historical were considered as symbols of other

things persons and events or as symbols of concepts

and ideas The doctrine of ldquouniversal symbolismrdquo orig-

inated in Saint Augustine (De Trinitate) and first of all

in the Neo-Platonic philosophy of Pseudo-Dionysius

the Areopagite for whom ldquovisible things are images

of invisible beautyrdquo Thanks to John Scotus Erigenas

translation the ideas of Pseudo-Dionysius spread

widely and it was Hugh of St Victor who presented

the complete theory of universal symbolism ldquoall nature

expresses Godrdquo (Omnis natura Deum loquitur) For

Hugh the universe is ldquoa book written by the hand of

Godrdquo Alain de Lille has given a popular compact

poetic formula of universal symbolism

Omnis mundi creatura

quasi liber et pictura

nobis est et speculum

(ldquoEvery creature of the world is for us like a book and

a picture of the world and it is like a mirrorrdquo) Saint

Bonaventure finds that created beauty being a sign of

the eternal leads men to God Theologians discerned

mainly two kinds of symbolism under different names

but signifying two more or less basically similar divi-

sions (1) existing things endowed with meaning (res

et signa) and (2) conventional signs (Chydenius 1960)

In the practical use of symbolism in art one can discern

another diversity an Aristotelian rational trend and

a Neo-Platonic irrational and mystical one (Gombrich

1948 1965) In the first case the images were not

considered as including any more content than their

verbal equivalents they constituted a code a conven-

tional language of signs used to communicate religious

messages In the second case experience of symbolical

images was believed to give the observer another

higher knowledge than that transmitted by words it

was meant to give a direct ecstatic and enthusiastic

contact with abstract ideas incorporated as it were

in images Medieval art used generally symbolic images

conceived as a code transmitting its messages to every-

body also to those who were not able to read The

other attitude to symbols appeared in the Middle Ages

in the mystical trends The image which can be grasped

in a sensual way was a means of transgressing the limits

of the corporeal world and of reaching the spiritual

one Such a function of images was formulated by

various theologians Jean Gerson in the fifteenth cen-

tury put it in the following words ldquoAnd we ought

thus to learn to transcend with our minds from these

visible things to the invisible from the corporeal to

the spiritual For this is the purpose of the imagerdquo

(Ringbom [1969] p 165)

The didactic doctrine had been formulated already

in the early period of the Church according to that

doctrine images were considered as a form of writing

accessible to those unable to read (Paulinus of Nola

Gregory the Great also Thomas Aquinas considered

images to be useful ad instructionem rudium) This

attitude lasted until the very end of the Middle Ages

(later it was revived in the period of the Counter-

Reformation) and it found expression as late as the

fourteenth and fifteenth centuries in the early graphic

imagery of such typological compendia as Biblia

pauperum and Speculum humanae salvationis The

didactic aims encompassed not only the direct moral

lessons which were transmitted through the imagery

of ldquoprohibitionrdquo and ldquodissuasionrdquo of the Last Judgment

and of the Virtues and Vices but also the visual repre-

527

sentation of sometimes complicated links among the

events of sacred history considered as prefigurations

and fulfillments which were established between the

figures and events of the Old and the New Dispen-

sation Thus typological thinking connected images

into symbolic relations Visual unity was established

in the religious imagery through the large encyclopedic

compendia eg Glossa ordinaria (the large body of

Commentaries to the Bible until recently held to be

a compilation by Walafrid Strabo) and Gulielmus

Durandus system of liturgy Rationale divinorum offi-

ciorum or Vincent of Beauvaiss Speculum maius an

image of the world seen in the symbolistic mirror

These books contributed to the realization of the tre-

mendous iconographical programs of the great cathe-

drals of the high Middle Ages where God nature and

man were united into an exceptionally elaborated sys-

tem of symbolic images mirroring the model of the

world current in the period of Gothic art Art at that

time followed the symbolistic way of thinking which

prevailed in theology as well as in liturgy in profane

ceremonials and in the other fields of life Art gave

artistic form to the abstract structure of the cosmos

as seen by medieval theologians and brought it close

to the understanding or to the imagination of every

man This does not at all mean that medieval symbol-

ism was always understandable to everybody and

everywhere Very specific theological problems and

controversies found their way into iconography and

when deciphered by modern iconographers they dis-

close often complicated religious andor political situ-

ations (for example the imagery of the Ruthwell Cross

which reflects the conflicting ideologies of Northern

versus Roman Christianity in England as revealed in

an analysis by Meyer Schapiro 1944)

Neo-Platonic symbolism was developed especially

under the impact of writings by Pseudo-Dionysius the

Areopagite His influence promoted to a great extent

medieval ideas about the symbolism of light The sym-

bolism of light found its highest achievement in the

creation of Gothic architecture dominated by the

mysticism of light (von Simson 1956) Abbot Suger

the auctor intellectualis of Gothic architecture pre-

sented in his writings an excellent record of that atti-

tude toward symbolism In his De rebus in adminis-

tratione sua gestis (XVII) he writes about the doors

with gilt bronze reliefs ldquoBright is the noble work but

being nobly bright the work should brighten the

minds so that they may travel through the true lights

to the true light where Christ is the true door

The dull mind rises to truth through that which

is materialrdquo (Panofsky [1946] pp 46-49) Con-

templating precious stones transports Sugers mind to

a contemplation of the supernatural

Whenmdashout of my delight in the beauty of the house of

Godmdashthe loveliness of the many-colored stones has called

me away from external cares and worthy meditation has

induced me to reflect transferring that which is material

to that which is immaterial on the diversity of the sacred

virtues then it seems to me that I see myself dwelling as

it were in some strange region of the universe which neither

exists entirely in the slime of the earth nor entirely in the

purity of Heaven and that by the Grace of God I can

be transported from this inferior to that higher world in

an anagogical mannerrdquo

(ibid pp 63-65)

To a similar sphere of mystical symbols the specific

symbolism of numbers also belongs Numbers in the

Bible and those referring to quantitative relations in

architecture were considered as having a mystical

meaning ldquothe Divine Wisdom is reflected in the num-

bers impressed on all thingsrdquo (Saint Augustine De

libero arbitrio II XVI) The belief in the mystical signi-

ficance of numbers which originated in Pythagorean-

ism and was revived by Neo-Platonism was transmitted

to the Middle Ages by the Fathers of the Church (Macircle

[1898] English ed [1958] p 10) Complicated ramifi-

cations of this numerical symbolism in the field of

medieval architectural iconography are studied by J

Sauer (1924) as well as by E Macircle (ibid p 10) The

number eight for example connected with the idea

of new life by the Fathers (since it comes after seven

the terminal number of human life and of the world)

expresses the concept of resurrection and therefore that

of the Baptism because of that early belief baptisteries

and baptismal fonts are octagonal (Macircle ibid p 14)

One may trace in such use of numerical symbolism

a mystical rather than a didactic attitude

The general adoption of a symbolic attitude does

not mean that in the Middle Ages no actual events

were represented in art However since medieval art

was very much traditional and remained faithful to

exempla or compositional visual patterns the actual

events when they were sometimes taken as subjects

of representation used to be transformed to fit precon-

ceived traditional patterns The written lives of the

saints have been composed according to literary and

mythical topoi The same may be observed in art

When a new subject had to be represented it used to

be molded according to existing patterns As an exam-

ple we may adduce the story of Saint Adalbert repre-

sented on the bronze doors of the twelfth century at

Gniezno Poland The formerly executed European

bronze church doors represented Christological narra-

tive or allegorical figures or ornaments The fairly

recent hagiographic story had to be given visual shape

It is not surprising that the representations in most

cases follow the patterns of Christological iconography

(Kalinowski 1959) Secular subjects as for example

528

the conquest of England by William the Conqueror

and its circumstances represented on the so-called

Bayeux Tapestry followed in the general idea the

classical tradition It seems that perhaps more of a

direct experience of the actual medieval life found its

way into art than is usually admitted but the relative

share of symbolism and realism of system and freedom

is still a matter of discussion among medievalists

(Berliner 1945 1956)

In the late Middle Ages the general system of icon-

ography persisted but new subjects especially the

representations of the most human episodes and rela-

tionships in Christs life namely of His infancy and

His emotional connections (with the Virgin and Saint

John) as well as His Passion and the episodes of Our

Ladys life come to the fore Although symbolical and

didactic thinking maintained its importance the means

to communicate with the faithful changed most sub-

jects popular in the late Middle Ages appeal to the

beholders emotions rather than to his reason Scholars

have selected a group of so-called devotional pictures

as opposed to dogmatic and to historical repre-

sentations but the precise delimitation of such a group

is still a matter of discussion as is also the question

of how much this art was influenced by literature and

especially by pious poetry With the development of

the graphic arts new cheap pictures spread widely the

typological imagery systematized in the Biblia pau-

perum and in the Speculum humanae salvationis

Great collections of religious meditations compiled in

monasteries like Meditations on the Life of Christ by

Pseudo-Bonaventure (ed I Ragusa and R B Green

1961) spread widely a new emotional approach to

iconography Also the religious theater had some influ-

ence on the way stories in art were told

4 In the iconography of the Renaissance art ldquohis-

toryrdquo was shifted to the fore at the expense of symbol-

ism It does not mean that symbols ceased to exist

Pictorial allegory and symbolism played a very impor-

tant part in the conception of humanistic art But what

was placed in the center of the new art theory was

the concept of istoria The first and the most important

task of the work of art according to L B Alberti (De

pictura 1435 Della pittura 1436) is to present a story

This story had to be selected from authoritative literary

sources either sacred or profane it should represent

in a possibly convincing and expressive way an episode

from the Holy Scriptures from sacred or classical

history from mythology or legend This new concept

of istoria which was to dominate iconographic consid-

erations for more than three hundred years (the mean-

ing of the term istoria or storia changed of course in

that period) was one of the consequences of the Ren-

aissance idea of the priority of literature over the visual

arts There were several reasons for that priority one

being a complete lack of known classical theory of art

In its stead the theories of poetry and rhetoric were

adopted as guiding principles for the visual arts Hence

the dominating Horatian principle Ut pictura poesis

which subordinated the visual arts to the rules of liter-

ary theory This identification of literature and art

lasted until G E Lessing in 1766 revolted against it

in his Laokooumln (R W Lee 1940) In the humanistic

theory of visual arts the concept of istoria took the

central place Istoria had to be chosen for its moral

value (Alberti chose as his examples the subjects show-

ing stoic moral firmness as the ldquoDeath of Meleagerrdquo

the ldquoImmolation of Iphigeniardquo or the ldquoCalumnyrdquo of

Apelles) it had to be represented according to the

principle of decorum and costume ie with regard to

its dignity and most truthfully to the literary proto-

type Everything should be suitable in ldquosize function

kind color and other similar thingsrdquo Alberti stressed

the necessity of varied and convincing expressions of

emotions by suitable gestures

The dependence of post-medieval iconography on

literature increased with time and in the seventeenth

century the truthfulness of the pictorial formulation

of literary subjects became one of the most valued

qualities of a work of visual arts ldquoRead the story and

the picture at the same timerdquo Nicolas Poussin wrote

to M de Chantelou one of his customers In the French

Royal Academy of Painting and Sculpture lengthy

discussions were going on concerning the relation of

pictures to literary sources To be able to represent

well subjects taken from poetry the artist had to be

a doctus artifex well-informed in various fields G P

Bellori (1695) stressed however the fact that not

everything good in writing comes out well in painting

Therefore the painter to be able to transform the

story had to acquire ldquoan universal knowledge of things

and he should contemplate precisely nature and reali-

tiesrdquo Some freedom was given to the artist from the

beginning Alberti was far from limiting the painter

too much by this dependence on literature He stressed

the specific requirements of the visual arts as for ex-

ample the necessity to limit the number of represented

figures in order to keep a balance between ldquocopious-

nessrdquo and ldquosolitude in paintingrdquo This made it of

course necessary to reduce crowded scenes to an easily

graspable number of figures in order to avoid ldquodissolute

confusionrdquo (Spencer [1956] pp 23-28)

The interest of early Renaissance art theorists in

iconography was not great They concentrated their

attention chiefly on the discussion of the means needed

to achieve a convincing and beautiful representation

of the istoria and on the specific problems of repre-

sentationmdashcorrect (by adoption of the rules of per-

529

spective) and beautiful (by adoption of the rules of

proportion) Leonardo da Vinci does not show a spe-

cific interest in iconography but in some passages of

his incompleted Treatise on Painting he gives literary

programs of pictures remarkably however the pic-

tures are not of stories but of representations of pow-

erful natural or human happenings such as storms and

battles Here the naturalistic interests of the Renais-

sance come to the fore

An important achievement of the Renaissance partly

affecting iconography was the reunionmdashas noticed and

described by E Panofsky and F Saxl (1932) and Panof-

sky (1960)mdashof the literary and visual traditions of

classical antiquity during the fifteenth century During

the Middle Ages the literary tradition of classical sub-

ject matter was separated from the visual tradition of

classical artistic motifs so that there was no awareness

of their belonging together The classical subjects for

example those taken from Ovid used to be represented

in contemporary medieval stylistic forms classical

artistic motifs on the other hand for example the forms

of garment folds human types gestures compositional

patterns and so on were used to represent Christian

subject matter as in the western portals of the Reims

cathedral or in the pulpits of Nicola or Giovanni

Pisano It was only in the High Renaissance eg in

the works of Raphael Titian Michelangelo and Cor-

reggio that forms and iconography themes and motifs

became reintegrated In this way the classical vision

of classical subjects became sometimes so perfect that

some works created around 1500 could have been

taken for classical originals (for example Bacchus by

Michelangelo) The growing understanding of classical

ideas and forms led to another specific Renaissance

phenomenon called by Panofsky ldquopseudomorphosisrdquo

Certain Renaissance figures became invested with a mean-

ing which for all their classicizing appearance had not been

present in their classical prototypes though it had fre-

quently been foreshadowed in classical literature Owing

to its medieval antecedents Renaissance art was often able

to translate into images what classical art had deemed

inexpressible

(Panofsky [1939] pp 70f)

In the north of Italy beside the concept of istoria

poesia appears a fact which also points to a depend-

ence on poetry this was understood mainly as referring

to lyrical poetry and not to epic or heroic Mythologi-

cal pictures by Titian were described in such a way

(Keller [1969] pp 24f) The stress was on the poetical

mood more than on an important human action a

lyrical tonality was preferred to a heroic one The

archaeological interests then current in Padua and

Venice visible for instance in the works by Andrea

Mantegna were moderated by an elegiac poetic mood

in reconstructing the classical world Pictures by Gior-

gione who worked for exclusive circles of humanists

were so hermetic in meaning that several of them like

the Three Philosophers (Vienna) or the Storm (Venice)

are iconographic riddles up to our own day The same

is true of the enigmatic and poetic iconography of some

pictures by Titian (Sacred and Profane Love in the

Borghese Gallery in Rome) by Lorenzo Lotto or by

the Ferrarese Dosso Dossi

The most important document of this romantic ar-

chaeological vision which strongly influenced icono-

graphical invention in Italy and outside of Italy was

a fantastic romance Hypnerotomachia Poliphili attrib-

uted in the most plausible way to a Franciscan monk

Francesco Colonna and published with beautiful

woodcuts by Aldus Manutius in Venice in 1499 Poetic

visions of a dreamy classical landscape full of ruins

in which the lovers Poliphilo and Polia wander influ-

enced the imagination of artists not less than the excel-

lent woodcuts their impact can be found as far and

as late as in the gardens at Versailles The illustrations

to Hypnerotomachia also popularized hieroglyphic

signs which make their appearance in iconography as

a specific phenomenon of the Renaissance

5 Art conceived as a language may be addressed

to large or to small groups It depends on the scope

of communication It can be intended as a message

to a possibly large audience but it can also be limited

in its appeal to a small selected group of observers

In an extreme case the polarization could be that

between a didactic art appealing to everybody and an

elitarian cryptic message understandable only to the

initiated few Medieval art belonged by far to the first

category the art of the Renaissance to the second

Even in the monumental wall-paintings decorating the

most celebrated places of Christianity such as the

Sistine Chapel or the official rooms of the Popes like

the Stanza della Segnatura even in the sepulchral

chapels of the most important families like the Sassetti

and the Medici the iconographic programs and sym-

bolism are extremely complicated The meaning of the

decoration of the great Gallery of Franccedilois I at Fon-

tainebleau is so cryptic that it was hypothetically ex-

plained only recently by the best specialists in icon-

ography (D and E Panofsky 1958) Few works of

medieval art have provoked such a number of inter-

pretations as the well-known and at first glance seem-

ingly easy to understand pictures like Botticellis

mythologies (Birth of Venus Spring The Uffizi Flor-

ence) like Titians Sacred and Profane Love or like

sculptures such as Michelangelos Medici tombs The

same is true of works by Duumlrer Holbein and Bruegel

in the North A deep symbolism a complicated

iconographymdashespecially current in the circles influ-

530

enced by Neo-Platonismmdashbelonged to the perfection

of the work

This idea had a long life it recurs in 1604 in Carel

van Manders Book of the Painter as well as in Berninis

utterances on the beauty of the concept which adorns

the work The more refined the concept the more

difficult the symbolism the narrower the circle of those

who can really understand the work

Art was considered especially in the exclusive court

social groups or among the humanists as a secret

language accessible to the initiated The visual sign

was connected with words into a specific union of

literature and art which flourished at the time of the

Renaissance of mannerism and of the baroque in the

form of impresa of hieroglyph and of emblem The

roots of the impresamdashthe personal sign and mottomdashare

to be found in chivalrous devices and signs popular

in the late Middle Ages it was brought to Italy from

France and connected with Neo-Platonic speculation

(Klein 1957) Hieroglyphs became popular thanks to

the discovery in 1419 of the Hieroglyphica by Hora-

pollo Niliacus (of the second or fourth century AD)

published in 1505 The humanists believed that this

enigmatic image-script disguised a profound wisdom

of the Egyptians ldquothey supposed that the great minds

of Greece had been initiated into these Egyptian

mysteriesmdashwhich in their turn were of course one

more prefiguration of the teachings of Christrdquo (Seznec

[1953] p 100) Emblems originated from an erudite

intellectual play among the humanists aiming however

at a moral lesson and sometimes considered in a Neo-

Platonic way as symbols revealing to those who con-

template them a higher knowledge of divine mysteries

Emblem included a motto called lemma an image

and an epigram Only the whole of the emblem can

be understood each element of it giving only one part

of the meaning All those cryptic codes of expression

connecting words and images originated as secret and

elitarian The problem of the degree of obscurity was

one of the main points discussed by the theorists of

the emblematics (Clements [1964] pp 191-95) Eras-

mus of Rotterdam stressed that one of the virtues of

the impresa is that its meaning can be grasped only

with an intellectual effort Cesare Ripa (Iconologia

1593) demands that symbolic images be composed ldquoin

the form of enigmardquo Sambucus (1564) required ldquoob-

scuritasrdquo and ldquonovitasrdquo from the emblems Paolo

Giovio represented a reasonable middle ldquoThe device

should not be so obscure as to require the Sybil to

interpret it nor yet so obvious that any literal-minded

person can understand itrdquo Later however the crypto-

grams of hieroglyphics and emblem books began to

be popularized and explained Collections of emblems

became widely known New systematization of icon

ography now of a humanistic one was inaugurated

In 1556 Vincenzo Cartari published the first modern

handbook of mythological imagery le imagini colla

sposizione degli dei degli antichi (Venice 1556) In the

same year Pierio Valeriano produced a rich collection

of Hieroglyphica (Basel 1556) Earlier in 1531 Andrea

Alciati had compiled the first emblem book (Emblema-

tum liber Augsburg 1531) The influence of such

books which went through many translations and edi-

tions and which were imitated and continued all over

Europe grew at the close of the sixteenth and in the

seventeenth century In exclusive groups it happened

much earlier that hieroglyphic astrological and em-

blematic imagery influenced the iconography of im-

portant works of art as for example at the court of

Maximilian I (M Giehlow 1915) sometimes this con-

cerned works done by the most distinguished artists

like Duumlrers Melencolia I (Klibansky et al 1964)

Emblematic principle of composition uniting as it did

the image with the verbal formulations found great

popularity in northern Europe perhaps because the

importance of the word so prominent in Protestantism

was stressed (Luther required ldquofragments from the

Holy Writrdquo to be included in the Epitaph-pictures)

Epitaphs and other religious pictures of the Protestant

North connect words and images in the harmonious

indivisible whole (Białostocki 1968)

In the Netherlands emblems played an important

part in the development of realistic painting in the

seventeenth century since they furnished a rich reper-

tory of imagery charged with allegorical meaning (de

Jongh von Monroy) However the meaning of those

images obvious to the viewer who remembered the

original emblematic context eluded for a long time

later interpreters who were no longer conversant with

the emblems

After Cartari and his followers furnished artists and

patrons with images of classical gods there was a need

felt for another handbook which would enable the

artist to represent and the patron to understand the

abstract moral philosophical scientific and other

ideas symbolized Only then was art able to express

complex thoughts This task was fulfilled by Cesare

Ripa of Perugia who in 1593 published his Iconologia

a handbook explaining how to represent all the incor-

poreal concepts In 1603 Iconologia was republished

with illustrations and became one of the most popular

and influential art books With Ripa in hand art

historiansmdashinitially Eacutemile Macircle (1932)mdashwere able to

decipher hundreds of allegorical statements in paint

and stone guided by this alphabet of personifications

Ripas basic entity was a human figure female more

often than male whose costumes attributes gestures

and other particulars express specific qualities of the

531

idea represented With the publication of Ripas workmdash

translated soon into many languages and frequently

republished and revisedmdashthe humanistic system of

allegorical iconography was established classical gods

and personifications hieroglyphic signs and emblems

connecting words and images this was the material

used by the artists of mannerism and the baroque when

they did not choose to keep to the ldquohistoricalrdquo world

ie to borrow their subjects directly from literature

When they did so when they painted stories they used

to select them not only from Ovid and Vergil but also

from the more recent poems by Ariosto and Tasso and

also from the works of less known writers ancient and

modern Valerius Maximus furnished them with exam-

ples of virtuous behavior These historical examples

were in general either connected with allegorical gen-

eralizations (in the big decorations of the late baroque

the central fresco was often an allegory and the ac-

companying canvas-pictures presented historical ex-

amples of virtues Garas pp 280-83) or conceived in

an allegorical way Ovide moraliseacute was popular already

in the late Middle Ages Its influence persisted also

in the time of the baroque Myths and stories under-

went allegorical interpretations along the lines of that

moralizing commentary

What was considered necessary for an artist around

1600 can be seen from Carel van Manders Book of

the Painter (1604) It included a long theoretical poem

a history of classical and modern Italian and Nether-

landish artists a translation and a moral interpretation

of Ovids Metamorphoses and finally a description of

personifications There is no specific section on reli-

gious iconography since artists were well furnished

with books giving them rules in this respect

Against the humanistic conception of art the Council

of Trent proclaimed rules constituting a new system

of religious iconography which put an end to the live

tradition of medieval art These rules were published

officially by the Church and they have been com-

mented upon and elaborated in books by Joannes

Molanus (1570) Saint Carlo Borromeo (1577) Gabriele

Paleotti (1581) Federico Borromeo (1624) and several

others The rules of the Council governed the decora-

tion of churches and other sacred buildings and the

character of pictures representing sacred subjects A

break between the religious and the secular iconogra-

phy became obvious in theoretical literature although

there existed many emblem books of a very distinct

religious character (G de Montenay 1571 B Arias

Montanus 1571 H Hugo 1624) A new strictly for-

mulated system of religious iconography coexisted in

the seventeenth century with humanistic subject mat-

ter symbolism and allegory The classical nude intro-

duced by the Renaissance into art was strictly forbid

den now in religious art but found a free field of

development in secular mythological and allegorical

works Many artists exercised their imagination in both

fields in some specific fields such as sepulchral iconog-

raphy cooperation between religious and humanistic

symbolism was common In the work of P P Rubens

the various aspects of the new iconography found

perhaps their best expression In his art allegorical

concepts classical gods and heroes triumphs of mythi-

cal beings as well as of secular rulers accompany mar-

tyrdoms of Catholic saints and the triumphs of the

Eucharist What began to be separated in theory could

yet coexist in harmony in the work of a great artist

6 In northern European art (before Rubens) the

renewal of the arts during the Renaissance took the

form of the new study of nature and the elaboration

of the most convincing means of representing the ma-

terial world in an illusionistic way traditional medieval

symbolism was transformed in a specific way produc-

ing what E Panofsky called in 1953 ldquodisguised sym-

bolismrdquo The symbolic meaning connected with objects

and qualities persisted but a new mastery reproduced

these symbolical objects with such a degree of realism

that they did not differ any longer from other objects

not charged with any metaphorical meaning Some-

times the symbolical meaning of represented objects

results from the traditional iconography in an unmistak-

able way sometimes the meaning is hinted at by the

inscriptions placed in the picture or on its frame But

in many cases the modern viewer remains perplexed

without any sufficient clue to decide whether in the

picture he observes he has to do with the beginnings

of the representation of reality for its own sake or

whether the search for specific metaphorical meaning

is justified It is still always a matter of discussion to

decide at which moment the representation of some

objects or some scene in life without any symbolical

(or ldquohistoricalrdquo) implications became possible (Gilbert

1952) Observers of the eighteenth and nineteenth

centuries to whom the meaning of old symbols was

wholly forgotten took many images of the fifteenth and

sixteenth centuries for simple representations of life

Bruegel for example was considered as simply a

painter of joking or working peasants Recent studies

in iconography have shown that these pictures are

saturated with disguised meaning and that it is ex-

tremely rare before about 1550 to meet simple repre-

sentations of nature in painting In graphic arts the

direct depiction of life and landscape began earlier

as in the works of Lombard draughtsmen or in the

incredibly fresh convincing drawings and prints by the

Master of the Housebook There are also early excep-

tions in painting like Albrecht Altdorfers landscape

without any human figures But in general it was only

532

during the second half of the sixteenth century that

landscape genre and still-life painting began to ac-

quire equal rights with religious and humanistic history

and allegory predominantly in Venice and in Antwerp

Even then however the representations of people

working in fields (Jacopo or Francesco Bassano) fol-

lowed the old traditions of Calendar-pictures and in

the background of genre scenes as in Pieter Aertsens

pictures a biblical motif may be found which trans-

forms the whole composition into a storia however

unorthodox

With the development of realistic painting in the

seventeenth century there appeared specific iconogra-

phic problems New subjects slowly found convenient

form They entered the scene patterned after the ven-

erable stories of sacred or of profane iconography

H van de Waal described (1952) the process of the for-

mation of national historical iconography in Holland

Scenes depicting recent happenings from a long strug-

gle for national independence appeared first in forms

assimilated to well-known religious or mythical scenes

This was not only an expedient facilitating their com-

position for by this means the new subjects gained the

decorum inherent in the adopted patterns formed to

express traditional stories Similar procedures may be

seen in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries when

more and more sections of reality became interesting

enough to be represented in art

The transfer of decorum from the sacred or allegori-

cal figures to the humans represented is a means used

in what modern iconographers call ldquoallegorical por-

traiturerdquo Renaissance painters had represented real

people under mythological or even sacred disguise

they gave actual faces of living people to the figures

represented with all the attributes and characteristics

of their mythical sacred or even allegorical qualities

Later it was only the pattern which remained still in

the eighteenth century English portraitists patterned

the effigies of contemporary aristocrats after Michel-

angelos Sybils or after allegories like the Caritas

(Wind 1937) J B Oudry represented the Polish King

in exile Stanisław Leszczyński with all the attributes

of the allegory of exile taken from Ripa identifying

him in this way with personification of his most promi-

nent quality (Białostocki 1969)

Dutch realistic painting of the seventeenth century

is a document of an important iconographic conquest

Landscapes seascapes moonlit night scenes snapshots

of people skating in winter landscapes views of market

places church interiors backyards fishermen old

women preparing food fashionable dishes ready for

lunch merchants and artisans elegant gentlemen pay-

ing visits and folk-surgeons performing sensational

street-operations all this became subject matter for

representation and continued to be considered worthy

of depiction until the end of the nineteenth century

It was first considered as such in Holland only then

slowly everyday subject matter was recognized also by

art-theorists in other countries although it was re-

garded as much less dignified than religious mytholog-

ical or allegorical subjects Only in the nineteenth

century did the vogue of realistic representation of

everyday subjects become widespread In Dutch pic-

tures of the seventeenth century we are often con-

fronted with nothing else than representations of pic-

turesque reality Sometimes however these genre

pictures appear to be illustrations of proverbs expres-

sing moralistic folk-wisdom sometimes they recall

scenes from the popular threater of the rederijkers or

rhetoricians especially pictures by Jan Steen (Gud-

laugsson 1945) they contain allusions to emblems

Sometimes the elegant scenes from bourgeois life in-

clude quite indecent erotic allusions (de Jongh 1967

1969) The ambiguity of these pictures was certainly

a source of specific pleasure for those who knew the

key to their true meaning

7 In Catholic countries allegorical art sacred as

well as profane flourished The twofold character of

symbolic representations mentioned above persisted

in the seventeenth century Aristotelian rational sym-

bolism which used images as words was widespread

in the orthodox Catholic iconography of the Counter-

Reformation as well as in the humanistic visual lan-

guage codified by Ripa and others A mystical Neo-

Platonic symbolism transcending reason reappeared

too Its outspoken document is the treatise by Chris-

toforo Giarda Bibliothecae alexandrinae icones sym-

bolicae of 1626 (Gombrich 1948) For Giarda symbolic

images give the beholder a direct insight into the

mysteries of religion which are not accessible to rea-

son

Thanks to symbolic images the mind which is banished from

heaven into this dark cave of the body its actions held in

bondage by the senses can behold the beauty and form

of the Virtues and Sciences divorced from all matter and

yet adumbrated if not perfectly expressed in colours and

is thus roused to an even more fervent love and desire for

them Who then can sufficiently estimate the magni-

tude of the debt we owe to those who expressed the Arts

and Sciences themselves in images and so brought it about

that we could not only know them but look at them as

it were with our eyes that we can meet them and almost

converse with them

(Gombrich [1948] pp 188f)

Great allegorical compositions covering the ceilings of

baroque churches are often realizations of this princi-

ple For those however who conceived allegory as a

rational operation as a language used for didactic aims

the main problem remained the clarity of the allegori-

533

cal message The larger the audience to whom allegory

was addressed the simpler more obvious its symbolism

should have been The banality of allegorical language

provoked criticism in the eighteenth century Fran-

cesco Algarotti (1762) prefers without any doubt his-

torical representations to the ldquoempty allegories and

complicated mythological allusionsrdquo (Garas [1967] p

280) Especially criticized was the obscurity of these

allegories in which completely original unknown sym-

bols were used Roger de Piles praises his favorite

master Rubens who ldquointroduced only such allegories

elements of which were already known from ancient

artrdquo and opposes him to Charles Lebrun who ldquoinstead

of taking symbols from some known source as the

ancient fable and medals has invented almost all of

them and thus the pictures of this kind became riddles

which the beholder does not want to take the task to

solverdquo To keep the balance between platitudinous

redundancy and utter incomprehensibility was the

crucial problem of late baroque allegorism What is

interesting however is that the idea of the picture

as a riddle was not foreign to the seventeenth century

It appears in France as well as in Sweden where David

Kloumlcker Ehrenstrahl (1694) proposed that pictures

present riddles that could not be solved by everyone

In France however the ldquopainted enigmardquo fostered

by the Jesuits in their schools flourished especially well

in the seventeenth century (Montagu 1968) These

ldquopainted enigmasrdquo lent themselves to various inter-

pretations and gave interpreters an opportunity to

show their ingenuity These pictures and their inter-

pretations seem to prove that a considerable flexibility

of meaning was intended

We might rather accept that a work of art was regarded

in the seventeenth century as in a certain sense an open

symbol raw material like the myth or sacred story which

it illustrates on which the interpreter might exercise the

power of his ingenuity turning it into an allegory of Chris-

tian doctrine or a panegyric in honour of his patron

(Montagu [1968] p 334)

Such a situation probably existed only in some specific

circles It was a limiting case The other extreme was

to use in an uninteresting routine way Ripas symbolic

images or those of other popular symbolic handbooks

Such practice continued well into the eighteenth cen-

tury The general trend fed by ideas of the Enlighten-

ment was to make allegories more and more obvious

It is understandable that some theorists like the Count

de Caylus looked for new subject matter presenting

as he did Tableaux tireacutes de lIliade (1755) or that

J J Winckelmann tried to revive allegory and to give

it a new force It was however too late In the eight-

eenth century together with the whole system of

humanistic tradition the systems of iconography began

to disintegrate The great break in the tradition con-

cerned not only style but also iconography Emblem-

atic roots may be discovered in Goyas symbolism as

well as in the reasonable allegories of the Enlighten-

ment but generally speaking there was a search for

new not known or not used sourcesmdashas in William

Blakes biblical individualistic imagerymdashor the new

staging of the old ones as in Jacques Louis Davids

classical subjects

The art of romanticism was a definite break with

the past much more in the field of ideas and iconogra-

phy than in a stylistic respect where romanticists

retrospectively looked back either to medieval and

pre-Raphaelite or to baroque sources Symbols and

allegories yielded to an all-pervading mood and the

traditional repertory of religious allegorical mytho-

logical and historical iconography gave way to a new

iconography Although several encompassing images

of Christian and humanistic art survived they received

new content and essentially changed their character

New attitudes of the individual to the world of nature

and history to society and destiny to time and death

and new problems resulting from the striving after

freedom (which was a new perhaps most important

principle of human behavior in all fields of human

activity) found expression in new thematic fields and

in new particular themes such as ldquoStorm-tossed Boatrdquo

ldquoLonely Wanderer in the Mountainsrdquo ldquoA Death of the

Herordquo (Eitner 1955 Hofmann 1960 Białostocki

1966)

Romanticism has not formed and could not have

formed an iconographic system for since they strived

first of all for originality of individual conception the

romantics interpreted images in a subjective way as

expressions of mood Romanticism has on the other

hand introduced new heroes and martyrs into art

instead of religious ones the national social and artis-

tic ones It created a new image of history seen now

as a set of political and moral examplesmdashas in

baroquemdashbut often put together now according to a

very individualistic principle of choice A correlative

to pathetic and heroic romanticism was a bourgeois

and intimate romanticism its expression was for ex-

ample the new imagery of the open window which

shows to the viewer wide perspectives but shelters him

at the same time from the dangers of the unknown

(Eitner 1955)

When the world of ideas and images created at the

moment of the flowering of romanticism began to be

popularized for the use of the large bourgeois masses

the contentmdashideological and iconographicalmdashof ro-

manticism lost its original authenticity and left be-

hind not a new system of original images but a dispo-

534

sition to melodramatic experiences and an inflation of

a theatrical gesture (Hofmann 1960 Białostocki 1966)

The nineteenth century developed a realistic por-

traiture of man and nature and took over worn out

clicheacutes of the Renaissance and baroque allegories It

introduced new subject matter taken partly from tra-

dition partly from observation of reality tinted with

vague symbolism such as ldquoForgerdquo or the ldquoFuneral of

the Peasantrdquo but it did not create a new system of

iconography in spite of short-lived revivals of symbol-

istic attitudes in such movementsmdashincidentally not

limited to and not initiated in the visual artsmdashas

ldquosymbolismrdquo

New ephemeral artistic movements which consti-

tuted the history of European art in the last hundred

years show an interesting bracketing of style and icon-

ography in spite of a preponderant lack of iconogra-

phic interest Their representatives chose subjects suit-

able to specific artistic aims and means which they

developed and were interested in Impressionists

painted seaside scenes landscapes and genre pictures

showing the life of artistic and intellectual milieus

Cubists introduced a specific repertory of still-life

motifs symbols of the artists atelier and of the life

of the bohegraveme bottles musical instruments books

fruits flowers newspapers How much these motifs

were connected with specific cubist style appears when

one looks at works of artists foreign to the original

cubist group but imitating its style as for instance

several Czech artists like Emil Filla They adopted

cubist iconography together with cubist style Abstract

movements in general lacked iconography although

they were not foreign to symbolic tendencies espe-

cially in sculpture (Brancusi Moore) Only in the dec-

ades of 1950-70 can a revival of more articulated and

programmatic symbolism be observed One may sup-

pose that this revival is at least in part brought about

by the development of research in iconography and

symbolism which took place in the second and third

quarters of our century

II

1 The origins of ldquointerpretative iconographyrdquo may

be seen in the descriptions (ekphrasis) of works of art

known in classical literature But these descriptions

like those by Philostratus the Elder or Lucian are

limited simply to description and lack in general any

interpretation Moreover it is not certain whether they

are descriptions of actual or fictitious works of art at

least opinions in this respect vary Brief medieval tituli

which formulated in words the content of religious

images were to be sure interpretative sometimes but

they were short and cannot be connected with the

tradition of artistic erudition We have to look to

modern times to indicate the beginnings of iconogra-

phic interpretation and research From Vasaris Rag-

ionamenti in which interpretations of the paintings

decorating the Palazzo Vecchio in Florence are given

we learn how complicated and how undecipherable

iconographic concepts might have been even to peo-

ple living in buildings decorated by paintings expres-

sing these concepts But perhaps the first really to be

considered as interested in iconographic research was

the seventeenth-century archaeologist and art theorist

Giovanni Pietro Bellori In the introduction to his Lives

of Artists (1672) Bellori stressed that he paid special

attention to the content of the works of art he was

talking about and he even credited the painter Nicolas

Poussin with having directed his attention to iconogra-

phy In his Lives Bellori presented short interpretative

descriptions of pictures and he sometimes developed

these interpretations further in small iconographic

essays the influence of classical ekphrasis on him is

a possibility Sometimes his errors took deep roots in

the subsequent history of art as when he explained

Poussins Triumph of Flora (Dresden) by designating

Ovids Metamorphoses as its source The true source

Marinos Adona was finally found by R E Spear in

1965

What is interesting in Belloris procedure is that he

first identifies the motifs tries to connect them with

classical or modern literary sources and then proceeds

to find out the deep meaning the general symbolic

idea of the work Therefore he may be considered as

one of the pioneers not only of iconography as a disci-

pline of research but also of iconology as formulated

by its recent partisans That even in the second half

of the sixteenth century some observers were inclined

to look for hidden meaning in each element of the work

of art we learn from Joannes Molanus (1570) who in

De picturis et imaginibus sacris states reasonably that

ldquoit is not necessary to ask for meaning of everything

that can be observed in a picture in such cases a lot

of absurd things may resultrdquo But the consciousness of

the importance of iconography increased and at the

end of the seventeenth century Andreacute Feacutelibien stressed

that in order to attribute a picture to a painter it is

not enough to know the way he uses his brush one

needs also to know his esprit to learn his geacutenie and

to be able to foresee in which way he is able to form

his conceptions Thus iconographic analysis was con-

sidered necessary even for the purpose of attribution

Descriptive interpretations of the works of ancient

art appeared in the big archaeological publications of

the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries such as

Jacques Spons Miscellanea eruditae antiquitatis (1679)

G P Belloris Admiranda romanarum antiquitatum ac

veteris sculpturae vestigia (1693) P de Caylus Recueil

535

dantiquiteacutes eacutegyptiennes eacutetrusques grecques et

romaines (1752-67) and in an interesting endeavor

(although very much criticized by Lessing) of Joseph

Spence to explain classical poets through works of art

and vice versa (Polymetis 1747) Classical archaeology

however has not been especially interested in iconog-

raphy and the use of the term itself by archaeolo-

gists was limited to portraiture The first great devel-

opment of iconographic studies was connected with

the romantic movement although an important pre-

lude for it was hagiographical collections of sources

such as Acta sanctorum published by the Bollandists

(1643-1794 resumed later) Among the pre-romantic

scholars in iconography the eminent German poet

G E Lessing is to be noted His study of the repre-

sentation of death in classical times can be considered

as one of the first essays in interpretative iconography

which is now called iconology In Wie die Alten den

Tod gebildet (1769) Lessing tries to interpret the classi-

cal iconographic type of Amor with the inverted torch

and to find its ldquointrinsic meaningrdquo by taking into ac-

count the religion customs and philosophy of the

classical world The work of art is interpreted by Less-

ing as ldquoa symptom of something elserdquo While Lessings

predecessors (like B de Montfaucon) ldquoexplained the

classical past by monumentsrdquo he for the first time did

the opposite ldquohe explained the monuments by Antiq-

uityrdquo (Maurin Białostocka [1969] pp 92-100)

Pre-romantic and romantic interests in myth and

symbol found their expression in publications and dis-

cussions by German philosophers and scholars like F

Schlegel J Herder J J von Goumlrres and F Creuzer

Creuzers work Symbolik und Mythologie der alten

Voumllker (1810) which shows the influence of mystical

Neo-Platonic ideas on symbols (Gombrich 1965) was

the most influential in the romantic period in Ger-

many Under the impact of Chateaubriands le Geacutenie

du christianisme (1802) research in medieval iconog-

raphy developed mainly in France Works by French

scholars mostly clergymen which were indeed con-

cerned with Christian medieval art dominated icon-

ographical study in the nineteenth century Since most

of these writers were not professional scholars their

work was often amateurish in character but it is unde-

niable that books by A N Didron Histoire de Dieu

(Paris 1843) the first part of a comprehensive pro-

jected but not completed iconography of Christian art

A Crosnier Iconographie chreacutetienne (Caen 1848) C

Cahier Caracteacuteristiques des saints (Paris 1867) C

Rohault de Fleury Archeacuteologie chreacutetienne les saints

de la messe et leurs monuments 12 vols (Paris

1893-1900) L Breacutehier Lart chreacutetien son deacuteveloppe-

ment iconographique des origines agrave nos jours (Paris

1918) P Perdrizet V Leroquais and G de Jerphanion

have built up a solid body of iconographical knowl-

edge on which scholars of the twentieth century were

able to erect a modern comprehensive structure In

the field of Byzantine iconography it was Gabriel

Millets Recherches sur liconographie de leacutevangile aux

XIVe XVe et XVIe siegravecles (Paris 1916 reprint

1960) that was basic for any further study For Western

chiefly French art a well-written and learned work

appealing to the general reader as well as to the

scholar was produced by Eacutemile Macircle who in his four

volumes of the history of religious art (1898-1932) has

presented a well-composed synthetic image of icono-

graphical development A lexicographic summary of

these studies of generations of French scholars is pre-

sented in the Dictionnaire darcheacuteologie chreacutetienne et

de liturgie published from 1907 to 1953 and edited

by F Cabrol and H Leclerq A recent reference work

is that by L Reacuteau Iconographie de lart chreacutetien (Paris

1955-59) Russian scholars have done important work

in the field of Byzantine and Orthodox iconography

of religious art The most prominent are N P Kon-

dakov Ikonografia Bogomatieri (St Petersburg 1911

2nd ed 1914-15) D V Ainalov Mosaiki IV i V vekov

(St Petersburg 1895) and N Pokrovski Otcherki

pamyatnikov christianskogo isskusstva i ikonografii (St

Petersburg 1894 3rd ed 1910) V Lasarev and M

Alpatov belonging to the mid-twentieth-century gen-

eration of Russian scholars discuss iconography in

several works on religious art German scholarship

produced in the nineteenth century works by F Piper

A Springer and H Detzel Useful compendia were

produced in the early twentieth century by J Sauer

W Molsdorf K Kuumlnstle and J Braun Dutch scholars

C Smits J B Knipping and J J M Timmers contrib-

uted to iconographic studies in recent times Knip-

pings book (1939-40) being the most important work

on the iconography of the Counter-Reformation and

supplementing Macircles volume of 1932 In the twentieth

century on C R Moreys initiative iconographic

studies were inaugurated in North America Focused

on earlier medieval art these studies developed at

Princeton University

A new direction characteristic of iconographic

studies in the twentieth century has been given to

them by the international school of art historical re-

search inaugurated by the Hamburg scholar Aby

Warburg At the International Congress for the History

of Art at Rome in 1912 he presented a sensational

astrological interpretation of the frescoes painted by

Francesco Cossa and his collaborators in Palazzo

Schifanoja at Ferrara Warburg solved the secret of

those representations which had puzzled the ingenuity

of several former students interpreting them as images

of zodiacal signs and their decans But he did not limit

536

his contribution to the presentation of his results He

wanted to stress the importance of his approach and

of the method of study which later became connected

with his name He said

I hope that through the method used by me for explication

of the frescoes at the Palazzo Schifanoja of Ferrara I have

proved that an iconological analysis which does not allow

itself to be diverted by the rules of frontier police from

considering antiquity Middle Ages and modern times as

interconnected periods nor from analyzing the most liberal

and the most applied works of art as equally important

documents of expression that this method endeavoring as

it does to throw light upon one dark spot clears up at

the same time great interconnected developments

(Warburg 1912 Heckscher 1967)

Warburgs influence on the history of art was very

great although he himself did not write much It was

mainly the posthumous impact of his ideas promul-

gated as they were by Fritz Saxl which contributed

to the specific direction of studies concentrated in the

library Warburg founded in Hamburg and which Saxl

succeeded in transplanting during the Nazi era to

London where it became the Warburg Institute of the

University of London While the object of study of the

nineteenth-century iconographers was mainly religious

art in its relation to religious literary sources and lit-

urgy for Warburg the study of images was a study

of their relations to religion to poetry to myth to

science and to social and political life Art was for

him closely connected with the polyphonic structure

of historical life

Warburgs ideas had a great importance for the most

influential theory of iconographic interpretation in our

century that elaborated by Erwin Panofsky In Ham-

burg where Warburg Saxl and Panofsky were active

in the twenties Ernst Cassirer built up his philosophy

of symbolic forms which constituted an additional

background for Panofskys system being derived as

his own methodology was from the traditions of

Kantian philosophy Around 1930 Panofskys ideas

ripened into a system which found formulation in his

book herkules am Scheidewege (1930) and later in a

theoretical article of 1932 G J Hoogewerff was how-

ever the first to propose the word ldquoiconologyrdquo as a

name for the method of an analysis of content in a

work of art (Warburg spoke of iconological analysis)

In 1931 he proposed distinguishing between iconogra-

phy as a descriptive science aiming at the identifica-

tion of themes and ldquoiconologyrdquo aiming at the under-

standing ldquoof symbolic dogmatic or mystical meaning

which is expressed (or hidden) in figurative formsrdquo He

stressed that ldquoiconologyrdquo deals with works of art with-

out classifying them according to the technique used

or to the achieved perfection taking into account only

their meaning Hoogewerff saw the last aim of iconol-

ogy in finding out the cultural and ideological back-

ground expressed by works of art and the cultural and

social significance which can be attributed to certain

forms and to means of expression in the same time

Hoogewerffs part in the expansion of iconology was

limited because he did not endorse his methodical

proposals with examples of historical interpretations

Erwin Panofsky with whose name iconology has

been connected ever since not only developed its

theoretical foundations but contributed by his practi-

cal work in art history to the main triumph of iconol-

ogy after the Second World War The most influential

book by Panofsky has been Studies in Iconology (1939)

in which his masterly presentation of the method was

connected with its equally excellent exemplification

2 Panofsky considers the interpretation of a work

of art as falling on three levels On the first level the

object of interpretation is the primary or natural sub-

ject matter The function of interpretation is called

ldquopre-iconographical descriptionrdquo In order to be able

to arrive at a correct interpretation on that level the

interpreter must have a practical experience (ldquofamili-

arity with objects and eventsrdquo) common to everybody

at least in one cultural sphere However he has to

control his observations by a ldquocorrective knowledge

of the history of stylerdquo (ldquoinsight into the manner in

which under varying historical conditions objects and

events were expressed by formsrdquo) On the second level

the function of interpretation is called ldquoiconographical

analysisrdquo its object is the ldquosecondary or conventional

subject matterrdquo constituting the world of images his-

tories and allegories The interpreters equipment in

this case is obviously the knowledge of literary sources

giving him a ldquofamiliarity with specific themes and

conceptsrdquo The interpreter has to control his observa-

tions by ldquothe insight into the manner in which under

varying historical conditions specific themes or con-

cepts were expressed by objects and eventsrdquo On the

third level the function of interpreting is called ldquoicon-

ographical analysis in a deeper senserdquo (1939) or ldquoicon-

ological analysisrdquo (1955) Its object is the ldquointrinsic

meaning or contentrdquo of a work of art The interpreters

equipment on that level should be a ldquofamiliarity with

the essential tendencies of the human mindrdquo and he

has to control his interpretation by the ldquoinsight into

the manner in which under varying historical condi-

tions essential tendencies of the human mind were

expressed by specific themes and conceptsrdquo Thus

taking all the time into account what Panofsky calls

the history of tradition the interpreter has to aim at

understanding the work of art its ldquoprimaryrdquo as well

as ldquosecondary subject matterrdquo as symptoms of some

fundamental tendency of the human mind typical of

537

a place a time a civilization and of an individual

responsible for the creation of the work ldquoIconologyrdquomdash

for Panofskymdashldquois a method of interpretation which

arises from synthesis rather than analysisrdquo Trying to

find the intrinsic meaning of a work of art

The art historian will have to check what he thinks is the

intrinsic meaning of the work or group of works against

what he thinks is the intrinsic meaning of as many other

documents of civilization historically related to that work

or group of works as he can master It is in the search

for intrinsic meaning or content that the various humanistic

disciplines meet on a common plane instead of serving as

handmaidens to each other

(Panofsky [1955] p 39)

The concept of intrinsic meaning of a work of art

was elaborated by Panofsky much earlier (1925) when

he interpreted in his own way the concept of Kunst-

wollen introduced by A Riegl to research in art

Panofsky understood this ldquoartistic volitionrdquo as an im-

manent ultimate meaning of a work of art which is

manifested in the way basic artistic problems are solved

in that work He used the same concept further to bring

art closer to the other fields of human activity Since

the ldquoimmanent ultimate senserdquo of the work of art is

nothing else than uniformity in the way of solving basic

artistic problems it is possible to compare that imma-

nent sense with immanent senses of the other human

works in various fields Panofsky did it for instance

when in one of his later works he compared the struc-

tural principles of Gothic architecture with those of

scholastic thinking (1951)

The system elaborated by Panofsky and exemplified

by his own work in art history was the first consistent

system of an integral interpretation of a work of visual

arts based on the analysis of content In principle

Panofskys system takes into account all the elements

of the work of art since it takes as the point of depar-

ture the sensual exterior shape of the work It is

however clear that its main scope is not the inter-

pretation of form as a bearer of meaning but the

understanding and interpretation of conventional alle-

gories literary themes and symbols as symptoms of

the history of the human mind It was that method

in the history of art which programmatically fostered

a collaboration with all the other disciplines of histori-

cal studies It was therefore one of the most influential

methods not only among art historians but also among

representatives of the other branches of humanistic

studies Although there were art historians who ex-

pressed a critical attitude toward ldquoiconologyrdquo as the

new method was soon baptized its influence was over-

whelming

3 It is not only but mainly due to Panofsky that

one can venture to call ldquoiconographicalrdquo that period

of art history as a historical discipline which followed

the Second World War and to oppose it to the ldquostylis-

ticrdquo one which preceded it It does not mean of course

that no iconographic research took place in the

twenties or thirties the works of Macircle Knipping van

Marle Wilpert Saxl and of Panofsky himself would

contradict such a statement Neither is it true that

purely formal research aiming at stylistic classification

and analysis discontinued after World War II It is

evident that in the last decades (from 1940 on) icono-

graphic interests came to the fore and became domi-

nant in many countries Iconographical studies grew

so much in number and importance that they made

it possible to undertake and to publish new reference

works of iconographic character like dictionaries

written by one scholar (Guy de Tervarent Aurenham-

mer) as well as larger works based on a collaboration

of several scholars (Encyclopedias of German art of

Antiquity and Christian civilization of Byzantine art)

Interest in meaning and iconography has appeared

also among historians of political social and religious

institutions The symbolism of signs ceremonies cos-

tumes and arms was studied by such scholars as A

Alfoumlldi ldquoInsignien und Tracht der roumlmischen Kaiserrdquo

Mitteilungen des deutschen Archaumlologischen Instituts

Roumlmische Abteilung (1935) 1ff ldquoDie Geburt der

kaiserlichen Bildsymbolikrdquo museum Helveticum 9

(1952) 204ff also by A Grabar Martyrium (Paris

1943-46) by E H Kantorowicz laudes Regiae

(Berkeley and Los Angeles 1946) The Kings Two

Bodies (Princeton 1957) by H P L Orange Studies

in the Iconography of Cosmic Kingship in the Ancient

World (Oslo 1953) Art Forms and Civic Life in the

Late Roman Empire (Princeton 1965) and by P E

Schramm herrschaftszeichen und Staatssymbolik

(Stuttgart 1954-56) In their studies iconography far

transcends the borders of art and it helps to build up

a history of ideas by following their various visual

expressions

Pioneering studies by K Giehlow F Saxl and E

Panofsky enlarged iconographical interests above all

to encompass the large field of secular art whereas

they had been mainly limited to religious iconography

in the work of preceding generations of scholars The

whole complicated and hardly known large body of

meanings disguised by the cryptic language of hiero-

glyphs emblems and iconologies became one of the

main topics of study

This established a collaboration between historians

of art and literature Mario Prazs admirable study of

emblems and his bibliography of emblem books

(1939-47) belongs now to the foundations of studies

in that field Publications by W S Heckscher and

A K Wirth by R S Clements E F von Monroy and

538

H M von Erffa E de Jongh and H Miedema and

several other scholars have elucidated the structure

and meaning of emblems and have shown their tre-

mendous influence on art even in its most monumental

and dignified forms An uninterrupted flow of reprints

of emblem books which brought within the reach of

modern students inaccessible volumes of sixteenth- and

seventeenth-century emblem writers were crowned by

the monumental undertaking of Arthur Henkel and

Albrecht Schoumlne who compiled an excellent volume

including almost all the texts and images needed for

the study of emblemsmdashEmblemata Handbuch zur

Sinnbildkunst des XVI und XVII Jahrhunderts

(Stuttgart 1967) Research was under way on hiero-

glyphs (Erik Iversen) and on the imprese (the late

Robert Klein) as well as on iconologies and allegories

These studies have disclosed meanings of the art of

the Renaissance of mannerism and of the baroque not

understood by nineteenth-century scholars

E Panofsky deciphered extremely farfetched and

individualistic programs of decoration of such famous

ensembles as the Camera di San Paolo by Correggio

in Parma the Gallery of Franccedilois I at Fontainebleau

Edgar Wind Andreacute Chastel and other scholars inter-

preted Raphaels decorations in the Popes apartments

Michelangelos art furnished material to detailed com-

prehensive studies by Panofsky Ch de Tolnay H von

Einem and Pope-Hennessy in which the share of

Neo-Platonic thinking in the ideological background

of the celebrated works of Michelangelo was discussed

Innumerable studies have been devoted to Titians

mythological paintings J R Martin presented expla-

nations of the Carracci frescoes in the Camerino Far-

nese and in the great gallery of the Palazzo Farnese

Bruegel considered in the nineteenth century as a drocircle

painter of peasant life has been shown by de Tolnay

Stridbeck and others to be an allegorist expressing a

skeptical humanistic outlook J S Held and W

Stechow contributed several articles to the under-

standing of mythological and allegorical contents in

Flemish and Dutch art of the sixteenth and seventeenth

centuries Rembrandts iconography was put into new

light by the two above-mentioned scholars as well as

by H M Rotermund H van de Waal J G van Gelder

H von Einem and Ch Tuumlmpel The intricate symbol-

ism and subject matter of historical and mythological

pictures by Nicolas Poussin were elucidated by such

masters of iconographic research as E H Gombrich

W Friedlaumlnder E Panofsky and above all by A Blunt

who in his monograph on Poussin presented a new

deep synthetic view of the ideas expressed by that

artists works Goyas individualistic secret symbolism

was also studied with the help of emblems and the

allegorical tradition Berninis works received iconolo

gical treatment by R Wittkower and H Kauffmann

All of this research does not mean that there was a

lack of interest in religious iconography M Schapiro

A Katzenellenbogen H Bober F Wormald and V

Elbern among others have contributed considerably

to deepen our understanding of the not completely

explained motifs and prominent works of medieval art

Panofsky has also shed a new light on several problems

of sepulchral iconography studies by such scholars as

R Berliner G von der Osten L Kalinowski S

Ringbom and T Dobrzeniecki contributed to late

medieval iconography in a new way Berliner stressed

the autonomous invention of visual artists or their

patrons while according to the traditional view popu-

larized by Macircle late medieval art should have followed

strictly literary sources

The religious content of modern art especially its

allegorical form in the late baroque period has been

examined and thanks to studies by such scholars as

W Mrazek and H Bauer has become better known

and understandable A great change was introduced

by ldquoiconologyrdquo into architectural history Buildings

which were formerly interpreted from aesthetic and

functional points of view only have been shown to

present allegorical symbolical or even emblematic

ideas Publications by leading art historians (R Witt-

kower B Smith G Bandmann O von Simson and

G C Argan) have presented medieval and modern

architecture as a bearer of meaning and have essen-

tially changed the character of architectural history

The iconography of classicism and romanticism

received a thorough treatment in books by W Hof-

mann and R Rosenblum as well as in several studies

devoted to individual themes and pictures G Hersey

has for example shown how much Delacroixs decora-

tion of the library in the Palais Bourbon owed to

Giambattista Vicos ideas about history More recently

studies on ldquoSymbolismrdquo have been undertaken Vincent

van Goghs symbolic language and iconography were

the object of studies by J Seznec C Nordenfalk and

other scholars On Ceacutezannes iconography interesting

remarks have been published by M Schapiro

Along with the development of iconographic studies

the establishment of centers of documentation has

advanced The ldquoFrenchrdquo stage in the development of

iconography has not left any marked trace in this

respect It was in America thanks to C R Morey that

the famous Index of Christian Art at the Department

of Art and Archaeology of Princeton University was

founded at first limited to the early Middle Ages then

enlarged so as to include art up to the end of the

medieval period Copies of the Princeton Index are

to be found also at the Istituto Pontificio dArcheolo-

gia in Rome and in the Dumbarton Oaks Library and

539

Collection in Washington DC But that Index ends

ldquowhere art beginsrdquomdashas Panofsky used to say jokingly

The need for systematic iconographic files for modern

art was strongly felt In 1956 A Pigler published a

very useful book Barockthemen in which he listed

thousands of works of art of the baroque period ac-

cording to their subjects It was however far from

being a systematic work The first essay in establishing

a systematic iconographic index for art of any time

was done by The Netherlands Institute for Art History

at the Hague then directed by H Gerson which took

the initiative around 1950 of publishing a postcard-size

photographic index of its rich collection of photographs

of Netherlandish art ordered according to an icono-

graphic principle Once such an idea was formulated

the need for a comprehensive consistent and clear

iconographic classification was urgent H van de Waal

of Leiden University devised such a system of classifi-

cation based on decimal divisions consistent and easy

to read He based his system on experiences of ethnol-

ogy and on such elaborated systems of classification

as that devised by Stith Thompson in his Motif-Index

of Folk Literature Vols I-VI (Bloomington Ind

1932-36 rev ed 1955-58) Van de Waal has elabor-

ated a system in which the first five main sections

classify five fundamental groups of portrayable things

namely (1) The Supernatural (2) Nature (3) Man (4)

Society (5) Abstracts The last four classify specific

subjects such as (6) History (7) The Bible (8) Myths

Legends and Tales (with the exception of classical

antiquity) (9) Myths and Legends of Classical Antiq-

uity Van de Waal combines the classification in the

first and in the second group in order to classify general

as well as specific subjects Christ in his system is

described with the sign ldquo11 Drdquo (ldquo1rdquo standing for Su-

pernatural ldquo11rdquo for Christianity ldquoDrdquo for Christ) the

adult Christ = 11 D 3 since ldquoshepherdrdquo on the other

hand bears the signature 47 I 221 the adult Christ

as a shepherd can be described in this system by the

following formula 11 D 3 = 47 I 221 Van de Waal

has also provided means to describe more complex

images which he expresses by adding elements between

brackets The Annunciation with God the Father and

a winged Angel is expressed by the following formula

73 A 5 (+1 +41) ldquo1rdquo standing for God the Father

and ldquo41rdquo for a winged Angel (van de Waal 1952) This

system elaborated for many years by its inventor and

prepared for publication in many volumes has proved

most useful in the practical arrangement of the Icono-

graphical Index of the Netherlandish Art and as the

only one until now in existence it became used more

and more in spite of some ambiguities and difficulties

As an endeavor to classify ldquoall portrayablerdquo things

persons events and ideas and to create a consistent

method to describe every possible image van de Waals

system may be considered as one of the important

achievements of the ldquoiconographical stagerdquo in the

development of art history Iconographic files exist of

course in many institutions as for example in the Ikon-

ologisch Instituut of Utrecht University one of the

main centers of study in emblematics and of course

in the most venerable institution of iconographic re-

search the Warburg Institute of the London University

and in other places

4 What was the result of this ldquoiconographicrdquo turn

in the development of the history of art One thing

is certain that this discipline by necessity has come

closer to other humanistic disciplines Since the

ldquointrinsicrdquo meaningmdashin Panofskys terminologymdashof a

work of art cannot be described in terms used by the

history of art but only in terms borrowed from the

history of philosophy of religion of social structures

of science and so on the ldquoiconological methodrdquo took

for granted and provoked such a collaboration Art

history was perhaps the first or one of the first to show

new interest in investigation of meaning It was fol-

lowed by similar developments in ethnology and in

linguistics

We have mentioned above a parallel development

in Byzantine and classical studies Panofskys influence

has been considerable in the other fields of humanistic

research Since ldquoiconologyrdquo aimed at discovering ideas

expressed by a work of art it awoke in art historians

an interest in the history of ideas This general shift

of emphasis and of the direction of studies from mainly

formal ones to studies aiming at ideas underlying art

was perhaps responsible among others for the fact that

several contributions to the Journal of the History of

Ideas have been written by historians of art

It is not difficult to see that such a development

should have provoked criticism on the side of those

who care about the purity and autonomy of methods

Iconology was criticized as far as its internal coherence

and also as far as its claim to be the integral method

of the study of art are concerned (Białostocki 1962)

Studies by R Klein E Forssman G Previtali G

Kubler B Teyssegravedre C Ginzburg and G Hermeren

expressed critical opinions in one or the other respect

Iconology linked art with the rest of history but it

disrupted the links between the work of art and other

things (Kubler 1962) Concentrating on meaning

iconology neglected art as form as individual expres-

sion Iconology implied a rational relationship between

intellectual content and artistic form On the one hand

one spoke of ldquoiconological diminutionsrdquo (Kubler

1962)mdashlimitations of research to meaning only But

on the other hand the overstatements of iconology

were criticized its representatives sometimes seemed

540

to assume everything symbolized something And some

iconologists seemed to consider important in art not

that which makes art a different field of human activity

but that which connects art with other fieldsmdashwith

the history of ideas

There were of course critics who had the opposite

opinion Since the end of the eighteenth century a

direct experience of art was more and more valued

and its symbolical function considered as a burden

J G von Herder said ein Kunstwerk ist der Kunst

wegen da aber bei einem Symbole ist die Kunst

dienend (ldquoA work of art is there because of art but

with a symbol art is a servicerdquo) Similar opinions were

expressed by nineteenth-century art writers and in this

century they have been voiced by Benedetto Croce and

by other Italian opponents of contenutismo by which

they meant interest in content For such critics to put

stress on iconography was to miss the essential in art

and to focus attention on a subordinate function of art

Also among scholars who considered the function

of representation and of communication as a legitimate

and important function of art criticism was expressed

not against the principle of an iconographical or icon-

ological investigation but against overstatements in

their application The introduction of the idea of ldquodis-

guised symbolismrdquo has created a danger of course of

opening the way to fanciful interpretations The alle-

gorical and symbolical function of mythological imag-

ery in classical art is also difficult to interpret precisely

Since no literary sources give a key to an interpretation

of the iconography of the sarcophagi very divergent

theories have been expressed concerning their meaning

Some archaeologists like F Cumont (1942) believe

that mythological and allegorical imagery (Anadyo-

mene Sea-Thiasos Personifications of the Seasons) is

to be read symbolically The Sea-Thiasos for instance

is to be interpreted as a symbol of the journey of the

souls of the deceased to the islands of the blessed

Others like A D Nock (1946) do not find enough

evidence to accept other than a decorative function

in such imagery

The intrusion of some representatives of psychology

eg C G Jung into iconographic studies giving them

an unhistorical turn in their search for ldquoarchetypal

imagesrdquo has complicated the situation although art

historians in general understandably have not accepted

that kind of approach to symbolism (Frankfort 1958

Gombrich 1965)

The fact that iconographic interpretations sometimes

lack satisfactory proofs does not detract from the im-

portance of such investigations so long as they are

conducted according to the requirements of historical

methods and take into account the corrective princi-

ples established by Panofsky A correct acquaintance

with the way of thinking of the artist the patron or the

viewer based on a satisfactory knowledge of documen-

tary visual and literary sources an awareness of the

choice situations produced by historical developments

may enable art historians to discover the secondary

meaning of a work of art as well as its intrinsic mean-

ing It is of course possible that the art historian will

meet some works for which it will not be possible to re-

construct in a satisfactory way the world of ideas that

would account for the meaning of those works In such

cases a reliable interpretation is simply not possible

R Berliner (1945 1966) criticized the widespread

opinion according to which content of the works of

visual arts in the Middle Ages had to be checked

against the literary sources considered as the only

medium in which ideological innovations were per-

mitted Berliner pleaded for assuming a considerable

ldquofreedomrdquo in the medieval artist and he considered

iconographic innovation possible even when no writ-

ten evidence could be found Meyer Schapiro (1947)

presented proofs that sometimes purely aesthetic rea-

sons decided the character of the work of art even as

early as the Romanesque period

We can only touch on some specific discussions going

on in the field of iconographic research But iconogra-

phic research is far from being a closed system and

the relative share of iconographic and stylistic criticism

in the work of art historians is always a matter of

discussion It is certain that the ldquoiconographicrdquo period

in the study of art has enlarged in a considerable way

the understanding of the art of the past and that it

has connected art history in a way unknown before

with the other historical disciplines and above all others

with the history of ideas

BIBLIOGRAPHY

L B Alberti On Painting ed J Spencer (New Haven

1956 revised ed 1966) E Auerbach ldquoFigurardquo (1944) trans

and published in Scenes From the Drama of European Liter-

ature (New York 1959) pp 11-76 K Bauch ldquoImagordquo

(1960) Studien zur Kunstgeschichte (Berlin 1967) pp 1-20

G P Bellori Descrizione delle imagini dipinte da Raffaello

(Rome 1695 ed used is 1751) R Berliner ldquoThe Free-

dom of Medieval Artrdquo Gazette des Beaux-Arts 628 (1945)

263-88 idem ldquoBemerkungen zu einigen Darstellungen des

Erloumlsers als Schmerzensmannrdquo Das Muumlnster 9 (1956)

97-117x J Białostocki ldquoIconografia e Iconologiardquo Enciclo-

pedia Universale dellArte (1962) Vol VII cols 163-75

trans as Encyclopedia of World Art (1966) Vol VII cols

769-85 lists almost all important older contributions to this

field idem ldquoRomantische Ikonographierdquo Stil und Ikonog-

raphie (Dresden 1966) pp 156-81 idem ldquoKompozycja

emblematyczna epitafioacutew ślaskich XVI wiekurdquo (ldquoEmblem-

atic Composition of Silesian Epitaphs of the Sixteenth Cen-

turyrdquo) Ze studioacutew nad Sztuka XVI wieku na Řlasku

(Wrocław 1968) pp 77-93 idem ldquoEsilio Privatordquo Bulletin

du Museacutee National de Varsovie 10 (1969) 95-101 J

541

Chydenius The Theory of Medieval Symbolism (Helsingfors

1960) Series of the Societas Scientiarum Fennica Com-

mentationes Humanarum Litterarum 27 2 R J Clements

Picta Poesis (Rome 1960) F Creuzer Symbolik und

Mythologie der Alten Voumllker (Leipzig and Darmstadt 1810

revised ed 1819) F Cumont Recherches sur le symbolisme

funeacuteraire des Romains (Paris 1942) L Eitner ldquoThe Open

Window and the Storm-Tossed Boatrdquo Art Bulletin 37

(1955) 281-90 H Frankfort ldquoThe Archetype in Analytical

Psychology and the History of Religionrdquo Journal of the

Warburg and Courtauld Institutes 21 (1958) 166-78

K Garas ldquoAllegorie und Geschichte in der Venezianischen

Malerei des 18 Jahrhundertsrdquo in proceedings of the XXI

International Congress of the History of Art Bonn Stil und

Uumlberlieferung in der Kunst des Abendlandes (Berlin 1967)

3 280-83 K Giehlow ldquoDie Hieroglyphenkunde des

Humanismus in der Allegorie der Renaissancerdquo Jahrbuch

der Kunsthistorischen Sammlungen des Allerhochsten

Kaiserhauses 32 (1915) 1-232 C Gilbert ldquoOn Subject and

Not-Subject in Italian Renaissance Picturesrdquo Art Bulletin

34 (1952) 202-16 C Ginzburg ldquoDa A Warburg a E H

Gombrich Note su un problema di metodordquo Studi medi-

evali series 3 7 (1966) 1015-65 E H Gombrich ldquoIcones

Symbolicae The Visual Image in Neo-Platonic Thoughtrdquo

Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes 11 (1948)

163-92 idem ldquoThe Use of Art for the Study of Symbolsrdquo

American Psychologist 20 (1965) A Grabar Liconoclasme

byzantin Dossier archeacuteologique (Paris 1957) idem Chris-

tian Iconography A Study of Its Origins (Princeton 1969)

S J Gudlaugsson De Comedianten bij Jan Steen en zijn

tijdgenooten (s-Gravenhage 1945) W S Heckscher ldquoThe

Genesis of Iconologyrdquo Stl und Uumlberlieferung in der Kunst

des Abendlandes Akten des XXI Internationalen Kon-

gresses fuumlr Kunstgeschichte (Berlin 1967) 3 239-62 G

Hermereacuten Representation and Meaning in the Visual Arts

A Study in the Methodology of Iconography and Iconology

Lund Studies in Philosophy Vol I (Lund 1969) R Hinks

Myth and Allegory in Ancient Art (London 1939) W

Hofmann Das Irdische Paradies (Munich 1960) G J

Hoogewerff ldquoLIconologie et son importance pour leacutetude

systeacutematique de lart chreacutetienrdquo Rivista dArcheologia Cris-

tiana 8 (1931) 53-82 E de Jongh Zinne- en minnebeelden

in de schilderkunst van de zeventiende eeuw (mdash1967) idem

ldquoErotica in Vogelperspectief De dubbelzinnigheid van een

reeks 17de eeuwse genrevoorstellingenrdquo Simiolus 3

(1968-69) 22-72 L Kalinowski ldquoTreści ideowe i estetyczne

Drzwi Gnieźnieńskichrdquo (ldquoIdeological and Aesthetic Content

of the Gniezno Bronze Doorsrdquo) in Drzwi Gnieźnieńskie ed

M Walicki (Wroclaw 1959) 2 7-160 H Keller Tizians

Poesie fuumlr Koumlnig Philip II von Spanien (Wiesbaden 1969)

R Klein ldquoLa theacuteorie de lexpression figureacutee dans les traiteacutes

italiens sur les imprese 1555-1612rdquo Bibliothegraveque dHu-

manisme et Renaissance 19 (1957) 320-41 republished with

the other relevant studies in la forme et lintelligible (Paris

1969) R Klibansky E Panofsky F Saxl Saturn and Melan-

choly (London 1964) J B Knipping Ikonografie van de

Contra-Reformatie in de Nederlanden (Hilversum 1939-40)

G Kubler The Shape of Time (New Haven and London

1962) R W Lee ldquoUt pictura poesisrdquo Art Bulletin 22

(1940) 197-269 E Macircle Lart religieux du XIIIe siegravecle en

France (Paris 1898) English ed used (New York 1958)

idem Lart religieux de la fin du Moyen-Age en France

(Paris 1908) idem Lart religieux du XIIe siegravecle en France

(Paris 1922) idem Lart religieux apregraves le Concile de Trente

(Paris 1932) J Maurin Białostocka Lessing i sztuki plas-

tyczne (ldquoLessing and the visual artsrdquo) (Wroclaw Warszawa

Krakoacutew 1969) E F von Monroy Embleme und Emblem-

buumlcher in den Niederlanden 1560-1630 ed H M von Erffa

(Utrecht 1964) J Montagu ldquoThe Painted Enigma and

French Seventeenth Century Artrdquo Journal of the Warburg

and Courtauld Institutes 31 (1968) 307-35 W Mrazek

Ikonologie der barocken Deckenmalerei (Vienna 1953)

Uumlsterreichische Akademie der Wissenschaften Philo-

sophisch-historische Klasse Sitzungsberichte 2283 A D

Nock ldquoSarcophagi and Symbolismrdquo American Journal of

Archaeology 50 (1946) 166ff D Panofsky and E Panofsky

ldquoThe Iconography of the Galeacuterie Franccedilois Ier at Fontaine-

bleaurdquo Gazette des Beaux-Arts 652 (1958) 113-90

E Panofsky ldquoUumlber das Verhaumlltnis der Kunstgeschichte zur

Kunsttheorierdquo Zeitschrift fuumlr Aesthetik und allgemeine

Kunstwissenschaft 18 (1925) 129-61 idem Studies in

Iconology (New York 1939) idem ed Abbot Suger (Prince-

ton 1946) idem Gothic Architecture and Scholasticism

(Latrobe Pa 1951) idem Early Netherlandish Painting

(Cambridge Mass 1953) idem Meaning in the Visual Arts

(Garden City N Y 1955) idem Renaissance and Renas-

cences in Western Art (Stockholm 1960) idem Tomb Sculp-

ture (New York 1964) E Panofsky and F Saxl ldquoClassical

Mythology in Medieval Artrdquo Metropolitan Museum Studies

4 (1932-33) 228-80 M Praz Studies in Seventeenth Cen-

tury Imagery (London 1939-47 2nd ed Rome 1964) S

Ringbom ldquoDevotional Images and Imaginative Devotions

Notes on the Place of Art in Late Medieval Private Pietyrdquo

Gazette des Beaux-Arts 6 73 (1969) 159-70 Joseph Sauer

Symbolik des Kirchengebaumludes und seiner Ausstattung in

der Auffassung des Mittelalters 2nd ed (Freiburg i B

1924) F Saxl ldquoFruumlhes Christentum und spaumltes Heidentum

in ihren kuumlnstlerischen Ausdrucksformenrdquo Wiener Jahrbuch

fuumlr Kunstgeschichte 2 (1923) 63-121 M Schapiro ldquoThe

Ruthwell Crossrdquo Art Bulletin 26 (1944) 232-45 idem ldquoOn

the Aesthetic Attitude in Romanesque Artrdquo in Art and

Thought issued in Honour of Ananda Coomaraswamy

(London 1947) 139-50 J Seznec The Survival of the Pagan

Gods (New York 1953) O G von Simson The Gothic

Cathedral (New York 1956) R E Spear ldquoThe Literary

Source of Poussins Realm of Florardquo The Burlington Maga-

zine 107 (1965) 563-69 L Volkmann Bilderschriften der

Renaissance (Leipzig 1923) Hans van de Waal Drie

eeuwen vaderlandsche geschieduitbeelding 1500-1800 (s-

Gravenhage 1952) idem ldquoSome Principles of a General

Iconographical Classificationrdquo in Actes du XVIIe Congregraves

International dHistoire de lArt Amsterdam 1952 (La Haye

1955) 601-06 E Wind ldquoCharity the Case History of a

Patternrdquo Journal of the Warburg Institute 1 (1937) 322ff

JAN BIAŁOSTOCKI

[See also Allegory Baroque Classicism Criticism Enlight-

enment Motif Myth Naturalism in Art Neo-Platonism

Renaissance Humanism Romanticism Symbolism Tem-

perance Ut pictura poesis]

situation must be personalized the dramatic conflict

of ethical principles must be represented by the con-

certed action of their symbolsrdquo (ibid p 66) The

greatness of the Greeks consisted in that they knew

how ldquoto construct a mythical framework within which

the movements of the planets and the passions of the

heart are converted into symbols not merely compara-

ble but actually to some extent interchangeablerdquo (ibid

p 94)

In the later periods of antiquity when irrational

Orphic and Dionysiac religious movements prevailed

over the reasonably organized world of Olympian gods

and when the Imperial Roman form of the state pre-

vailed over the tradition of small democratic Greek

states there appeared new forms of iconography

which were to remain influential in the Christian pe-

riod Tomb decoration began to flourish based on the

allegorical interpretation of mythical imagery Seasons

Bacchic myths Venus Anadyomene Sea-Thiasos

(Cumont 1942) imperial ceremonies gave form to

elaborate triumphal iconography and they decisively

influenced Christian symbolism Late classical art

elaborated also the representation of the internal dia-

logue of a man with his soul or conscience in the form

of an external dialogue with an allegorical person often

acting in an inspiring way a Muse a Genius an Angel

thus giving shape to a long-lived representation of

inspiration or of conversation with superhuman pow-

ers current in art until modern times (Saxl 1923

Hinks 1939)

2 The history of iconographical attitudes in post-

classical times is to a considerable degree a history of

accepting or rejecting the classical tradition Every-

thing which recalled a heathenish idol-cult was re-

jected and the meaning of imago was limited mainly

to painted images which being flat and therefore not

similar materially to what they represented suggested

only the shape of divine figures Nevertheless Christian

art adopted various images and functions of images

from the pagan tradition developing as it did an

526

allegorical imagery of its own a historical narration

and icon-portraits of Christ of the Virgin and of the

Saints The cult of the images seems to go back to a

pagan tradition (images of the emperors portraits of

the deceased) and most probably existed among the

first generations of Christians (Grabar 1968) That cult

which rose to greater importance in the fifth and sixth

centuries and the belief in the part of the holiness of

their saintly prototypes being inherent in these images

became the object of a long theological quarrel as a

result of which attitudes towards religious iconography

were differentiated in the West and in the East

In the Byzantine Empire the problem of religious

images acquired an exceptional importance as the

object of violent theological and political discussions

and of decisions of the Church Councils (Grabar 1957)

At the Councils of 730 754 and 815 images were

prohibited but at those of 787 (Nicaea) and of 843

they were again allowed Although the partisans of the

images triumphed a very strict iconographic doctrine

was established which provided extremely precise

regulations concerning religious imagery in the decor-

ation of East-Christian churches These regulations

have been followed in the Eastern Church ever since

The traditional character of Byzantine iconography is

demonstrated by the fact that the iconographic hand-

book by Dionysius of Fourna Hermeneia tes zograph-

ikes technes published by A N Didron (1845) was for

a long time considered as a document of an early

period of Byzantine art and it was only in 1909 that

A Papadopoulos Kerameus proved it to be a work of

the eighteenth century obviously reflecting a very old

tradition In this static world of iconographical think-

ing little change is noticeable although Eastern Chris-

tian art had its important artistic evolution and often

absorbed Western influences sometimes even in icono-

graphic respects (eg the influence of German prints

on the wall paintings in the Athos monasteries)

3 For medieval Christian thought everything in the

world was a symbol Things persons and events actual

and historical were considered as symbols of other

things persons and events or as symbols of concepts

and ideas The doctrine of ldquouniversal symbolismrdquo orig-

inated in Saint Augustine (De Trinitate) and first of all

in the Neo-Platonic philosophy of Pseudo-Dionysius

the Areopagite for whom ldquovisible things are images

of invisible beautyrdquo Thanks to John Scotus Erigenas

translation the ideas of Pseudo-Dionysius spread

widely and it was Hugh of St Victor who presented

the complete theory of universal symbolism ldquoall nature

expresses Godrdquo (Omnis natura Deum loquitur) For

Hugh the universe is ldquoa book written by the hand of

Godrdquo Alain de Lille has given a popular compact

poetic formula of universal symbolism

Omnis mundi creatura

quasi liber et pictura

nobis est et speculum

(ldquoEvery creature of the world is for us like a book and

a picture of the world and it is like a mirrorrdquo) Saint

Bonaventure finds that created beauty being a sign of

the eternal leads men to God Theologians discerned

mainly two kinds of symbolism under different names

but signifying two more or less basically similar divi-

sions (1) existing things endowed with meaning (res

et signa) and (2) conventional signs (Chydenius 1960)

In the practical use of symbolism in art one can discern

another diversity an Aristotelian rational trend and

a Neo-Platonic irrational and mystical one (Gombrich

1948 1965) In the first case the images were not

considered as including any more content than their

verbal equivalents they constituted a code a conven-

tional language of signs used to communicate religious

messages In the second case experience of symbolical

images was believed to give the observer another

higher knowledge than that transmitted by words it

was meant to give a direct ecstatic and enthusiastic

contact with abstract ideas incorporated as it were

in images Medieval art used generally symbolic images

conceived as a code transmitting its messages to every-

body also to those who were not able to read The

other attitude to symbols appeared in the Middle Ages

in the mystical trends The image which can be grasped

in a sensual way was a means of transgressing the limits

of the corporeal world and of reaching the spiritual

one Such a function of images was formulated by

various theologians Jean Gerson in the fifteenth cen-

tury put it in the following words ldquoAnd we ought

thus to learn to transcend with our minds from these

visible things to the invisible from the corporeal to

the spiritual For this is the purpose of the imagerdquo

(Ringbom [1969] p 165)

The didactic doctrine had been formulated already

in the early period of the Church according to that

doctrine images were considered as a form of writing

accessible to those unable to read (Paulinus of Nola

Gregory the Great also Thomas Aquinas considered

images to be useful ad instructionem rudium) This

attitude lasted until the very end of the Middle Ages

(later it was revived in the period of the Counter-

Reformation) and it found expression as late as the

fourteenth and fifteenth centuries in the early graphic

imagery of such typological compendia as Biblia

pauperum and Speculum humanae salvationis The

didactic aims encompassed not only the direct moral

lessons which were transmitted through the imagery

of ldquoprohibitionrdquo and ldquodissuasionrdquo of the Last Judgment

and of the Virtues and Vices but also the visual repre-

527

sentation of sometimes complicated links among the

events of sacred history considered as prefigurations

and fulfillments which were established between the

figures and events of the Old and the New Dispen-

sation Thus typological thinking connected images

into symbolic relations Visual unity was established

in the religious imagery through the large encyclopedic

compendia eg Glossa ordinaria (the large body of

Commentaries to the Bible until recently held to be

a compilation by Walafrid Strabo) and Gulielmus

Durandus system of liturgy Rationale divinorum offi-

ciorum or Vincent of Beauvaiss Speculum maius an

image of the world seen in the symbolistic mirror

These books contributed to the realization of the tre-

mendous iconographical programs of the great cathe-

drals of the high Middle Ages where God nature and

man were united into an exceptionally elaborated sys-

tem of symbolic images mirroring the model of the

world current in the period of Gothic art Art at that

time followed the symbolistic way of thinking which

prevailed in theology as well as in liturgy in profane

ceremonials and in the other fields of life Art gave

artistic form to the abstract structure of the cosmos

as seen by medieval theologians and brought it close

to the understanding or to the imagination of every

man This does not at all mean that medieval symbol-

ism was always understandable to everybody and

everywhere Very specific theological problems and

controversies found their way into iconography and

when deciphered by modern iconographers they dis-

close often complicated religious andor political situ-

ations (for example the imagery of the Ruthwell Cross

which reflects the conflicting ideologies of Northern

versus Roman Christianity in England as revealed in

an analysis by Meyer Schapiro 1944)

Neo-Platonic symbolism was developed especially

under the impact of writings by Pseudo-Dionysius the

Areopagite His influence promoted to a great extent

medieval ideas about the symbolism of light The sym-

bolism of light found its highest achievement in the

creation of Gothic architecture dominated by the

mysticism of light (von Simson 1956) Abbot Suger

the auctor intellectualis of Gothic architecture pre-

sented in his writings an excellent record of that atti-

tude toward symbolism In his De rebus in adminis-

tratione sua gestis (XVII) he writes about the doors

with gilt bronze reliefs ldquoBright is the noble work but

being nobly bright the work should brighten the

minds so that they may travel through the true lights

to the true light where Christ is the true door

The dull mind rises to truth through that which

is materialrdquo (Panofsky [1946] pp 46-49) Con-

templating precious stones transports Sugers mind to

a contemplation of the supernatural

Whenmdashout of my delight in the beauty of the house of

Godmdashthe loveliness of the many-colored stones has called

me away from external cares and worthy meditation has

induced me to reflect transferring that which is material

to that which is immaterial on the diversity of the sacred

virtues then it seems to me that I see myself dwelling as

it were in some strange region of the universe which neither

exists entirely in the slime of the earth nor entirely in the

purity of Heaven and that by the Grace of God I can

be transported from this inferior to that higher world in

an anagogical mannerrdquo

(ibid pp 63-65)

To a similar sphere of mystical symbols the specific

symbolism of numbers also belongs Numbers in the

Bible and those referring to quantitative relations in

architecture were considered as having a mystical

meaning ldquothe Divine Wisdom is reflected in the num-

bers impressed on all thingsrdquo (Saint Augustine De

libero arbitrio II XVI) The belief in the mystical signi-

ficance of numbers which originated in Pythagorean-

ism and was revived by Neo-Platonism was transmitted

to the Middle Ages by the Fathers of the Church (Macircle

[1898] English ed [1958] p 10) Complicated ramifi-

cations of this numerical symbolism in the field of

medieval architectural iconography are studied by J

Sauer (1924) as well as by E Macircle (ibid p 10) The

number eight for example connected with the idea

of new life by the Fathers (since it comes after seven

the terminal number of human life and of the world)

expresses the concept of resurrection and therefore that

of the Baptism because of that early belief baptisteries

and baptismal fonts are octagonal (Macircle ibid p 14)

One may trace in such use of numerical symbolism

a mystical rather than a didactic attitude

The general adoption of a symbolic attitude does

not mean that in the Middle Ages no actual events

were represented in art However since medieval art

was very much traditional and remained faithful to

exempla or compositional visual patterns the actual

events when they were sometimes taken as subjects

of representation used to be transformed to fit precon-

ceived traditional patterns The written lives of the

saints have been composed according to literary and

mythical topoi The same may be observed in art

When a new subject had to be represented it used to

be molded according to existing patterns As an exam-

ple we may adduce the story of Saint Adalbert repre-

sented on the bronze doors of the twelfth century at

Gniezno Poland The formerly executed European

bronze church doors represented Christological narra-

tive or allegorical figures or ornaments The fairly

recent hagiographic story had to be given visual shape

It is not surprising that the representations in most

cases follow the patterns of Christological iconography

(Kalinowski 1959) Secular subjects as for example

528

the conquest of England by William the Conqueror

and its circumstances represented on the so-called

Bayeux Tapestry followed in the general idea the

classical tradition It seems that perhaps more of a

direct experience of the actual medieval life found its

way into art than is usually admitted but the relative

share of symbolism and realism of system and freedom

is still a matter of discussion among medievalists

(Berliner 1945 1956)

In the late Middle Ages the general system of icon-

ography persisted but new subjects especially the

representations of the most human episodes and rela-

tionships in Christs life namely of His infancy and

His emotional connections (with the Virgin and Saint

John) as well as His Passion and the episodes of Our

Ladys life come to the fore Although symbolical and

didactic thinking maintained its importance the means

to communicate with the faithful changed most sub-

jects popular in the late Middle Ages appeal to the

beholders emotions rather than to his reason Scholars

have selected a group of so-called devotional pictures

as opposed to dogmatic and to historical repre-

sentations but the precise delimitation of such a group

is still a matter of discussion as is also the question

of how much this art was influenced by literature and

especially by pious poetry With the development of

the graphic arts new cheap pictures spread widely the

typological imagery systematized in the Biblia pau-

perum and in the Speculum humanae salvationis

Great collections of religious meditations compiled in

monasteries like Meditations on the Life of Christ by

Pseudo-Bonaventure (ed I Ragusa and R B Green

1961) spread widely a new emotional approach to

iconography Also the religious theater had some influ-

ence on the way stories in art were told

4 In the iconography of the Renaissance art ldquohis-

toryrdquo was shifted to the fore at the expense of symbol-

ism It does not mean that symbols ceased to exist

Pictorial allegory and symbolism played a very impor-

tant part in the conception of humanistic art But what

was placed in the center of the new art theory was

the concept of istoria The first and the most important

task of the work of art according to L B Alberti (De

pictura 1435 Della pittura 1436) is to present a story

This story had to be selected from authoritative literary

sources either sacred or profane it should represent

in a possibly convincing and expressive way an episode

from the Holy Scriptures from sacred or classical

history from mythology or legend This new concept

of istoria which was to dominate iconographic consid-

erations for more than three hundred years (the mean-

ing of the term istoria or storia changed of course in

that period) was one of the consequences of the Ren-

aissance idea of the priority of literature over the visual

arts There were several reasons for that priority one

being a complete lack of known classical theory of art

In its stead the theories of poetry and rhetoric were

adopted as guiding principles for the visual arts Hence

the dominating Horatian principle Ut pictura poesis

which subordinated the visual arts to the rules of liter-

ary theory This identification of literature and art

lasted until G E Lessing in 1766 revolted against it

in his Laokooumln (R W Lee 1940) In the humanistic

theory of visual arts the concept of istoria took the

central place Istoria had to be chosen for its moral

value (Alberti chose as his examples the subjects show-

ing stoic moral firmness as the ldquoDeath of Meleagerrdquo

the ldquoImmolation of Iphigeniardquo or the ldquoCalumnyrdquo of

Apelles) it had to be represented according to the

principle of decorum and costume ie with regard to

its dignity and most truthfully to the literary proto-

type Everything should be suitable in ldquosize function

kind color and other similar thingsrdquo Alberti stressed

the necessity of varied and convincing expressions of

emotions by suitable gestures

The dependence of post-medieval iconography on

literature increased with time and in the seventeenth

century the truthfulness of the pictorial formulation

of literary subjects became one of the most valued

qualities of a work of visual arts ldquoRead the story and

the picture at the same timerdquo Nicolas Poussin wrote

to M de Chantelou one of his customers In the French

Royal Academy of Painting and Sculpture lengthy

discussions were going on concerning the relation of

pictures to literary sources To be able to represent

well subjects taken from poetry the artist had to be

a doctus artifex well-informed in various fields G P

Bellori (1695) stressed however the fact that not

everything good in writing comes out well in painting

Therefore the painter to be able to transform the

story had to acquire ldquoan universal knowledge of things

and he should contemplate precisely nature and reali-

tiesrdquo Some freedom was given to the artist from the

beginning Alberti was far from limiting the painter

too much by this dependence on literature He stressed

the specific requirements of the visual arts as for ex-

ample the necessity to limit the number of represented

figures in order to keep a balance between ldquocopious-

nessrdquo and ldquosolitude in paintingrdquo This made it of

course necessary to reduce crowded scenes to an easily

graspable number of figures in order to avoid ldquodissolute

confusionrdquo (Spencer [1956] pp 23-28)

The interest of early Renaissance art theorists in

iconography was not great They concentrated their

attention chiefly on the discussion of the means needed

to achieve a convincing and beautiful representation

of the istoria and on the specific problems of repre-

sentationmdashcorrect (by adoption of the rules of per-

529

spective) and beautiful (by adoption of the rules of

proportion) Leonardo da Vinci does not show a spe-

cific interest in iconography but in some passages of

his incompleted Treatise on Painting he gives literary

programs of pictures remarkably however the pic-

tures are not of stories but of representations of pow-

erful natural or human happenings such as storms and

battles Here the naturalistic interests of the Renais-

sance come to the fore

An important achievement of the Renaissance partly

affecting iconography was the reunionmdashas noticed and

described by E Panofsky and F Saxl (1932) and Panof-

sky (1960)mdashof the literary and visual traditions of

classical antiquity during the fifteenth century During

the Middle Ages the literary tradition of classical sub-

ject matter was separated from the visual tradition of

classical artistic motifs so that there was no awareness

of their belonging together The classical subjects for

example those taken from Ovid used to be represented

in contemporary medieval stylistic forms classical

artistic motifs on the other hand for example the forms

of garment folds human types gestures compositional

patterns and so on were used to represent Christian

subject matter as in the western portals of the Reims

cathedral or in the pulpits of Nicola or Giovanni

Pisano It was only in the High Renaissance eg in

the works of Raphael Titian Michelangelo and Cor-

reggio that forms and iconography themes and motifs

became reintegrated In this way the classical vision

of classical subjects became sometimes so perfect that

some works created around 1500 could have been

taken for classical originals (for example Bacchus by

Michelangelo) The growing understanding of classical

ideas and forms led to another specific Renaissance

phenomenon called by Panofsky ldquopseudomorphosisrdquo

Certain Renaissance figures became invested with a mean-

ing which for all their classicizing appearance had not been

present in their classical prototypes though it had fre-

quently been foreshadowed in classical literature Owing

to its medieval antecedents Renaissance art was often able

to translate into images what classical art had deemed

inexpressible

(Panofsky [1939] pp 70f)

In the north of Italy beside the concept of istoria

poesia appears a fact which also points to a depend-

ence on poetry this was understood mainly as referring

to lyrical poetry and not to epic or heroic Mythologi-

cal pictures by Titian were described in such a way

(Keller [1969] pp 24f) The stress was on the poetical

mood more than on an important human action a

lyrical tonality was preferred to a heroic one The

archaeological interests then current in Padua and

Venice visible for instance in the works by Andrea

Mantegna were moderated by an elegiac poetic mood

in reconstructing the classical world Pictures by Gior-

gione who worked for exclusive circles of humanists

were so hermetic in meaning that several of them like

the Three Philosophers (Vienna) or the Storm (Venice)

are iconographic riddles up to our own day The same

is true of the enigmatic and poetic iconography of some

pictures by Titian (Sacred and Profane Love in the

Borghese Gallery in Rome) by Lorenzo Lotto or by

the Ferrarese Dosso Dossi

The most important document of this romantic ar-

chaeological vision which strongly influenced icono-

graphical invention in Italy and outside of Italy was

a fantastic romance Hypnerotomachia Poliphili attrib-

uted in the most plausible way to a Franciscan monk

Francesco Colonna and published with beautiful

woodcuts by Aldus Manutius in Venice in 1499 Poetic

visions of a dreamy classical landscape full of ruins

in which the lovers Poliphilo and Polia wander influ-

enced the imagination of artists not less than the excel-

lent woodcuts their impact can be found as far and

as late as in the gardens at Versailles The illustrations

to Hypnerotomachia also popularized hieroglyphic

signs which make their appearance in iconography as

a specific phenomenon of the Renaissance

5 Art conceived as a language may be addressed

to large or to small groups It depends on the scope

of communication It can be intended as a message

to a possibly large audience but it can also be limited

in its appeal to a small selected group of observers

In an extreme case the polarization could be that

between a didactic art appealing to everybody and an

elitarian cryptic message understandable only to the

initiated few Medieval art belonged by far to the first

category the art of the Renaissance to the second

Even in the monumental wall-paintings decorating the

most celebrated places of Christianity such as the

Sistine Chapel or the official rooms of the Popes like

the Stanza della Segnatura even in the sepulchral

chapels of the most important families like the Sassetti

and the Medici the iconographic programs and sym-

bolism are extremely complicated The meaning of the

decoration of the great Gallery of Franccedilois I at Fon-

tainebleau is so cryptic that it was hypothetically ex-

plained only recently by the best specialists in icon-

ography (D and E Panofsky 1958) Few works of

medieval art have provoked such a number of inter-

pretations as the well-known and at first glance seem-

ingly easy to understand pictures like Botticellis

mythologies (Birth of Venus Spring The Uffizi Flor-

ence) like Titians Sacred and Profane Love or like

sculptures such as Michelangelos Medici tombs The

same is true of works by Duumlrer Holbein and Bruegel

in the North A deep symbolism a complicated

iconographymdashespecially current in the circles influ-

530

enced by Neo-Platonismmdashbelonged to the perfection

of the work

This idea had a long life it recurs in 1604 in Carel

van Manders Book of the Painter as well as in Berninis

utterances on the beauty of the concept which adorns

the work The more refined the concept the more

difficult the symbolism the narrower the circle of those

who can really understand the work

Art was considered especially in the exclusive court

social groups or among the humanists as a secret

language accessible to the initiated The visual sign

was connected with words into a specific union of

literature and art which flourished at the time of the

Renaissance of mannerism and of the baroque in the

form of impresa of hieroglyph and of emblem The

roots of the impresamdashthe personal sign and mottomdashare

to be found in chivalrous devices and signs popular

in the late Middle Ages it was brought to Italy from

France and connected with Neo-Platonic speculation

(Klein 1957) Hieroglyphs became popular thanks to

the discovery in 1419 of the Hieroglyphica by Hora-

pollo Niliacus (of the second or fourth century AD)

published in 1505 The humanists believed that this

enigmatic image-script disguised a profound wisdom

of the Egyptians ldquothey supposed that the great minds

of Greece had been initiated into these Egyptian

mysteriesmdashwhich in their turn were of course one

more prefiguration of the teachings of Christrdquo (Seznec

[1953] p 100) Emblems originated from an erudite

intellectual play among the humanists aiming however

at a moral lesson and sometimes considered in a Neo-

Platonic way as symbols revealing to those who con-

template them a higher knowledge of divine mysteries

Emblem included a motto called lemma an image

and an epigram Only the whole of the emblem can

be understood each element of it giving only one part

of the meaning All those cryptic codes of expression

connecting words and images originated as secret and

elitarian The problem of the degree of obscurity was

one of the main points discussed by the theorists of

the emblematics (Clements [1964] pp 191-95) Eras-

mus of Rotterdam stressed that one of the virtues of

the impresa is that its meaning can be grasped only

with an intellectual effort Cesare Ripa (Iconologia

1593) demands that symbolic images be composed ldquoin

the form of enigmardquo Sambucus (1564) required ldquoob-

scuritasrdquo and ldquonovitasrdquo from the emblems Paolo

Giovio represented a reasonable middle ldquoThe device

should not be so obscure as to require the Sybil to

interpret it nor yet so obvious that any literal-minded

person can understand itrdquo Later however the crypto-

grams of hieroglyphics and emblem books began to

be popularized and explained Collections of emblems

became widely known New systematization of icon

ography now of a humanistic one was inaugurated

In 1556 Vincenzo Cartari published the first modern

handbook of mythological imagery le imagini colla

sposizione degli dei degli antichi (Venice 1556) In the

same year Pierio Valeriano produced a rich collection

of Hieroglyphica (Basel 1556) Earlier in 1531 Andrea

Alciati had compiled the first emblem book (Emblema-

tum liber Augsburg 1531) The influence of such

books which went through many translations and edi-

tions and which were imitated and continued all over

Europe grew at the close of the sixteenth and in the

seventeenth century In exclusive groups it happened

much earlier that hieroglyphic astrological and em-

blematic imagery influenced the iconography of im-

portant works of art as for example at the court of

Maximilian I (M Giehlow 1915) sometimes this con-

cerned works done by the most distinguished artists

like Duumlrers Melencolia I (Klibansky et al 1964)

Emblematic principle of composition uniting as it did

the image with the verbal formulations found great

popularity in northern Europe perhaps because the

importance of the word so prominent in Protestantism

was stressed (Luther required ldquofragments from the

Holy Writrdquo to be included in the Epitaph-pictures)

Epitaphs and other religious pictures of the Protestant

North connect words and images in the harmonious

indivisible whole (Białostocki 1968)

In the Netherlands emblems played an important

part in the development of realistic painting in the

seventeenth century since they furnished a rich reper-

tory of imagery charged with allegorical meaning (de

Jongh von Monroy) However the meaning of those

images obvious to the viewer who remembered the

original emblematic context eluded for a long time

later interpreters who were no longer conversant with

the emblems

After Cartari and his followers furnished artists and

patrons with images of classical gods there was a need

felt for another handbook which would enable the

artist to represent and the patron to understand the

abstract moral philosophical scientific and other

ideas symbolized Only then was art able to express

complex thoughts This task was fulfilled by Cesare

Ripa of Perugia who in 1593 published his Iconologia

a handbook explaining how to represent all the incor-

poreal concepts In 1603 Iconologia was republished

with illustrations and became one of the most popular

and influential art books With Ripa in hand art

historiansmdashinitially Eacutemile Macircle (1932)mdashwere able to

decipher hundreds of allegorical statements in paint

and stone guided by this alphabet of personifications

Ripas basic entity was a human figure female more

often than male whose costumes attributes gestures

and other particulars express specific qualities of the

531

idea represented With the publication of Ripas workmdash

translated soon into many languages and frequently

republished and revisedmdashthe humanistic system of

allegorical iconography was established classical gods

and personifications hieroglyphic signs and emblems

connecting words and images this was the material

used by the artists of mannerism and the baroque when

they did not choose to keep to the ldquohistoricalrdquo world

ie to borrow their subjects directly from literature

When they did so when they painted stories they used

to select them not only from Ovid and Vergil but also

from the more recent poems by Ariosto and Tasso and

also from the works of less known writers ancient and

modern Valerius Maximus furnished them with exam-

ples of virtuous behavior These historical examples

were in general either connected with allegorical gen-

eralizations (in the big decorations of the late baroque

the central fresco was often an allegory and the ac-

companying canvas-pictures presented historical ex-

amples of virtues Garas pp 280-83) or conceived in

an allegorical way Ovide moraliseacute was popular already

in the late Middle Ages Its influence persisted also

in the time of the baroque Myths and stories under-

went allegorical interpretations along the lines of that

moralizing commentary

What was considered necessary for an artist around

1600 can be seen from Carel van Manders Book of

the Painter (1604) It included a long theoretical poem

a history of classical and modern Italian and Nether-

landish artists a translation and a moral interpretation

of Ovids Metamorphoses and finally a description of

personifications There is no specific section on reli-

gious iconography since artists were well furnished

with books giving them rules in this respect

Against the humanistic conception of art the Council

of Trent proclaimed rules constituting a new system

of religious iconography which put an end to the live

tradition of medieval art These rules were published

officially by the Church and they have been com-

mented upon and elaborated in books by Joannes

Molanus (1570) Saint Carlo Borromeo (1577) Gabriele

Paleotti (1581) Federico Borromeo (1624) and several

others The rules of the Council governed the decora-

tion of churches and other sacred buildings and the

character of pictures representing sacred subjects A

break between the religious and the secular iconogra-

phy became obvious in theoretical literature although

there existed many emblem books of a very distinct

religious character (G de Montenay 1571 B Arias

Montanus 1571 H Hugo 1624) A new strictly for-

mulated system of religious iconography coexisted in

the seventeenth century with humanistic subject mat-

ter symbolism and allegory The classical nude intro-

duced by the Renaissance into art was strictly forbid

den now in religious art but found a free field of

development in secular mythological and allegorical

works Many artists exercised their imagination in both

fields in some specific fields such as sepulchral iconog-

raphy cooperation between religious and humanistic

symbolism was common In the work of P P Rubens

the various aspects of the new iconography found

perhaps their best expression In his art allegorical

concepts classical gods and heroes triumphs of mythi-

cal beings as well as of secular rulers accompany mar-

tyrdoms of Catholic saints and the triumphs of the

Eucharist What began to be separated in theory could

yet coexist in harmony in the work of a great artist

6 In northern European art (before Rubens) the

renewal of the arts during the Renaissance took the

form of the new study of nature and the elaboration

of the most convincing means of representing the ma-

terial world in an illusionistic way traditional medieval

symbolism was transformed in a specific way produc-

ing what E Panofsky called in 1953 ldquodisguised sym-

bolismrdquo The symbolic meaning connected with objects

and qualities persisted but a new mastery reproduced

these symbolical objects with such a degree of realism

that they did not differ any longer from other objects

not charged with any metaphorical meaning Some-

times the symbolical meaning of represented objects

results from the traditional iconography in an unmistak-

able way sometimes the meaning is hinted at by the

inscriptions placed in the picture or on its frame But

in many cases the modern viewer remains perplexed

without any sufficient clue to decide whether in the

picture he observes he has to do with the beginnings

of the representation of reality for its own sake or

whether the search for specific metaphorical meaning

is justified It is still always a matter of discussion to

decide at which moment the representation of some

objects or some scene in life without any symbolical

(or ldquohistoricalrdquo) implications became possible (Gilbert

1952) Observers of the eighteenth and nineteenth

centuries to whom the meaning of old symbols was

wholly forgotten took many images of the fifteenth and

sixteenth centuries for simple representations of life

Bruegel for example was considered as simply a

painter of joking or working peasants Recent studies

in iconography have shown that these pictures are

saturated with disguised meaning and that it is ex-

tremely rare before about 1550 to meet simple repre-

sentations of nature in painting In graphic arts the

direct depiction of life and landscape began earlier

as in the works of Lombard draughtsmen or in the

incredibly fresh convincing drawings and prints by the

Master of the Housebook There are also early excep-

tions in painting like Albrecht Altdorfers landscape

without any human figures But in general it was only

532

during the second half of the sixteenth century that

landscape genre and still-life painting began to ac-

quire equal rights with religious and humanistic history

and allegory predominantly in Venice and in Antwerp

Even then however the representations of people

working in fields (Jacopo or Francesco Bassano) fol-

lowed the old traditions of Calendar-pictures and in

the background of genre scenes as in Pieter Aertsens

pictures a biblical motif may be found which trans-

forms the whole composition into a storia however

unorthodox

With the development of realistic painting in the

seventeenth century there appeared specific iconogra-

phic problems New subjects slowly found convenient

form They entered the scene patterned after the ven-

erable stories of sacred or of profane iconography

H van de Waal described (1952) the process of the for-

mation of national historical iconography in Holland

Scenes depicting recent happenings from a long strug-

gle for national independence appeared first in forms

assimilated to well-known religious or mythical scenes

This was not only an expedient facilitating their com-

position for by this means the new subjects gained the

decorum inherent in the adopted patterns formed to

express traditional stories Similar procedures may be

seen in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries when

more and more sections of reality became interesting

enough to be represented in art

The transfer of decorum from the sacred or allegori-

cal figures to the humans represented is a means used

in what modern iconographers call ldquoallegorical por-

traiturerdquo Renaissance painters had represented real

people under mythological or even sacred disguise

they gave actual faces of living people to the figures

represented with all the attributes and characteristics

of their mythical sacred or even allegorical qualities

Later it was only the pattern which remained still in

the eighteenth century English portraitists patterned

the effigies of contemporary aristocrats after Michel-

angelos Sybils or after allegories like the Caritas

(Wind 1937) J B Oudry represented the Polish King

in exile Stanisław Leszczyński with all the attributes

of the allegory of exile taken from Ripa identifying

him in this way with personification of his most promi-

nent quality (Białostocki 1969)

Dutch realistic painting of the seventeenth century

is a document of an important iconographic conquest

Landscapes seascapes moonlit night scenes snapshots

of people skating in winter landscapes views of market

places church interiors backyards fishermen old

women preparing food fashionable dishes ready for

lunch merchants and artisans elegant gentlemen pay-

ing visits and folk-surgeons performing sensational

street-operations all this became subject matter for

representation and continued to be considered worthy

of depiction until the end of the nineteenth century

It was first considered as such in Holland only then

slowly everyday subject matter was recognized also by

art-theorists in other countries although it was re-

garded as much less dignified than religious mytholog-

ical or allegorical subjects Only in the nineteenth

century did the vogue of realistic representation of

everyday subjects become widespread In Dutch pic-

tures of the seventeenth century we are often con-

fronted with nothing else than representations of pic-

turesque reality Sometimes however these genre

pictures appear to be illustrations of proverbs expres-

sing moralistic folk-wisdom sometimes they recall

scenes from the popular threater of the rederijkers or

rhetoricians especially pictures by Jan Steen (Gud-

laugsson 1945) they contain allusions to emblems

Sometimes the elegant scenes from bourgeois life in-

clude quite indecent erotic allusions (de Jongh 1967

1969) The ambiguity of these pictures was certainly

a source of specific pleasure for those who knew the

key to their true meaning

7 In Catholic countries allegorical art sacred as

well as profane flourished The twofold character of

symbolic representations mentioned above persisted

in the seventeenth century Aristotelian rational sym-

bolism which used images as words was widespread

in the orthodox Catholic iconography of the Counter-

Reformation as well as in the humanistic visual lan-

guage codified by Ripa and others A mystical Neo-

Platonic symbolism transcending reason reappeared

too Its outspoken document is the treatise by Chris-

toforo Giarda Bibliothecae alexandrinae icones sym-

bolicae of 1626 (Gombrich 1948) For Giarda symbolic

images give the beholder a direct insight into the

mysteries of religion which are not accessible to rea-

son

Thanks to symbolic images the mind which is banished from

heaven into this dark cave of the body its actions held in

bondage by the senses can behold the beauty and form

of the Virtues and Sciences divorced from all matter and

yet adumbrated if not perfectly expressed in colours and

is thus roused to an even more fervent love and desire for

them Who then can sufficiently estimate the magni-

tude of the debt we owe to those who expressed the Arts

and Sciences themselves in images and so brought it about

that we could not only know them but look at them as

it were with our eyes that we can meet them and almost

converse with them

(Gombrich [1948] pp 188f)

Great allegorical compositions covering the ceilings of

baroque churches are often realizations of this princi-

ple For those however who conceived allegory as a

rational operation as a language used for didactic aims

the main problem remained the clarity of the allegori-

533

cal message The larger the audience to whom allegory

was addressed the simpler more obvious its symbolism

should have been The banality of allegorical language

provoked criticism in the eighteenth century Fran-

cesco Algarotti (1762) prefers without any doubt his-

torical representations to the ldquoempty allegories and

complicated mythological allusionsrdquo (Garas [1967] p

280) Especially criticized was the obscurity of these

allegories in which completely original unknown sym-

bols were used Roger de Piles praises his favorite

master Rubens who ldquointroduced only such allegories

elements of which were already known from ancient

artrdquo and opposes him to Charles Lebrun who ldquoinstead

of taking symbols from some known source as the

ancient fable and medals has invented almost all of

them and thus the pictures of this kind became riddles

which the beholder does not want to take the task to

solverdquo To keep the balance between platitudinous

redundancy and utter incomprehensibility was the

crucial problem of late baroque allegorism What is

interesting however is that the idea of the picture

as a riddle was not foreign to the seventeenth century

It appears in France as well as in Sweden where David

Kloumlcker Ehrenstrahl (1694) proposed that pictures

present riddles that could not be solved by everyone

In France however the ldquopainted enigmardquo fostered

by the Jesuits in their schools flourished especially well

in the seventeenth century (Montagu 1968) These

ldquopainted enigmasrdquo lent themselves to various inter-

pretations and gave interpreters an opportunity to

show their ingenuity These pictures and their inter-

pretations seem to prove that a considerable flexibility

of meaning was intended

We might rather accept that a work of art was regarded

in the seventeenth century as in a certain sense an open

symbol raw material like the myth or sacred story which

it illustrates on which the interpreter might exercise the

power of his ingenuity turning it into an allegory of Chris-

tian doctrine or a panegyric in honour of his patron

(Montagu [1968] p 334)

Such a situation probably existed only in some specific

circles It was a limiting case The other extreme was

to use in an uninteresting routine way Ripas symbolic

images or those of other popular symbolic handbooks

Such practice continued well into the eighteenth cen-

tury The general trend fed by ideas of the Enlighten-

ment was to make allegories more and more obvious

It is understandable that some theorists like the Count

de Caylus looked for new subject matter presenting

as he did Tableaux tireacutes de lIliade (1755) or that

J J Winckelmann tried to revive allegory and to give

it a new force It was however too late In the eight-

eenth century together with the whole system of

humanistic tradition the systems of iconography began

to disintegrate The great break in the tradition con-

cerned not only style but also iconography Emblem-

atic roots may be discovered in Goyas symbolism as

well as in the reasonable allegories of the Enlighten-

ment but generally speaking there was a search for

new not known or not used sourcesmdashas in William

Blakes biblical individualistic imagerymdashor the new

staging of the old ones as in Jacques Louis Davids

classical subjects

The art of romanticism was a definite break with

the past much more in the field of ideas and iconogra-

phy than in a stylistic respect where romanticists

retrospectively looked back either to medieval and

pre-Raphaelite or to baroque sources Symbols and

allegories yielded to an all-pervading mood and the

traditional repertory of religious allegorical mytho-

logical and historical iconography gave way to a new

iconography Although several encompassing images

of Christian and humanistic art survived they received

new content and essentially changed their character

New attitudes of the individual to the world of nature

and history to society and destiny to time and death

and new problems resulting from the striving after

freedom (which was a new perhaps most important

principle of human behavior in all fields of human

activity) found expression in new thematic fields and

in new particular themes such as ldquoStorm-tossed Boatrdquo

ldquoLonely Wanderer in the Mountainsrdquo ldquoA Death of the

Herordquo (Eitner 1955 Hofmann 1960 Białostocki

1966)

Romanticism has not formed and could not have

formed an iconographic system for since they strived

first of all for originality of individual conception the

romantics interpreted images in a subjective way as

expressions of mood Romanticism has on the other

hand introduced new heroes and martyrs into art

instead of religious ones the national social and artis-

tic ones It created a new image of history seen now

as a set of political and moral examplesmdashas in

baroquemdashbut often put together now according to a

very individualistic principle of choice A correlative

to pathetic and heroic romanticism was a bourgeois

and intimate romanticism its expression was for ex-

ample the new imagery of the open window which

shows to the viewer wide perspectives but shelters him

at the same time from the dangers of the unknown

(Eitner 1955)

When the world of ideas and images created at the

moment of the flowering of romanticism began to be

popularized for the use of the large bourgeois masses

the contentmdashideological and iconographicalmdashof ro-

manticism lost its original authenticity and left be-

hind not a new system of original images but a dispo-

534

sition to melodramatic experiences and an inflation of

a theatrical gesture (Hofmann 1960 Białostocki 1966)

The nineteenth century developed a realistic por-

traiture of man and nature and took over worn out

clicheacutes of the Renaissance and baroque allegories It

introduced new subject matter taken partly from tra-

dition partly from observation of reality tinted with

vague symbolism such as ldquoForgerdquo or the ldquoFuneral of

the Peasantrdquo but it did not create a new system of

iconography in spite of short-lived revivals of symbol-

istic attitudes in such movementsmdashincidentally not

limited to and not initiated in the visual artsmdashas

ldquosymbolismrdquo

New ephemeral artistic movements which consti-

tuted the history of European art in the last hundred

years show an interesting bracketing of style and icon-

ography in spite of a preponderant lack of iconogra-

phic interest Their representatives chose subjects suit-

able to specific artistic aims and means which they

developed and were interested in Impressionists

painted seaside scenes landscapes and genre pictures

showing the life of artistic and intellectual milieus

Cubists introduced a specific repertory of still-life

motifs symbols of the artists atelier and of the life

of the bohegraveme bottles musical instruments books

fruits flowers newspapers How much these motifs

were connected with specific cubist style appears when

one looks at works of artists foreign to the original

cubist group but imitating its style as for instance

several Czech artists like Emil Filla They adopted

cubist iconography together with cubist style Abstract

movements in general lacked iconography although

they were not foreign to symbolic tendencies espe-

cially in sculpture (Brancusi Moore) Only in the dec-

ades of 1950-70 can a revival of more articulated and

programmatic symbolism be observed One may sup-

pose that this revival is at least in part brought about

by the development of research in iconography and

symbolism which took place in the second and third

quarters of our century

II

1 The origins of ldquointerpretative iconographyrdquo may

be seen in the descriptions (ekphrasis) of works of art

known in classical literature But these descriptions

like those by Philostratus the Elder or Lucian are

limited simply to description and lack in general any

interpretation Moreover it is not certain whether they

are descriptions of actual or fictitious works of art at

least opinions in this respect vary Brief medieval tituli

which formulated in words the content of religious

images were to be sure interpretative sometimes but

they were short and cannot be connected with the

tradition of artistic erudition We have to look to

modern times to indicate the beginnings of iconogra-

phic interpretation and research From Vasaris Rag-

ionamenti in which interpretations of the paintings

decorating the Palazzo Vecchio in Florence are given

we learn how complicated and how undecipherable

iconographic concepts might have been even to peo-

ple living in buildings decorated by paintings expres-

sing these concepts But perhaps the first really to be

considered as interested in iconographic research was

the seventeenth-century archaeologist and art theorist

Giovanni Pietro Bellori In the introduction to his Lives

of Artists (1672) Bellori stressed that he paid special

attention to the content of the works of art he was

talking about and he even credited the painter Nicolas

Poussin with having directed his attention to iconogra-

phy In his Lives Bellori presented short interpretative

descriptions of pictures and he sometimes developed

these interpretations further in small iconographic

essays the influence of classical ekphrasis on him is

a possibility Sometimes his errors took deep roots in

the subsequent history of art as when he explained

Poussins Triumph of Flora (Dresden) by designating

Ovids Metamorphoses as its source The true source

Marinos Adona was finally found by R E Spear in

1965

What is interesting in Belloris procedure is that he

first identifies the motifs tries to connect them with

classical or modern literary sources and then proceeds

to find out the deep meaning the general symbolic

idea of the work Therefore he may be considered as

one of the pioneers not only of iconography as a disci-

pline of research but also of iconology as formulated

by its recent partisans That even in the second half

of the sixteenth century some observers were inclined

to look for hidden meaning in each element of the work

of art we learn from Joannes Molanus (1570) who in

De picturis et imaginibus sacris states reasonably that

ldquoit is not necessary to ask for meaning of everything

that can be observed in a picture in such cases a lot

of absurd things may resultrdquo But the consciousness of

the importance of iconography increased and at the

end of the seventeenth century Andreacute Feacutelibien stressed

that in order to attribute a picture to a painter it is

not enough to know the way he uses his brush one

needs also to know his esprit to learn his geacutenie and

to be able to foresee in which way he is able to form

his conceptions Thus iconographic analysis was con-

sidered necessary even for the purpose of attribution

Descriptive interpretations of the works of ancient

art appeared in the big archaeological publications of

the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries such as

Jacques Spons Miscellanea eruditae antiquitatis (1679)

G P Belloris Admiranda romanarum antiquitatum ac

veteris sculpturae vestigia (1693) P de Caylus Recueil

535

dantiquiteacutes eacutegyptiennes eacutetrusques grecques et

romaines (1752-67) and in an interesting endeavor

(although very much criticized by Lessing) of Joseph

Spence to explain classical poets through works of art

and vice versa (Polymetis 1747) Classical archaeology

however has not been especially interested in iconog-

raphy and the use of the term itself by archaeolo-

gists was limited to portraiture The first great devel-

opment of iconographic studies was connected with

the romantic movement although an important pre-

lude for it was hagiographical collections of sources

such as Acta sanctorum published by the Bollandists

(1643-1794 resumed later) Among the pre-romantic

scholars in iconography the eminent German poet

G E Lessing is to be noted His study of the repre-

sentation of death in classical times can be considered

as one of the first essays in interpretative iconography

which is now called iconology In Wie die Alten den

Tod gebildet (1769) Lessing tries to interpret the classi-

cal iconographic type of Amor with the inverted torch

and to find its ldquointrinsic meaningrdquo by taking into ac-

count the religion customs and philosophy of the

classical world The work of art is interpreted by Less-

ing as ldquoa symptom of something elserdquo While Lessings

predecessors (like B de Montfaucon) ldquoexplained the

classical past by monumentsrdquo he for the first time did

the opposite ldquohe explained the monuments by Antiq-

uityrdquo (Maurin Białostocka [1969] pp 92-100)

Pre-romantic and romantic interests in myth and

symbol found their expression in publications and dis-

cussions by German philosophers and scholars like F

Schlegel J Herder J J von Goumlrres and F Creuzer

Creuzers work Symbolik und Mythologie der alten

Voumllker (1810) which shows the influence of mystical

Neo-Platonic ideas on symbols (Gombrich 1965) was

the most influential in the romantic period in Ger-

many Under the impact of Chateaubriands le Geacutenie

du christianisme (1802) research in medieval iconog-

raphy developed mainly in France Works by French

scholars mostly clergymen which were indeed con-

cerned with Christian medieval art dominated icon-

ographical study in the nineteenth century Since most

of these writers were not professional scholars their

work was often amateurish in character but it is unde-

niable that books by A N Didron Histoire de Dieu

(Paris 1843) the first part of a comprehensive pro-

jected but not completed iconography of Christian art

A Crosnier Iconographie chreacutetienne (Caen 1848) C

Cahier Caracteacuteristiques des saints (Paris 1867) C

Rohault de Fleury Archeacuteologie chreacutetienne les saints

de la messe et leurs monuments 12 vols (Paris

1893-1900) L Breacutehier Lart chreacutetien son deacuteveloppe-

ment iconographique des origines agrave nos jours (Paris

1918) P Perdrizet V Leroquais and G de Jerphanion

have built up a solid body of iconographical knowl-

edge on which scholars of the twentieth century were

able to erect a modern comprehensive structure In

the field of Byzantine iconography it was Gabriel

Millets Recherches sur liconographie de leacutevangile aux

XIVe XVe et XVIe siegravecles (Paris 1916 reprint

1960) that was basic for any further study For Western

chiefly French art a well-written and learned work

appealing to the general reader as well as to the

scholar was produced by Eacutemile Macircle who in his four

volumes of the history of religious art (1898-1932) has

presented a well-composed synthetic image of icono-

graphical development A lexicographic summary of

these studies of generations of French scholars is pre-

sented in the Dictionnaire darcheacuteologie chreacutetienne et

de liturgie published from 1907 to 1953 and edited

by F Cabrol and H Leclerq A recent reference work

is that by L Reacuteau Iconographie de lart chreacutetien (Paris

1955-59) Russian scholars have done important work

in the field of Byzantine and Orthodox iconography

of religious art The most prominent are N P Kon-

dakov Ikonografia Bogomatieri (St Petersburg 1911

2nd ed 1914-15) D V Ainalov Mosaiki IV i V vekov

(St Petersburg 1895) and N Pokrovski Otcherki

pamyatnikov christianskogo isskusstva i ikonografii (St

Petersburg 1894 3rd ed 1910) V Lasarev and M

Alpatov belonging to the mid-twentieth-century gen-

eration of Russian scholars discuss iconography in

several works on religious art German scholarship

produced in the nineteenth century works by F Piper

A Springer and H Detzel Useful compendia were

produced in the early twentieth century by J Sauer

W Molsdorf K Kuumlnstle and J Braun Dutch scholars

C Smits J B Knipping and J J M Timmers contrib-

uted to iconographic studies in recent times Knip-

pings book (1939-40) being the most important work

on the iconography of the Counter-Reformation and

supplementing Macircles volume of 1932 In the twentieth

century on C R Moreys initiative iconographic

studies were inaugurated in North America Focused

on earlier medieval art these studies developed at

Princeton University

A new direction characteristic of iconographic

studies in the twentieth century has been given to

them by the international school of art historical re-

search inaugurated by the Hamburg scholar Aby

Warburg At the International Congress for the History

of Art at Rome in 1912 he presented a sensational

astrological interpretation of the frescoes painted by

Francesco Cossa and his collaborators in Palazzo

Schifanoja at Ferrara Warburg solved the secret of

those representations which had puzzled the ingenuity

of several former students interpreting them as images

of zodiacal signs and their decans But he did not limit

536

his contribution to the presentation of his results He

wanted to stress the importance of his approach and

of the method of study which later became connected

with his name He said

I hope that through the method used by me for explication

of the frescoes at the Palazzo Schifanoja of Ferrara I have

proved that an iconological analysis which does not allow

itself to be diverted by the rules of frontier police from

considering antiquity Middle Ages and modern times as

interconnected periods nor from analyzing the most liberal

and the most applied works of art as equally important

documents of expression that this method endeavoring as

it does to throw light upon one dark spot clears up at

the same time great interconnected developments

(Warburg 1912 Heckscher 1967)

Warburgs influence on the history of art was very

great although he himself did not write much It was

mainly the posthumous impact of his ideas promul-

gated as they were by Fritz Saxl which contributed

to the specific direction of studies concentrated in the

library Warburg founded in Hamburg and which Saxl

succeeded in transplanting during the Nazi era to

London where it became the Warburg Institute of the

University of London While the object of study of the

nineteenth-century iconographers was mainly religious

art in its relation to religious literary sources and lit-

urgy for Warburg the study of images was a study

of their relations to religion to poetry to myth to

science and to social and political life Art was for

him closely connected with the polyphonic structure

of historical life

Warburgs ideas had a great importance for the most

influential theory of iconographic interpretation in our

century that elaborated by Erwin Panofsky In Ham-

burg where Warburg Saxl and Panofsky were active

in the twenties Ernst Cassirer built up his philosophy

of symbolic forms which constituted an additional

background for Panofskys system being derived as

his own methodology was from the traditions of

Kantian philosophy Around 1930 Panofskys ideas

ripened into a system which found formulation in his

book herkules am Scheidewege (1930) and later in a

theoretical article of 1932 G J Hoogewerff was how-

ever the first to propose the word ldquoiconologyrdquo as a

name for the method of an analysis of content in a

work of art (Warburg spoke of iconological analysis)

In 1931 he proposed distinguishing between iconogra-

phy as a descriptive science aiming at the identifica-

tion of themes and ldquoiconologyrdquo aiming at the under-

standing ldquoof symbolic dogmatic or mystical meaning

which is expressed (or hidden) in figurative formsrdquo He

stressed that ldquoiconologyrdquo deals with works of art with-

out classifying them according to the technique used

or to the achieved perfection taking into account only

their meaning Hoogewerff saw the last aim of iconol-

ogy in finding out the cultural and ideological back-

ground expressed by works of art and the cultural and

social significance which can be attributed to certain

forms and to means of expression in the same time

Hoogewerffs part in the expansion of iconology was

limited because he did not endorse his methodical

proposals with examples of historical interpretations

Erwin Panofsky with whose name iconology has

been connected ever since not only developed its

theoretical foundations but contributed by his practi-

cal work in art history to the main triumph of iconol-

ogy after the Second World War The most influential

book by Panofsky has been Studies in Iconology (1939)

in which his masterly presentation of the method was

connected with its equally excellent exemplification

2 Panofsky considers the interpretation of a work

of art as falling on three levels On the first level the

object of interpretation is the primary or natural sub-

ject matter The function of interpretation is called

ldquopre-iconographical descriptionrdquo In order to be able

to arrive at a correct interpretation on that level the

interpreter must have a practical experience (ldquofamili-

arity with objects and eventsrdquo) common to everybody

at least in one cultural sphere However he has to

control his observations by a ldquocorrective knowledge

of the history of stylerdquo (ldquoinsight into the manner in

which under varying historical conditions objects and

events were expressed by formsrdquo) On the second level

the function of interpretation is called ldquoiconographical

analysisrdquo its object is the ldquosecondary or conventional

subject matterrdquo constituting the world of images his-

tories and allegories The interpreters equipment in

this case is obviously the knowledge of literary sources

giving him a ldquofamiliarity with specific themes and

conceptsrdquo The interpreter has to control his observa-

tions by ldquothe insight into the manner in which under

varying historical conditions specific themes or con-

cepts were expressed by objects and eventsrdquo On the

third level the function of interpreting is called ldquoicon-

ographical analysis in a deeper senserdquo (1939) or ldquoicon-

ological analysisrdquo (1955) Its object is the ldquointrinsic

meaning or contentrdquo of a work of art The interpreters

equipment on that level should be a ldquofamiliarity with

the essential tendencies of the human mindrdquo and he

has to control his interpretation by the ldquoinsight into

the manner in which under varying historical condi-

tions essential tendencies of the human mind were

expressed by specific themes and conceptsrdquo Thus

taking all the time into account what Panofsky calls

the history of tradition the interpreter has to aim at

understanding the work of art its ldquoprimaryrdquo as well

as ldquosecondary subject matterrdquo as symptoms of some

fundamental tendency of the human mind typical of

537

a place a time a civilization and of an individual

responsible for the creation of the work ldquoIconologyrdquomdash

for Panofskymdashldquois a method of interpretation which

arises from synthesis rather than analysisrdquo Trying to

find the intrinsic meaning of a work of art

The art historian will have to check what he thinks is the

intrinsic meaning of the work or group of works against

what he thinks is the intrinsic meaning of as many other

documents of civilization historically related to that work

or group of works as he can master It is in the search

for intrinsic meaning or content that the various humanistic

disciplines meet on a common plane instead of serving as

handmaidens to each other

(Panofsky [1955] p 39)

The concept of intrinsic meaning of a work of art

was elaborated by Panofsky much earlier (1925) when

he interpreted in his own way the concept of Kunst-

wollen introduced by A Riegl to research in art

Panofsky understood this ldquoartistic volitionrdquo as an im-

manent ultimate meaning of a work of art which is

manifested in the way basic artistic problems are solved

in that work He used the same concept further to bring

art closer to the other fields of human activity Since

the ldquoimmanent ultimate senserdquo of the work of art is

nothing else than uniformity in the way of solving basic

artistic problems it is possible to compare that imma-

nent sense with immanent senses of the other human

works in various fields Panofsky did it for instance

when in one of his later works he compared the struc-

tural principles of Gothic architecture with those of

scholastic thinking (1951)

The system elaborated by Panofsky and exemplified

by his own work in art history was the first consistent

system of an integral interpretation of a work of visual

arts based on the analysis of content In principle

Panofskys system takes into account all the elements

of the work of art since it takes as the point of depar-

ture the sensual exterior shape of the work It is

however clear that its main scope is not the inter-

pretation of form as a bearer of meaning but the

understanding and interpretation of conventional alle-

gories literary themes and symbols as symptoms of

the history of the human mind It was that method

in the history of art which programmatically fostered

a collaboration with all the other disciplines of histori-

cal studies It was therefore one of the most influential

methods not only among art historians but also among

representatives of the other branches of humanistic

studies Although there were art historians who ex-

pressed a critical attitude toward ldquoiconologyrdquo as the

new method was soon baptized its influence was over-

whelming

3 It is not only but mainly due to Panofsky that

one can venture to call ldquoiconographicalrdquo that period

of art history as a historical discipline which followed

the Second World War and to oppose it to the ldquostylis-

ticrdquo one which preceded it It does not mean of course

that no iconographic research took place in the

twenties or thirties the works of Macircle Knipping van

Marle Wilpert Saxl and of Panofsky himself would

contradict such a statement Neither is it true that

purely formal research aiming at stylistic classification

and analysis discontinued after World War II It is

evident that in the last decades (from 1940 on) icono-

graphic interests came to the fore and became domi-

nant in many countries Iconographical studies grew

so much in number and importance that they made

it possible to undertake and to publish new reference

works of iconographic character like dictionaries

written by one scholar (Guy de Tervarent Aurenham-

mer) as well as larger works based on a collaboration

of several scholars (Encyclopedias of German art of

Antiquity and Christian civilization of Byzantine art)

Interest in meaning and iconography has appeared

also among historians of political social and religious

institutions The symbolism of signs ceremonies cos-

tumes and arms was studied by such scholars as A

Alfoumlldi ldquoInsignien und Tracht der roumlmischen Kaiserrdquo

Mitteilungen des deutschen Archaumlologischen Instituts

Roumlmische Abteilung (1935) 1ff ldquoDie Geburt der

kaiserlichen Bildsymbolikrdquo museum Helveticum 9

(1952) 204ff also by A Grabar Martyrium (Paris

1943-46) by E H Kantorowicz laudes Regiae

(Berkeley and Los Angeles 1946) The Kings Two

Bodies (Princeton 1957) by H P L Orange Studies

in the Iconography of Cosmic Kingship in the Ancient

World (Oslo 1953) Art Forms and Civic Life in the

Late Roman Empire (Princeton 1965) and by P E

Schramm herrschaftszeichen und Staatssymbolik

(Stuttgart 1954-56) In their studies iconography far

transcends the borders of art and it helps to build up

a history of ideas by following their various visual

expressions

Pioneering studies by K Giehlow F Saxl and E

Panofsky enlarged iconographical interests above all

to encompass the large field of secular art whereas

they had been mainly limited to religious iconography

in the work of preceding generations of scholars The

whole complicated and hardly known large body of

meanings disguised by the cryptic language of hiero-

glyphs emblems and iconologies became one of the

main topics of study

This established a collaboration between historians

of art and literature Mario Prazs admirable study of

emblems and his bibliography of emblem books

(1939-47) belongs now to the foundations of studies

in that field Publications by W S Heckscher and

A K Wirth by R S Clements E F von Monroy and

538

H M von Erffa E de Jongh and H Miedema and

several other scholars have elucidated the structure

and meaning of emblems and have shown their tre-

mendous influence on art even in its most monumental

and dignified forms An uninterrupted flow of reprints

of emblem books which brought within the reach of

modern students inaccessible volumes of sixteenth- and

seventeenth-century emblem writers were crowned by

the monumental undertaking of Arthur Henkel and

Albrecht Schoumlne who compiled an excellent volume

including almost all the texts and images needed for

the study of emblemsmdashEmblemata Handbuch zur

Sinnbildkunst des XVI und XVII Jahrhunderts

(Stuttgart 1967) Research was under way on hiero-

glyphs (Erik Iversen) and on the imprese (the late

Robert Klein) as well as on iconologies and allegories

These studies have disclosed meanings of the art of

the Renaissance of mannerism and of the baroque not

understood by nineteenth-century scholars

E Panofsky deciphered extremely farfetched and

individualistic programs of decoration of such famous

ensembles as the Camera di San Paolo by Correggio

in Parma the Gallery of Franccedilois I at Fontainebleau

Edgar Wind Andreacute Chastel and other scholars inter-

preted Raphaels decorations in the Popes apartments

Michelangelos art furnished material to detailed com-

prehensive studies by Panofsky Ch de Tolnay H von

Einem and Pope-Hennessy in which the share of

Neo-Platonic thinking in the ideological background

of the celebrated works of Michelangelo was discussed

Innumerable studies have been devoted to Titians

mythological paintings J R Martin presented expla-

nations of the Carracci frescoes in the Camerino Far-

nese and in the great gallery of the Palazzo Farnese

Bruegel considered in the nineteenth century as a drocircle

painter of peasant life has been shown by de Tolnay

Stridbeck and others to be an allegorist expressing a

skeptical humanistic outlook J S Held and W

Stechow contributed several articles to the under-

standing of mythological and allegorical contents in

Flemish and Dutch art of the sixteenth and seventeenth

centuries Rembrandts iconography was put into new

light by the two above-mentioned scholars as well as

by H M Rotermund H van de Waal J G van Gelder

H von Einem and Ch Tuumlmpel The intricate symbol-

ism and subject matter of historical and mythological

pictures by Nicolas Poussin were elucidated by such

masters of iconographic research as E H Gombrich

W Friedlaumlnder E Panofsky and above all by A Blunt

who in his monograph on Poussin presented a new

deep synthetic view of the ideas expressed by that

artists works Goyas individualistic secret symbolism

was also studied with the help of emblems and the

allegorical tradition Berninis works received iconolo

gical treatment by R Wittkower and H Kauffmann

All of this research does not mean that there was a

lack of interest in religious iconography M Schapiro

A Katzenellenbogen H Bober F Wormald and V

Elbern among others have contributed considerably

to deepen our understanding of the not completely

explained motifs and prominent works of medieval art

Panofsky has also shed a new light on several problems

of sepulchral iconography studies by such scholars as

R Berliner G von der Osten L Kalinowski S

Ringbom and T Dobrzeniecki contributed to late

medieval iconography in a new way Berliner stressed

the autonomous invention of visual artists or their

patrons while according to the traditional view popu-

larized by Macircle late medieval art should have followed

strictly literary sources

The religious content of modern art especially its

allegorical form in the late baroque period has been

examined and thanks to studies by such scholars as

W Mrazek and H Bauer has become better known

and understandable A great change was introduced

by ldquoiconologyrdquo into architectural history Buildings

which were formerly interpreted from aesthetic and

functional points of view only have been shown to

present allegorical symbolical or even emblematic

ideas Publications by leading art historians (R Witt-

kower B Smith G Bandmann O von Simson and

G C Argan) have presented medieval and modern

architecture as a bearer of meaning and have essen-

tially changed the character of architectural history

The iconography of classicism and romanticism

received a thorough treatment in books by W Hof-

mann and R Rosenblum as well as in several studies

devoted to individual themes and pictures G Hersey

has for example shown how much Delacroixs decora-

tion of the library in the Palais Bourbon owed to

Giambattista Vicos ideas about history More recently

studies on ldquoSymbolismrdquo have been undertaken Vincent

van Goghs symbolic language and iconography were

the object of studies by J Seznec C Nordenfalk and

other scholars On Ceacutezannes iconography interesting

remarks have been published by M Schapiro

Along with the development of iconographic studies

the establishment of centers of documentation has

advanced The ldquoFrenchrdquo stage in the development of

iconography has not left any marked trace in this

respect It was in America thanks to C R Morey that

the famous Index of Christian Art at the Department

of Art and Archaeology of Princeton University was

founded at first limited to the early Middle Ages then

enlarged so as to include art up to the end of the

medieval period Copies of the Princeton Index are

to be found also at the Istituto Pontificio dArcheolo-

gia in Rome and in the Dumbarton Oaks Library and

539

Collection in Washington DC But that Index ends

ldquowhere art beginsrdquomdashas Panofsky used to say jokingly

The need for systematic iconographic files for modern

art was strongly felt In 1956 A Pigler published a

very useful book Barockthemen in which he listed

thousands of works of art of the baroque period ac-

cording to their subjects It was however far from

being a systematic work The first essay in establishing

a systematic iconographic index for art of any time

was done by The Netherlands Institute for Art History

at the Hague then directed by H Gerson which took

the initiative around 1950 of publishing a postcard-size

photographic index of its rich collection of photographs

of Netherlandish art ordered according to an icono-

graphic principle Once such an idea was formulated

the need for a comprehensive consistent and clear

iconographic classification was urgent H van de Waal

of Leiden University devised such a system of classifi-

cation based on decimal divisions consistent and easy

to read He based his system on experiences of ethnol-

ogy and on such elaborated systems of classification

as that devised by Stith Thompson in his Motif-Index

of Folk Literature Vols I-VI (Bloomington Ind

1932-36 rev ed 1955-58) Van de Waal has elabor-

ated a system in which the first five main sections

classify five fundamental groups of portrayable things

namely (1) The Supernatural (2) Nature (3) Man (4)

Society (5) Abstracts The last four classify specific

subjects such as (6) History (7) The Bible (8) Myths

Legends and Tales (with the exception of classical

antiquity) (9) Myths and Legends of Classical Antiq-

uity Van de Waal combines the classification in the

first and in the second group in order to classify general

as well as specific subjects Christ in his system is

described with the sign ldquo11 Drdquo (ldquo1rdquo standing for Su-

pernatural ldquo11rdquo for Christianity ldquoDrdquo for Christ) the

adult Christ = 11 D 3 since ldquoshepherdrdquo on the other

hand bears the signature 47 I 221 the adult Christ

as a shepherd can be described in this system by the

following formula 11 D 3 = 47 I 221 Van de Waal

has also provided means to describe more complex

images which he expresses by adding elements between

brackets The Annunciation with God the Father and

a winged Angel is expressed by the following formula

73 A 5 (+1 +41) ldquo1rdquo standing for God the Father

and ldquo41rdquo for a winged Angel (van de Waal 1952) This

system elaborated for many years by its inventor and

prepared for publication in many volumes has proved

most useful in the practical arrangement of the Icono-

graphical Index of the Netherlandish Art and as the

only one until now in existence it became used more

and more in spite of some ambiguities and difficulties

As an endeavor to classify ldquoall portrayablerdquo things

persons events and ideas and to create a consistent

method to describe every possible image van de Waals

system may be considered as one of the important

achievements of the ldquoiconographical stagerdquo in the

development of art history Iconographic files exist of

course in many institutions as for example in the Ikon-

ologisch Instituut of Utrecht University one of the

main centers of study in emblematics and of course

in the most venerable institution of iconographic re-

search the Warburg Institute of the London University

and in other places

4 What was the result of this ldquoiconographicrdquo turn

in the development of the history of art One thing

is certain that this discipline by necessity has come

closer to other humanistic disciplines Since the

ldquointrinsicrdquo meaningmdashin Panofskys terminologymdashof a

work of art cannot be described in terms used by the

history of art but only in terms borrowed from the

history of philosophy of religion of social structures

of science and so on the ldquoiconological methodrdquo took

for granted and provoked such a collaboration Art

history was perhaps the first or one of the first to show

new interest in investigation of meaning It was fol-

lowed by similar developments in ethnology and in

linguistics

We have mentioned above a parallel development

in Byzantine and classical studies Panofskys influence

has been considerable in the other fields of humanistic

research Since ldquoiconologyrdquo aimed at discovering ideas

expressed by a work of art it awoke in art historians

an interest in the history of ideas This general shift

of emphasis and of the direction of studies from mainly

formal ones to studies aiming at ideas underlying art

was perhaps responsible among others for the fact that

several contributions to the Journal of the History of

Ideas have been written by historians of art

It is not difficult to see that such a development

should have provoked criticism on the side of those

who care about the purity and autonomy of methods

Iconology was criticized as far as its internal coherence

and also as far as its claim to be the integral method

of the study of art are concerned (Białostocki 1962)

Studies by R Klein E Forssman G Previtali G

Kubler B Teyssegravedre C Ginzburg and G Hermeren

expressed critical opinions in one or the other respect

Iconology linked art with the rest of history but it

disrupted the links between the work of art and other

things (Kubler 1962) Concentrating on meaning

iconology neglected art as form as individual expres-

sion Iconology implied a rational relationship between

intellectual content and artistic form On the one hand

one spoke of ldquoiconological diminutionsrdquo (Kubler

1962)mdashlimitations of research to meaning only But

on the other hand the overstatements of iconology

were criticized its representatives sometimes seemed

540

to assume everything symbolized something And some

iconologists seemed to consider important in art not

that which makes art a different field of human activity

but that which connects art with other fieldsmdashwith

the history of ideas

There were of course critics who had the opposite

opinion Since the end of the eighteenth century a

direct experience of art was more and more valued

and its symbolical function considered as a burden

J G von Herder said ein Kunstwerk ist der Kunst

wegen da aber bei einem Symbole ist die Kunst

dienend (ldquoA work of art is there because of art but

with a symbol art is a servicerdquo) Similar opinions were

expressed by nineteenth-century art writers and in this

century they have been voiced by Benedetto Croce and

by other Italian opponents of contenutismo by which

they meant interest in content For such critics to put

stress on iconography was to miss the essential in art

and to focus attention on a subordinate function of art

Also among scholars who considered the function

of representation and of communication as a legitimate

and important function of art criticism was expressed

not against the principle of an iconographical or icon-

ological investigation but against overstatements in

their application The introduction of the idea of ldquodis-

guised symbolismrdquo has created a danger of course of

opening the way to fanciful interpretations The alle-

gorical and symbolical function of mythological imag-

ery in classical art is also difficult to interpret precisely

Since no literary sources give a key to an interpretation

of the iconography of the sarcophagi very divergent

theories have been expressed concerning their meaning

Some archaeologists like F Cumont (1942) believe

that mythological and allegorical imagery (Anadyo-

mene Sea-Thiasos Personifications of the Seasons) is

to be read symbolically The Sea-Thiasos for instance

is to be interpreted as a symbol of the journey of the

souls of the deceased to the islands of the blessed

Others like A D Nock (1946) do not find enough

evidence to accept other than a decorative function

in such imagery

The intrusion of some representatives of psychology

eg C G Jung into iconographic studies giving them

an unhistorical turn in their search for ldquoarchetypal

imagesrdquo has complicated the situation although art

historians in general understandably have not accepted

that kind of approach to symbolism (Frankfort 1958

Gombrich 1965)

The fact that iconographic interpretations sometimes

lack satisfactory proofs does not detract from the im-

portance of such investigations so long as they are

conducted according to the requirements of historical

methods and take into account the corrective princi-

ples established by Panofsky A correct acquaintance

with the way of thinking of the artist the patron or the

viewer based on a satisfactory knowledge of documen-

tary visual and literary sources an awareness of the

choice situations produced by historical developments

may enable art historians to discover the secondary

meaning of a work of art as well as its intrinsic mean-

ing It is of course possible that the art historian will

meet some works for which it will not be possible to re-

construct in a satisfactory way the world of ideas that

would account for the meaning of those works In such

cases a reliable interpretation is simply not possible

R Berliner (1945 1966) criticized the widespread

opinion according to which content of the works of

visual arts in the Middle Ages had to be checked

against the literary sources considered as the only

medium in which ideological innovations were per-

mitted Berliner pleaded for assuming a considerable

ldquofreedomrdquo in the medieval artist and he considered

iconographic innovation possible even when no writ-

ten evidence could be found Meyer Schapiro (1947)

presented proofs that sometimes purely aesthetic rea-

sons decided the character of the work of art even as

early as the Romanesque period

We can only touch on some specific discussions going

on in the field of iconographic research But iconogra-

phic research is far from being a closed system and

the relative share of iconographic and stylistic criticism

in the work of art historians is always a matter of

discussion It is certain that the ldquoiconographicrdquo period

in the study of art has enlarged in a considerable way

the understanding of the art of the past and that it

has connected art history in a way unknown before

with the other historical disciplines and above all others

with the history of ideas

BIBLIOGRAPHY

L B Alberti On Painting ed J Spencer (New Haven

1956 revised ed 1966) E Auerbach ldquoFigurardquo (1944) trans

and published in Scenes From the Drama of European Liter-

ature (New York 1959) pp 11-76 K Bauch ldquoImagordquo

(1960) Studien zur Kunstgeschichte (Berlin 1967) pp 1-20

G P Bellori Descrizione delle imagini dipinte da Raffaello

(Rome 1695 ed used is 1751) R Berliner ldquoThe Free-

dom of Medieval Artrdquo Gazette des Beaux-Arts 628 (1945)

263-88 idem ldquoBemerkungen zu einigen Darstellungen des

Erloumlsers als Schmerzensmannrdquo Das Muumlnster 9 (1956)

97-117x J Białostocki ldquoIconografia e Iconologiardquo Enciclo-

pedia Universale dellArte (1962) Vol VII cols 163-75

trans as Encyclopedia of World Art (1966) Vol VII cols

769-85 lists almost all important older contributions to this

field idem ldquoRomantische Ikonographierdquo Stil und Ikonog-

raphie (Dresden 1966) pp 156-81 idem ldquoKompozycja

emblematyczna epitafioacutew ślaskich XVI wiekurdquo (ldquoEmblem-

atic Composition of Silesian Epitaphs of the Sixteenth Cen-

turyrdquo) Ze studioacutew nad Sztuka XVI wieku na Řlasku

(Wrocław 1968) pp 77-93 idem ldquoEsilio Privatordquo Bulletin

du Museacutee National de Varsovie 10 (1969) 95-101 J

541

Chydenius The Theory of Medieval Symbolism (Helsingfors

1960) Series of the Societas Scientiarum Fennica Com-

mentationes Humanarum Litterarum 27 2 R J Clements

Picta Poesis (Rome 1960) F Creuzer Symbolik und

Mythologie der Alten Voumllker (Leipzig and Darmstadt 1810

revised ed 1819) F Cumont Recherches sur le symbolisme

funeacuteraire des Romains (Paris 1942) L Eitner ldquoThe Open

Window and the Storm-Tossed Boatrdquo Art Bulletin 37

(1955) 281-90 H Frankfort ldquoThe Archetype in Analytical

Psychology and the History of Religionrdquo Journal of the

Warburg and Courtauld Institutes 21 (1958) 166-78

K Garas ldquoAllegorie und Geschichte in der Venezianischen

Malerei des 18 Jahrhundertsrdquo in proceedings of the XXI

International Congress of the History of Art Bonn Stil und

Uumlberlieferung in der Kunst des Abendlandes (Berlin 1967)

3 280-83 K Giehlow ldquoDie Hieroglyphenkunde des

Humanismus in der Allegorie der Renaissancerdquo Jahrbuch

der Kunsthistorischen Sammlungen des Allerhochsten

Kaiserhauses 32 (1915) 1-232 C Gilbert ldquoOn Subject and

Not-Subject in Italian Renaissance Picturesrdquo Art Bulletin

34 (1952) 202-16 C Ginzburg ldquoDa A Warburg a E H

Gombrich Note su un problema di metodordquo Studi medi-

evali series 3 7 (1966) 1015-65 E H Gombrich ldquoIcones

Symbolicae The Visual Image in Neo-Platonic Thoughtrdquo

Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes 11 (1948)

163-92 idem ldquoThe Use of Art for the Study of Symbolsrdquo

American Psychologist 20 (1965) A Grabar Liconoclasme

byzantin Dossier archeacuteologique (Paris 1957) idem Chris-

tian Iconography A Study of Its Origins (Princeton 1969)

S J Gudlaugsson De Comedianten bij Jan Steen en zijn

tijdgenooten (s-Gravenhage 1945) W S Heckscher ldquoThe

Genesis of Iconologyrdquo Stl und Uumlberlieferung in der Kunst

des Abendlandes Akten des XXI Internationalen Kon-

gresses fuumlr Kunstgeschichte (Berlin 1967) 3 239-62 G

Hermereacuten Representation and Meaning in the Visual Arts

A Study in the Methodology of Iconography and Iconology

Lund Studies in Philosophy Vol I (Lund 1969) R Hinks

Myth and Allegory in Ancient Art (London 1939) W

Hofmann Das Irdische Paradies (Munich 1960) G J

Hoogewerff ldquoLIconologie et son importance pour leacutetude

systeacutematique de lart chreacutetienrdquo Rivista dArcheologia Cris-

tiana 8 (1931) 53-82 E de Jongh Zinne- en minnebeelden

in de schilderkunst van de zeventiende eeuw (mdash1967) idem

ldquoErotica in Vogelperspectief De dubbelzinnigheid van een

reeks 17de eeuwse genrevoorstellingenrdquo Simiolus 3

(1968-69) 22-72 L Kalinowski ldquoTreści ideowe i estetyczne

Drzwi Gnieźnieńskichrdquo (ldquoIdeological and Aesthetic Content

of the Gniezno Bronze Doorsrdquo) in Drzwi Gnieźnieńskie ed

M Walicki (Wroclaw 1959) 2 7-160 H Keller Tizians

Poesie fuumlr Koumlnig Philip II von Spanien (Wiesbaden 1969)

R Klein ldquoLa theacuteorie de lexpression figureacutee dans les traiteacutes

italiens sur les imprese 1555-1612rdquo Bibliothegraveque dHu-

manisme et Renaissance 19 (1957) 320-41 republished with

the other relevant studies in la forme et lintelligible (Paris

1969) R Klibansky E Panofsky F Saxl Saturn and Melan-

choly (London 1964) J B Knipping Ikonografie van de

Contra-Reformatie in de Nederlanden (Hilversum 1939-40)

G Kubler The Shape of Time (New Haven and London

1962) R W Lee ldquoUt pictura poesisrdquo Art Bulletin 22

(1940) 197-269 E Macircle Lart religieux du XIIIe siegravecle en

France (Paris 1898) English ed used (New York 1958)

idem Lart religieux de la fin du Moyen-Age en France

(Paris 1908) idem Lart religieux du XIIe siegravecle en France

(Paris 1922) idem Lart religieux apregraves le Concile de Trente

(Paris 1932) J Maurin Białostocka Lessing i sztuki plas-

tyczne (ldquoLessing and the visual artsrdquo) (Wroclaw Warszawa

Krakoacutew 1969) E F von Monroy Embleme und Emblem-

buumlcher in den Niederlanden 1560-1630 ed H M von Erffa

(Utrecht 1964) J Montagu ldquoThe Painted Enigma and

French Seventeenth Century Artrdquo Journal of the Warburg

and Courtauld Institutes 31 (1968) 307-35 W Mrazek

Ikonologie der barocken Deckenmalerei (Vienna 1953)

Uumlsterreichische Akademie der Wissenschaften Philo-

sophisch-historische Klasse Sitzungsberichte 2283 A D

Nock ldquoSarcophagi and Symbolismrdquo American Journal of

Archaeology 50 (1946) 166ff D Panofsky and E Panofsky

ldquoThe Iconography of the Galeacuterie Franccedilois Ier at Fontaine-

bleaurdquo Gazette des Beaux-Arts 652 (1958) 113-90

E Panofsky ldquoUumlber das Verhaumlltnis der Kunstgeschichte zur

Kunsttheorierdquo Zeitschrift fuumlr Aesthetik und allgemeine

Kunstwissenschaft 18 (1925) 129-61 idem Studies in

Iconology (New York 1939) idem ed Abbot Suger (Prince-

ton 1946) idem Gothic Architecture and Scholasticism

(Latrobe Pa 1951) idem Early Netherlandish Painting

(Cambridge Mass 1953) idem Meaning in the Visual Arts

(Garden City N Y 1955) idem Renaissance and Renas-

cences in Western Art (Stockholm 1960) idem Tomb Sculp-

ture (New York 1964) E Panofsky and F Saxl ldquoClassical

Mythology in Medieval Artrdquo Metropolitan Museum Studies

4 (1932-33) 228-80 M Praz Studies in Seventeenth Cen-

tury Imagery (London 1939-47 2nd ed Rome 1964) S

Ringbom ldquoDevotional Images and Imaginative Devotions

Notes on the Place of Art in Late Medieval Private Pietyrdquo

Gazette des Beaux-Arts 6 73 (1969) 159-70 Joseph Sauer

Symbolik des Kirchengebaumludes und seiner Ausstattung in

der Auffassung des Mittelalters 2nd ed (Freiburg i B

1924) F Saxl ldquoFruumlhes Christentum und spaumltes Heidentum

in ihren kuumlnstlerischen Ausdrucksformenrdquo Wiener Jahrbuch

fuumlr Kunstgeschichte 2 (1923) 63-121 M Schapiro ldquoThe

Ruthwell Crossrdquo Art Bulletin 26 (1944) 232-45 idem ldquoOn

the Aesthetic Attitude in Romanesque Artrdquo in Art and

Thought issued in Honour of Ananda Coomaraswamy

(London 1947) 139-50 J Seznec The Survival of the Pagan

Gods (New York 1953) O G von Simson The Gothic

Cathedral (New York 1956) R E Spear ldquoThe Literary

Source of Poussins Realm of Florardquo The Burlington Maga-

zine 107 (1965) 563-69 L Volkmann Bilderschriften der

Renaissance (Leipzig 1923) Hans van de Waal Drie

eeuwen vaderlandsche geschieduitbeelding 1500-1800 (s-

Gravenhage 1952) idem ldquoSome Principles of a General

Iconographical Classificationrdquo in Actes du XVIIe Congregraves

International dHistoire de lArt Amsterdam 1952 (La Haye

1955) 601-06 E Wind ldquoCharity the Case History of a

Patternrdquo Journal of the Warburg Institute 1 (1937) 322ff

JAN BIAŁOSTOCKI

[See also Allegory Baroque Classicism Criticism Enlight-

enment Motif Myth Naturalism in Art Neo-Platonism

Renaissance Humanism Romanticism Symbolism Tem-

perance Ut pictura poesis]

the deceased) and most probably existed among the

first generations of Christians (Grabar 1968) That cult

which rose to greater importance in the fifth and sixth

centuries and the belief in the part of the holiness of

their saintly prototypes being inherent in these images

became the object of a long theological quarrel as a

result of which attitudes towards religious iconography

were differentiated in the West and in the East

In the Byzantine Empire the problem of religious

images acquired an exceptional importance as the

object of violent theological and political discussions

and of decisions of the Church Councils (Grabar 1957)

At the Councils of 730 754 and 815 images were

prohibited but at those of 787 (Nicaea) and of 843

they were again allowed Although the partisans of the

images triumphed a very strict iconographic doctrine

was established which provided extremely precise

regulations concerning religious imagery in the decor-

ation of East-Christian churches These regulations

have been followed in the Eastern Church ever since

The traditional character of Byzantine iconography is

demonstrated by the fact that the iconographic hand-

book by Dionysius of Fourna Hermeneia tes zograph-

ikes technes published by A N Didron (1845) was for

a long time considered as a document of an early

period of Byzantine art and it was only in 1909 that

A Papadopoulos Kerameus proved it to be a work of

the eighteenth century obviously reflecting a very old

tradition In this static world of iconographical think-

ing little change is noticeable although Eastern Chris-

tian art had its important artistic evolution and often

absorbed Western influences sometimes even in icono-

graphic respects (eg the influence of German prints

on the wall paintings in the Athos monasteries)

3 For medieval Christian thought everything in the

world was a symbol Things persons and events actual

and historical were considered as symbols of other

things persons and events or as symbols of concepts

and ideas The doctrine of ldquouniversal symbolismrdquo orig-

inated in Saint Augustine (De Trinitate) and first of all

in the Neo-Platonic philosophy of Pseudo-Dionysius

the Areopagite for whom ldquovisible things are images

of invisible beautyrdquo Thanks to John Scotus Erigenas

translation the ideas of Pseudo-Dionysius spread

widely and it was Hugh of St Victor who presented

the complete theory of universal symbolism ldquoall nature

expresses Godrdquo (Omnis natura Deum loquitur) For

Hugh the universe is ldquoa book written by the hand of

Godrdquo Alain de Lille has given a popular compact

poetic formula of universal symbolism

Omnis mundi creatura

quasi liber et pictura

nobis est et speculum

(ldquoEvery creature of the world is for us like a book and

a picture of the world and it is like a mirrorrdquo) Saint

Bonaventure finds that created beauty being a sign of

the eternal leads men to God Theologians discerned

mainly two kinds of symbolism under different names

but signifying two more or less basically similar divi-

sions (1) existing things endowed with meaning (res

et signa) and (2) conventional signs (Chydenius 1960)

In the practical use of symbolism in art one can discern

another diversity an Aristotelian rational trend and

a Neo-Platonic irrational and mystical one (Gombrich

1948 1965) In the first case the images were not

considered as including any more content than their

verbal equivalents they constituted a code a conven-

tional language of signs used to communicate religious

messages In the second case experience of symbolical

images was believed to give the observer another

higher knowledge than that transmitted by words it

was meant to give a direct ecstatic and enthusiastic

contact with abstract ideas incorporated as it were

in images Medieval art used generally symbolic images

conceived as a code transmitting its messages to every-

body also to those who were not able to read The

other attitude to symbols appeared in the Middle Ages

in the mystical trends The image which can be grasped

in a sensual way was a means of transgressing the limits

of the corporeal world and of reaching the spiritual

one Such a function of images was formulated by

various theologians Jean Gerson in the fifteenth cen-

tury put it in the following words ldquoAnd we ought

thus to learn to transcend with our minds from these

visible things to the invisible from the corporeal to

the spiritual For this is the purpose of the imagerdquo

(Ringbom [1969] p 165)

The didactic doctrine had been formulated already

in the early period of the Church according to that

doctrine images were considered as a form of writing

accessible to those unable to read (Paulinus of Nola

Gregory the Great also Thomas Aquinas considered

images to be useful ad instructionem rudium) This

attitude lasted until the very end of the Middle Ages

(later it was revived in the period of the Counter-

Reformation) and it found expression as late as the

fourteenth and fifteenth centuries in the early graphic

imagery of such typological compendia as Biblia

pauperum and Speculum humanae salvationis The

didactic aims encompassed not only the direct moral

lessons which were transmitted through the imagery

of ldquoprohibitionrdquo and ldquodissuasionrdquo of the Last Judgment

and of the Virtues and Vices but also the visual repre-

527

sentation of sometimes complicated links among the

events of sacred history considered as prefigurations

and fulfillments which were established between the

figures and events of the Old and the New Dispen-

sation Thus typological thinking connected images

into symbolic relations Visual unity was established

in the religious imagery through the large encyclopedic

compendia eg Glossa ordinaria (the large body of

Commentaries to the Bible until recently held to be

a compilation by Walafrid Strabo) and Gulielmus

Durandus system of liturgy Rationale divinorum offi-

ciorum or Vincent of Beauvaiss Speculum maius an

image of the world seen in the symbolistic mirror

These books contributed to the realization of the tre-

mendous iconographical programs of the great cathe-

drals of the high Middle Ages where God nature and

man were united into an exceptionally elaborated sys-

tem of symbolic images mirroring the model of the

world current in the period of Gothic art Art at that

time followed the symbolistic way of thinking which

prevailed in theology as well as in liturgy in profane

ceremonials and in the other fields of life Art gave

artistic form to the abstract structure of the cosmos

as seen by medieval theologians and brought it close

to the understanding or to the imagination of every

man This does not at all mean that medieval symbol-

ism was always understandable to everybody and

everywhere Very specific theological problems and

controversies found their way into iconography and

when deciphered by modern iconographers they dis-

close often complicated religious andor political situ-

ations (for example the imagery of the Ruthwell Cross

which reflects the conflicting ideologies of Northern

versus Roman Christianity in England as revealed in

an analysis by Meyer Schapiro 1944)

Neo-Platonic symbolism was developed especially

under the impact of writings by Pseudo-Dionysius the

Areopagite His influence promoted to a great extent

medieval ideas about the symbolism of light The sym-

bolism of light found its highest achievement in the

creation of Gothic architecture dominated by the

mysticism of light (von Simson 1956) Abbot Suger

the auctor intellectualis of Gothic architecture pre-

sented in his writings an excellent record of that atti-

tude toward symbolism In his De rebus in adminis-

tratione sua gestis (XVII) he writes about the doors

with gilt bronze reliefs ldquoBright is the noble work but

being nobly bright the work should brighten the

minds so that they may travel through the true lights

to the true light where Christ is the true door

The dull mind rises to truth through that which

is materialrdquo (Panofsky [1946] pp 46-49) Con-

templating precious stones transports Sugers mind to

a contemplation of the supernatural

Whenmdashout of my delight in the beauty of the house of

Godmdashthe loveliness of the many-colored stones has called

me away from external cares and worthy meditation has

induced me to reflect transferring that which is material

to that which is immaterial on the diversity of the sacred

virtues then it seems to me that I see myself dwelling as

it were in some strange region of the universe which neither

exists entirely in the slime of the earth nor entirely in the

purity of Heaven and that by the Grace of God I can

be transported from this inferior to that higher world in

an anagogical mannerrdquo

(ibid pp 63-65)

To a similar sphere of mystical symbols the specific

symbolism of numbers also belongs Numbers in the

Bible and those referring to quantitative relations in

architecture were considered as having a mystical

meaning ldquothe Divine Wisdom is reflected in the num-

bers impressed on all thingsrdquo (Saint Augustine De

libero arbitrio II XVI) The belief in the mystical signi-

ficance of numbers which originated in Pythagorean-

ism and was revived by Neo-Platonism was transmitted

to the Middle Ages by the Fathers of the Church (Macircle

[1898] English ed [1958] p 10) Complicated ramifi-

cations of this numerical symbolism in the field of

medieval architectural iconography are studied by J

Sauer (1924) as well as by E Macircle (ibid p 10) The

number eight for example connected with the idea

of new life by the Fathers (since it comes after seven

the terminal number of human life and of the world)

expresses the concept of resurrection and therefore that

of the Baptism because of that early belief baptisteries

and baptismal fonts are octagonal (Macircle ibid p 14)

One may trace in such use of numerical symbolism

a mystical rather than a didactic attitude

The general adoption of a symbolic attitude does

not mean that in the Middle Ages no actual events

were represented in art However since medieval art

was very much traditional and remained faithful to

exempla or compositional visual patterns the actual

events when they were sometimes taken as subjects

of representation used to be transformed to fit precon-

ceived traditional patterns The written lives of the

saints have been composed according to literary and

mythical topoi The same may be observed in art

When a new subject had to be represented it used to

be molded according to existing patterns As an exam-

ple we may adduce the story of Saint Adalbert repre-

sented on the bronze doors of the twelfth century at

Gniezno Poland The formerly executed European

bronze church doors represented Christological narra-

tive or allegorical figures or ornaments The fairly

recent hagiographic story had to be given visual shape

It is not surprising that the representations in most

cases follow the patterns of Christological iconography

(Kalinowski 1959) Secular subjects as for example

528

the conquest of England by William the Conqueror

and its circumstances represented on the so-called

Bayeux Tapestry followed in the general idea the

classical tradition It seems that perhaps more of a

direct experience of the actual medieval life found its

way into art than is usually admitted but the relative

share of symbolism and realism of system and freedom

is still a matter of discussion among medievalists

(Berliner 1945 1956)

In the late Middle Ages the general system of icon-

ography persisted but new subjects especially the

representations of the most human episodes and rela-

tionships in Christs life namely of His infancy and

His emotional connections (with the Virgin and Saint

John) as well as His Passion and the episodes of Our

Ladys life come to the fore Although symbolical and

didactic thinking maintained its importance the means

to communicate with the faithful changed most sub-

jects popular in the late Middle Ages appeal to the

beholders emotions rather than to his reason Scholars

have selected a group of so-called devotional pictures

as opposed to dogmatic and to historical repre-

sentations but the precise delimitation of such a group

is still a matter of discussion as is also the question

of how much this art was influenced by literature and

especially by pious poetry With the development of

the graphic arts new cheap pictures spread widely the

typological imagery systematized in the Biblia pau-

perum and in the Speculum humanae salvationis

Great collections of religious meditations compiled in

monasteries like Meditations on the Life of Christ by

Pseudo-Bonaventure (ed I Ragusa and R B Green

1961) spread widely a new emotional approach to

iconography Also the religious theater had some influ-

ence on the way stories in art were told

4 In the iconography of the Renaissance art ldquohis-

toryrdquo was shifted to the fore at the expense of symbol-

ism It does not mean that symbols ceased to exist

Pictorial allegory and symbolism played a very impor-

tant part in the conception of humanistic art But what

was placed in the center of the new art theory was

the concept of istoria The first and the most important

task of the work of art according to L B Alberti (De

pictura 1435 Della pittura 1436) is to present a story

This story had to be selected from authoritative literary

sources either sacred or profane it should represent

in a possibly convincing and expressive way an episode

from the Holy Scriptures from sacred or classical

history from mythology or legend This new concept

of istoria which was to dominate iconographic consid-

erations for more than three hundred years (the mean-

ing of the term istoria or storia changed of course in

that period) was one of the consequences of the Ren-

aissance idea of the priority of literature over the visual

arts There were several reasons for that priority one

being a complete lack of known classical theory of art

In its stead the theories of poetry and rhetoric were

adopted as guiding principles for the visual arts Hence

the dominating Horatian principle Ut pictura poesis

which subordinated the visual arts to the rules of liter-

ary theory This identification of literature and art

lasted until G E Lessing in 1766 revolted against it

in his Laokooumln (R W Lee 1940) In the humanistic

theory of visual arts the concept of istoria took the

central place Istoria had to be chosen for its moral

value (Alberti chose as his examples the subjects show-

ing stoic moral firmness as the ldquoDeath of Meleagerrdquo

the ldquoImmolation of Iphigeniardquo or the ldquoCalumnyrdquo of

Apelles) it had to be represented according to the

principle of decorum and costume ie with regard to

its dignity and most truthfully to the literary proto-

type Everything should be suitable in ldquosize function

kind color and other similar thingsrdquo Alberti stressed

the necessity of varied and convincing expressions of

emotions by suitable gestures

The dependence of post-medieval iconography on

literature increased with time and in the seventeenth

century the truthfulness of the pictorial formulation

of literary subjects became one of the most valued

qualities of a work of visual arts ldquoRead the story and

the picture at the same timerdquo Nicolas Poussin wrote

to M de Chantelou one of his customers In the French

Royal Academy of Painting and Sculpture lengthy

discussions were going on concerning the relation of

pictures to literary sources To be able to represent

well subjects taken from poetry the artist had to be

a doctus artifex well-informed in various fields G P

Bellori (1695) stressed however the fact that not

everything good in writing comes out well in painting

Therefore the painter to be able to transform the

story had to acquire ldquoan universal knowledge of things

and he should contemplate precisely nature and reali-

tiesrdquo Some freedom was given to the artist from the

beginning Alberti was far from limiting the painter

too much by this dependence on literature He stressed

the specific requirements of the visual arts as for ex-

ample the necessity to limit the number of represented

figures in order to keep a balance between ldquocopious-

nessrdquo and ldquosolitude in paintingrdquo This made it of

course necessary to reduce crowded scenes to an easily

graspable number of figures in order to avoid ldquodissolute

confusionrdquo (Spencer [1956] pp 23-28)

The interest of early Renaissance art theorists in

iconography was not great They concentrated their

attention chiefly on the discussion of the means needed

to achieve a convincing and beautiful representation

of the istoria and on the specific problems of repre-

sentationmdashcorrect (by adoption of the rules of per-

529

spective) and beautiful (by adoption of the rules of

proportion) Leonardo da Vinci does not show a spe-

cific interest in iconography but in some passages of

his incompleted Treatise on Painting he gives literary

programs of pictures remarkably however the pic-

tures are not of stories but of representations of pow-

erful natural or human happenings such as storms and

battles Here the naturalistic interests of the Renais-

sance come to the fore

An important achievement of the Renaissance partly

affecting iconography was the reunionmdashas noticed and

described by E Panofsky and F Saxl (1932) and Panof-

sky (1960)mdashof the literary and visual traditions of

classical antiquity during the fifteenth century During

the Middle Ages the literary tradition of classical sub-

ject matter was separated from the visual tradition of

classical artistic motifs so that there was no awareness

of their belonging together The classical subjects for

example those taken from Ovid used to be represented

in contemporary medieval stylistic forms classical

artistic motifs on the other hand for example the forms

of garment folds human types gestures compositional

patterns and so on were used to represent Christian

subject matter as in the western portals of the Reims

cathedral or in the pulpits of Nicola or Giovanni

Pisano It was only in the High Renaissance eg in

the works of Raphael Titian Michelangelo and Cor-

reggio that forms and iconography themes and motifs

became reintegrated In this way the classical vision

of classical subjects became sometimes so perfect that

some works created around 1500 could have been

taken for classical originals (for example Bacchus by

Michelangelo) The growing understanding of classical

ideas and forms led to another specific Renaissance

phenomenon called by Panofsky ldquopseudomorphosisrdquo

Certain Renaissance figures became invested with a mean-

ing which for all their classicizing appearance had not been

present in their classical prototypes though it had fre-

quently been foreshadowed in classical literature Owing

to its medieval antecedents Renaissance art was often able

to translate into images what classical art had deemed

inexpressible

(Panofsky [1939] pp 70f)

In the north of Italy beside the concept of istoria

poesia appears a fact which also points to a depend-

ence on poetry this was understood mainly as referring

to lyrical poetry and not to epic or heroic Mythologi-

cal pictures by Titian were described in such a way

(Keller [1969] pp 24f) The stress was on the poetical

mood more than on an important human action a

lyrical tonality was preferred to a heroic one The

archaeological interests then current in Padua and

Venice visible for instance in the works by Andrea

Mantegna were moderated by an elegiac poetic mood

in reconstructing the classical world Pictures by Gior-

gione who worked for exclusive circles of humanists

were so hermetic in meaning that several of them like

the Three Philosophers (Vienna) or the Storm (Venice)

are iconographic riddles up to our own day The same

is true of the enigmatic and poetic iconography of some

pictures by Titian (Sacred and Profane Love in the

Borghese Gallery in Rome) by Lorenzo Lotto or by

the Ferrarese Dosso Dossi

The most important document of this romantic ar-

chaeological vision which strongly influenced icono-

graphical invention in Italy and outside of Italy was

a fantastic romance Hypnerotomachia Poliphili attrib-

uted in the most plausible way to a Franciscan monk

Francesco Colonna and published with beautiful

woodcuts by Aldus Manutius in Venice in 1499 Poetic

visions of a dreamy classical landscape full of ruins

in which the lovers Poliphilo and Polia wander influ-

enced the imagination of artists not less than the excel-

lent woodcuts their impact can be found as far and

as late as in the gardens at Versailles The illustrations

to Hypnerotomachia also popularized hieroglyphic

signs which make their appearance in iconography as

a specific phenomenon of the Renaissance

5 Art conceived as a language may be addressed

to large or to small groups It depends on the scope

of communication It can be intended as a message

to a possibly large audience but it can also be limited

in its appeal to a small selected group of observers

In an extreme case the polarization could be that

between a didactic art appealing to everybody and an

elitarian cryptic message understandable only to the

initiated few Medieval art belonged by far to the first

category the art of the Renaissance to the second

Even in the monumental wall-paintings decorating the

most celebrated places of Christianity such as the

Sistine Chapel or the official rooms of the Popes like

the Stanza della Segnatura even in the sepulchral

chapels of the most important families like the Sassetti

and the Medici the iconographic programs and sym-

bolism are extremely complicated The meaning of the

decoration of the great Gallery of Franccedilois I at Fon-

tainebleau is so cryptic that it was hypothetically ex-

plained only recently by the best specialists in icon-

ography (D and E Panofsky 1958) Few works of

medieval art have provoked such a number of inter-

pretations as the well-known and at first glance seem-

ingly easy to understand pictures like Botticellis

mythologies (Birth of Venus Spring The Uffizi Flor-

ence) like Titians Sacred and Profane Love or like

sculptures such as Michelangelos Medici tombs The

same is true of works by Duumlrer Holbein and Bruegel

in the North A deep symbolism a complicated

iconographymdashespecially current in the circles influ-

530

enced by Neo-Platonismmdashbelonged to the perfection

of the work

This idea had a long life it recurs in 1604 in Carel

van Manders Book of the Painter as well as in Berninis

utterances on the beauty of the concept which adorns

the work The more refined the concept the more

difficult the symbolism the narrower the circle of those

who can really understand the work

Art was considered especially in the exclusive court

social groups or among the humanists as a secret

language accessible to the initiated The visual sign

was connected with words into a specific union of

literature and art which flourished at the time of the

Renaissance of mannerism and of the baroque in the

form of impresa of hieroglyph and of emblem The

roots of the impresamdashthe personal sign and mottomdashare

to be found in chivalrous devices and signs popular

in the late Middle Ages it was brought to Italy from

France and connected with Neo-Platonic speculation

(Klein 1957) Hieroglyphs became popular thanks to

the discovery in 1419 of the Hieroglyphica by Hora-

pollo Niliacus (of the second or fourth century AD)

published in 1505 The humanists believed that this

enigmatic image-script disguised a profound wisdom

of the Egyptians ldquothey supposed that the great minds

of Greece had been initiated into these Egyptian

mysteriesmdashwhich in their turn were of course one

more prefiguration of the teachings of Christrdquo (Seznec

[1953] p 100) Emblems originated from an erudite

intellectual play among the humanists aiming however

at a moral lesson and sometimes considered in a Neo-

Platonic way as symbols revealing to those who con-

template them a higher knowledge of divine mysteries

Emblem included a motto called lemma an image

and an epigram Only the whole of the emblem can

be understood each element of it giving only one part

of the meaning All those cryptic codes of expression

connecting words and images originated as secret and

elitarian The problem of the degree of obscurity was

one of the main points discussed by the theorists of

the emblematics (Clements [1964] pp 191-95) Eras-

mus of Rotterdam stressed that one of the virtues of

the impresa is that its meaning can be grasped only

with an intellectual effort Cesare Ripa (Iconologia

1593) demands that symbolic images be composed ldquoin

the form of enigmardquo Sambucus (1564) required ldquoob-

scuritasrdquo and ldquonovitasrdquo from the emblems Paolo

Giovio represented a reasonable middle ldquoThe device

should not be so obscure as to require the Sybil to

interpret it nor yet so obvious that any literal-minded

person can understand itrdquo Later however the crypto-

grams of hieroglyphics and emblem books began to

be popularized and explained Collections of emblems

became widely known New systematization of icon

ography now of a humanistic one was inaugurated

In 1556 Vincenzo Cartari published the first modern

handbook of mythological imagery le imagini colla

sposizione degli dei degli antichi (Venice 1556) In the

same year Pierio Valeriano produced a rich collection

of Hieroglyphica (Basel 1556) Earlier in 1531 Andrea

Alciati had compiled the first emblem book (Emblema-

tum liber Augsburg 1531) The influence of such

books which went through many translations and edi-

tions and which were imitated and continued all over

Europe grew at the close of the sixteenth and in the

seventeenth century In exclusive groups it happened

much earlier that hieroglyphic astrological and em-

blematic imagery influenced the iconography of im-

portant works of art as for example at the court of

Maximilian I (M Giehlow 1915) sometimes this con-

cerned works done by the most distinguished artists

like Duumlrers Melencolia I (Klibansky et al 1964)

Emblematic principle of composition uniting as it did

the image with the verbal formulations found great

popularity in northern Europe perhaps because the

importance of the word so prominent in Protestantism

was stressed (Luther required ldquofragments from the

Holy Writrdquo to be included in the Epitaph-pictures)

Epitaphs and other religious pictures of the Protestant

North connect words and images in the harmonious

indivisible whole (Białostocki 1968)

In the Netherlands emblems played an important

part in the development of realistic painting in the

seventeenth century since they furnished a rich reper-

tory of imagery charged with allegorical meaning (de

Jongh von Monroy) However the meaning of those

images obvious to the viewer who remembered the

original emblematic context eluded for a long time

later interpreters who were no longer conversant with

the emblems

After Cartari and his followers furnished artists and

patrons with images of classical gods there was a need

felt for another handbook which would enable the

artist to represent and the patron to understand the

abstract moral philosophical scientific and other

ideas symbolized Only then was art able to express

complex thoughts This task was fulfilled by Cesare

Ripa of Perugia who in 1593 published his Iconologia

a handbook explaining how to represent all the incor-

poreal concepts In 1603 Iconologia was republished

with illustrations and became one of the most popular

and influential art books With Ripa in hand art

historiansmdashinitially Eacutemile Macircle (1932)mdashwere able to

decipher hundreds of allegorical statements in paint

and stone guided by this alphabet of personifications

Ripas basic entity was a human figure female more

often than male whose costumes attributes gestures

and other particulars express specific qualities of the

531

idea represented With the publication of Ripas workmdash

translated soon into many languages and frequently

republished and revisedmdashthe humanistic system of

allegorical iconography was established classical gods

and personifications hieroglyphic signs and emblems

connecting words and images this was the material

used by the artists of mannerism and the baroque when

they did not choose to keep to the ldquohistoricalrdquo world

ie to borrow their subjects directly from literature

When they did so when they painted stories they used

to select them not only from Ovid and Vergil but also

from the more recent poems by Ariosto and Tasso and

also from the works of less known writers ancient and

modern Valerius Maximus furnished them with exam-

ples of virtuous behavior These historical examples

were in general either connected with allegorical gen-

eralizations (in the big decorations of the late baroque

the central fresco was often an allegory and the ac-

companying canvas-pictures presented historical ex-

amples of virtues Garas pp 280-83) or conceived in

an allegorical way Ovide moraliseacute was popular already

in the late Middle Ages Its influence persisted also

in the time of the baroque Myths and stories under-

went allegorical interpretations along the lines of that

moralizing commentary

What was considered necessary for an artist around

1600 can be seen from Carel van Manders Book of

the Painter (1604) It included a long theoretical poem

a history of classical and modern Italian and Nether-

landish artists a translation and a moral interpretation

of Ovids Metamorphoses and finally a description of

personifications There is no specific section on reli-

gious iconography since artists were well furnished

with books giving them rules in this respect

Against the humanistic conception of art the Council

of Trent proclaimed rules constituting a new system

of religious iconography which put an end to the live

tradition of medieval art These rules were published

officially by the Church and they have been com-

mented upon and elaborated in books by Joannes

Molanus (1570) Saint Carlo Borromeo (1577) Gabriele

Paleotti (1581) Federico Borromeo (1624) and several

others The rules of the Council governed the decora-

tion of churches and other sacred buildings and the

character of pictures representing sacred subjects A

break between the religious and the secular iconogra-

phy became obvious in theoretical literature although

there existed many emblem books of a very distinct

religious character (G de Montenay 1571 B Arias

Montanus 1571 H Hugo 1624) A new strictly for-

mulated system of religious iconography coexisted in

the seventeenth century with humanistic subject mat-

ter symbolism and allegory The classical nude intro-

duced by the Renaissance into art was strictly forbid

den now in religious art but found a free field of

development in secular mythological and allegorical

works Many artists exercised their imagination in both

fields in some specific fields such as sepulchral iconog-

raphy cooperation between religious and humanistic

symbolism was common In the work of P P Rubens

the various aspects of the new iconography found

perhaps their best expression In his art allegorical

concepts classical gods and heroes triumphs of mythi-

cal beings as well as of secular rulers accompany mar-

tyrdoms of Catholic saints and the triumphs of the

Eucharist What began to be separated in theory could

yet coexist in harmony in the work of a great artist

6 In northern European art (before Rubens) the

renewal of the arts during the Renaissance took the

form of the new study of nature and the elaboration

of the most convincing means of representing the ma-

terial world in an illusionistic way traditional medieval

symbolism was transformed in a specific way produc-

ing what E Panofsky called in 1953 ldquodisguised sym-

bolismrdquo The symbolic meaning connected with objects

and qualities persisted but a new mastery reproduced

these symbolical objects with such a degree of realism

that they did not differ any longer from other objects

not charged with any metaphorical meaning Some-

times the symbolical meaning of represented objects

results from the traditional iconography in an unmistak-

able way sometimes the meaning is hinted at by the

inscriptions placed in the picture or on its frame But

in many cases the modern viewer remains perplexed

without any sufficient clue to decide whether in the

picture he observes he has to do with the beginnings

of the representation of reality for its own sake or

whether the search for specific metaphorical meaning

is justified It is still always a matter of discussion to

decide at which moment the representation of some

objects or some scene in life without any symbolical

(or ldquohistoricalrdquo) implications became possible (Gilbert

1952) Observers of the eighteenth and nineteenth

centuries to whom the meaning of old symbols was

wholly forgotten took many images of the fifteenth and

sixteenth centuries for simple representations of life

Bruegel for example was considered as simply a

painter of joking or working peasants Recent studies

in iconography have shown that these pictures are

saturated with disguised meaning and that it is ex-

tremely rare before about 1550 to meet simple repre-

sentations of nature in painting In graphic arts the

direct depiction of life and landscape began earlier

as in the works of Lombard draughtsmen or in the

incredibly fresh convincing drawings and prints by the

Master of the Housebook There are also early excep-

tions in painting like Albrecht Altdorfers landscape

without any human figures But in general it was only

532

during the second half of the sixteenth century that

landscape genre and still-life painting began to ac-

quire equal rights with religious and humanistic history

and allegory predominantly in Venice and in Antwerp

Even then however the representations of people

working in fields (Jacopo or Francesco Bassano) fol-

lowed the old traditions of Calendar-pictures and in

the background of genre scenes as in Pieter Aertsens

pictures a biblical motif may be found which trans-

forms the whole composition into a storia however

unorthodox

With the development of realistic painting in the

seventeenth century there appeared specific iconogra-

phic problems New subjects slowly found convenient

form They entered the scene patterned after the ven-

erable stories of sacred or of profane iconography

H van de Waal described (1952) the process of the for-

mation of national historical iconography in Holland

Scenes depicting recent happenings from a long strug-

gle for national independence appeared first in forms

assimilated to well-known religious or mythical scenes

This was not only an expedient facilitating their com-

position for by this means the new subjects gained the

decorum inherent in the adopted patterns formed to

express traditional stories Similar procedures may be

seen in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries when

more and more sections of reality became interesting

enough to be represented in art

The transfer of decorum from the sacred or allegori-

cal figures to the humans represented is a means used

in what modern iconographers call ldquoallegorical por-

traiturerdquo Renaissance painters had represented real

people under mythological or even sacred disguise

they gave actual faces of living people to the figures

represented with all the attributes and characteristics

of their mythical sacred or even allegorical qualities

Later it was only the pattern which remained still in

the eighteenth century English portraitists patterned

the effigies of contemporary aristocrats after Michel-

angelos Sybils or after allegories like the Caritas

(Wind 1937) J B Oudry represented the Polish King

in exile Stanisław Leszczyński with all the attributes

of the allegory of exile taken from Ripa identifying

him in this way with personification of his most promi-

nent quality (Białostocki 1969)

Dutch realistic painting of the seventeenth century

is a document of an important iconographic conquest

Landscapes seascapes moonlit night scenes snapshots

of people skating in winter landscapes views of market

places church interiors backyards fishermen old

women preparing food fashionable dishes ready for

lunch merchants and artisans elegant gentlemen pay-

ing visits and folk-surgeons performing sensational

street-operations all this became subject matter for

representation and continued to be considered worthy

of depiction until the end of the nineteenth century

It was first considered as such in Holland only then

slowly everyday subject matter was recognized also by

art-theorists in other countries although it was re-

garded as much less dignified than religious mytholog-

ical or allegorical subjects Only in the nineteenth

century did the vogue of realistic representation of

everyday subjects become widespread In Dutch pic-

tures of the seventeenth century we are often con-

fronted with nothing else than representations of pic-

turesque reality Sometimes however these genre

pictures appear to be illustrations of proverbs expres-

sing moralistic folk-wisdom sometimes they recall

scenes from the popular threater of the rederijkers or

rhetoricians especially pictures by Jan Steen (Gud-

laugsson 1945) they contain allusions to emblems

Sometimes the elegant scenes from bourgeois life in-

clude quite indecent erotic allusions (de Jongh 1967

1969) The ambiguity of these pictures was certainly

a source of specific pleasure for those who knew the

key to their true meaning

7 In Catholic countries allegorical art sacred as

well as profane flourished The twofold character of

symbolic representations mentioned above persisted

in the seventeenth century Aristotelian rational sym-

bolism which used images as words was widespread

in the orthodox Catholic iconography of the Counter-

Reformation as well as in the humanistic visual lan-

guage codified by Ripa and others A mystical Neo-

Platonic symbolism transcending reason reappeared

too Its outspoken document is the treatise by Chris-

toforo Giarda Bibliothecae alexandrinae icones sym-

bolicae of 1626 (Gombrich 1948) For Giarda symbolic

images give the beholder a direct insight into the

mysteries of religion which are not accessible to rea-

son

Thanks to symbolic images the mind which is banished from

heaven into this dark cave of the body its actions held in

bondage by the senses can behold the beauty and form

of the Virtues and Sciences divorced from all matter and

yet adumbrated if not perfectly expressed in colours and

is thus roused to an even more fervent love and desire for

them Who then can sufficiently estimate the magni-

tude of the debt we owe to those who expressed the Arts

and Sciences themselves in images and so brought it about

that we could not only know them but look at them as

it were with our eyes that we can meet them and almost

converse with them

(Gombrich [1948] pp 188f)

Great allegorical compositions covering the ceilings of

baroque churches are often realizations of this princi-

ple For those however who conceived allegory as a

rational operation as a language used for didactic aims

the main problem remained the clarity of the allegori-

533

cal message The larger the audience to whom allegory

was addressed the simpler more obvious its symbolism

should have been The banality of allegorical language

provoked criticism in the eighteenth century Fran-

cesco Algarotti (1762) prefers without any doubt his-

torical representations to the ldquoempty allegories and

complicated mythological allusionsrdquo (Garas [1967] p

280) Especially criticized was the obscurity of these

allegories in which completely original unknown sym-

bols were used Roger de Piles praises his favorite

master Rubens who ldquointroduced only such allegories

elements of which were already known from ancient

artrdquo and opposes him to Charles Lebrun who ldquoinstead

of taking symbols from some known source as the

ancient fable and medals has invented almost all of

them and thus the pictures of this kind became riddles

which the beholder does not want to take the task to

solverdquo To keep the balance between platitudinous

redundancy and utter incomprehensibility was the

crucial problem of late baroque allegorism What is

interesting however is that the idea of the picture

as a riddle was not foreign to the seventeenth century

It appears in France as well as in Sweden where David

Kloumlcker Ehrenstrahl (1694) proposed that pictures

present riddles that could not be solved by everyone

In France however the ldquopainted enigmardquo fostered

by the Jesuits in their schools flourished especially well

in the seventeenth century (Montagu 1968) These

ldquopainted enigmasrdquo lent themselves to various inter-

pretations and gave interpreters an opportunity to

show their ingenuity These pictures and their inter-

pretations seem to prove that a considerable flexibility

of meaning was intended

We might rather accept that a work of art was regarded

in the seventeenth century as in a certain sense an open

symbol raw material like the myth or sacred story which

it illustrates on which the interpreter might exercise the

power of his ingenuity turning it into an allegory of Chris-

tian doctrine or a panegyric in honour of his patron

(Montagu [1968] p 334)

Such a situation probably existed only in some specific

circles It was a limiting case The other extreme was

to use in an uninteresting routine way Ripas symbolic

images or those of other popular symbolic handbooks

Such practice continued well into the eighteenth cen-

tury The general trend fed by ideas of the Enlighten-

ment was to make allegories more and more obvious

It is understandable that some theorists like the Count

de Caylus looked for new subject matter presenting

as he did Tableaux tireacutes de lIliade (1755) or that

J J Winckelmann tried to revive allegory and to give

it a new force It was however too late In the eight-

eenth century together with the whole system of

humanistic tradition the systems of iconography began

to disintegrate The great break in the tradition con-

cerned not only style but also iconography Emblem-

atic roots may be discovered in Goyas symbolism as

well as in the reasonable allegories of the Enlighten-

ment but generally speaking there was a search for

new not known or not used sourcesmdashas in William

Blakes biblical individualistic imagerymdashor the new

staging of the old ones as in Jacques Louis Davids

classical subjects

The art of romanticism was a definite break with

the past much more in the field of ideas and iconogra-

phy than in a stylistic respect where romanticists

retrospectively looked back either to medieval and

pre-Raphaelite or to baroque sources Symbols and

allegories yielded to an all-pervading mood and the

traditional repertory of religious allegorical mytho-

logical and historical iconography gave way to a new

iconography Although several encompassing images

of Christian and humanistic art survived they received

new content and essentially changed their character

New attitudes of the individual to the world of nature

and history to society and destiny to time and death

and new problems resulting from the striving after

freedom (which was a new perhaps most important

principle of human behavior in all fields of human

activity) found expression in new thematic fields and

in new particular themes such as ldquoStorm-tossed Boatrdquo

ldquoLonely Wanderer in the Mountainsrdquo ldquoA Death of the

Herordquo (Eitner 1955 Hofmann 1960 Białostocki

1966)

Romanticism has not formed and could not have

formed an iconographic system for since they strived

first of all for originality of individual conception the

romantics interpreted images in a subjective way as

expressions of mood Romanticism has on the other

hand introduced new heroes and martyrs into art

instead of religious ones the national social and artis-

tic ones It created a new image of history seen now

as a set of political and moral examplesmdashas in

baroquemdashbut often put together now according to a

very individualistic principle of choice A correlative

to pathetic and heroic romanticism was a bourgeois

and intimate romanticism its expression was for ex-

ample the new imagery of the open window which

shows to the viewer wide perspectives but shelters him

at the same time from the dangers of the unknown

(Eitner 1955)

When the world of ideas and images created at the

moment of the flowering of romanticism began to be

popularized for the use of the large bourgeois masses

the contentmdashideological and iconographicalmdashof ro-

manticism lost its original authenticity and left be-

hind not a new system of original images but a dispo-

534

sition to melodramatic experiences and an inflation of

a theatrical gesture (Hofmann 1960 Białostocki 1966)

The nineteenth century developed a realistic por-

traiture of man and nature and took over worn out

clicheacutes of the Renaissance and baroque allegories It

introduced new subject matter taken partly from tra-

dition partly from observation of reality tinted with

vague symbolism such as ldquoForgerdquo or the ldquoFuneral of

the Peasantrdquo but it did not create a new system of

iconography in spite of short-lived revivals of symbol-

istic attitudes in such movementsmdashincidentally not

limited to and not initiated in the visual artsmdashas

ldquosymbolismrdquo

New ephemeral artistic movements which consti-

tuted the history of European art in the last hundred

years show an interesting bracketing of style and icon-

ography in spite of a preponderant lack of iconogra-

phic interest Their representatives chose subjects suit-

able to specific artistic aims and means which they

developed and were interested in Impressionists

painted seaside scenes landscapes and genre pictures

showing the life of artistic and intellectual milieus

Cubists introduced a specific repertory of still-life

motifs symbols of the artists atelier and of the life

of the bohegraveme bottles musical instruments books

fruits flowers newspapers How much these motifs

were connected with specific cubist style appears when

one looks at works of artists foreign to the original

cubist group but imitating its style as for instance

several Czech artists like Emil Filla They adopted

cubist iconography together with cubist style Abstract

movements in general lacked iconography although

they were not foreign to symbolic tendencies espe-

cially in sculpture (Brancusi Moore) Only in the dec-

ades of 1950-70 can a revival of more articulated and

programmatic symbolism be observed One may sup-

pose that this revival is at least in part brought about

by the development of research in iconography and

symbolism which took place in the second and third

quarters of our century

II

1 The origins of ldquointerpretative iconographyrdquo may

be seen in the descriptions (ekphrasis) of works of art

known in classical literature But these descriptions

like those by Philostratus the Elder or Lucian are

limited simply to description and lack in general any

interpretation Moreover it is not certain whether they

are descriptions of actual or fictitious works of art at

least opinions in this respect vary Brief medieval tituli

which formulated in words the content of religious

images were to be sure interpretative sometimes but

they were short and cannot be connected with the

tradition of artistic erudition We have to look to

modern times to indicate the beginnings of iconogra-

phic interpretation and research From Vasaris Rag-

ionamenti in which interpretations of the paintings

decorating the Palazzo Vecchio in Florence are given

we learn how complicated and how undecipherable

iconographic concepts might have been even to peo-

ple living in buildings decorated by paintings expres-

sing these concepts But perhaps the first really to be

considered as interested in iconographic research was

the seventeenth-century archaeologist and art theorist

Giovanni Pietro Bellori In the introduction to his Lives

of Artists (1672) Bellori stressed that he paid special

attention to the content of the works of art he was

talking about and he even credited the painter Nicolas

Poussin with having directed his attention to iconogra-

phy In his Lives Bellori presented short interpretative

descriptions of pictures and he sometimes developed

these interpretations further in small iconographic

essays the influence of classical ekphrasis on him is

a possibility Sometimes his errors took deep roots in

the subsequent history of art as when he explained

Poussins Triumph of Flora (Dresden) by designating

Ovids Metamorphoses as its source The true source

Marinos Adona was finally found by R E Spear in

1965

What is interesting in Belloris procedure is that he

first identifies the motifs tries to connect them with

classical or modern literary sources and then proceeds

to find out the deep meaning the general symbolic

idea of the work Therefore he may be considered as

one of the pioneers not only of iconography as a disci-

pline of research but also of iconology as formulated

by its recent partisans That even in the second half

of the sixteenth century some observers were inclined

to look for hidden meaning in each element of the work

of art we learn from Joannes Molanus (1570) who in

De picturis et imaginibus sacris states reasonably that

ldquoit is not necessary to ask for meaning of everything

that can be observed in a picture in such cases a lot

of absurd things may resultrdquo But the consciousness of

the importance of iconography increased and at the

end of the seventeenth century Andreacute Feacutelibien stressed

that in order to attribute a picture to a painter it is

not enough to know the way he uses his brush one

needs also to know his esprit to learn his geacutenie and

to be able to foresee in which way he is able to form

his conceptions Thus iconographic analysis was con-

sidered necessary even for the purpose of attribution

Descriptive interpretations of the works of ancient

art appeared in the big archaeological publications of

the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries such as

Jacques Spons Miscellanea eruditae antiquitatis (1679)

G P Belloris Admiranda romanarum antiquitatum ac

veteris sculpturae vestigia (1693) P de Caylus Recueil

535

dantiquiteacutes eacutegyptiennes eacutetrusques grecques et

romaines (1752-67) and in an interesting endeavor

(although very much criticized by Lessing) of Joseph

Spence to explain classical poets through works of art

and vice versa (Polymetis 1747) Classical archaeology

however has not been especially interested in iconog-

raphy and the use of the term itself by archaeolo-

gists was limited to portraiture The first great devel-

opment of iconographic studies was connected with

the romantic movement although an important pre-

lude for it was hagiographical collections of sources

such as Acta sanctorum published by the Bollandists

(1643-1794 resumed later) Among the pre-romantic

scholars in iconography the eminent German poet

G E Lessing is to be noted His study of the repre-

sentation of death in classical times can be considered

as one of the first essays in interpretative iconography

which is now called iconology In Wie die Alten den

Tod gebildet (1769) Lessing tries to interpret the classi-

cal iconographic type of Amor with the inverted torch

and to find its ldquointrinsic meaningrdquo by taking into ac-

count the religion customs and philosophy of the

classical world The work of art is interpreted by Less-

ing as ldquoa symptom of something elserdquo While Lessings

predecessors (like B de Montfaucon) ldquoexplained the

classical past by monumentsrdquo he for the first time did

the opposite ldquohe explained the monuments by Antiq-

uityrdquo (Maurin Białostocka [1969] pp 92-100)

Pre-romantic and romantic interests in myth and

symbol found their expression in publications and dis-

cussions by German philosophers and scholars like F

Schlegel J Herder J J von Goumlrres and F Creuzer

Creuzers work Symbolik und Mythologie der alten

Voumllker (1810) which shows the influence of mystical

Neo-Platonic ideas on symbols (Gombrich 1965) was

the most influential in the romantic period in Ger-

many Under the impact of Chateaubriands le Geacutenie

du christianisme (1802) research in medieval iconog-

raphy developed mainly in France Works by French

scholars mostly clergymen which were indeed con-

cerned with Christian medieval art dominated icon-

ographical study in the nineteenth century Since most

of these writers were not professional scholars their

work was often amateurish in character but it is unde-

niable that books by A N Didron Histoire de Dieu

(Paris 1843) the first part of a comprehensive pro-

jected but not completed iconography of Christian art

A Crosnier Iconographie chreacutetienne (Caen 1848) C

Cahier Caracteacuteristiques des saints (Paris 1867) C

Rohault de Fleury Archeacuteologie chreacutetienne les saints

de la messe et leurs monuments 12 vols (Paris

1893-1900) L Breacutehier Lart chreacutetien son deacuteveloppe-

ment iconographique des origines agrave nos jours (Paris

1918) P Perdrizet V Leroquais and G de Jerphanion

have built up a solid body of iconographical knowl-

edge on which scholars of the twentieth century were

able to erect a modern comprehensive structure In

the field of Byzantine iconography it was Gabriel

Millets Recherches sur liconographie de leacutevangile aux

XIVe XVe et XVIe siegravecles (Paris 1916 reprint

1960) that was basic for any further study For Western

chiefly French art a well-written and learned work

appealing to the general reader as well as to the

scholar was produced by Eacutemile Macircle who in his four

volumes of the history of religious art (1898-1932) has

presented a well-composed synthetic image of icono-

graphical development A lexicographic summary of

these studies of generations of French scholars is pre-

sented in the Dictionnaire darcheacuteologie chreacutetienne et

de liturgie published from 1907 to 1953 and edited

by F Cabrol and H Leclerq A recent reference work

is that by L Reacuteau Iconographie de lart chreacutetien (Paris

1955-59) Russian scholars have done important work

in the field of Byzantine and Orthodox iconography

of religious art The most prominent are N P Kon-

dakov Ikonografia Bogomatieri (St Petersburg 1911

2nd ed 1914-15) D V Ainalov Mosaiki IV i V vekov

(St Petersburg 1895) and N Pokrovski Otcherki

pamyatnikov christianskogo isskusstva i ikonografii (St

Petersburg 1894 3rd ed 1910) V Lasarev and M

Alpatov belonging to the mid-twentieth-century gen-

eration of Russian scholars discuss iconography in

several works on religious art German scholarship

produced in the nineteenth century works by F Piper

A Springer and H Detzel Useful compendia were

produced in the early twentieth century by J Sauer

W Molsdorf K Kuumlnstle and J Braun Dutch scholars

C Smits J B Knipping and J J M Timmers contrib-

uted to iconographic studies in recent times Knip-

pings book (1939-40) being the most important work

on the iconography of the Counter-Reformation and

supplementing Macircles volume of 1932 In the twentieth

century on C R Moreys initiative iconographic

studies were inaugurated in North America Focused

on earlier medieval art these studies developed at

Princeton University

A new direction characteristic of iconographic

studies in the twentieth century has been given to

them by the international school of art historical re-

search inaugurated by the Hamburg scholar Aby

Warburg At the International Congress for the History

of Art at Rome in 1912 he presented a sensational

astrological interpretation of the frescoes painted by

Francesco Cossa and his collaborators in Palazzo

Schifanoja at Ferrara Warburg solved the secret of

those representations which had puzzled the ingenuity

of several former students interpreting them as images

of zodiacal signs and their decans But he did not limit

536

his contribution to the presentation of his results He

wanted to stress the importance of his approach and

of the method of study which later became connected

with his name He said

I hope that through the method used by me for explication

of the frescoes at the Palazzo Schifanoja of Ferrara I have

proved that an iconological analysis which does not allow

itself to be diverted by the rules of frontier police from

considering antiquity Middle Ages and modern times as

interconnected periods nor from analyzing the most liberal

and the most applied works of art as equally important

documents of expression that this method endeavoring as

it does to throw light upon one dark spot clears up at

the same time great interconnected developments

(Warburg 1912 Heckscher 1967)

Warburgs influence on the history of art was very

great although he himself did not write much It was

mainly the posthumous impact of his ideas promul-

gated as they were by Fritz Saxl which contributed

to the specific direction of studies concentrated in the

library Warburg founded in Hamburg and which Saxl

succeeded in transplanting during the Nazi era to

London where it became the Warburg Institute of the

University of London While the object of study of the

nineteenth-century iconographers was mainly religious

art in its relation to religious literary sources and lit-

urgy for Warburg the study of images was a study

of their relations to religion to poetry to myth to

science and to social and political life Art was for

him closely connected with the polyphonic structure

of historical life

Warburgs ideas had a great importance for the most

influential theory of iconographic interpretation in our

century that elaborated by Erwin Panofsky In Ham-

burg where Warburg Saxl and Panofsky were active

in the twenties Ernst Cassirer built up his philosophy

of symbolic forms which constituted an additional

background for Panofskys system being derived as

his own methodology was from the traditions of

Kantian philosophy Around 1930 Panofskys ideas

ripened into a system which found formulation in his

book herkules am Scheidewege (1930) and later in a

theoretical article of 1932 G J Hoogewerff was how-

ever the first to propose the word ldquoiconologyrdquo as a

name for the method of an analysis of content in a

work of art (Warburg spoke of iconological analysis)

In 1931 he proposed distinguishing between iconogra-

phy as a descriptive science aiming at the identifica-

tion of themes and ldquoiconologyrdquo aiming at the under-

standing ldquoof symbolic dogmatic or mystical meaning

which is expressed (or hidden) in figurative formsrdquo He

stressed that ldquoiconologyrdquo deals with works of art with-

out classifying them according to the technique used

or to the achieved perfection taking into account only

their meaning Hoogewerff saw the last aim of iconol-

ogy in finding out the cultural and ideological back-

ground expressed by works of art and the cultural and

social significance which can be attributed to certain

forms and to means of expression in the same time

Hoogewerffs part in the expansion of iconology was

limited because he did not endorse his methodical

proposals with examples of historical interpretations

Erwin Panofsky with whose name iconology has

been connected ever since not only developed its

theoretical foundations but contributed by his practi-

cal work in art history to the main triumph of iconol-

ogy after the Second World War The most influential

book by Panofsky has been Studies in Iconology (1939)

in which his masterly presentation of the method was

connected with its equally excellent exemplification

2 Panofsky considers the interpretation of a work

of art as falling on three levels On the first level the

object of interpretation is the primary or natural sub-

ject matter The function of interpretation is called

ldquopre-iconographical descriptionrdquo In order to be able

to arrive at a correct interpretation on that level the

interpreter must have a practical experience (ldquofamili-

arity with objects and eventsrdquo) common to everybody

at least in one cultural sphere However he has to

control his observations by a ldquocorrective knowledge

of the history of stylerdquo (ldquoinsight into the manner in

which under varying historical conditions objects and

events were expressed by formsrdquo) On the second level

the function of interpretation is called ldquoiconographical

analysisrdquo its object is the ldquosecondary or conventional

subject matterrdquo constituting the world of images his-

tories and allegories The interpreters equipment in

this case is obviously the knowledge of literary sources

giving him a ldquofamiliarity with specific themes and

conceptsrdquo The interpreter has to control his observa-

tions by ldquothe insight into the manner in which under

varying historical conditions specific themes or con-

cepts were expressed by objects and eventsrdquo On the

third level the function of interpreting is called ldquoicon-

ographical analysis in a deeper senserdquo (1939) or ldquoicon-

ological analysisrdquo (1955) Its object is the ldquointrinsic

meaning or contentrdquo of a work of art The interpreters

equipment on that level should be a ldquofamiliarity with

the essential tendencies of the human mindrdquo and he

has to control his interpretation by the ldquoinsight into

the manner in which under varying historical condi-

tions essential tendencies of the human mind were

expressed by specific themes and conceptsrdquo Thus

taking all the time into account what Panofsky calls

the history of tradition the interpreter has to aim at

understanding the work of art its ldquoprimaryrdquo as well

as ldquosecondary subject matterrdquo as symptoms of some

fundamental tendency of the human mind typical of

537

a place a time a civilization and of an individual

responsible for the creation of the work ldquoIconologyrdquomdash

for Panofskymdashldquois a method of interpretation which

arises from synthesis rather than analysisrdquo Trying to

find the intrinsic meaning of a work of art

The art historian will have to check what he thinks is the

intrinsic meaning of the work or group of works against

what he thinks is the intrinsic meaning of as many other

documents of civilization historically related to that work

or group of works as he can master It is in the search

for intrinsic meaning or content that the various humanistic

disciplines meet on a common plane instead of serving as

handmaidens to each other

(Panofsky [1955] p 39)

The concept of intrinsic meaning of a work of art

was elaborated by Panofsky much earlier (1925) when

he interpreted in his own way the concept of Kunst-

wollen introduced by A Riegl to research in art

Panofsky understood this ldquoartistic volitionrdquo as an im-

manent ultimate meaning of a work of art which is

manifested in the way basic artistic problems are solved

in that work He used the same concept further to bring

art closer to the other fields of human activity Since

the ldquoimmanent ultimate senserdquo of the work of art is

nothing else than uniformity in the way of solving basic

artistic problems it is possible to compare that imma-

nent sense with immanent senses of the other human

works in various fields Panofsky did it for instance

when in one of his later works he compared the struc-

tural principles of Gothic architecture with those of

scholastic thinking (1951)

The system elaborated by Panofsky and exemplified

by his own work in art history was the first consistent

system of an integral interpretation of a work of visual

arts based on the analysis of content In principle

Panofskys system takes into account all the elements

of the work of art since it takes as the point of depar-

ture the sensual exterior shape of the work It is

however clear that its main scope is not the inter-

pretation of form as a bearer of meaning but the

understanding and interpretation of conventional alle-

gories literary themes and symbols as symptoms of

the history of the human mind It was that method

in the history of art which programmatically fostered

a collaboration with all the other disciplines of histori-

cal studies It was therefore one of the most influential

methods not only among art historians but also among

representatives of the other branches of humanistic

studies Although there were art historians who ex-

pressed a critical attitude toward ldquoiconologyrdquo as the

new method was soon baptized its influence was over-

whelming

3 It is not only but mainly due to Panofsky that

one can venture to call ldquoiconographicalrdquo that period

of art history as a historical discipline which followed

the Second World War and to oppose it to the ldquostylis-

ticrdquo one which preceded it It does not mean of course

that no iconographic research took place in the

twenties or thirties the works of Macircle Knipping van

Marle Wilpert Saxl and of Panofsky himself would

contradict such a statement Neither is it true that

purely formal research aiming at stylistic classification

and analysis discontinued after World War II It is

evident that in the last decades (from 1940 on) icono-

graphic interests came to the fore and became domi-

nant in many countries Iconographical studies grew

so much in number and importance that they made

it possible to undertake and to publish new reference

works of iconographic character like dictionaries

written by one scholar (Guy de Tervarent Aurenham-

mer) as well as larger works based on a collaboration

of several scholars (Encyclopedias of German art of

Antiquity and Christian civilization of Byzantine art)

Interest in meaning and iconography has appeared

also among historians of political social and religious

institutions The symbolism of signs ceremonies cos-

tumes and arms was studied by such scholars as A

Alfoumlldi ldquoInsignien und Tracht der roumlmischen Kaiserrdquo

Mitteilungen des deutschen Archaumlologischen Instituts

Roumlmische Abteilung (1935) 1ff ldquoDie Geburt der

kaiserlichen Bildsymbolikrdquo museum Helveticum 9

(1952) 204ff also by A Grabar Martyrium (Paris

1943-46) by E H Kantorowicz laudes Regiae

(Berkeley and Los Angeles 1946) The Kings Two

Bodies (Princeton 1957) by H P L Orange Studies

in the Iconography of Cosmic Kingship in the Ancient

World (Oslo 1953) Art Forms and Civic Life in the

Late Roman Empire (Princeton 1965) and by P E

Schramm herrschaftszeichen und Staatssymbolik

(Stuttgart 1954-56) In their studies iconography far

transcends the borders of art and it helps to build up

a history of ideas by following their various visual

expressions

Pioneering studies by K Giehlow F Saxl and E

Panofsky enlarged iconographical interests above all

to encompass the large field of secular art whereas

they had been mainly limited to religious iconography

in the work of preceding generations of scholars The

whole complicated and hardly known large body of

meanings disguised by the cryptic language of hiero-

glyphs emblems and iconologies became one of the

main topics of study

This established a collaboration between historians

of art and literature Mario Prazs admirable study of

emblems and his bibliography of emblem books

(1939-47) belongs now to the foundations of studies

in that field Publications by W S Heckscher and

A K Wirth by R S Clements E F von Monroy and

538

H M von Erffa E de Jongh and H Miedema and

several other scholars have elucidated the structure

and meaning of emblems and have shown their tre-

mendous influence on art even in its most monumental

and dignified forms An uninterrupted flow of reprints

of emblem books which brought within the reach of

modern students inaccessible volumes of sixteenth- and

seventeenth-century emblem writers were crowned by

the monumental undertaking of Arthur Henkel and

Albrecht Schoumlne who compiled an excellent volume

including almost all the texts and images needed for

the study of emblemsmdashEmblemata Handbuch zur

Sinnbildkunst des XVI und XVII Jahrhunderts

(Stuttgart 1967) Research was under way on hiero-

glyphs (Erik Iversen) and on the imprese (the late

Robert Klein) as well as on iconologies and allegories

These studies have disclosed meanings of the art of

the Renaissance of mannerism and of the baroque not

understood by nineteenth-century scholars

E Panofsky deciphered extremely farfetched and

individualistic programs of decoration of such famous

ensembles as the Camera di San Paolo by Correggio

in Parma the Gallery of Franccedilois I at Fontainebleau

Edgar Wind Andreacute Chastel and other scholars inter-

preted Raphaels decorations in the Popes apartments

Michelangelos art furnished material to detailed com-

prehensive studies by Panofsky Ch de Tolnay H von

Einem and Pope-Hennessy in which the share of

Neo-Platonic thinking in the ideological background

of the celebrated works of Michelangelo was discussed

Innumerable studies have been devoted to Titians

mythological paintings J R Martin presented expla-

nations of the Carracci frescoes in the Camerino Far-

nese and in the great gallery of the Palazzo Farnese

Bruegel considered in the nineteenth century as a drocircle

painter of peasant life has been shown by de Tolnay

Stridbeck and others to be an allegorist expressing a

skeptical humanistic outlook J S Held and W

Stechow contributed several articles to the under-

standing of mythological and allegorical contents in

Flemish and Dutch art of the sixteenth and seventeenth

centuries Rembrandts iconography was put into new

light by the two above-mentioned scholars as well as

by H M Rotermund H van de Waal J G van Gelder

H von Einem and Ch Tuumlmpel The intricate symbol-

ism and subject matter of historical and mythological

pictures by Nicolas Poussin were elucidated by such

masters of iconographic research as E H Gombrich

W Friedlaumlnder E Panofsky and above all by A Blunt

who in his monograph on Poussin presented a new

deep synthetic view of the ideas expressed by that

artists works Goyas individualistic secret symbolism

was also studied with the help of emblems and the

allegorical tradition Berninis works received iconolo

gical treatment by R Wittkower and H Kauffmann

All of this research does not mean that there was a

lack of interest in religious iconography M Schapiro

A Katzenellenbogen H Bober F Wormald and V

Elbern among others have contributed considerably

to deepen our understanding of the not completely

explained motifs and prominent works of medieval art

Panofsky has also shed a new light on several problems

of sepulchral iconography studies by such scholars as

R Berliner G von der Osten L Kalinowski S

Ringbom and T Dobrzeniecki contributed to late

medieval iconography in a new way Berliner stressed

the autonomous invention of visual artists or their

patrons while according to the traditional view popu-

larized by Macircle late medieval art should have followed

strictly literary sources

The religious content of modern art especially its

allegorical form in the late baroque period has been

examined and thanks to studies by such scholars as

W Mrazek and H Bauer has become better known

and understandable A great change was introduced

by ldquoiconologyrdquo into architectural history Buildings

which were formerly interpreted from aesthetic and

functional points of view only have been shown to

present allegorical symbolical or even emblematic

ideas Publications by leading art historians (R Witt-

kower B Smith G Bandmann O von Simson and

G C Argan) have presented medieval and modern

architecture as a bearer of meaning and have essen-

tially changed the character of architectural history

The iconography of classicism and romanticism

received a thorough treatment in books by W Hof-

mann and R Rosenblum as well as in several studies

devoted to individual themes and pictures G Hersey

has for example shown how much Delacroixs decora-

tion of the library in the Palais Bourbon owed to

Giambattista Vicos ideas about history More recently

studies on ldquoSymbolismrdquo have been undertaken Vincent

van Goghs symbolic language and iconography were

the object of studies by J Seznec C Nordenfalk and

other scholars On Ceacutezannes iconography interesting

remarks have been published by M Schapiro

Along with the development of iconographic studies

the establishment of centers of documentation has

advanced The ldquoFrenchrdquo stage in the development of

iconography has not left any marked trace in this

respect It was in America thanks to C R Morey that

the famous Index of Christian Art at the Department

of Art and Archaeology of Princeton University was

founded at first limited to the early Middle Ages then

enlarged so as to include art up to the end of the

medieval period Copies of the Princeton Index are

to be found also at the Istituto Pontificio dArcheolo-

gia in Rome and in the Dumbarton Oaks Library and

539

Collection in Washington DC But that Index ends

ldquowhere art beginsrdquomdashas Panofsky used to say jokingly

The need for systematic iconographic files for modern

art was strongly felt In 1956 A Pigler published a

very useful book Barockthemen in which he listed

thousands of works of art of the baroque period ac-

cording to their subjects It was however far from

being a systematic work The first essay in establishing

a systematic iconographic index for art of any time

was done by The Netherlands Institute for Art History

at the Hague then directed by H Gerson which took

the initiative around 1950 of publishing a postcard-size

photographic index of its rich collection of photographs

of Netherlandish art ordered according to an icono-

graphic principle Once such an idea was formulated

the need for a comprehensive consistent and clear

iconographic classification was urgent H van de Waal

of Leiden University devised such a system of classifi-

cation based on decimal divisions consistent and easy

to read He based his system on experiences of ethnol-

ogy and on such elaborated systems of classification

as that devised by Stith Thompson in his Motif-Index

of Folk Literature Vols I-VI (Bloomington Ind

1932-36 rev ed 1955-58) Van de Waal has elabor-

ated a system in which the first five main sections

classify five fundamental groups of portrayable things

namely (1) The Supernatural (2) Nature (3) Man (4)

Society (5) Abstracts The last four classify specific

subjects such as (6) History (7) The Bible (8) Myths

Legends and Tales (with the exception of classical

antiquity) (9) Myths and Legends of Classical Antiq-

uity Van de Waal combines the classification in the

first and in the second group in order to classify general

as well as specific subjects Christ in his system is

described with the sign ldquo11 Drdquo (ldquo1rdquo standing for Su-

pernatural ldquo11rdquo for Christianity ldquoDrdquo for Christ) the

adult Christ = 11 D 3 since ldquoshepherdrdquo on the other

hand bears the signature 47 I 221 the adult Christ

as a shepherd can be described in this system by the

following formula 11 D 3 = 47 I 221 Van de Waal

has also provided means to describe more complex

images which he expresses by adding elements between

brackets The Annunciation with God the Father and

a winged Angel is expressed by the following formula

73 A 5 (+1 +41) ldquo1rdquo standing for God the Father

and ldquo41rdquo for a winged Angel (van de Waal 1952) This

system elaborated for many years by its inventor and

prepared for publication in many volumes has proved

most useful in the practical arrangement of the Icono-

graphical Index of the Netherlandish Art and as the

only one until now in existence it became used more

and more in spite of some ambiguities and difficulties

As an endeavor to classify ldquoall portrayablerdquo things

persons events and ideas and to create a consistent

method to describe every possible image van de Waals

system may be considered as one of the important

achievements of the ldquoiconographical stagerdquo in the

development of art history Iconographic files exist of

course in many institutions as for example in the Ikon-

ologisch Instituut of Utrecht University one of the

main centers of study in emblematics and of course

in the most venerable institution of iconographic re-

search the Warburg Institute of the London University

and in other places

4 What was the result of this ldquoiconographicrdquo turn

in the development of the history of art One thing

is certain that this discipline by necessity has come

closer to other humanistic disciplines Since the

ldquointrinsicrdquo meaningmdashin Panofskys terminologymdashof a

work of art cannot be described in terms used by the

history of art but only in terms borrowed from the

history of philosophy of religion of social structures

of science and so on the ldquoiconological methodrdquo took

for granted and provoked such a collaboration Art

history was perhaps the first or one of the first to show

new interest in investigation of meaning It was fol-

lowed by similar developments in ethnology and in

linguistics

We have mentioned above a parallel development

in Byzantine and classical studies Panofskys influence

has been considerable in the other fields of humanistic

research Since ldquoiconologyrdquo aimed at discovering ideas

expressed by a work of art it awoke in art historians

an interest in the history of ideas This general shift

of emphasis and of the direction of studies from mainly

formal ones to studies aiming at ideas underlying art

was perhaps responsible among others for the fact that

several contributions to the Journal of the History of

Ideas have been written by historians of art

It is not difficult to see that such a development

should have provoked criticism on the side of those

who care about the purity and autonomy of methods

Iconology was criticized as far as its internal coherence

and also as far as its claim to be the integral method

of the study of art are concerned (Białostocki 1962)

Studies by R Klein E Forssman G Previtali G

Kubler B Teyssegravedre C Ginzburg and G Hermeren

expressed critical opinions in one or the other respect

Iconology linked art with the rest of history but it

disrupted the links between the work of art and other

things (Kubler 1962) Concentrating on meaning

iconology neglected art as form as individual expres-

sion Iconology implied a rational relationship between

intellectual content and artistic form On the one hand

one spoke of ldquoiconological diminutionsrdquo (Kubler

1962)mdashlimitations of research to meaning only But

on the other hand the overstatements of iconology

were criticized its representatives sometimes seemed

540

to assume everything symbolized something And some

iconologists seemed to consider important in art not

that which makes art a different field of human activity

but that which connects art with other fieldsmdashwith

the history of ideas

There were of course critics who had the opposite

opinion Since the end of the eighteenth century a

direct experience of art was more and more valued

and its symbolical function considered as a burden

J G von Herder said ein Kunstwerk ist der Kunst

wegen da aber bei einem Symbole ist die Kunst

dienend (ldquoA work of art is there because of art but

with a symbol art is a servicerdquo) Similar opinions were

expressed by nineteenth-century art writers and in this

century they have been voiced by Benedetto Croce and

by other Italian opponents of contenutismo by which

they meant interest in content For such critics to put

stress on iconography was to miss the essential in art

and to focus attention on a subordinate function of art

Also among scholars who considered the function

of representation and of communication as a legitimate

and important function of art criticism was expressed

not against the principle of an iconographical or icon-

ological investigation but against overstatements in

their application The introduction of the idea of ldquodis-

guised symbolismrdquo has created a danger of course of

opening the way to fanciful interpretations The alle-

gorical and symbolical function of mythological imag-

ery in classical art is also difficult to interpret precisely

Since no literary sources give a key to an interpretation

of the iconography of the sarcophagi very divergent

theories have been expressed concerning their meaning

Some archaeologists like F Cumont (1942) believe

that mythological and allegorical imagery (Anadyo-

mene Sea-Thiasos Personifications of the Seasons) is

to be read symbolically The Sea-Thiasos for instance

is to be interpreted as a symbol of the journey of the

souls of the deceased to the islands of the blessed

Others like A D Nock (1946) do not find enough

evidence to accept other than a decorative function

in such imagery

The intrusion of some representatives of psychology

eg C G Jung into iconographic studies giving them

an unhistorical turn in their search for ldquoarchetypal

imagesrdquo has complicated the situation although art

historians in general understandably have not accepted

that kind of approach to symbolism (Frankfort 1958

Gombrich 1965)

The fact that iconographic interpretations sometimes

lack satisfactory proofs does not detract from the im-

portance of such investigations so long as they are

conducted according to the requirements of historical

methods and take into account the corrective princi-

ples established by Panofsky A correct acquaintance

with the way of thinking of the artist the patron or the

viewer based on a satisfactory knowledge of documen-

tary visual and literary sources an awareness of the

choice situations produced by historical developments

may enable art historians to discover the secondary

meaning of a work of art as well as its intrinsic mean-

ing It is of course possible that the art historian will

meet some works for which it will not be possible to re-

construct in a satisfactory way the world of ideas that

would account for the meaning of those works In such

cases a reliable interpretation is simply not possible

R Berliner (1945 1966) criticized the widespread

opinion according to which content of the works of

visual arts in the Middle Ages had to be checked

against the literary sources considered as the only

medium in which ideological innovations were per-

mitted Berliner pleaded for assuming a considerable

ldquofreedomrdquo in the medieval artist and he considered

iconographic innovation possible even when no writ-

ten evidence could be found Meyer Schapiro (1947)

presented proofs that sometimes purely aesthetic rea-

sons decided the character of the work of art even as

early as the Romanesque period

We can only touch on some specific discussions going

on in the field of iconographic research But iconogra-

phic research is far from being a closed system and

the relative share of iconographic and stylistic criticism

in the work of art historians is always a matter of

discussion It is certain that the ldquoiconographicrdquo period

in the study of art has enlarged in a considerable way

the understanding of the art of the past and that it

has connected art history in a way unknown before

with the other historical disciplines and above all others

with the history of ideas

BIBLIOGRAPHY

L B Alberti On Painting ed J Spencer (New Haven

1956 revised ed 1966) E Auerbach ldquoFigurardquo (1944) trans

and published in Scenes From the Drama of European Liter-

ature (New York 1959) pp 11-76 K Bauch ldquoImagordquo

(1960) Studien zur Kunstgeschichte (Berlin 1967) pp 1-20

G P Bellori Descrizione delle imagini dipinte da Raffaello

(Rome 1695 ed used is 1751) R Berliner ldquoThe Free-

dom of Medieval Artrdquo Gazette des Beaux-Arts 628 (1945)

263-88 idem ldquoBemerkungen zu einigen Darstellungen des

Erloumlsers als Schmerzensmannrdquo Das Muumlnster 9 (1956)

97-117x J Białostocki ldquoIconografia e Iconologiardquo Enciclo-

pedia Universale dellArte (1962) Vol VII cols 163-75

trans as Encyclopedia of World Art (1966) Vol VII cols

769-85 lists almost all important older contributions to this

field idem ldquoRomantische Ikonographierdquo Stil und Ikonog-

raphie (Dresden 1966) pp 156-81 idem ldquoKompozycja

emblematyczna epitafioacutew ślaskich XVI wiekurdquo (ldquoEmblem-

atic Composition of Silesian Epitaphs of the Sixteenth Cen-

turyrdquo) Ze studioacutew nad Sztuka XVI wieku na Řlasku

(Wrocław 1968) pp 77-93 idem ldquoEsilio Privatordquo Bulletin

du Museacutee National de Varsovie 10 (1969) 95-101 J

541

Chydenius The Theory of Medieval Symbolism (Helsingfors

1960) Series of the Societas Scientiarum Fennica Com-

mentationes Humanarum Litterarum 27 2 R J Clements

Picta Poesis (Rome 1960) F Creuzer Symbolik und

Mythologie der Alten Voumllker (Leipzig and Darmstadt 1810

revised ed 1819) F Cumont Recherches sur le symbolisme

funeacuteraire des Romains (Paris 1942) L Eitner ldquoThe Open

Window and the Storm-Tossed Boatrdquo Art Bulletin 37

(1955) 281-90 H Frankfort ldquoThe Archetype in Analytical

Psychology and the History of Religionrdquo Journal of the

Warburg and Courtauld Institutes 21 (1958) 166-78

K Garas ldquoAllegorie und Geschichte in der Venezianischen

Malerei des 18 Jahrhundertsrdquo in proceedings of the XXI

International Congress of the History of Art Bonn Stil und

Uumlberlieferung in der Kunst des Abendlandes (Berlin 1967)

3 280-83 K Giehlow ldquoDie Hieroglyphenkunde des

Humanismus in der Allegorie der Renaissancerdquo Jahrbuch

der Kunsthistorischen Sammlungen des Allerhochsten

Kaiserhauses 32 (1915) 1-232 C Gilbert ldquoOn Subject and

Not-Subject in Italian Renaissance Picturesrdquo Art Bulletin

34 (1952) 202-16 C Ginzburg ldquoDa A Warburg a E H

Gombrich Note su un problema di metodordquo Studi medi-

evali series 3 7 (1966) 1015-65 E H Gombrich ldquoIcones

Symbolicae The Visual Image in Neo-Platonic Thoughtrdquo

Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes 11 (1948)

163-92 idem ldquoThe Use of Art for the Study of Symbolsrdquo

American Psychologist 20 (1965) A Grabar Liconoclasme

byzantin Dossier archeacuteologique (Paris 1957) idem Chris-

tian Iconography A Study of Its Origins (Princeton 1969)

S J Gudlaugsson De Comedianten bij Jan Steen en zijn

tijdgenooten (s-Gravenhage 1945) W S Heckscher ldquoThe

Genesis of Iconologyrdquo Stl und Uumlberlieferung in der Kunst

des Abendlandes Akten des XXI Internationalen Kon-

gresses fuumlr Kunstgeschichte (Berlin 1967) 3 239-62 G

Hermereacuten Representation and Meaning in the Visual Arts

A Study in the Methodology of Iconography and Iconology

Lund Studies in Philosophy Vol I (Lund 1969) R Hinks

Myth and Allegory in Ancient Art (London 1939) W

Hofmann Das Irdische Paradies (Munich 1960) G J

Hoogewerff ldquoLIconologie et son importance pour leacutetude

systeacutematique de lart chreacutetienrdquo Rivista dArcheologia Cris-

tiana 8 (1931) 53-82 E de Jongh Zinne- en minnebeelden

in de schilderkunst van de zeventiende eeuw (mdash1967) idem

ldquoErotica in Vogelperspectief De dubbelzinnigheid van een

reeks 17de eeuwse genrevoorstellingenrdquo Simiolus 3

(1968-69) 22-72 L Kalinowski ldquoTreści ideowe i estetyczne

Drzwi Gnieźnieńskichrdquo (ldquoIdeological and Aesthetic Content

of the Gniezno Bronze Doorsrdquo) in Drzwi Gnieźnieńskie ed

M Walicki (Wroclaw 1959) 2 7-160 H Keller Tizians

Poesie fuumlr Koumlnig Philip II von Spanien (Wiesbaden 1969)

R Klein ldquoLa theacuteorie de lexpression figureacutee dans les traiteacutes

italiens sur les imprese 1555-1612rdquo Bibliothegraveque dHu-

manisme et Renaissance 19 (1957) 320-41 republished with

the other relevant studies in la forme et lintelligible (Paris

1969) R Klibansky E Panofsky F Saxl Saturn and Melan-

choly (London 1964) J B Knipping Ikonografie van de

Contra-Reformatie in de Nederlanden (Hilversum 1939-40)

G Kubler The Shape of Time (New Haven and London

1962) R W Lee ldquoUt pictura poesisrdquo Art Bulletin 22

(1940) 197-269 E Macircle Lart religieux du XIIIe siegravecle en

France (Paris 1898) English ed used (New York 1958)

idem Lart religieux de la fin du Moyen-Age en France

(Paris 1908) idem Lart religieux du XIIe siegravecle en France

(Paris 1922) idem Lart religieux apregraves le Concile de Trente

(Paris 1932) J Maurin Białostocka Lessing i sztuki plas-

tyczne (ldquoLessing and the visual artsrdquo) (Wroclaw Warszawa

Krakoacutew 1969) E F von Monroy Embleme und Emblem-

buumlcher in den Niederlanden 1560-1630 ed H M von Erffa

(Utrecht 1964) J Montagu ldquoThe Painted Enigma and

French Seventeenth Century Artrdquo Journal of the Warburg

and Courtauld Institutes 31 (1968) 307-35 W Mrazek

Ikonologie der barocken Deckenmalerei (Vienna 1953)

Uumlsterreichische Akademie der Wissenschaften Philo-

sophisch-historische Klasse Sitzungsberichte 2283 A D

Nock ldquoSarcophagi and Symbolismrdquo American Journal of

Archaeology 50 (1946) 166ff D Panofsky and E Panofsky

ldquoThe Iconography of the Galeacuterie Franccedilois Ier at Fontaine-

bleaurdquo Gazette des Beaux-Arts 652 (1958) 113-90

E Panofsky ldquoUumlber das Verhaumlltnis der Kunstgeschichte zur

Kunsttheorierdquo Zeitschrift fuumlr Aesthetik und allgemeine

Kunstwissenschaft 18 (1925) 129-61 idem Studies in

Iconology (New York 1939) idem ed Abbot Suger (Prince-

ton 1946) idem Gothic Architecture and Scholasticism

(Latrobe Pa 1951) idem Early Netherlandish Painting

(Cambridge Mass 1953) idem Meaning in the Visual Arts

(Garden City N Y 1955) idem Renaissance and Renas-

cences in Western Art (Stockholm 1960) idem Tomb Sculp-

ture (New York 1964) E Panofsky and F Saxl ldquoClassical

Mythology in Medieval Artrdquo Metropolitan Museum Studies

4 (1932-33) 228-80 M Praz Studies in Seventeenth Cen-

tury Imagery (London 1939-47 2nd ed Rome 1964) S

Ringbom ldquoDevotional Images and Imaginative Devotions

Notes on the Place of Art in Late Medieval Private Pietyrdquo

Gazette des Beaux-Arts 6 73 (1969) 159-70 Joseph Sauer

Symbolik des Kirchengebaumludes und seiner Ausstattung in

der Auffassung des Mittelalters 2nd ed (Freiburg i B

1924) F Saxl ldquoFruumlhes Christentum und spaumltes Heidentum

in ihren kuumlnstlerischen Ausdrucksformenrdquo Wiener Jahrbuch

fuumlr Kunstgeschichte 2 (1923) 63-121 M Schapiro ldquoThe

Ruthwell Crossrdquo Art Bulletin 26 (1944) 232-45 idem ldquoOn

the Aesthetic Attitude in Romanesque Artrdquo in Art and

Thought issued in Honour of Ananda Coomaraswamy

(London 1947) 139-50 J Seznec The Survival of the Pagan

Gods (New York 1953) O G von Simson The Gothic

Cathedral (New York 1956) R E Spear ldquoThe Literary

Source of Poussins Realm of Florardquo The Burlington Maga-

zine 107 (1965) 563-69 L Volkmann Bilderschriften der

Renaissance (Leipzig 1923) Hans van de Waal Drie

eeuwen vaderlandsche geschieduitbeelding 1500-1800 (s-

Gravenhage 1952) idem ldquoSome Principles of a General

Iconographical Classificationrdquo in Actes du XVIIe Congregraves

International dHistoire de lArt Amsterdam 1952 (La Haye

1955) 601-06 E Wind ldquoCharity the Case History of a

Patternrdquo Journal of the Warburg Institute 1 (1937) 322ff

JAN BIAŁOSTOCKI

[See also Allegory Baroque Classicism Criticism Enlight-

enment Motif Myth Naturalism in Art Neo-Platonism

Renaissance Humanism Romanticism Symbolism Tem-

perance Ut pictura poesis]

Godrdquo Alain de Lille has given a popular compact

poetic formula of universal symbolism

Omnis mundi creatura

quasi liber et pictura

nobis est et speculum

(ldquoEvery creature of the world is for us like a book and

a picture of the world and it is like a mirrorrdquo) Saint

Bonaventure finds that created beauty being a sign of

the eternal leads men to God Theologians discerned

mainly two kinds of symbolism under different names

but signifying two more or less basically similar divi-

sions (1) existing things endowed with meaning (res

et signa) and (2) conventional signs (Chydenius 1960)

In the practical use of symbolism in art one can discern

another diversity an Aristotelian rational trend and

a Neo-Platonic irrational and mystical one (Gombrich

1948 1965) In the first case the images were not

considered as including any more content than their

verbal equivalents they constituted a code a conven-

tional language of signs used to communicate religious

messages In the second case experience of symbolical

images was believed to give the observer another

higher knowledge than that transmitted by words it

was meant to give a direct ecstatic and enthusiastic

contact with abstract ideas incorporated as it were

in images Medieval art used generally symbolic images

conceived as a code transmitting its messages to every-

body also to those who were not able to read The

other attitude to symbols appeared in the Middle Ages

in the mystical trends The image which can be grasped

in a sensual way was a means of transgressing the limits

of the corporeal world and of reaching the spiritual

one Such a function of images was formulated by

various theologians Jean Gerson in the fifteenth cen-

tury put it in the following words ldquoAnd we ought

thus to learn to transcend with our minds from these

visible things to the invisible from the corporeal to

the spiritual For this is the purpose of the imagerdquo

(Ringbom [1969] p 165)

The didactic doctrine had been formulated already

in the early period of the Church according to that

doctrine images were considered as a form of writing

accessible to those unable to read (Paulinus of Nola

Gregory the Great also Thomas Aquinas considered

images to be useful ad instructionem rudium) This

attitude lasted until the very end of the Middle Ages

(later it was revived in the period of the Counter-

Reformation) and it found expression as late as the

fourteenth and fifteenth centuries in the early graphic

imagery of such typological compendia as Biblia

pauperum and Speculum humanae salvationis The

didactic aims encompassed not only the direct moral

lessons which were transmitted through the imagery

of ldquoprohibitionrdquo and ldquodissuasionrdquo of the Last Judgment

and of the Virtues and Vices but also the visual repre-

527

sentation of sometimes complicated links among the

events of sacred history considered as prefigurations

and fulfillments which were established between the

figures and events of the Old and the New Dispen-

sation Thus typological thinking connected images

into symbolic relations Visual unity was established

in the religious imagery through the large encyclopedic

compendia eg Glossa ordinaria (the large body of

Commentaries to the Bible until recently held to be

a compilation by Walafrid Strabo) and Gulielmus

Durandus system of liturgy Rationale divinorum offi-

ciorum or Vincent of Beauvaiss Speculum maius an

image of the world seen in the symbolistic mirror

These books contributed to the realization of the tre-

mendous iconographical programs of the great cathe-

drals of the high Middle Ages where God nature and

man were united into an exceptionally elaborated sys-

tem of symbolic images mirroring the model of the

world current in the period of Gothic art Art at that

time followed the symbolistic way of thinking which

prevailed in theology as well as in liturgy in profane

ceremonials and in the other fields of life Art gave

artistic form to the abstract structure of the cosmos

as seen by medieval theologians and brought it close

to the understanding or to the imagination of every

man This does not at all mean that medieval symbol-

ism was always understandable to everybody and

everywhere Very specific theological problems and

controversies found their way into iconography and

when deciphered by modern iconographers they dis-

close often complicated religious andor political situ-

ations (for example the imagery of the Ruthwell Cross

which reflects the conflicting ideologies of Northern

versus Roman Christianity in England as revealed in

an analysis by Meyer Schapiro 1944)

Neo-Platonic symbolism was developed especially

under the impact of writings by Pseudo-Dionysius the

Areopagite His influence promoted to a great extent

medieval ideas about the symbolism of light The sym-

bolism of light found its highest achievement in the

creation of Gothic architecture dominated by the

mysticism of light (von Simson 1956) Abbot Suger

the auctor intellectualis of Gothic architecture pre-

sented in his writings an excellent record of that atti-

tude toward symbolism In his De rebus in adminis-

tratione sua gestis (XVII) he writes about the doors

with gilt bronze reliefs ldquoBright is the noble work but

being nobly bright the work should brighten the

minds so that they may travel through the true lights

to the true light where Christ is the true door

The dull mind rises to truth through that which

is materialrdquo (Panofsky [1946] pp 46-49) Con-

templating precious stones transports Sugers mind to

a contemplation of the supernatural

Whenmdashout of my delight in the beauty of the house of

Godmdashthe loveliness of the many-colored stones has called

me away from external cares and worthy meditation has

induced me to reflect transferring that which is material

to that which is immaterial on the diversity of the sacred

virtues then it seems to me that I see myself dwelling as

it were in some strange region of the universe which neither

exists entirely in the slime of the earth nor entirely in the

purity of Heaven and that by the Grace of God I can

be transported from this inferior to that higher world in

an anagogical mannerrdquo

(ibid pp 63-65)

To a similar sphere of mystical symbols the specific

symbolism of numbers also belongs Numbers in the

Bible and those referring to quantitative relations in

architecture were considered as having a mystical

meaning ldquothe Divine Wisdom is reflected in the num-

bers impressed on all thingsrdquo (Saint Augustine De

libero arbitrio II XVI) The belief in the mystical signi-

ficance of numbers which originated in Pythagorean-

ism and was revived by Neo-Platonism was transmitted

to the Middle Ages by the Fathers of the Church (Macircle

[1898] English ed [1958] p 10) Complicated ramifi-

cations of this numerical symbolism in the field of

medieval architectural iconography are studied by J

Sauer (1924) as well as by E Macircle (ibid p 10) The

number eight for example connected with the idea

of new life by the Fathers (since it comes after seven

the terminal number of human life and of the world)

expresses the concept of resurrection and therefore that

of the Baptism because of that early belief baptisteries

and baptismal fonts are octagonal (Macircle ibid p 14)

One may trace in such use of numerical symbolism

a mystical rather than a didactic attitude

The general adoption of a symbolic attitude does

not mean that in the Middle Ages no actual events

were represented in art However since medieval art

was very much traditional and remained faithful to

exempla or compositional visual patterns the actual

events when they were sometimes taken as subjects

of representation used to be transformed to fit precon-

ceived traditional patterns The written lives of the

saints have been composed according to literary and

mythical topoi The same may be observed in art

When a new subject had to be represented it used to

be molded according to existing patterns As an exam-

ple we may adduce the story of Saint Adalbert repre-

sented on the bronze doors of the twelfth century at

Gniezno Poland The formerly executed European

bronze church doors represented Christological narra-

tive or allegorical figures or ornaments The fairly

recent hagiographic story had to be given visual shape

It is not surprising that the representations in most

cases follow the patterns of Christological iconography

(Kalinowski 1959) Secular subjects as for example

528

the conquest of England by William the Conqueror

and its circumstances represented on the so-called

Bayeux Tapestry followed in the general idea the

classical tradition It seems that perhaps more of a

direct experience of the actual medieval life found its

way into art than is usually admitted but the relative

share of symbolism and realism of system and freedom

is still a matter of discussion among medievalists

(Berliner 1945 1956)

In the late Middle Ages the general system of icon-

ography persisted but new subjects especially the

representations of the most human episodes and rela-

tionships in Christs life namely of His infancy and

His emotional connections (with the Virgin and Saint

John) as well as His Passion and the episodes of Our

Ladys life come to the fore Although symbolical and

didactic thinking maintained its importance the means

to communicate with the faithful changed most sub-

jects popular in the late Middle Ages appeal to the

beholders emotions rather than to his reason Scholars

have selected a group of so-called devotional pictures

as opposed to dogmatic and to historical repre-

sentations but the precise delimitation of such a group

is still a matter of discussion as is also the question

of how much this art was influenced by literature and

especially by pious poetry With the development of

the graphic arts new cheap pictures spread widely the

typological imagery systematized in the Biblia pau-

perum and in the Speculum humanae salvationis

Great collections of religious meditations compiled in

monasteries like Meditations on the Life of Christ by

Pseudo-Bonaventure (ed I Ragusa and R B Green

1961) spread widely a new emotional approach to

iconography Also the religious theater had some influ-

ence on the way stories in art were told

4 In the iconography of the Renaissance art ldquohis-

toryrdquo was shifted to the fore at the expense of symbol-

ism It does not mean that symbols ceased to exist

Pictorial allegory and symbolism played a very impor-

tant part in the conception of humanistic art But what

was placed in the center of the new art theory was

the concept of istoria The first and the most important

task of the work of art according to L B Alberti (De

pictura 1435 Della pittura 1436) is to present a story

This story had to be selected from authoritative literary

sources either sacred or profane it should represent

in a possibly convincing and expressive way an episode

from the Holy Scriptures from sacred or classical

history from mythology or legend This new concept

of istoria which was to dominate iconographic consid-

erations for more than three hundred years (the mean-

ing of the term istoria or storia changed of course in

that period) was one of the consequences of the Ren-

aissance idea of the priority of literature over the visual

arts There were several reasons for that priority one

being a complete lack of known classical theory of art

In its stead the theories of poetry and rhetoric were

adopted as guiding principles for the visual arts Hence

the dominating Horatian principle Ut pictura poesis

which subordinated the visual arts to the rules of liter-

ary theory This identification of literature and art

lasted until G E Lessing in 1766 revolted against it

in his Laokooumln (R W Lee 1940) In the humanistic

theory of visual arts the concept of istoria took the

central place Istoria had to be chosen for its moral

value (Alberti chose as his examples the subjects show-

ing stoic moral firmness as the ldquoDeath of Meleagerrdquo

the ldquoImmolation of Iphigeniardquo or the ldquoCalumnyrdquo of

Apelles) it had to be represented according to the

principle of decorum and costume ie with regard to

its dignity and most truthfully to the literary proto-

type Everything should be suitable in ldquosize function

kind color and other similar thingsrdquo Alberti stressed

the necessity of varied and convincing expressions of

emotions by suitable gestures

The dependence of post-medieval iconography on

literature increased with time and in the seventeenth

century the truthfulness of the pictorial formulation

of literary subjects became one of the most valued

qualities of a work of visual arts ldquoRead the story and

the picture at the same timerdquo Nicolas Poussin wrote

to M de Chantelou one of his customers In the French

Royal Academy of Painting and Sculpture lengthy

discussions were going on concerning the relation of

pictures to literary sources To be able to represent

well subjects taken from poetry the artist had to be

a doctus artifex well-informed in various fields G P

Bellori (1695) stressed however the fact that not

everything good in writing comes out well in painting

Therefore the painter to be able to transform the

story had to acquire ldquoan universal knowledge of things

and he should contemplate precisely nature and reali-

tiesrdquo Some freedom was given to the artist from the

beginning Alberti was far from limiting the painter

too much by this dependence on literature He stressed

the specific requirements of the visual arts as for ex-

ample the necessity to limit the number of represented

figures in order to keep a balance between ldquocopious-

nessrdquo and ldquosolitude in paintingrdquo This made it of

course necessary to reduce crowded scenes to an easily

graspable number of figures in order to avoid ldquodissolute

confusionrdquo (Spencer [1956] pp 23-28)

The interest of early Renaissance art theorists in

iconography was not great They concentrated their

attention chiefly on the discussion of the means needed

to achieve a convincing and beautiful representation

of the istoria and on the specific problems of repre-

sentationmdashcorrect (by adoption of the rules of per-

529

spective) and beautiful (by adoption of the rules of

proportion) Leonardo da Vinci does not show a spe-

cific interest in iconography but in some passages of

his incompleted Treatise on Painting he gives literary

programs of pictures remarkably however the pic-

tures are not of stories but of representations of pow-

erful natural or human happenings such as storms and

battles Here the naturalistic interests of the Renais-

sance come to the fore

An important achievement of the Renaissance partly

affecting iconography was the reunionmdashas noticed and

described by E Panofsky and F Saxl (1932) and Panof-

sky (1960)mdashof the literary and visual traditions of

classical antiquity during the fifteenth century During

the Middle Ages the literary tradition of classical sub-

ject matter was separated from the visual tradition of

classical artistic motifs so that there was no awareness

of their belonging together The classical subjects for

example those taken from Ovid used to be represented

in contemporary medieval stylistic forms classical

artistic motifs on the other hand for example the forms

of garment folds human types gestures compositional

patterns and so on were used to represent Christian

subject matter as in the western portals of the Reims

cathedral or in the pulpits of Nicola or Giovanni

Pisano It was only in the High Renaissance eg in

the works of Raphael Titian Michelangelo and Cor-

reggio that forms and iconography themes and motifs

became reintegrated In this way the classical vision

of classical subjects became sometimes so perfect that

some works created around 1500 could have been

taken for classical originals (for example Bacchus by

Michelangelo) The growing understanding of classical

ideas and forms led to another specific Renaissance

phenomenon called by Panofsky ldquopseudomorphosisrdquo

Certain Renaissance figures became invested with a mean-

ing which for all their classicizing appearance had not been

present in their classical prototypes though it had fre-

quently been foreshadowed in classical literature Owing

to its medieval antecedents Renaissance art was often able

to translate into images what classical art had deemed

inexpressible

(Panofsky [1939] pp 70f)

In the north of Italy beside the concept of istoria

poesia appears a fact which also points to a depend-

ence on poetry this was understood mainly as referring

to lyrical poetry and not to epic or heroic Mythologi-

cal pictures by Titian were described in such a way

(Keller [1969] pp 24f) The stress was on the poetical

mood more than on an important human action a

lyrical tonality was preferred to a heroic one The

archaeological interests then current in Padua and

Venice visible for instance in the works by Andrea

Mantegna were moderated by an elegiac poetic mood

in reconstructing the classical world Pictures by Gior-

gione who worked for exclusive circles of humanists

were so hermetic in meaning that several of them like

the Three Philosophers (Vienna) or the Storm (Venice)

are iconographic riddles up to our own day The same

is true of the enigmatic and poetic iconography of some

pictures by Titian (Sacred and Profane Love in the

Borghese Gallery in Rome) by Lorenzo Lotto or by

the Ferrarese Dosso Dossi

The most important document of this romantic ar-

chaeological vision which strongly influenced icono-

graphical invention in Italy and outside of Italy was

a fantastic romance Hypnerotomachia Poliphili attrib-

uted in the most plausible way to a Franciscan monk

Francesco Colonna and published with beautiful

woodcuts by Aldus Manutius in Venice in 1499 Poetic

visions of a dreamy classical landscape full of ruins

in which the lovers Poliphilo and Polia wander influ-

enced the imagination of artists not less than the excel-

lent woodcuts their impact can be found as far and

as late as in the gardens at Versailles The illustrations

to Hypnerotomachia also popularized hieroglyphic

signs which make their appearance in iconography as

a specific phenomenon of the Renaissance

5 Art conceived as a language may be addressed

to large or to small groups It depends on the scope

of communication It can be intended as a message

to a possibly large audience but it can also be limited

in its appeal to a small selected group of observers

In an extreme case the polarization could be that

between a didactic art appealing to everybody and an

elitarian cryptic message understandable only to the

initiated few Medieval art belonged by far to the first

category the art of the Renaissance to the second

Even in the monumental wall-paintings decorating the

most celebrated places of Christianity such as the

Sistine Chapel or the official rooms of the Popes like

the Stanza della Segnatura even in the sepulchral

chapels of the most important families like the Sassetti

and the Medici the iconographic programs and sym-

bolism are extremely complicated The meaning of the

decoration of the great Gallery of Franccedilois I at Fon-

tainebleau is so cryptic that it was hypothetically ex-

plained only recently by the best specialists in icon-

ography (D and E Panofsky 1958) Few works of

medieval art have provoked such a number of inter-

pretations as the well-known and at first glance seem-

ingly easy to understand pictures like Botticellis

mythologies (Birth of Venus Spring The Uffizi Flor-

ence) like Titians Sacred and Profane Love or like

sculptures such as Michelangelos Medici tombs The

same is true of works by Duumlrer Holbein and Bruegel

in the North A deep symbolism a complicated

iconographymdashespecially current in the circles influ-

530

enced by Neo-Platonismmdashbelonged to the perfection

of the work

This idea had a long life it recurs in 1604 in Carel

van Manders Book of the Painter as well as in Berninis

utterances on the beauty of the concept which adorns

the work The more refined the concept the more

difficult the symbolism the narrower the circle of those

who can really understand the work

Art was considered especially in the exclusive court

social groups or among the humanists as a secret

language accessible to the initiated The visual sign

was connected with words into a specific union of

literature and art which flourished at the time of the

Renaissance of mannerism and of the baroque in the

form of impresa of hieroglyph and of emblem The

roots of the impresamdashthe personal sign and mottomdashare

to be found in chivalrous devices and signs popular

in the late Middle Ages it was brought to Italy from

France and connected with Neo-Platonic speculation

(Klein 1957) Hieroglyphs became popular thanks to

the discovery in 1419 of the Hieroglyphica by Hora-

pollo Niliacus (of the second or fourth century AD)

published in 1505 The humanists believed that this

enigmatic image-script disguised a profound wisdom

of the Egyptians ldquothey supposed that the great minds

of Greece had been initiated into these Egyptian

mysteriesmdashwhich in their turn were of course one

more prefiguration of the teachings of Christrdquo (Seznec

[1953] p 100) Emblems originated from an erudite

intellectual play among the humanists aiming however

at a moral lesson and sometimes considered in a Neo-

Platonic way as symbols revealing to those who con-

template them a higher knowledge of divine mysteries

Emblem included a motto called lemma an image

and an epigram Only the whole of the emblem can

be understood each element of it giving only one part

of the meaning All those cryptic codes of expression

connecting words and images originated as secret and

elitarian The problem of the degree of obscurity was

one of the main points discussed by the theorists of

the emblematics (Clements [1964] pp 191-95) Eras-

mus of Rotterdam stressed that one of the virtues of

the impresa is that its meaning can be grasped only

with an intellectual effort Cesare Ripa (Iconologia

1593) demands that symbolic images be composed ldquoin

the form of enigmardquo Sambucus (1564) required ldquoob-

scuritasrdquo and ldquonovitasrdquo from the emblems Paolo

Giovio represented a reasonable middle ldquoThe device

should not be so obscure as to require the Sybil to

interpret it nor yet so obvious that any literal-minded

person can understand itrdquo Later however the crypto-

grams of hieroglyphics and emblem books began to

be popularized and explained Collections of emblems

became widely known New systematization of icon

ography now of a humanistic one was inaugurated

In 1556 Vincenzo Cartari published the first modern

handbook of mythological imagery le imagini colla

sposizione degli dei degli antichi (Venice 1556) In the

same year Pierio Valeriano produced a rich collection

of Hieroglyphica (Basel 1556) Earlier in 1531 Andrea

Alciati had compiled the first emblem book (Emblema-

tum liber Augsburg 1531) The influence of such

books which went through many translations and edi-

tions and which were imitated and continued all over

Europe grew at the close of the sixteenth and in the

seventeenth century In exclusive groups it happened

much earlier that hieroglyphic astrological and em-

blematic imagery influenced the iconography of im-

portant works of art as for example at the court of

Maximilian I (M Giehlow 1915) sometimes this con-

cerned works done by the most distinguished artists

like Duumlrers Melencolia I (Klibansky et al 1964)

Emblematic principle of composition uniting as it did

the image with the verbal formulations found great

popularity in northern Europe perhaps because the

importance of the word so prominent in Protestantism

was stressed (Luther required ldquofragments from the

Holy Writrdquo to be included in the Epitaph-pictures)

Epitaphs and other religious pictures of the Protestant

North connect words and images in the harmonious

indivisible whole (Białostocki 1968)

In the Netherlands emblems played an important

part in the development of realistic painting in the

seventeenth century since they furnished a rich reper-

tory of imagery charged with allegorical meaning (de

Jongh von Monroy) However the meaning of those

images obvious to the viewer who remembered the

original emblematic context eluded for a long time

later interpreters who were no longer conversant with

the emblems

After Cartari and his followers furnished artists and

patrons with images of classical gods there was a need

felt for another handbook which would enable the

artist to represent and the patron to understand the

abstract moral philosophical scientific and other

ideas symbolized Only then was art able to express

complex thoughts This task was fulfilled by Cesare

Ripa of Perugia who in 1593 published his Iconologia

a handbook explaining how to represent all the incor-

poreal concepts In 1603 Iconologia was republished

with illustrations and became one of the most popular

and influential art books With Ripa in hand art

historiansmdashinitially Eacutemile Macircle (1932)mdashwere able to

decipher hundreds of allegorical statements in paint

and stone guided by this alphabet of personifications

Ripas basic entity was a human figure female more

often than male whose costumes attributes gestures

and other particulars express specific qualities of the

531

idea represented With the publication of Ripas workmdash

translated soon into many languages and frequently

republished and revisedmdashthe humanistic system of

allegorical iconography was established classical gods

and personifications hieroglyphic signs and emblems

connecting words and images this was the material

used by the artists of mannerism and the baroque when

they did not choose to keep to the ldquohistoricalrdquo world

ie to borrow their subjects directly from literature

When they did so when they painted stories they used

to select them not only from Ovid and Vergil but also

from the more recent poems by Ariosto and Tasso and

also from the works of less known writers ancient and

modern Valerius Maximus furnished them with exam-

ples of virtuous behavior These historical examples

were in general either connected with allegorical gen-

eralizations (in the big decorations of the late baroque

the central fresco was often an allegory and the ac-

companying canvas-pictures presented historical ex-

amples of virtues Garas pp 280-83) or conceived in

an allegorical way Ovide moraliseacute was popular already

in the late Middle Ages Its influence persisted also

in the time of the baroque Myths and stories under-

went allegorical interpretations along the lines of that

moralizing commentary

What was considered necessary for an artist around

1600 can be seen from Carel van Manders Book of

the Painter (1604) It included a long theoretical poem

a history of classical and modern Italian and Nether-

landish artists a translation and a moral interpretation

of Ovids Metamorphoses and finally a description of

personifications There is no specific section on reli-

gious iconography since artists were well furnished

with books giving them rules in this respect

Against the humanistic conception of art the Council

of Trent proclaimed rules constituting a new system

of religious iconography which put an end to the live

tradition of medieval art These rules were published

officially by the Church and they have been com-

mented upon and elaborated in books by Joannes

Molanus (1570) Saint Carlo Borromeo (1577) Gabriele

Paleotti (1581) Federico Borromeo (1624) and several

others The rules of the Council governed the decora-

tion of churches and other sacred buildings and the

character of pictures representing sacred subjects A

break between the religious and the secular iconogra-

phy became obvious in theoretical literature although

there existed many emblem books of a very distinct

religious character (G de Montenay 1571 B Arias

Montanus 1571 H Hugo 1624) A new strictly for-

mulated system of religious iconography coexisted in

the seventeenth century with humanistic subject mat-

ter symbolism and allegory The classical nude intro-

duced by the Renaissance into art was strictly forbid

den now in religious art but found a free field of

development in secular mythological and allegorical

works Many artists exercised their imagination in both

fields in some specific fields such as sepulchral iconog-

raphy cooperation between religious and humanistic

symbolism was common In the work of P P Rubens

the various aspects of the new iconography found

perhaps their best expression In his art allegorical

concepts classical gods and heroes triumphs of mythi-

cal beings as well as of secular rulers accompany mar-

tyrdoms of Catholic saints and the triumphs of the

Eucharist What began to be separated in theory could

yet coexist in harmony in the work of a great artist

6 In northern European art (before Rubens) the

renewal of the arts during the Renaissance took the

form of the new study of nature and the elaboration

of the most convincing means of representing the ma-

terial world in an illusionistic way traditional medieval

symbolism was transformed in a specific way produc-

ing what E Panofsky called in 1953 ldquodisguised sym-

bolismrdquo The symbolic meaning connected with objects

and qualities persisted but a new mastery reproduced

these symbolical objects with such a degree of realism

that they did not differ any longer from other objects

not charged with any metaphorical meaning Some-

times the symbolical meaning of represented objects

results from the traditional iconography in an unmistak-

able way sometimes the meaning is hinted at by the

inscriptions placed in the picture or on its frame But

in many cases the modern viewer remains perplexed

without any sufficient clue to decide whether in the

picture he observes he has to do with the beginnings

of the representation of reality for its own sake or

whether the search for specific metaphorical meaning

is justified It is still always a matter of discussion to

decide at which moment the representation of some

objects or some scene in life without any symbolical

(or ldquohistoricalrdquo) implications became possible (Gilbert

1952) Observers of the eighteenth and nineteenth

centuries to whom the meaning of old symbols was

wholly forgotten took many images of the fifteenth and

sixteenth centuries for simple representations of life

Bruegel for example was considered as simply a

painter of joking or working peasants Recent studies

in iconography have shown that these pictures are

saturated with disguised meaning and that it is ex-

tremely rare before about 1550 to meet simple repre-

sentations of nature in painting In graphic arts the

direct depiction of life and landscape began earlier

as in the works of Lombard draughtsmen or in the

incredibly fresh convincing drawings and prints by the

Master of the Housebook There are also early excep-

tions in painting like Albrecht Altdorfers landscape

without any human figures But in general it was only

532

during the second half of the sixteenth century that

landscape genre and still-life painting began to ac-

quire equal rights with religious and humanistic history

and allegory predominantly in Venice and in Antwerp

Even then however the representations of people

working in fields (Jacopo or Francesco Bassano) fol-

lowed the old traditions of Calendar-pictures and in

the background of genre scenes as in Pieter Aertsens

pictures a biblical motif may be found which trans-

forms the whole composition into a storia however

unorthodox

With the development of realistic painting in the

seventeenth century there appeared specific iconogra-

phic problems New subjects slowly found convenient

form They entered the scene patterned after the ven-

erable stories of sacred or of profane iconography

H van de Waal described (1952) the process of the for-

mation of national historical iconography in Holland

Scenes depicting recent happenings from a long strug-

gle for national independence appeared first in forms

assimilated to well-known religious or mythical scenes

This was not only an expedient facilitating their com-

position for by this means the new subjects gained the

decorum inherent in the adopted patterns formed to

express traditional stories Similar procedures may be

seen in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries when

more and more sections of reality became interesting

enough to be represented in art

The transfer of decorum from the sacred or allegori-

cal figures to the humans represented is a means used

in what modern iconographers call ldquoallegorical por-

traiturerdquo Renaissance painters had represented real

people under mythological or even sacred disguise

they gave actual faces of living people to the figures

represented with all the attributes and characteristics

of their mythical sacred or even allegorical qualities

Later it was only the pattern which remained still in

the eighteenth century English portraitists patterned

the effigies of contemporary aristocrats after Michel-

angelos Sybils or after allegories like the Caritas

(Wind 1937) J B Oudry represented the Polish King

in exile Stanisław Leszczyński with all the attributes

of the allegory of exile taken from Ripa identifying

him in this way with personification of his most promi-

nent quality (Białostocki 1969)

Dutch realistic painting of the seventeenth century

is a document of an important iconographic conquest

Landscapes seascapes moonlit night scenes snapshots

of people skating in winter landscapes views of market

places church interiors backyards fishermen old

women preparing food fashionable dishes ready for

lunch merchants and artisans elegant gentlemen pay-

ing visits and folk-surgeons performing sensational

street-operations all this became subject matter for

representation and continued to be considered worthy

of depiction until the end of the nineteenth century

It was first considered as such in Holland only then

slowly everyday subject matter was recognized also by

art-theorists in other countries although it was re-

garded as much less dignified than religious mytholog-

ical or allegorical subjects Only in the nineteenth

century did the vogue of realistic representation of

everyday subjects become widespread In Dutch pic-

tures of the seventeenth century we are often con-

fronted with nothing else than representations of pic-

turesque reality Sometimes however these genre

pictures appear to be illustrations of proverbs expres-

sing moralistic folk-wisdom sometimes they recall

scenes from the popular threater of the rederijkers or

rhetoricians especially pictures by Jan Steen (Gud-

laugsson 1945) they contain allusions to emblems

Sometimes the elegant scenes from bourgeois life in-

clude quite indecent erotic allusions (de Jongh 1967

1969) The ambiguity of these pictures was certainly

a source of specific pleasure for those who knew the

key to their true meaning

7 In Catholic countries allegorical art sacred as

well as profane flourished The twofold character of

symbolic representations mentioned above persisted

in the seventeenth century Aristotelian rational sym-

bolism which used images as words was widespread

in the orthodox Catholic iconography of the Counter-

Reformation as well as in the humanistic visual lan-

guage codified by Ripa and others A mystical Neo-

Platonic symbolism transcending reason reappeared

too Its outspoken document is the treatise by Chris-

toforo Giarda Bibliothecae alexandrinae icones sym-

bolicae of 1626 (Gombrich 1948) For Giarda symbolic

images give the beholder a direct insight into the

mysteries of religion which are not accessible to rea-

son

Thanks to symbolic images the mind which is banished from

heaven into this dark cave of the body its actions held in

bondage by the senses can behold the beauty and form

of the Virtues and Sciences divorced from all matter and

yet adumbrated if not perfectly expressed in colours and

is thus roused to an even more fervent love and desire for

them Who then can sufficiently estimate the magni-

tude of the debt we owe to those who expressed the Arts

and Sciences themselves in images and so brought it about

that we could not only know them but look at them as

it were with our eyes that we can meet them and almost

converse with them

(Gombrich [1948] pp 188f)

Great allegorical compositions covering the ceilings of

baroque churches are often realizations of this princi-

ple For those however who conceived allegory as a

rational operation as a language used for didactic aims

the main problem remained the clarity of the allegori-

533

cal message The larger the audience to whom allegory

was addressed the simpler more obvious its symbolism

should have been The banality of allegorical language

provoked criticism in the eighteenth century Fran-

cesco Algarotti (1762) prefers without any doubt his-

torical representations to the ldquoempty allegories and

complicated mythological allusionsrdquo (Garas [1967] p

280) Especially criticized was the obscurity of these

allegories in which completely original unknown sym-

bols were used Roger de Piles praises his favorite

master Rubens who ldquointroduced only such allegories

elements of which were already known from ancient

artrdquo and opposes him to Charles Lebrun who ldquoinstead

of taking symbols from some known source as the

ancient fable and medals has invented almost all of

them and thus the pictures of this kind became riddles

which the beholder does not want to take the task to

solverdquo To keep the balance between platitudinous

redundancy and utter incomprehensibility was the

crucial problem of late baroque allegorism What is

interesting however is that the idea of the picture

as a riddle was not foreign to the seventeenth century

It appears in France as well as in Sweden where David

Kloumlcker Ehrenstrahl (1694) proposed that pictures

present riddles that could not be solved by everyone

In France however the ldquopainted enigmardquo fostered

by the Jesuits in their schools flourished especially well

in the seventeenth century (Montagu 1968) These

ldquopainted enigmasrdquo lent themselves to various inter-

pretations and gave interpreters an opportunity to

show their ingenuity These pictures and their inter-

pretations seem to prove that a considerable flexibility

of meaning was intended

We might rather accept that a work of art was regarded

in the seventeenth century as in a certain sense an open

symbol raw material like the myth or sacred story which

it illustrates on which the interpreter might exercise the

power of his ingenuity turning it into an allegory of Chris-

tian doctrine or a panegyric in honour of his patron

(Montagu [1968] p 334)

Such a situation probably existed only in some specific

circles It was a limiting case The other extreme was

to use in an uninteresting routine way Ripas symbolic

images or those of other popular symbolic handbooks

Such practice continued well into the eighteenth cen-

tury The general trend fed by ideas of the Enlighten-

ment was to make allegories more and more obvious

It is understandable that some theorists like the Count

de Caylus looked for new subject matter presenting

as he did Tableaux tireacutes de lIliade (1755) or that

J J Winckelmann tried to revive allegory and to give

it a new force It was however too late In the eight-

eenth century together with the whole system of

humanistic tradition the systems of iconography began

to disintegrate The great break in the tradition con-

cerned not only style but also iconography Emblem-

atic roots may be discovered in Goyas symbolism as

well as in the reasonable allegories of the Enlighten-

ment but generally speaking there was a search for

new not known or not used sourcesmdashas in William

Blakes biblical individualistic imagerymdashor the new

staging of the old ones as in Jacques Louis Davids

classical subjects

The art of romanticism was a definite break with

the past much more in the field of ideas and iconogra-

phy than in a stylistic respect where romanticists

retrospectively looked back either to medieval and

pre-Raphaelite or to baroque sources Symbols and

allegories yielded to an all-pervading mood and the

traditional repertory of religious allegorical mytho-

logical and historical iconography gave way to a new

iconography Although several encompassing images

of Christian and humanistic art survived they received

new content and essentially changed their character

New attitudes of the individual to the world of nature

and history to society and destiny to time and death

and new problems resulting from the striving after

freedom (which was a new perhaps most important

principle of human behavior in all fields of human

activity) found expression in new thematic fields and

in new particular themes such as ldquoStorm-tossed Boatrdquo

ldquoLonely Wanderer in the Mountainsrdquo ldquoA Death of the

Herordquo (Eitner 1955 Hofmann 1960 Białostocki

1966)

Romanticism has not formed and could not have

formed an iconographic system for since they strived

first of all for originality of individual conception the

romantics interpreted images in a subjective way as

expressions of mood Romanticism has on the other

hand introduced new heroes and martyrs into art

instead of religious ones the national social and artis-

tic ones It created a new image of history seen now

as a set of political and moral examplesmdashas in

baroquemdashbut often put together now according to a

very individualistic principle of choice A correlative

to pathetic and heroic romanticism was a bourgeois

and intimate romanticism its expression was for ex-

ample the new imagery of the open window which

shows to the viewer wide perspectives but shelters him

at the same time from the dangers of the unknown

(Eitner 1955)

When the world of ideas and images created at the

moment of the flowering of romanticism began to be

popularized for the use of the large bourgeois masses

the contentmdashideological and iconographicalmdashof ro-

manticism lost its original authenticity and left be-

hind not a new system of original images but a dispo-

534

sition to melodramatic experiences and an inflation of

a theatrical gesture (Hofmann 1960 Białostocki 1966)

The nineteenth century developed a realistic por-

traiture of man and nature and took over worn out

clicheacutes of the Renaissance and baroque allegories It

introduced new subject matter taken partly from tra-

dition partly from observation of reality tinted with

vague symbolism such as ldquoForgerdquo or the ldquoFuneral of

the Peasantrdquo but it did not create a new system of

iconography in spite of short-lived revivals of symbol-

istic attitudes in such movementsmdashincidentally not

limited to and not initiated in the visual artsmdashas

ldquosymbolismrdquo

New ephemeral artistic movements which consti-

tuted the history of European art in the last hundred

years show an interesting bracketing of style and icon-

ography in spite of a preponderant lack of iconogra-

phic interest Their representatives chose subjects suit-

able to specific artistic aims and means which they

developed and were interested in Impressionists

painted seaside scenes landscapes and genre pictures

showing the life of artistic and intellectual milieus

Cubists introduced a specific repertory of still-life

motifs symbols of the artists atelier and of the life

of the bohegraveme bottles musical instruments books

fruits flowers newspapers How much these motifs

were connected with specific cubist style appears when

one looks at works of artists foreign to the original

cubist group but imitating its style as for instance

several Czech artists like Emil Filla They adopted

cubist iconography together with cubist style Abstract

movements in general lacked iconography although

they were not foreign to symbolic tendencies espe-

cially in sculpture (Brancusi Moore) Only in the dec-

ades of 1950-70 can a revival of more articulated and

programmatic symbolism be observed One may sup-

pose that this revival is at least in part brought about

by the development of research in iconography and

symbolism which took place in the second and third

quarters of our century

II

1 The origins of ldquointerpretative iconographyrdquo may

be seen in the descriptions (ekphrasis) of works of art

known in classical literature But these descriptions

like those by Philostratus the Elder or Lucian are

limited simply to description and lack in general any

interpretation Moreover it is not certain whether they

are descriptions of actual or fictitious works of art at

least opinions in this respect vary Brief medieval tituli

which formulated in words the content of religious

images were to be sure interpretative sometimes but

they were short and cannot be connected with the

tradition of artistic erudition We have to look to

modern times to indicate the beginnings of iconogra-

phic interpretation and research From Vasaris Rag-

ionamenti in which interpretations of the paintings

decorating the Palazzo Vecchio in Florence are given

we learn how complicated and how undecipherable

iconographic concepts might have been even to peo-

ple living in buildings decorated by paintings expres-

sing these concepts But perhaps the first really to be

considered as interested in iconographic research was

the seventeenth-century archaeologist and art theorist

Giovanni Pietro Bellori In the introduction to his Lives

of Artists (1672) Bellori stressed that he paid special

attention to the content of the works of art he was

talking about and he even credited the painter Nicolas

Poussin with having directed his attention to iconogra-

phy In his Lives Bellori presented short interpretative

descriptions of pictures and he sometimes developed

these interpretations further in small iconographic

essays the influence of classical ekphrasis on him is

a possibility Sometimes his errors took deep roots in

the subsequent history of art as when he explained

Poussins Triumph of Flora (Dresden) by designating

Ovids Metamorphoses as its source The true source

Marinos Adona was finally found by R E Spear in

1965

What is interesting in Belloris procedure is that he

first identifies the motifs tries to connect them with

classical or modern literary sources and then proceeds

to find out the deep meaning the general symbolic

idea of the work Therefore he may be considered as

one of the pioneers not only of iconography as a disci-

pline of research but also of iconology as formulated

by its recent partisans That even in the second half

of the sixteenth century some observers were inclined

to look for hidden meaning in each element of the work

of art we learn from Joannes Molanus (1570) who in

De picturis et imaginibus sacris states reasonably that

ldquoit is not necessary to ask for meaning of everything

that can be observed in a picture in such cases a lot

of absurd things may resultrdquo But the consciousness of

the importance of iconography increased and at the

end of the seventeenth century Andreacute Feacutelibien stressed

that in order to attribute a picture to a painter it is

not enough to know the way he uses his brush one

needs also to know his esprit to learn his geacutenie and

to be able to foresee in which way he is able to form

his conceptions Thus iconographic analysis was con-

sidered necessary even for the purpose of attribution

Descriptive interpretations of the works of ancient

art appeared in the big archaeological publications of

the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries such as

Jacques Spons Miscellanea eruditae antiquitatis (1679)

G P Belloris Admiranda romanarum antiquitatum ac

veteris sculpturae vestigia (1693) P de Caylus Recueil

535

dantiquiteacutes eacutegyptiennes eacutetrusques grecques et

romaines (1752-67) and in an interesting endeavor

(although very much criticized by Lessing) of Joseph

Spence to explain classical poets through works of art

and vice versa (Polymetis 1747) Classical archaeology

however has not been especially interested in iconog-

raphy and the use of the term itself by archaeolo-

gists was limited to portraiture The first great devel-

opment of iconographic studies was connected with

the romantic movement although an important pre-

lude for it was hagiographical collections of sources

such as Acta sanctorum published by the Bollandists

(1643-1794 resumed later) Among the pre-romantic

scholars in iconography the eminent German poet

G E Lessing is to be noted His study of the repre-

sentation of death in classical times can be considered

as one of the first essays in interpretative iconography

which is now called iconology In Wie die Alten den

Tod gebildet (1769) Lessing tries to interpret the classi-

cal iconographic type of Amor with the inverted torch

and to find its ldquointrinsic meaningrdquo by taking into ac-

count the religion customs and philosophy of the

classical world The work of art is interpreted by Less-

ing as ldquoa symptom of something elserdquo While Lessings

predecessors (like B de Montfaucon) ldquoexplained the

classical past by monumentsrdquo he for the first time did

the opposite ldquohe explained the monuments by Antiq-

uityrdquo (Maurin Białostocka [1969] pp 92-100)

Pre-romantic and romantic interests in myth and

symbol found their expression in publications and dis-

cussions by German philosophers and scholars like F

Schlegel J Herder J J von Goumlrres and F Creuzer

Creuzers work Symbolik und Mythologie der alten

Voumllker (1810) which shows the influence of mystical

Neo-Platonic ideas on symbols (Gombrich 1965) was

the most influential in the romantic period in Ger-

many Under the impact of Chateaubriands le Geacutenie

du christianisme (1802) research in medieval iconog-

raphy developed mainly in France Works by French

scholars mostly clergymen which were indeed con-

cerned with Christian medieval art dominated icon-

ographical study in the nineteenth century Since most

of these writers were not professional scholars their

work was often amateurish in character but it is unde-

niable that books by A N Didron Histoire de Dieu

(Paris 1843) the first part of a comprehensive pro-

jected but not completed iconography of Christian art

A Crosnier Iconographie chreacutetienne (Caen 1848) C

Cahier Caracteacuteristiques des saints (Paris 1867) C

Rohault de Fleury Archeacuteologie chreacutetienne les saints

de la messe et leurs monuments 12 vols (Paris

1893-1900) L Breacutehier Lart chreacutetien son deacuteveloppe-

ment iconographique des origines agrave nos jours (Paris

1918) P Perdrizet V Leroquais and G de Jerphanion

have built up a solid body of iconographical knowl-

edge on which scholars of the twentieth century were

able to erect a modern comprehensive structure In

the field of Byzantine iconography it was Gabriel

Millets Recherches sur liconographie de leacutevangile aux

XIVe XVe et XVIe siegravecles (Paris 1916 reprint

1960) that was basic for any further study For Western

chiefly French art a well-written and learned work

appealing to the general reader as well as to the

scholar was produced by Eacutemile Macircle who in his four

volumes of the history of religious art (1898-1932) has

presented a well-composed synthetic image of icono-

graphical development A lexicographic summary of

these studies of generations of French scholars is pre-

sented in the Dictionnaire darcheacuteologie chreacutetienne et

de liturgie published from 1907 to 1953 and edited

by F Cabrol and H Leclerq A recent reference work

is that by L Reacuteau Iconographie de lart chreacutetien (Paris

1955-59) Russian scholars have done important work

in the field of Byzantine and Orthodox iconography

of religious art The most prominent are N P Kon-

dakov Ikonografia Bogomatieri (St Petersburg 1911

2nd ed 1914-15) D V Ainalov Mosaiki IV i V vekov

(St Petersburg 1895) and N Pokrovski Otcherki

pamyatnikov christianskogo isskusstva i ikonografii (St

Petersburg 1894 3rd ed 1910) V Lasarev and M

Alpatov belonging to the mid-twentieth-century gen-

eration of Russian scholars discuss iconography in

several works on religious art German scholarship

produced in the nineteenth century works by F Piper

A Springer and H Detzel Useful compendia were

produced in the early twentieth century by J Sauer

W Molsdorf K Kuumlnstle and J Braun Dutch scholars

C Smits J B Knipping and J J M Timmers contrib-

uted to iconographic studies in recent times Knip-

pings book (1939-40) being the most important work

on the iconography of the Counter-Reformation and

supplementing Macircles volume of 1932 In the twentieth

century on C R Moreys initiative iconographic

studies were inaugurated in North America Focused

on earlier medieval art these studies developed at

Princeton University

A new direction characteristic of iconographic

studies in the twentieth century has been given to

them by the international school of art historical re-

search inaugurated by the Hamburg scholar Aby

Warburg At the International Congress for the History

of Art at Rome in 1912 he presented a sensational

astrological interpretation of the frescoes painted by

Francesco Cossa and his collaborators in Palazzo

Schifanoja at Ferrara Warburg solved the secret of

those representations which had puzzled the ingenuity

of several former students interpreting them as images

of zodiacal signs and their decans But he did not limit

536

his contribution to the presentation of his results He

wanted to stress the importance of his approach and

of the method of study which later became connected

with his name He said

I hope that through the method used by me for explication

of the frescoes at the Palazzo Schifanoja of Ferrara I have

proved that an iconological analysis which does not allow

itself to be diverted by the rules of frontier police from

considering antiquity Middle Ages and modern times as

interconnected periods nor from analyzing the most liberal

and the most applied works of art as equally important

documents of expression that this method endeavoring as

it does to throw light upon one dark spot clears up at

the same time great interconnected developments

(Warburg 1912 Heckscher 1967)

Warburgs influence on the history of art was very

great although he himself did not write much It was

mainly the posthumous impact of his ideas promul-

gated as they were by Fritz Saxl which contributed

to the specific direction of studies concentrated in the

library Warburg founded in Hamburg and which Saxl

succeeded in transplanting during the Nazi era to

London where it became the Warburg Institute of the

University of London While the object of study of the

nineteenth-century iconographers was mainly religious

art in its relation to religious literary sources and lit-

urgy for Warburg the study of images was a study

of their relations to religion to poetry to myth to

science and to social and political life Art was for

him closely connected with the polyphonic structure

of historical life

Warburgs ideas had a great importance for the most

influential theory of iconographic interpretation in our

century that elaborated by Erwin Panofsky In Ham-

burg where Warburg Saxl and Panofsky were active

in the twenties Ernst Cassirer built up his philosophy

of symbolic forms which constituted an additional

background for Panofskys system being derived as

his own methodology was from the traditions of

Kantian philosophy Around 1930 Panofskys ideas

ripened into a system which found formulation in his

book herkules am Scheidewege (1930) and later in a

theoretical article of 1932 G J Hoogewerff was how-

ever the first to propose the word ldquoiconologyrdquo as a

name for the method of an analysis of content in a

work of art (Warburg spoke of iconological analysis)

In 1931 he proposed distinguishing between iconogra-

phy as a descriptive science aiming at the identifica-

tion of themes and ldquoiconologyrdquo aiming at the under-

standing ldquoof symbolic dogmatic or mystical meaning

which is expressed (or hidden) in figurative formsrdquo He

stressed that ldquoiconologyrdquo deals with works of art with-

out classifying them according to the technique used

or to the achieved perfection taking into account only

their meaning Hoogewerff saw the last aim of iconol-

ogy in finding out the cultural and ideological back-

ground expressed by works of art and the cultural and

social significance which can be attributed to certain

forms and to means of expression in the same time

Hoogewerffs part in the expansion of iconology was

limited because he did not endorse his methodical

proposals with examples of historical interpretations

Erwin Panofsky with whose name iconology has

been connected ever since not only developed its

theoretical foundations but contributed by his practi-

cal work in art history to the main triumph of iconol-

ogy after the Second World War The most influential

book by Panofsky has been Studies in Iconology (1939)

in which his masterly presentation of the method was

connected with its equally excellent exemplification

2 Panofsky considers the interpretation of a work

of art as falling on three levels On the first level the

object of interpretation is the primary or natural sub-

ject matter The function of interpretation is called

ldquopre-iconographical descriptionrdquo In order to be able

to arrive at a correct interpretation on that level the

interpreter must have a practical experience (ldquofamili-

arity with objects and eventsrdquo) common to everybody

at least in one cultural sphere However he has to

control his observations by a ldquocorrective knowledge

of the history of stylerdquo (ldquoinsight into the manner in

which under varying historical conditions objects and

events were expressed by formsrdquo) On the second level

the function of interpretation is called ldquoiconographical

analysisrdquo its object is the ldquosecondary or conventional

subject matterrdquo constituting the world of images his-

tories and allegories The interpreters equipment in

this case is obviously the knowledge of literary sources

giving him a ldquofamiliarity with specific themes and

conceptsrdquo The interpreter has to control his observa-

tions by ldquothe insight into the manner in which under

varying historical conditions specific themes or con-

cepts were expressed by objects and eventsrdquo On the

third level the function of interpreting is called ldquoicon-

ographical analysis in a deeper senserdquo (1939) or ldquoicon-

ological analysisrdquo (1955) Its object is the ldquointrinsic

meaning or contentrdquo of a work of art The interpreters

equipment on that level should be a ldquofamiliarity with

the essential tendencies of the human mindrdquo and he

has to control his interpretation by the ldquoinsight into

the manner in which under varying historical condi-

tions essential tendencies of the human mind were

expressed by specific themes and conceptsrdquo Thus

taking all the time into account what Panofsky calls

the history of tradition the interpreter has to aim at

understanding the work of art its ldquoprimaryrdquo as well

as ldquosecondary subject matterrdquo as symptoms of some

fundamental tendency of the human mind typical of

537

a place a time a civilization and of an individual

responsible for the creation of the work ldquoIconologyrdquomdash

for Panofskymdashldquois a method of interpretation which

arises from synthesis rather than analysisrdquo Trying to

find the intrinsic meaning of a work of art

The art historian will have to check what he thinks is the

intrinsic meaning of the work or group of works against

what he thinks is the intrinsic meaning of as many other

documents of civilization historically related to that work

or group of works as he can master It is in the search

for intrinsic meaning or content that the various humanistic

disciplines meet on a common plane instead of serving as

handmaidens to each other

(Panofsky [1955] p 39)

The concept of intrinsic meaning of a work of art

was elaborated by Panofsky much earlier (1925) when

he interpreted in his own way the concept of Kunst-

wollen introduced by A Riegl to research in art

Panofsky understood this ldquoartistic volitionrdquo as an im-

manent ultimate meaning of a work of art which is

manifested in the way basic artistic problems are solved

in that work He used the same concept further to bring

art closer to the other fields of human activity Since

the ldquoimmanent ultimate senserdquo of the work of art is

nothing else than uniformity in the way of solving basic

artistic problems it is possible to compare that imma-

nent sense with immanent senses of the other human

works in various fields Panofsky did it for instance

when in one of his later works he compared the struc-

tural principles of Gothic architecture with those of

scholastic thinking (1951)

The system elaborated by Panofsky and exemplified

by his own work in art history was the first consistent

system of an integral interpretation of a work of visual

arts based on the analysis of content In principle

Panofskys system takes into account all the elements

of the work of art since it takes as the point of depar-

ture the sensual exterior shape of the work It is

however clear that its main scope is not the inter-

pretation of form as a bearer of meaning but the

understanding and interpretation of conventional alle-

gories literary themes and symbols as symptoms of

the history of the human mind It was that method

in the history of art which programmatically fostered

a collaboration with all the other disciplines of histori-

cal studies It was therefore one of the most influential

methods not only among art historians but also among

representatives of the other branches of humanistic

studies Although there were art historians who ex-

pressed a critical attitude toward ldquoiconologyrdquo as the

new method was soon baptized its influence was over-

whelming

3 It is not only but mainly due to Panofsky that

one can venture to call ldquoiconographicalrdquo that period

of art history as a historical discipline which followed

the Second World War and to oppose it to the ldquostylis-

ticrdquo one which preceded it It does not mean of course

that no iconographic research took place in the

twenties or thirties the works of Macircle Knipping van

Marle Wilpert Saxl and of Panofsky himself would

contradict such a statement Neither is it true that

purely formal research aiming at stylistic classification

and analysis discontinued after World War II It is

evident that in the last decades (from 1940 on) icono-

graphic interests came to the fore and became domi-

nant in many countries Iconographical studies grew

so much in number and importance that they made

it possible to undertake and to publish new reference

works of iconographic character like dictionaries

written by one scholar (Guy de Tervarent Aurenham-

mer) as well as larger works based on a collaboration

of several scholars (Encyclopedias of German art of

Antiquity and Christian civilization of Byzantine art)

Interest in meaning and iconography has appeared

also among historians of political social and religious

institutions The symbolism of signs ceremonies cos-

tumes and arms was studied by such scholars as A

Alfoumlldi ldquoInsignien und Tracht der roumlmischen Kaiserrdquo

Mitteilungen des deutschen Archaumlologischen Instituts

Roumlmische Abteilung (1935) 1ff ldquoDie Geburt der

kaiserlichen Bildsymbolikrdquo museum Helveticum 9

(1952) 204ff also by A Grabar Martyrium (Paris

1943-46) by E H Kantorowicz laudes Regiae

(Berkeley and Los Angeles 1946) The Kings Two

Bodies (Princeton 1957) by H P L Orange Studies

in the Iconography of Cosmic Kingship in the Ancient

World (Oslo 1953) Art Forms and Civic Life in the

Late Roman Empire (Princeton 1965) and by P E

Schramm herrschaftszeichen und Staatssymbolik

(Stuttgart 1954-56) In their studies iconography far

transcends the borders of art and it helps to build up

a history of ideas by following their various visual

expressions

Pioneering studies by K Giehlow F Saxl and E

Panofsky enlarged iconographical interests above all

to encompass the large field of secular art whereas

they had been mainly limited to religious iconography

in the work of preceding generations of scholars The

whole complicated and hardly known large body of

meanings disguised by the cryptic language of hiero-

glyphs emblems and iconologies became one of the

main topics of study

This established a collaboration between historians

of art and literature Mario Prazs admirable study of

emblems and his bibliography of emblem books

(1939-47) belongs now to the foundations of studies

in that field Publications by W S Heckscher and

A K Wirth by R S Clements E F von Monroy and

538

H M von Erffa E de Jongh and H Miedema and

several other scholars have elucidated the structure

and meaning of emblems and have shown their tre-

mendous influence on art even in its most monumental

and dignified forms An uninterrupted flow of reprints

of emblem books which brought within the reach of

modern students inaccessible volumes of sixteenth- and

seventeenth-century emblem writers were crowned by

the monumental undertaking of Arthur Henkel and

Albrecht Schoumlne who compiled an excellent volume

including almost all the texts and images needed for

the study of emblemsmdashEmblemata Handbuch zur

Sinnbildkunst des XVI und XVII Jahrhunderts

(Stuttgart 1967) Research was under way on hiero-

glyphs (Erik Iversen) and on the imprese (the late

Robert Klein) as well as on iconologies and allegories

These studies have disclosed meanings of the art of

the Renaissance of mannerism and of the baroque not

understood by nineteenth-century scholars

E Panofsky deciphered extremely farfetched and

individualistic programs of decoration of such famous

ensembles as the Camera di San Paolo by Correggio

in Parma the Gallery of Franccedilois I at Fontainebleau

Edgar Wind Andreacute Chastel and other scholars inter-

preted Raphaels decorations in the Popes apartments

Michelangelos art furnished material to detailed com-

prehensive studies by Panofsky Ch de Tolnay H von

Einem and Pope-Hennessy in which the share of

Neo-Platonic thinking in the ideological background

of the celebrated works of Michelangelo was discussed

Innumerable studies have been devoted to Titians

mythological paintings J R Martin presented expla-

nations of the Carracci frescoes in the Camerino Far-

nese and in the great gallery of the Palazzo Farnese

Bruegel considered in the nineteenth century as a drocircle

painter of peasant life has been shown by de Tolnay

Stridbeck and others to be an allegorist expressing a

skeptical humanistic outlook J S Held and W

Stechow contributed several articles to the under-

standing of mythological and allegorical contents in

Flemish and Dutch art of the sixteenth and seventeenth

centuries Rembrandts iconography was put into new

light by the two above-mentioned scholars as well as

by H M Rotermund H van de Waal J G van Gelder

H von Einem and Ch Tuumlmpel The intricate symbol-

ism and subject matter of historical and mythological

pictures by Nicolas Poussin were elucidated by such

masters of iconographic research as E H Gombrich

W Friedlaumlnder E Panofsky and above all by A Blunt

who in his monograph on Poussin presented a new

deep synthetic view of the ideas expressed by that

artists works Goyas individualistic secret symbolism

was also studied with the help of emblems and the

allegorical tradition Berninis works received iconolo

gical treatment by R Wittkower and H Kauffmann

All of this research does not mean that there was a

lack of interest in religious iconography M Schapiro

A Katzenellenbogen H Bober F Wormald and V

Elbern among others have contributed considerably

to deepen our understanding of the not completely

explained motifs and prominent works of medieval art

Panofsky has also shed a new light on several problems

of sepulchral iconography studies by such scholars as

R Berliner G von der Osten L Kalinowski S

Ringbom and T Dobrzeniecki contributed to late

medieval iconography in a new way Berliner stressed

the autonomous invention of visual artists or their

patrons while according to the traditional view popu-

larized by Macircle late medieval art should have followed

strictly literary sources

The religious content of modern art especially its

allegorical form in the late baroque period has been

examined and thanks to studies by such scholars as

W Mrazek and H Bauer has become better known

and understandable A great change was introduced

by ldquoiconologyrdquo into architectural history Buildings

which were formerly interpreted from aesthetic and

functional points of view only have been shown to

present allegorical symbolical or even emblematic

ideas Publications by leading art historians (R Witt-

kower B Smith G Bandmann O von Simson and

G C Argan) have presented medieval and modern

architecture as a bearer of meaning and have essen-

tially changed the character of architectural history

The iconography of classicism and romanticism

received a thorough treatment in books by W Hof-

mann and R Rosenblum as well as in several studies

devoted to individual themes and pictures G Hersey

has for example shown how much Delacroixs decora-

tion of the library in the Palais Bourbon owed to

Giambattista Vicos ideas about history More recently

studies on ldquoSymbolismrdquo have been undertaken Vincent

van Goghs symbolic language and iconography were

the object of studies by J Seznec C Nordenfalk and

other scholars On Ceacutezannes iconography interesting

remarks have been published by M Schapiro

Along with the development of iconographic studies

the establishment of centers of documentation has

advanced The ldquoFrenchrdquo stage in the development of

iconography has not left any marked trace in this

respect It was in America thanks to C R Morey that

the famous Index of Christian Art at the Department

of Art and Archaeology of Princeton University was

founded at first limited to the early Middle Ages then

enlarged so as to include art up to the end of the

medieval period Copies of the Princeton Index are

to be found also at the Istituto Pontificio dArcheolo-

gia in Rome and in the Dumbarton Oaks Library and

539

Collection in Washington DC But that Index ends

ldquowhere art beginsrdquomdashas Panofsky used to say jokingly

The need for systematic iconographic files for modern

art was strongly felt In 1956 A Pigler published a

very useful book Barockthemen in which he listed

thousands of works of art of the baroque period ac-

cording to their subjects It was however far from

being a systematic work The first essay in establishing

a systematic iconographic index for art of any time

was done by The Netherlands Institute for Art History

at the Hague then directed by H Gerson which took

the initiative around 1950 of publishing a postcard-size

photographic index of its rich collection of photographs

of Netherlandish art ordered according to an icono-

graphic principle Once such an idea was formulated

the need for a comprehensive consistent and clear

iconographic classification was urgent H van de Waal

of Leiden University devised such a system of classifi-

cation based on decimal divisions consistent and easy

to read He based his system on experiences of ethnol-

ogy and on such elaborated systems of classification

as that devised by Stith Thompson in his Motif-Index

of Folk Literature Vols I-VI (Bloomington Ind

1932-36 rev ed 1955-58) Van de Waal has elabor-

ated a system in which the first five main sections

classify five fundamental groups of portrayable things

namely (1) The Supernatural (2) Nature (3) Man (4)

Society (5) Abstracts The last four classify specific

subjects such as (6) History (7) The Bible (8) Myths

Legends and Tales (with the exception of classical

antiquity) (9) Myths and Legends of Classical Antiq-

uity Van de Waal combines the classification in the

first and in the second group in order to classify general

as well as specific subjects Christ in his system is

described with the sign ldquo11 Drdquo (ldquo1rdquo standing for Su-

pernatural ldquo11rdquo for Christianity ldquoDrdquo for Christ) the

adult Christ = 11 D 3 since ldquoshepherdrdquo on the other

hand bears the signature 47 I 221 the adult Christ

as a shepherd can be described in this system by the

following formula 11 D 3 = 47 I 221 Van de Waal

has also provided means to describe more complex

images which he expresses by adding elements between

brackets The Annunciation with God the Father and

a winged Angel is expressed by the following formula

73 A 5 (+1 +41) ldquo1rdquo standing for God the Father

and ldquo41rdquo for a winged Angel (van de Waal 1952) This

system elaborated for many years by its inventor and

prepared for publication in many volumes has proved

most useful in the practical arrangement of the Icono-

graphical Index of the Netherlandish Art and as the

only one until now in existence it became used more

and more in spite of some ambiguities and difficulties

As an endeavor to classify ldquoall portrayablerdquo things

persons events and ideas and to create a consistent

method to describe every possible image van de Waals

system may be considered as one of the important

achievements of the ldquoiconographical stagerdquo in the

development of art history Iconographic files exist of

course in many institutions as for example in the Ikon-

ologisch Instituut of Utrecht University one of the

main centers of study in emblematics and of course

in the most venerable institution of iconographic re-

search the Warburg Institute of the London University

and in other places

4 What was the result of this ldquoiconographicrdquo turn

in the development of the history of art One thing

is certain that this discipline by necessity has come

closer to other humanistic disciplines Since the

ldquointrinsicrdquo meaningmdashin Panofskys terminologymdashof a

work of art cannot be described in terms used by the

history of art but only in terms borrowed from the

history of philosophy of religion of social structures

of science and so on the ldquoiconological methodrdquo took

for granted and provoked such a collaboration Art

history was perhaps the first or one of the first to show

new interest in investigation of meaning It was fol-

lowed by similar developments in ethnology and in

linguistics

We have mentioned above a parallel development

in Byzantine and classical studies Panofskys influence

has been considerable in the other fields of humanistic

research Since ldquoiconologyrdquo aimed at discovering ideas

expressed by a work of art it awoke in art historians

an interest in the history of ideas This general shift

of emphasis and of the direction of studies from mainly

formal ones to studies aiming at ideas underlying art

was perhaps responsible among others for the fact that

several contributions to the Journal of the History of

Ideas have been written by historians of art

It is not difficult to see that such a development

should have provoked criticism on the side of those

who care about the purity and autonomy of methods

Iconology was criticized as far as its internal coherence

and also as far as its claim to be the integral method

of the study of art are concerned (Białostocki 1962)

Studies by R Klein E Forssman G Previtali G

Kubler B Teyssegravedre C Ginzburg and G Hermeren

expressed critical opinions in one or the other respect

Iconology linked art with the rest of history but it

disrupted the links between the work of art and other

things (Kubler 1962) Concentrating on meaning

iconology neglected art as form as individual expres-

sion Iconology implied a rational relationship between

intellectual content and artistic form On the one hand

one spoke of ldquoiconological diminutionsrdquo (Kubler

1962)mdashlimitations of research to meaning only But

on the other hand the overstatements of iconology

were criticized its representatives sometimes seemed

540

to assume everything symbolized something And some

iconologists seemed to consider important in art not

that which makes art a different field of human activity

but that which connects art with other fieldsmdashwith

the history of ideas

There were of course critics who had the opposite

opinion Since the end of the eighteenth century a

direct experience of art was more and more valued

and its symbolical function considered as a burden

J G von Herder said ein Kunstwerk ist der Kunst

wegen da aber bei einem Symbole ist die Kunst

dienend (ldquoA work of art is there because of art but

with a symbol art is a servicerdquo) Similar opinions were

expressed by nineteenth-century art writers and in this

century they have been voiced by Benedetto Croce and

by other Italian opponents of contenutismo by which

they meant interest in content For such critics to put

stress on iconography was to miss the essential in art

and to focus attention on a subordinate function of art

Also among scholars who considered the function

of representation and of communication as a legitimate

and important function of art criticism was expressed

not against the principle of an iconographical or icon-

ological investigation but against overstatements in

their application The introduction of the idea of ldquodis-

guised symbolismrdquo has created a danger of course of

opening the way to fanciful interpretations The alle-

gorical and symbolical function of mythological imag-

ery in classical art is also difficult to interpret precisely

Since no literary sources give a key to an interpretation

of the iconography of the sarcophagi very divergent

theories have been expressed concerning their meaning

Some archaeologists like F Cumont (1942) believe

that mythological and allegorical imagery (Anadyo-

mene Sea-Thiasos Personifications of the Seasons) is

to be read symbolically The Sea-Thiasos for instance

is to be interpreted as a symbol of the journey of the

souls of the deceased to the islands of the blessed

Others like A D Nock (1946) do not find enough

evidence to accept other than a decorative function

in such imagery

The intrusion of some representatives of psychology

eg C G Jung into iconographic studies giving them

an unhistorical turn in their search for ldquoarchetypal

imagesrdquo has complicated the situation although art

historians in general understandably have not accepted

that kind of approach to symbolism (Frankfort 1958

Gombrich 1965)

The fact that iconographic interpretations sometimes

lack satisfactory proofs does not detract from the im-

portance of such investigations so long as they are

conducted according to the requirements of historical

methods and take into account the corrective princi-

ples established by Panofsky A correct acquaintance

with the way of thinking of the artist the patron or the

viewer based on a satisfactory knowledge of documen-

tary visual and literary sources an awareness of the

choice situations produced by historical developments

may enable art historians to discover the secondary

meaning of a work of art as well as its intrinsic mean-

ing It is of course possible that the art historian will

meet some works for which it will not be possible to re-

construct in a satisfactory way the world of ideas that

would account for the meaning of those works In such

cases a reliable interpretation is simply not possible

R Berliner (1945 1966) criticized the widespread

opinion according to which content of the works of

visual arts in the Middle Ages had to be checked

against the literary sources considered as the only

medium in which ideological innovations were per-

mitted Berliner pleaded for assuming a considerable

ldquofreedomrdquo in the medieval artist and he considered

iconographic innovation possible even when no writ-

ten evidence could be found Meyer Schapiro (1947)

presented proofs that sometimes purely aesthetic rea-

sons decided the character of the work of art even as

early as the Romanesque period

We can only touch on some specific discussions going

on in the field of iconographic research But iconogra-

phic research is far from being a closed system and

the relative share of iconographic and stylistic criticism

in the work of art historians is always a matter of

discussion It is certain that the ldquoiconographicrdquo period

in the study of art has enlarged in a considerable way

the understanding of the art of the past and that it

has connected art history in a way unknown before

with the other historical disciplines and above all others

with the history of ideas

BIBLIOGRAPHY

L B Alberti On Painting ed J Spencer (New Haven

1956 revised ed 1966) E Auerbach ldquoFigurardquo (1944) trans

and published in Scenes From the Drama of European Liter-

ature (New York 1959) pp 11-76 K Bauch ldquoImagordquo

(1960) Studien zur Kunstgeschichte (Berlin 1967) pp 1-20

G P Bellori Descrizione delle imagini dipinte da Raffaello

(Rome 1695 ed used is 1751) R Berliner ldquoThe Free-

dom of Medieval Artrdquo Gazette des Beaux-Arts 628 (1945)

263-88 idem ldquoBemerkungen zu einigen Darstellungen des

Erloumlsers als Schmerzensmannrdquo Das Muumlnster 9 (1956)

97-117x J Białostocki ldquoIconografia e Iconologiardquo Enciclo-

pedia Universale dellArte (1962) Vol VII cols 163-75

trans as Encyclopedia of World Art (1966) Vol VII cols

769-85 lists almost all important older contributions to this

field idem ldquoRomantische Ikonographierdquo Stil und Ikonog-

raphie (Dresden 1966) pp 156-81 idem ldquoKompozycja

emblematyczna epitafioacutew ślaskich XVI wiekurdquo (ldquoEmblem-

atic Composition of Silesian Epitaphs of the Sixteenth Cen-

turyrdquo) Ze studioacutew nad Sztuka XVI wieku na Řlasku

(Wrocław 1968) pp 77-93 idem ldquoEsilio Privatordquo Bulletin

du Museacutee National de Varsovie 10 (1969) 95-101 J

541

Chydenius The Theory of Medieval Symbolism (Helsingfors

1960) Series of the Societas Scientiarum Fennica Com-

mentationes Humanarum Litterarum 27 2 R J Clements

Picta Poesis (Rome 1960) F Creuzer Symbolik und

Mythologie der Alten Voumllker (Leipzig and Darmstadt 1810

revised ed 1819) F Cumont Recherches sur le symbolisme

funeacuteraire des Romains (Paris 1942) L Eitner ldquoThe Open

Window and the Storm-Tossed Boatrdquo Art Bulletin 37

(1955) 281-90 H Frankfort ldquoThe Archetype in Analytical

Psychology and the History of Religionrdquo Journal of the

Warburg and Courtauld Institutes 21 (1958) 166-78

K Garas ldquoAllegorie und Geschichte in der Venezianischen

Malerei des 18 Jahrhundertsrdquo in proceedings of the XXI

International Congress of the History of Art Bonn Stil und

Uumlberlieferung in der Kunst des Abendlandes (Berlin 1967)

3 280-83 K Giehlow ldquoDie Hieroglyphenkunde des

Humanismus in der Allegorie der Renaissancerdquo Jahrbuch

der Kunsthistorischen Sammlungen des Allerhochsten

Kaiserhauses 32 (1915) 1-232 C Gilbert ldquoOn Subject and

Not-Subject in Italian Renaissance Picturesrdquo Art Bulletin

34 (1952) 202-16 C Ginzburg ldquoDa A Warburg a E H

Gombrich Note su un problema di metodordquo Studi medi-

evali series 3 7 (1966) 1015-65 E H Gombrich ldquoIcones

Symbolicae The Visual Image in Neo-Platonic Thoughtrdquo

Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes 11 (1948)

163-92 idem ldquoThe Use of Art for the Study of Symbolsrdquo

American Psychologist 20 (1965) A Grabar Liconoclasme

byzantin Dossier archeacuteologique (Paris 1957) idem Chris-

tian Iconography A Study of Its Origins (Princeton 1969)

S J Gudlaugsson De Comedianten bij Jan Steen en zijn

tijdgenooten (s-Gravenhage 1945) W S Heckscher ldquoThe

Genesis of Iconologyrdquo Stl und Uumlberlieferung in der Kunst

des Abendlandes Akten des XXI Internationalen Kon-

gresses fuumlr Kunstgeschichte (Berlin 1967) 3 239-62 G

Hermereacuten Representation and Meaning in the Visual Arts

A Study in the Methodology of Iconography and Iconology

Lund Studies in Philosophy Vol I (Lund 1969) R Hinks

Myth and Allegory in Ancient Art (London 1939) W

Hofmann Das Irdische Paradies (Munich 1960) G J

Hoogewerff ldquoLIconologie et son importance pour leacutetude

systeacutematique de lart chreacutetienrdquo Rivista dArcheologia Cris-

tiana 8 (1931) 53-82 E de Jongh Zinne- en minnebeelden

in de schilderkunst van de zeventiende eeuw (mdash1967) idem

ldquoErotica in Vogelperspectief De dubbelzinnigheid van een

reeks 17de eeuwse genrevoorstellingenrdquo Simiolus 3

(1968-69) 22-72 L Kalinowski ldquoTreści ideowe i estetyczne

Drzwi Gnieźnieńskichrdquo (ldquoIdeological and Aesthetic Content

of the Gniezno Bronze Doorsrdquo) in Drzwi Gnieźnieńskie ed

M Walicki (Wroclaw 1959) 2 7-160 H Keller Tizians

Poesie fuumlr Koumlnig Philip II von Spanien (Wiesbaden 1969)

R Klein ldquoLa theacuteorie de lexpression figureacutee dans les traiteacutes

italiens sur les imprese 1555-1612rdquo Bibliothegraveque dHu-

manisme et Renaissance 19 (1957) 320-41 republished with

the other relevant studies in la forme et lintelligible (Paris

1969) R Klibansky E Panofsky F Saxl Saturn and Melan-

choly (London 1964) J B Knipping Ikonografie van de

Contra-Reformatie in de Nederlanden (Hilversum 1939-40)

G Kubler The Shape of Time (New Haven and London

1962) R W Lee ldquoUt pictura poesisrdquo Art Bulletin 22

(1940) 197-269 E Macircle Lart religieux du XIIIe siegravecle en

France (Paris 1898) English ed used (New York 1958)

idem Lart religieux de la fin du Moyen-Age en France

(Paris 1908) idem Lart religieux du XIIe siegravecle en France

(Paris 1922) idem Lart religieux apregraves le Concile de Trente

(Paris 1932) J Maurin Białostocka Lessing i sztuki plas-

tyczne (ldquoLessing and the visual artsrdquo) (Wroclaw Warszawa

Krakoacutew 1969) E F von Monroy Embleme und Emblem-

buumlcher in den Niederlanden 1560-1630 ed H M von Erffa

(Utrecht 1964) J Montagu ldquoThe Painted Enigma and

French Seventeenth Century Artrdquo Journal of the Warburg

and Courtauld Institutes 31 (1968) 307-35 W Mrazek

Ikonologie der barocken Deckenmalerei (Vienna 1953)

Uumlsterreichische Akademie der Wissenschaften Philo-

sophisch-historische Klasse Sitzungsberichte 2283 A D

Nock ldquoSarcophagi and Symbolismrdquo American Journal of

Archaeology 50 (1946) 166ff D Panofsky and E Panofsky

ldquoThe Iconography of the Galeacuterie Franccedilois Ier at Fontaine-

bleaurdquo Gazette des Beaux-Arts 652 (1958) 113-90

E Panofsky ldquoUumlber das Verhaumlltnis der Kunstgeschichte zur

Kunsttheorierdquo Zeitschrift fuumlr Aesthetik und allgemeine

Kunstwissenschaft 18 (1925) 129-61 idem Studies in

Iconology (New York 1939) idem ed Abbot Suger (Prince-

ton 1946) idem Gothic Architecture and Scholasticism

(Latrobe Pa 1951) idem Early Netherlandish Painting

(Cambridge Mass 1953) idem Meaning in the Visual Arts

(Garden City N Y 1955) idem Renaissance and Renas-

cences in Western Art (Stockholm 1960) idem Tomb Sculp-

ture (New York 1964) E Panofsky and F Saxl ldquoClassical

Mythology in Medieval Artrdquo Metropolitan Museum Studies

4 (1932-33) 228-80 M Praz Studies in Seventeenth Cen-

tury Imagery (London 1939-47 2nd ed Rome 1964) S

Ringbom ldquoDevotional Images and Imaginative Devotions

Notes on the Place of Art in Late Medieval Private Pietyrdquo

Gazette des Beaux-Arts 6 73 (1969) 159-70 Joseph Sauer

Symbolik des Kirchengebaumludes und seiner Ausstattung in

der Auffassung des Mittelalters 2nd ed (Freiburg i B

1924) F Saxl ldquoFruumlhes Christentum und spaumltes Heidentum

in ihren kuumlnstlerischen Ausdrucksformenrdquo Wiener Jahrbuch

fuumlr Kunstgeschichte 2 (1923) 63-121 M Schapiro ldquoThe

Ruthwell Crossrdquo Art Bulletin 26 (1944) 232-45 idem ldquoOn

the Aesthetic Attitude in Romanesque Artrdquo in Art and

Thought issued in Honour of Ananda Coomaraswamy

(London 1947) 139-50 J Seznec The Survival of the Pagan

Gods (New York 1953) O G von Simson The Gothic

Cathedral (New York 1956) R E Spear ldquoThe Literary

Source of Poussins Realm of Florardquo The Burlington Maga-

zine 107 (1965) 563-69 L Volkmann Bilderschriften der

Renaissance (Leipzig 1923) Hans van de Waal Drie

eeuwen vaderlandsche geschieduitbeelding 1500-1800 (s-

Gravenhage 1952) idem ldquoSome Principles of a General

Iconographical Classificationrdquo in Actes du XVIIe Congregraves

International dHistoire de lArt Amsterdam 1952 (La Haye

1955) 601-06 E Wind ldquoCharity the Case History of a

Patternrdquo Journal of the Warburg Institute 1 (1937) 322ff

JAN BIAŁOSTOCKI

[See also Allegory Baroque Classicism Criticism Enlight-

enment Motif Myth Naturalism in Art Neo-Platonism

Renaissance Humanism Romanticism Symbolism Tem-

perance Ut pictura poesis]

Reformation) and it found expression as late as the

fourteenth and fifteenth centuries in the early graphic

imagery of such typological compendia as Biblia

pauperum and Speculum humanae salvationis The

didactic aims encompassed not only the direct moral

lessons which were transmitted through the imagery

of ldquoprohibitionrdquo and ldquodissuasionrdquo of the Last Judgment

and of the Virtues and Vices but also the visual repre-

527

sentation of sometimes complicated links among the

events of sacred history considered as prefigurations

and fulfillments which were established between the

figures and events of the Old and the New Dispen-

sation Thus typological thinking connected images

into symbolic relations Visual unity was established

in the religious imagery through the large encyclopedic

compendia eg Glossa ordinaria (the large body of

Commentaries to the Bible until recently held to be

a compilation by Walafrid Strabo) and Gulielmus

Durandus system of liturgy Rationale divinorum offi-

ciorum or Vincent of Beauvaiss Speculum maius an

image of the world seen in the symbolistic mirror

These books contributed to the realization of the tre-

mendous iconographical programs of the great cathe-

drals of the high Middle Ages where God nature and

man were united into an exceptionally elaborated sys-

tem of symbolic images mirroring the model of the

world current in the period of Gothic art Art at that

time followed the symbolistic way of thinking which

prevailed in theology as well as in liturgy in profane

ceremonials and in the other fields of life Art gave

artistic form to the abstract structure of the cosmos

as seen by medieval theologians and brought it close

to the understanding or to the imagination of every

man This does not at all mean that medieval symbol-

ism was always understandable to everybody and

everywhere Very specific theological problems and

controversies found their way into iconography and

when deciphered by modern iconographers they dis-

close often complicated religious andor political situ-

ations (for example the imagery of the Ruthwell Cross

which reflects the conflicting ideologies of Northern

versus Roman Christianity in England as revealed in

an analysis by Meyer Schapiro 1944)

Neo-Platonic symbolism was developed especially

under the impact of writings by Pseudo-Dionysius the

Areopagite His influence promoted to a great extent

medieval ideas about the symbolism of light The sym-

bolism of light found its highest achievement in the

creation of Gothic architecture dominated by the

mysticism of light (von Simson 1956) Abbot Suger

the auctor intellectualis of Gothic architecture pre-

sented in his writings an excellent record of that atti-

tude toward symbolism In his De rebus in adminis-

tratione sua gestis (XVII) he writes about the doors

with gilt bronze reliefs ldquoBright is the noble work but

being nobly bright the work should brighten the

minds so that they may travel through the true lights

to the true light where Christ is the true door

The dull mind rises to truth through that which

is materialrdquo (Panofsky [1946] pp 46-49) Con-

templating precious stones transports Sugers mind to

a contemplation of the supernatural

Whenmdashout of my delight in the beauty of the house of

Godmdashthe loveliness of the many-colored stones has called

me away from external cares and worthy meditation has

induced me to reflect transferring that which is material

to that which is immaterial on the diversity of the sacred

virtues then it seems to me that I see myself dwelling as

it were in some strange region of the universe which neither

exists entirely in the slime of the earth nor entirely in the

purity of Heaven and that by the Grace of God I can

be transported from this inferior to that higher world in

an anagogical mannerrdquo

(ibid pp 63-65)

To a similar sphere of mystical symbols the specific

symbolism of numbers also belongs Numbers in the

Bible and those referring to quantitative relations in

architecture were considered as having a mystical

meaning ldquothe Divine Wisdom is reflected in the num-

bers impressed on all thingsrdquo (Saint Augustine De

libero arbitrio II XVI) The belief in the mystical signi-

ficance of numbers which originated in Pythagorean-

ism and was revived by Neo-Platonism was transmitted

to the Middle Ages by the Fathers of the Church (Macircle

[1898] English ed [1958] p 10) Complicated ramifi-

cations of this numerical symbolism in the field of

medieval architectural iconography are studied by J

Sauer (1924) as well as by E Macircle (ibid p 10) The

number eight for example connected with the idea

of new life by the Fathers (since it comes after seven

the terminal number of human life and of the world)

expresses the concept of resurrection and therefore that

of the Baptism because of that early belief baptisteries

and baptismal fonts are octagonal (Macircle ibid p 14)

One may trace in such use of numerical symbolism

a mystical rather than a didactic attitude

The general adoption of a symbolic attitude does

not mean that in the Middle Ages no actual events

were represented in art However since medieval art

was very much traditional and remained faithful to

exempla or compositional visual patterns the actual

events when they were sometimes taken as subjects

of representation used to be transformed to fit precon-

ceived traditional patterns The written lives of the

saints have been composed according to literary and

mythical topoi The same may be observed in art

When a new subject had to be represented it used to

be molded according to existing patterns As an exam-

ple we may adduce the story of Saint Adalbert repre-

sented on the bronze doors of the twelfth century at

Gniezno Poland The formerly executed European

bronze church doors represented Christological narra-

tive or allegorical figures or ornaments The fairly

recent hagiographic story had to be given visual shape

It is not surprising that the representations in most

cases follow the patterns of Christological iconography

(Kalinowski 1959) Secular subjects as for example

528

the conquest of England by William the Conqueror

and its circumstances represented on the so-called

Bayeux Tapestry followed in the general idea the

classical tradition It seems that perhaps more of a

direct experience of the actual medieval life found its

way into art than is usually admitted but the relative

share of symbolism and realism of system and freedom

is still a matter of discussion among medievalists

(Berliner 1945 1956)

In the late Middle Ages the general system of icon-

ography persisted but new subjects especially the

representations of the most human episodes and rela-

tionships in Christs life namely of His infancy and

His emotional connections (with the Virgin and Saint

John) as well as His Passion and the episodes of Our

Ladys life come to the fore Although symbolical and

didactic thinking maintained its importance the means

to communicate with the faithful changed most sub-

jects popular in the late Middle Ages appeal to the

beholders emotions rather than to his reason Scholars

have selected a group of so-called devotional pictures

as opposed to dogmatic and to historical repre-

sentations but the precise delimitation of such a group

is still a matter of discussion as is also the question

of how much this art was influenced by literature and

especially by pious poetry With the development of

the graphic arts new cheap pictures spread widely the

typological imagery systematized in the Biblia pau-

perum and in the Speculum humanae salvationis

Great collections of religious meditations compiled in

monasteries like Meditations on the Life of Christ by

Pseudo-Bonaventure (ed I Ragusa and R B Green

1961) spread widely a new emotional approach to

iconography Also the religious theater had some influ-

ence on the way stories in art were told

4 In the iconography of the Renaissance art ldquohis-

toryrdquo was shifted to the fore at the expense of symbol-

ism It does not mean that symbols ceased to exist

Pictorial allegory and symbolism played a very impor-

tant part in the conception of humanistic art But what

was placed in the center of the new art theory was

the concept of istoria The first and the most important

task of the work of art according to L B Alberti (De

pictura 1435 Della pittura 1436) is to present a story

This story had to be selected from authoritative literary

sources either sacred or profane it should represent

in a possibly convincing and expressive way an episode

from the Holy Scriptures from sacred or classical

history from mythology or legend This new concept

of istoria which was to dominate iconographic consid-

erations for more than three hundred years (the mean-

ing of the term istoria or storia changed of course in

that period) was one of the consequences of the Ren-

aissance idea of the priority of literature over the visual

arts There were several reasons for that priority one

being a complete lack of known classical theory of art

In its stead the theories of poetry and rhetoric were

adopted as guiding principles for the visual arts Hence

the dominating Horatian principle Ut pictura poesis

which subordinated the visual arts to the rules of liter-

ary theory This identification of literature and art

lasted until G E Lessing in 1766 revolted against it

in his Laokooumln (R W Lee 1940) In the humanistic

theory of visual arts the concept of istoria took the

central place Istoria had to be chosen for its moral

value (Alberti chose as his examples the subjects show-

ing stoic moral firmness as the ldquoDeath of Meleagerrdquo

the ldquoImmolation of Iphigeniardquo or the ldquoCalumnyrdquo of

Apelles) it had to be represented according to the

principle of decorum and costume ie with regard to

its dignity and most truthfully to the literary proto-

type Everything should be suitable in ldquosize function

kind color and other similar thingsrdquo Alberti stressed

the necessity of varied and convincing expressions of

emotions by suitable gestures

The dependence of post-medieval iconography on

literature increased with time and in the seventeenth

century the truthfulness of the pictorial formulation

of literary subjects became one of the most valued

qualities of a work of visual arts ldquoRead the story and

the picture at the same timerdquo Nicolas Poussin wrote

to M de Chantelou one of his customers In the French

Royal Academy of Painting and Sculpture lengthy

discussions were going on concerning the relation of

pictures to literary sources To be able to represent

well subjects taken from poetry the artist had to be

a doctus artifex well-informed in various fields G P

Bellori (1695) stressed however the fact that not

everything good in writing comes out well in painting

Therefore the painter to be able to transform the

story had to acquire ldquoan universal knowledge of things

and he should contemplate precisely nature and reali-

tiesrdquo Some freedom was given to the artist from the

beginning Alberti was far from limiting the painter

too much by this dependence on literature He stressed

the specific requirements of the visual arts as for ex-

ample the necessity to limit the number of represented

figures in order to keep a balance between ldquocopious-

nessrdquo and ldquosolitude in paintingrdquo This made it of

course necessary to reduce crowded scenes to an easily

graspable number of figures in order to avoid ldquodissolute

confusionrdquo (Spencer [1956] pp 23-28)

The interest of early Renaissance art theorists in

iconography was not great They concentrated their

attention chiefly on the discussion of the means needed

to achieve a convincing and beautiful representation

of the istoria and on the specific problems of repre-

sentationmdashcorrect (by adoption of the rules of per-

529

spective) and beautiful (by adoption of the rules of

proportion) Leonardo da Vinci does not show a spe-

cific interest in iconography but in some passages of

his incompleted Treatise on Painting he gives literary

programs of pictures remarkably however the pic-

tures are not of stories but of representations of pow-

erful natural or human happenings such as storms and

battles Here the naturalistic interests of the Renais-

sance come to the fore

An important achievement of the Renaissance partly

affecting iconography was the reunionmdashas noticed and

described by E Panofsky and F Saxl (1932) and Panof-

sky (1960)mdashof the literary and visual traditions of

classical antiquity during the fifteenth century During

the Middle Ages the literary tradition of classical sub-

ject matter was separated from the visual tradition of

classical artistic motifs so that there was no awareness

of their belonging together The classical subjects for

example those taken from Ovid used to be represented

in contemporary medieval stylistic forms classical

artistic motifs on the other hand for example the forms

of garment folds human types gestures compositional

patterns and so on were used to represent Christian

subject matter as in the western portals of the Reims

cathedral or in the pulpits of Nicola or Giovanni

Pisano It was only in the High Renaissance eg in

the works of Raphael Titian Michelangelo and Cor-

reggio that forms and iconography themes and motifs

became reintegrated In this way the classical vision

of classical subjects became sometimes so perfect that

some works created around 1500 could have been

taken for classical originals (for example Bacchus by

Michelangelo) The growing understanding of classical

ideas and forms led to another specific Renaissance

phenomenon called by Panofsky ldquopseudomorphosisrdquo

Certain Renaissance figures became invested with a mean-

ing which for all their classicizing appearance had not been

present in their classical prototypes though it had fre-

quently been foreshadowed in classical literature Owing

to its medieval antecedents Renaissance art was often able

to translate into images what classical art had deemed

inexpressible

(Panofsky [1939] pp 70f)

In the north of Italy beside the concept of istoria

poesia appears a fact which also points to a depend-

ence on poetry this was understood mainly as referring

to lyrical poetry and not to epic or heroic Mythologi-

cal pictures by Titian were described in such a way

(Keller [1969] pp 24f) The stress was on the poetical

mood more than on an important human action a

lyrical tonality was preferred to a heroic one The

archaeological interests then current in Padua and

Venice visible for instance in the works by Andrea

Mantegna were moderated by an elegiac poetic mood

in reconstructing the classical world Pictures by Gior-

gione who worked for exclusive circles of humanists

were so hermetic in meaning that several of them like

the Three Philosophers (Vienna) or the Storm (Venice)

are iconographic riddles up to our own day The same

is true of the enigmatic and poetic iconography of some

pictures by Titian (Sacred and Profane Love in the

Borghese Gallery in Rome) by Lorenzo Lotto or by

the Ferrarese Dosso Dossi

The most important document of this romantic ar-

chaeological vision which strongly influenced icono-

graphical invention in Italy and outside of Italy was

a fantastic romance Hypnerotomachia Poliphili attrib-

uted in the most plausible way to a Franciscan monk

Francesco Colonna and published with beautiful

woodcuts by Aldus Manutius in Venice in 1499 Poetic

visions of a dreamy classical landscape full of ruins

in which the lovers Poliphilo and Polia wander influ-

enced the imagination of artists not less than the excel-

lent woodcuts their impact can be found as far and

as late as in the gardens at Versailles The illustrations

to Hypnerotomachia also popularized hieroglyphic

signs which make their appearance in iconography as

a specific phenomenon of the Renaissance

5 Art conceived as a language may be addressed

to large or to small groups It depends on the scope

of communication It can be intended as a message

to a possibly large audience but it can also be limited

in its appeal to a small selected group of observers

In an extreme case the polarization could be that

between a didactic art appealing to everybody and an

elitarian cryptic message understandable only to the

initiated few Medieval art belonged by far to the first

category the art of the Renaissance to the second

Even in the monumental wall-paintings decorating the

most celebrated places of Christianity such as the

Sistine Chapel or the official rooms of the Popes like

the Stanza della Segnatura even in the sepulchral

chapels of the most important families like the Sassetti

and the Medici the iconographic programs and sym-

bolism are extremely complicated The meaning of the

decoration of the great Gallery of Franccedilois I at Fon-

tainebleau is so cryptic that it was hypothetically ex-

plained only recently by the best specialists in icon-

ography (D and E Panofsky 1958) Few works of

medieval art have provoked such a number of inter-

pretations as the well-known and at first glance seem-

ingly easy to understand pictures like Botticellis

mythologies (Birth of Venus Spring The Uffizi Flor-

ence) like Titians Sacred and Profane Love or like

sculptures such as Michelangelos Medici tombs The

same is true of works by Duumlrer Holbein and Bruegel

in the North A deep symbolism a complicated

iconographymdashespecially current in the circles influ-

530

enced by Neo-Platonismmdashbelonged to the perfection

of the work

This idea had a long life it recurs in 1604 in Carel

van Manders Book of the Painter as well as in Berninis

utterances on the beauty of the concept which adorns

the work The more refined the concept the more

difficult the symbolism the narrower the circle of those

who can really understand the work

Art was considered especially in the exclusive court

social groups or among the humanists as a secret

language accessible to the initiated The visual sign

was connected with words into a specific union of

literature and art which flourished at the time of the

Renaissance of mannerism and of the baroque in the

form of impresa of hieroglyph and of emblem The

roots of the impresamdashthe personal sign and mottomdashare

to be found in chivalrous devices and signs popular

in the late Middle Ages it was brought to Italy from

France and connected with Neo-Platonic speculation

(Klein 1957) Hieroglyphs became popular thanks to

the discovery in 1419 of the Hieroglyphica by Hora-

pollo Niliacus (of the second or fourth century AD)

published in 1505 The humanists believed that this

enigmatic image-script disguised a profound wisdom

of the Egyptians ldquothey supposed that the great minds

of Greece had been initiated into these Egyptian

mysteriesmdashwhich in their turn were of course one

more prefiguration of the teachings of Christrdquo (Seznec

[1953] p 100) Emblems originated from an erudite

intellectual play among the humanists aiming however

at a moral lesson and sometimes considered in a Neo-

Platonic way as symbols revealing to those who con-

template them a higher knowledge of divine mysteries

Emblem included a motto called lemma an image

and an epigram Only the whole of the emblem can

be understood each element of it giving only one part

of the meaning All those cryptic codes of expression

connecting words and images originated as secret and

elitarian The problem of the degree of obscurity was

one of the main points discussed by the theorists of

the emblematics (Clements [1964] pp 191-95) Eras-

mus of Rotterdam stressed that one of the virtues of

the impresa is that its meaning can be grasped only

with an intellectual effort Cesare Ripa (Iconologia

1593) demands that symbolic images be composed ldquoin

the form of enigmardquo Sambucus (1564) required ldquoob-

scuritasrdquo and ldquonovitasrdquo from the emblems Paolo

Giovio represented a reasonable middle ldquoThe device

should not be so obscure as to require the Sybil to

interpret it nor yet so obvious that any literal-minded

person can understand itrdquo Later however the crypto-

grams of hieroglyphics and emblem books began to

be popularized and explained Collections of emblems

became widely known New systematization of icon

ography now of a humanistic one was inaugurated

In 1556 Vincenzo Cartari published the first modern

handbook of mythological imagery le imagini colla

sposizione degli dei degli antichi (Venice 1556) In the

same year Pierio Valeriano produced a rich collection

of Hieroglyphica (Basel 1556) Earlier in 1531 Andrea

Alciati had compiled the first emblem book (Emblema-

tum liber Augsburg 1531) The influence of such

books which went through many translations and edi-

tions and which were imitated and continued all over

Europe grew at the close of the sixteenth and in the

seventeenth century In exclusive groups it happened

much earlier that hieroglyphic astrological and em-

blematic imagery influenced the iconography of im-

portant works of art as for example at the court of

Maximilian I (M Giehlow 1915) sometimes this con-

cerned works done by the most distinguished artists

like Duumlrers Melencolia I (Klibansky et al 1964)

Emblematic principle of composition uniting as it did

the image with the verbal formulations found great

popularity in northern Europe perhaps because the

importance of the word so prominent in Protestantism

was stressed (Luther required ldquofragments from the

Holy Writrdquo to be included in the Epitaph-pictures)

Epitaphs and other religious pictures of the Protestant

North connect words and images in the harmonious

indivisible whole (Białostocki 1968)

In the Netherlands emblems played an important

part in the development of realistic painting in the

seventeenth century since they furnished a rich reper-

tory of imagery charged with allegorical meaning (de

Jongh von Monroy) However the meaning of those

images obvious to the viewer who remembered the

original emblematic context eluded for a long time

later interpreters who were no longer conversant with

the emblems

After Cartari and his followers furnished artists and

patrons with images of classical gods there was a need

felt for another handbook which would enable the

artist to represent and the patron to understand the

abstract moral philosophical scientific and other

ideas symbolized Only then was art able to express

complex thoughts This task was fulfilled by Cesare

Ripa of Perugia who in 1593 published his Iconologia

a handbook explaining how to represent all the incor-

poreal concepts In 1603 Iconologia was republished

with illustrations and became one of the most popular

and influential art books With Ripa in hand art

historiansmdashinitially Eacutemile Macircle (1932)mdashwere able to

decipher hundreds of allegorical statements in paint

and stone guided by this alphabet of personifications

Ripas basic entity was a human figure female more

often than male whose costumes attributes gestures

and other particulars express specific qualities of the

531

idea represented With the publication of Ripas workmdash

translated soon into many languages and frequently

republished and revisedmdashthe humanistic system of

allegorical iconography was established classical gods

and personifications hieroglyphic signs and emblems

connecting words and images this was the material

used by the artists of mannerism and the baroque when

they did not choose to keep to the ldquohistoricalrdquo world

ie to borrow their subjects directly from literature

When they did so when they painted stories they used

to select them not only from Ovid and Vergil but also

from the more recent poems by Ariosto and Tasso and

also from the works of less known writers ancient and

modern Valerius Maximus furnished them with exam-

ples of virtuous behavior These historical examples

were in general either connected with allegorical gen-

eralizations (in the big decorations of the late baroque

the central fresco was often an allegory and the ac-

companying canvas-pictures presented historical ex-

amples of virtues Garas pp 280-83) or conceived in

an allegorical way Ovide moraliseacute was popular already

in the late Middle Ages Its influence persisted also

in the time of the baroque Myths and stories under-

went allegorical interpretations along the lines of that

moralizing commentary

What was considered necessary for an artist around

1600 can be seen from Carel van Manders Book of

the Painter (1604) It included a long theoretical poem

a history of classical and modern Italian and Nether-

landish artists a translation and a moral interpretation

of Ovids Metamorphoses and finally a description of

personifications There is no specific section on reli-

gious iconography since artists were well furnished

with books giving them rules in this respect

Against the humanistic conception of art the Council

of Trent proclaimed rules constituting a new system

of religious iconography which put an end to the live

tradition of medieval art These rules were published

officially by the Church and they have been com-

mented upon and elaborated in books by Joannes

Molanus (1570) Saint Carlo Borromeo (1577) Gabriele

Paleotti (1581) Federico Borromeo (1624) and several

others The rules of the Council governed the decora-

tion of churches and other sacred buildings and the

character of pictures representing sacred subjects A

break between the religious and the secular iconogra-

phy became obvious in theoretical literature although

there existed many emblem books of a very distinct

religious character (G de Montenay 1571 B Arias

Montanus 1571 H Hugo 1624) A new strictly for-

mulated system of religious iconography coexisted in

the seventeenth century with humanistic subject mat-

ter symbolism and allegory The classical nude intro-

duced by the Renaissance into art was strictly forbid

den now in religious art but found a free field of

development in secular mythological and allegorical

works Many artists exercised their imagination in both

fields in some specific fields such as sepulchral iconog-

raphy cooperation between religious and humanistic

symbolism was common In the work of P P Rubens

the various aspects of the new iconography found

perhaps their best expression In his art allegorical

concepts classical gods and heroes triumphs of mythi-

cal beings as well as of secular rulers accompany mar-

tyrdoms of Catholic saints and the triumphs of the

Eucharist What began to be separated in theory could

yet coexist in harmony in the work of a great artist

6 In northern European art (before Rubens) the

renewal of the arts during the Renaissance took the

form of the new study of nature and the elaboration

of the most convincing means of representing the ma-

terial world in an illusionistic way traditional medieval

symbolism was transformed in a specific way produc-

ing what E Panofsky called in 1953 ldquodisguised sym-

bolismrdquo The symbolic meaning connected with objects

and qualities persisted but a new mastery reproduced

these symbolical objects with such a degree of realism

that they did not differ any longer from other objects

not charged with any metaphorical meaning Some-

times the symbolical meaning of represented objects

results from the traditional iconography in an unmistak-

able way sometimes the meaning is hinted at by the

inscriptions placed in the picture or on its frame But

in many cases the modern viewer remains perplexed

without any sufficient clue to decide whether in the

picture he observes he has to do with the beginnings

of the representation of reality for its own sake or

whether the search for specific metaphorical meaning

is justified It is still always a matter of discussion to

decide at which moment the representation of some

objects or some scene in life without any symbolical

(or ldquohistoricalrdquo) implications became possible (Gilbert

1952) Observers of the eighteenth and nineteenth

centuries to whom the meaning of old symbols was

wholly forgotten took many images of the fifteenth and

sixteenth centuries for simple representations of life

Bruegel for example was considered as simply a

painter of joking or working peasants Recent studies

in iconography have shown that these pictures are

saturated with disguised meaning and that it is ex-

tremely rare before about 1550 to meet simple repre-

sentations of nature in painting In graphic arts the

direct depiction of life and landscape began earlier

as in the works of Lombard draughtsmen or in the

incredibly fresh convincing drawings and prints by the

Master of the Housebook There are also early excep-

tions in painting like Albrecht Altdorfers landscape

without any human figures But in general it was only

532

during the second half of the sixteenth century that

landscape genre and still-life painting began to ac-

quire equal rights with religious and humanistic history

and allegory predominantly in Venice and in Antwerp

Even then however the representations of people

working in fields (Jacopo or Francesco Bassano) fol-

lowed the old traditions of Calendar-pictures and in

the background of genre scenes as in Pieter Aertsens

pictures a biblical motif may be found which trans-

forms the whole composition into a storia however

unorthodox

With the development of realistic painting in the

seventeenth century there appeared specific iconogra-

phic problems New subjects slowly found convenient

form They entered the scene patterned after the ven-

erable stories of sacred or of profane iconography

H van de Waal described (1952) the process of the for-

mation of national historical iconography in Holland

Scenes depicting recent happenings from a long strug-

gle for national independence appeared first in forms

assimilated to well-known religious or mythical scenes

This was not only an expedient facilitating their com-

position for by this means the new subjects gained the

decorum inherent in the adopted patterns formed to

express traditional stories Similar procedures may be

seen in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries when

more and more sections of reality became interesting

enough to be represented in art

The transfer of decorum from the sacred or allegori-

cal figures to the humans represented is a means used

in what modern iconographers call ldquoallegorical por-

traiturerdquo Renaissance painters had represented real

people under mythological or even sacred disguise

they gave actual faces of living people to the figures

represented with all the attributes and characteristics

of their mythical sacred or even allegorical qualities

Later it was only the pattern which remained still in

the eighteenth century English portraitists patterned

the effigies of contemporary aristocrats after Michel-

angelos Sybils or after allegories like the Caritas

(Wind 1937) J B Oudry represented the Polish King

in exile Stanisław Leszczyński with all the attributes

of the allegory of exile taken from Ripa identifying

him in this way with personification of his most promi-

nent quality (Białostocki 1969)

Dutch realistic painting of the seventeenth century

is a document of an important iconographic conquest

Landscapes seascapes moonlit night scenes snapshots

of people skating in winter landscapes views of market

places church interiors backyards fishermen old

women preparing food fashionable dishes ready for

lunch merchants and artisans elegant gentlemen pay-

ing visits and folk-surgeons performing sensational

street-operations all this became subject matter for

representation and continued to be considered worthy

of depiction until the end of the nineteenth century

It was first considered as such in Holland only then

slowly everyday subject matter was recognized also by

art-theorists in other countries although it was re-

garded as much less dignified than religious mytholog-

ical or allegorical subjects Only in the nineteenth

century did the vogue of realistic representation of

everyday subjects become widespread In Dutch pic-

tures of the seventeenth century we are often con-

fronted with nothing else than representations of pic-

turesque reality Sometimes however these genre

pictures appear to be illustrations of proverbs expres-

sing moralistic folk-wisdom sometimes they recall

scenes from the popular threater of the rederijkers or

rhetoricians especially pictures by Jan Steen (Gud-

laugsson 1945) they contain allusions to emblems

Sometimes the elegant scenes from bourgeois life in-

clude quite indecent erotic allusions (de Jongh 1967

1969) The ambiguity of these pictures was certainly

a source of specific pleasure for those who knew the

key to their true meaning

7 In Catholic countries allegorical art sacred as

well as profane flourished The twofold character of

symbolic representations mentioned above persisted

in the seventeenth century Aristotelian rational sym-

bolism which used images as words was widespread

in the orthodox Catholic iconography of the Counter-

Reformation as well as in the humanistic visual lan-

guage codified by Ripa and others A mystical Neo-

Platonic symbolism transcending reason reappeared

too Its outspoken document is the treatise by Chris-

toforo Giarda Bibliothecae alexandrinae icones sym-

bolicae of 1626 (Gombrich 1948) For Giarda symbolic

images give the beholder a direct insight into the

mysteries of religion which are not accessible to rea-

son

Thanks to symbolic images the mind which is banished from

heaven into this dark cave of the body its actions held in

bondage by the senses can behold the beauty and form

of the Virtues and Sciences divorced from all matter and

yet adumbrated if not perfectly expressed in colours and

is thus roused to an even more fervent love and desire for

them Who then can sufficiently estimate the magni-

tude of the debt we owe to those who expressed the Arts

and Sciences themselves in images and so brought it about

that we could not only know them but look at them as

it were with our eyes that we can meet them and almost

converse with them

(Gombrich [1948] pp 188f)

Great allegorical compositions covering the ceilings of

baroque churches are often realizations of this princi-

ple For those however who conceived allegory as a

rational operation as a language used for didactic aims

the main problem remained the clarity of the allegori-

533

cal message The larger the audience to whom allegory

was addressed the simpler more obvious its symbolism

should have been The banality of allegorical language

provoked criticism in the eighteenth century Fran-

cesco Algarotti (1762) prefers without any doubt his-

torical representations to the ldquoempty allegories and

complicated mythological allusionsrdquo (Garas [1967] p

280) Especially criticized was the obscurity of these

allegories in which completely original unknown sym-

bols were used Roger de Piles praises his favorite

master Rubens who ldquointroduced only such allegories

elements of which were already known from ancient

artrdquo and opposes him to Charles Lebrun who ldquoinstead

of taking symbols from some known source as the

ancient fable and medals has invented almost all of

them and thus the pictures of this kind became riddles

which the beholder does not want to take the task to

solverdquo To keep the balance between platitudinous

redundancy and utter incomprehensibility was the

crucial problem of late baroque allegorism What is

interesting however is that the idea of the picture

as a riddle was not foreign to the seventeenth century

It appears in France as well as in Sweden where David

Kloumlcker Ehrenstrahl (1694) proposed that pictures

present riddles that could not be solved by everyone

In France however the ldquopainted enigmardquo fostered

by the Jesuits in their schools flourished especially well

in the seventeenth century (Montagu 1968) These

ldquopainted enigmasrdquo lent themselves to various inter-

pretations and gave interpreters an opportunity to

show their ingenuity These pictures and their inter-

pretations seem to prove that a considerable flexibility

of meaning was intended

We might rather accept that a work of art was regarded

in the seventeenth century as in a certain sense an open

symbol raw material like the myth or sacred story which

it illustrates on which the interpreter might exercise the

power of his ingenuity turning it into an allegory of Chris-

tian doctrine or a panegyric in honour of his patron

(Montagu [1968] p 334)

Such a situation probably existed only in some specific

circles It was a limiting case The other extreme was

to use in an uninteresting routine way Ripas symbolic

images or those of other popular symbolic handbooks

Such practice continued well into the eighteenth cen-

tury The general trend fed by ideas of the Enlighten-

ment was to make allegories more and more obvious

It is understandable that some theorists like the Count

de Caylus looked for new subject matter presenting

as he did Tableaux tireacutes de lIliade (1755) or that

J J Winckelmann tried to revive allegory and to give

it a new force It was however too late In the eight-

eenth century together with the whole system of

humanistic tradition the systems of iconography began

to disintegrate The great break in the tradition con-

cerned not only style but also iconography Emblem-

atic roots may be discovered in Goyas symbolism as

well as in the reasonable allegories of the Enlighten-

ment but generally speaking there was a search for

new not known or not used sourcesmdashas in William

Blakes biblical individualistic imagerymdashor the new

staging of the old ones as in Jacques Louis Davids

classical subjects

The art of romanticism was a definite break with

the past much more in the field of ideas and iconogra-

phy than in a stylistic respect where romanticists

retrospectively looked back either to medieval and

pre-Raphaelite or to baroque sources Symbols and

allegories yielded to an all-pervading mood and the

traditional repertory of religious allegorical mytho-

logical and historical iconography gave way to a new

iconography Although several encompassing images

of Christian and humanistic art survived they received

new content and essentially changed their character

New attitudes of the individual to the world of nature

and history to society and destiny to time and death

and new problems resulting from the striving after

freedom (which was a new perhaps most important

principle of human behavior in all fields of human

activity) found expression in new thematic fields and

in new particular themes such as ldquoStorm-tossed Boatrdquo

ldquoLonely Wanderer in the Mountainsrdquo ldquoA Death of the

Herordquo (Eitner 1955 Hofmann 1960 Białostocki

1966)

Romanticism has not formed and could not have

formed an iconographic system for since they strived

first of all for originality of individual conception the

romantics interpreted images in a subjective way as

expressions of mood Romanticism has on the other

hand introduced new heroes and martyrs into art

instead of religious ones the national social and artis-

tic ones It created a new image of history seen now

as a set of political and moral examplesmdashas in

baroquemdashbut often put together now according to a

very individualistic principle of choice A correlative

to pathetic and heroic romanticism was a bourgeois

and intimate romanticism its expression was for ex-

ample the new imagery of the open window which

shows to the viewer wide perspectives but shelters him

at the same time from the dangers of the unknown

(Eitner 1955)

When the world of ideas and images created at the

moment of the flowering of romanticism began to be

popularized for the use of the large bourgeois masses

the contentmdashideological and iconographicalmdashof ro-

manticism lost its original authenticity and left be-

hind not a new system of original images but a dispo-

534

sition to melodramatic experiences and an inflation of

a theatrical gesture (Hofmann 1960 Białostocki 1966)

The nineteenth century developed a realistic por-

traiture of man and nature and took over worn out

clicheacutes of the Renaissance and baroque allegories It

introduced new subject matter taken partly from tra-

dition partly from observation of reality tinted with

vague symbolism such as ldquoForgerdquo or the ldquoFuneral of

the Peasantrdquo but it did not create a new system of

iconography in spite of short-lived revivals of symbol-

istic attitudes in such movementsmdashincidentally not

limited to and not initiated in the visual artsmdashas

ldquosymbolismrdquo

New ephemeral artistic movements which consti-

tuted the history of European art in the last hundred

years show an interesting bracketing of style and icon-

ography in spite of a preponderant lack of iconogra-

phic interest Their representatives chose subjects suit-

able to specific artistic aims and means which they

developed and were interested in Impressionists

painted seaside scenes landscapes and genre pictures

showing the life of artistic and intellectual milieus

Cubists introduced a specific repertory of still-life

motifs symbols of the artists atelier and of the life

of the bohegraveme bottles musical instruments books

fruits flowers newspapers How much these motifs

were connected with specific cubist style appears when

one looks at works of artists foreign to the original

cubist group but imitating its style as for instance

several Czech artists like Emil Filla They adopted

cubist iconography together with cubist style Abstract

movements in general lacked iconography although

they were not foreign to symbolic tendencies espe-

cially in sculpture (Brancusi Moore) Only in the dec-

ades of 1950-70 can a revival of more articulated and

programmatic symbolism be observed One may sup-

pose that this revival is at least in part brought about

by the development of research in iconography and

symbolism which took place in the second and third

quarters of our century

II

1 The origins of ldquointerpretative iconographyrdquo may

be seen in the descriptions (ekphrasis) of works of art

known in classical literature But these descriptions

like those by Philostratus the Elder or Lucian are

limited simply to description and lack in general any

interpretation Moreover it is not certain whether they

are descriptions of actual or fictitious works of art at

least opinions in this respect vary Brief medieval tituli

which formulated in words the content of religious

images were to be sure interpretative sometimes but

they were short and cannot be connected with the

tradition of artistic erudition We have to look to

modern times to indicate the beginnings of iconogra-

phic interpretation and research From Vasaris Rag-

ionamenti in which interpretations of the paintings

decorating the Palazzo Vecchio in Florence are given

we learn how complicated and how undecipherable

iconographic concepts might have been even to peo-

ple living in buildings decorated by paintings expres-

sing these concepts But perhaps the first really to be

considered as interested in iconographic research was

the seventeenth-century archaeologist and art theorist

Giovanni Pietro Bellori In the introduction to his Lives

of Artists (1672) Bellori stressed that he paid special

attention to the content of the works of art he was

talking about and he even credited the painter Nicolas

Poussin with having directed his attention to iconogra-

phy In his Lives Bellori presented short interpretative

descriptions of pictures and he sometimes developed

these interpretations further in small iconographic

essays the influence of classical ekphrasis on him is

a possibility Sometimes his errors took deep roots in

the subsequent history of art as when he explained

Poussins Triumph of Flora (Dresden) by designating

Ovids Metamorphoses as its source The true source

Marinos Adona was finally found by R E Spear in

1965

What is interesting in Belloris procedure is that he

first identifies the motifs tries to connect them with

classical or modern literary sources and then proceeds

to find out the deep meaning the general symbolic

idea of the work Therefore he may be considered as

one of the pioneers not only of iconography as a disci-

pline of research but also of iconology as formulated

by its recent partisans That even in the second half

of the sixteenth century some observers were inclined

to look for hidden meaning in each element of the work

of art we learn from Joannes Molanus (1570) who in

De picturis et imaginibus sacris states reasonably that

ldquoit is not necessary to ask for meaning of everything

that can be observed in a picture in such cases a lot

of absurd things may resultrdquo But the consciousness of

the importance of iconography increased and at the

end of the seventeenth century Andreacute Feacutelibien stressed

that in order to attribute a picture to a painter it is

not enough to know the way he uses his brush one

needs also to know his esprit to learn his geacutenie and

to be able to foresee in which way he is able to form

his conceptions Thus iconographic analysis was con-

sidered necessary even for the purpose of attribution

Descriptive interpretations of the works of ancient

art appeared in the big archaeological publications of

the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries such as

Jacques Spons Miscellanea eruditae antiquitatis (1679)

G P Belloris Admiranda romanarum antiquitatum ac

veteris sculpturae vestigia (1693) P de Caylus Recueil

535

dantiquiteacutes eacutegyptiennes eacutetrusques grecques et

romaines (1752-67) and in an interesting endeavor

(although very much criticized by Lessing) of Joseph

Spence to explain classical poets through works of art

and vice versa (Polymetis 1747) Classical archaeology

however has not been especially interested in iconog-

raphy and the use of the term itself by archaeolo-

gists was limited to portraiture The first great devel-

opment of iconographic studies was connected with

the romantic movement although an important pre-

lude for it was hagiographical collections of sources

such as Acta sanctorum published by the Bollandists

(1643-1794 resumed later) Among the pre-romantic

scholars in iconography the eminent German poet

G E Lessing is to be noted His study of the repre-

sentation of death in classical times can be considered

as one of the first essays in interpretative iconography

which is now called iconology In Wie die Alten den

Tod gebildet (1769) Lessing tries to interpret the classi-

cal iconographic type of Amor with the inverted torch

and to find its ldquointrinsic meaningrdquo by taking into ac-

count the religion customs and philosophy of the

classical world The work of art is interpreted by Less-

ing as ldquoa symptom of something elserdquo While Lessings

predecessors (like B de Montfaucon) ldquoexplained the

classical past by monumentsrdquo he for the first time did

the opposite ldquohe explained the monuments by Antiq-

uityrdquo (Maurin Białostocka [1969] pp 92-100)

Pre-romantic and romantic interests in myth and

symbol found their expression in publications and dis-

cussions by German philosophers and scholars like F

Schlegel J Herder J J von Goumlrres and F Creuzer

Creuzers work Symbolik und Mythologie der alten

Voumllker (1810) which shows the influence of mystical

Neo-Platonic ideas on symbols (Gombrich 1965) was

the most influential in the romantic period in Ger-

many Under the impact of Chateaubriands le Geacutenie

du christianisme (1802) research in medieval iconog-

raphy developed mainly in France Works by French

scholars mostly clergymen which were indeed con-

cerned with Christian medieval art dominated icon-

ographical study in the nineteenth century Since most

of these writers were not professional scholars their

work was often amateurish in character but it is unde-

niable that books by A N Didron Histoire de Dieu

(Paris 1843) the first part of a comprehensive pro-

jected but not completed iconography of Christian art

A Crosnier Iconographie chreacutetienne (Caen 1848) C

Cahier Caracteacuteristiques des saints (Paris 1867) C

Rohault de Fleury Archeacuteologie chreacutetienne les saints

de la messe et leurs monuments 12 vols (Paris

1893-1900) L Breacutehier Lart chreacutetien son deacuteveloppe-

ment iconographique des origines agrave nos jours (Paris

1918) P Perdrizet V Leroquais and G de Jerphanion

have built up a solid body of iconographical knowl-

edge on which scholars of the twentieth century were

able to erect a modern comprehensive structure In

the field of Byzantine iconography it was Gabriel

Millets Recherches sur liconographie de leacutevangile aux

XIVe XVe et XVIe siegravecles (Paris 1916 reprint

1960) that was basic for any further study For Western

chiefly French art a well-written and learned work

appealing to the general reader as well as to the

scholar was produced by Eacutemile Macircle who in his four

volumes of the history of religious art (1898-1932) has

presented a well-composed synthetic image of icono-

graphical development A lexicographic summary of

these studies of generations of French scholars is pre-

sented in the Dictionnaire darcheacuteologie chreacutetienne et

de liturgie published from 1907 to 1953 and edited

by F Cabrol and H Leclerq A recent reference work

is that by L Reacuteau Iconographie de lart chreacutetien (Paris

1955-59) Russian scholars have done important work

in the field of Byzantine and Orthodox iconography

of religious art The most prominent are N P Kon-

dakov Ikonografia Bogomatieri (St Petersburg 1911

2nd ed 1914-15) D V Ainalov Mosaiki IV i V vekov

(St Petersburg 1895) and N Pokrovski Otcherki

pamyatnikov christianskogo isskusstva i ikonografii (St

Petersburg 1894 3rd ed 1910) V Lasarev and M

Alpatov belonging to the mid-twentieth-century gen-

eration of Russian scholars discuss iconography in

several works on religious art German scholarship

produced in the nineteenth century works by F Piper

A Springer and H Detzel Useful compendia were

produced in the early twentieth century by J Sauer

W Molsdorf K Kuumlnstle and J Braun Dutch scholars

C Smits J B Knipping and J J M Timmers contrib-

uted to iconographic studies in recent times Knip-

pings book (1939-40) being the most important work

on the iconography of the Counter-Reformation and

supplementing Macircles volume of 1932 In the twentieth

century on C R Moreys initiative iconographic

studies were inaugurated in North America Focused

on earlier medieval art these studies developed at

Princeton University

A new direction characteristic of iconographic

studies in the twentieth century has been given to

them by the international school of art historical re-

search inaugurated by the Hamburg scholar Aby

Warburg At the International Congress for the History

of Art at Rome in 1912 he presented a sensational

astrological interpretation of the frescoes painted by

Francesco Cossa and his collaborators in Palazzo

Schifanoja at Ferrara Warburg solved the secret of

those representations which had puzzled the ingenuity

of several former students interpreting them as images

of zodiacal signs and their decans But he did not limit

536

his contribution to the presentation of his results He

wanted to stress the importance of his approach and

of the method of study which later became connected

with his name He said

I hope that through the method used by me for explication

of the frescoes at the Palazzo Schifanoja of Ferrara I have

proved that an iconological analysis which does not allow

itself to be diverted by the rules of frontier police from

considering antiquity Middle Ages and modern times as

interconnected periods nor from analyzing the most liberal

and the most applied works of art as equally important

documents of expression that this method endeavoring as

it does to throw light upon one dark spot clears up at

the same time great interconnected developments

(Warburg 1912 Heckscher 1967)

Warburgs influence on the history of art was very

great although he himself did not write much It was

mainly the posthumous impact of his ideas promul-

gated as they were by Fritz Saxl which contributed

to the specific direction of studies concentrated in the

library Warburg founded in Hamburg and which Saxl

succeeded in transplanting during the Nazi era to

London where it became the Warburg Institute of the

University of London While the object of study of the

nineteenth-century iconographers was mainly religious

art in its relation to religious literary sources and lit-

urgy for Warburg the study of images was a study

of their relations to religion to poetry to myth to

science and to social and political life Art was for

him closely connected with the polyphonic structure

of historical life

Warburgs ideas had a great importance for the most

influential theory of iconographic interpretation in our

century that elaborated by Erwin Panofsky In Ham-

burg where Warburg Saxl and Panofsky were active

in the twenties Ernst Cassirer built up his philosophy

of symbolic forms which constituted an additional

background for Panofskys system being derived as

his own methodology was from the traditions of

Kantian philosophy Around 1930 Panofskys ideas

ripened into a system which found formulation in his

book herkules am Scheidewege (1930) and later in a

theoretical article of 1932 G J Hoogewerff was how-

ever the first to propose the word ldquoiconologyrdquo as a

name for the method of an analysis of content in a

work of art (Warburg spoke of iconological analysis)

In 1931 he proposed distinguishing between iconogra-

phy as a descriptive science aiming at the identifica-

tion of themes and ldquoiconologyrdquo aiming at the under-

standing ldquoof symbolic dogmatic or mystical meaning

which is expressed (or hidden) in figurative formsrdquo He

stressed that ldquoiconologyrdquo deals with works of art with-

out classifying them according to the technique used

or to the achieved perfection taking into account only

their meaning Hoogewerff saw the last aim of iconol-

ogy in finding out the cultural and ideological back-

ground expressed by works of art and the cultural and

social significance which can be attributed to certain

forms and to means of expression in the same time

Hoogewerffs part in the expansion of iconology was

limited because he did not endorse his methodical

proposals with examples of historical interpretations

Erwin Panofsky with whose name iconology has

been connected ever since not only developed its

theoretical foundations but contributed by his practi-

cal work in art history to the main triumph of iconol-

ogy after the Second World War The most influential

book by Panofsky has been Studies in Iconology (1939)

in which his masterly presentation of the method was

connected with its equally excellent exemplification

2 Panofsky considers the interpretation of a work

of art as falling on three levels On the first level the

object of interpretation is the primary or natural sub-

ject matter The function of interpretation is called

ldquopre-iconographical descriptionrdquo In order to be able

to arrive at a correct interpretation on that level the

interpreter must have a practical experience (ldquofamili-

arity with objects and eventsrdquo) common to everybody

at least in one cultural sphere However he has to

control his observations by a ldquocorrective knowledge

of the history of stylerdquo (ldquoinsight into the manner in

which under varying historical conditions objects and

events were expressed by formsrdquo) On the second level

the function of interpretation is called ldquoiconographical

analysisrdquo its object is the ldquosecondary or conventional

subject matterrdquo constituting the world of images his-

tories and allegories The interpreters equipment in

this case is obviously the knowledge of literary sources

giving him a ldquofamiliarity with specific themes and

conceptsrdquo The interpreter has to control his observa-

tions by ldquothe insight into the manner in which under

varying historical conditions specific themes or con-

cepts were expressed by objects and eventsrdquo On the

third level the function of interpreting is called ldquoicon-

ographical analysis in a deeper senserdquo (1939) or ldquoicon-

ological analysisrdquo (1955) Its object is the ldquointrinsic

meaning or contentrdquo of a work of art The interpreters

equipment on that level should be a ldquofamiliarity with

the essential tendencies of the human mindrdquo and he

has to control his interpretation by the ldquoinsight into

the manner in which under varying historical condi-

tions essential tendencies of the human mind were

expressed by specific themes and conceptsrdquo Thus

taking all the time into account what Panofsky calls

the history of tradition the interpreter has to aim at

understanding the work of art its ldquoprimaryrdquo as well

as ldquosecondary subject matterrdquo as symptoms of some

fundamental tendency of the human mind typical of

537

a place a time a civilization and of an individual

responsible for the creation of the work ldquoIconologyrdquomdash

for Panofskymdashldquois a method of interpretation which

arises from synthesis rather than analysisrdquo Trying to

find the intrinsic meaning of a work of art

The art historian will have to check what he thinks is the

intrinsic meaning of the work or group of works against

what he thinks is the intrinsic meaning of as many other

documents of civilization historically related to that work

or group of works as he can master It is in the search

for intrinsic meaning or content that the various humanistic

disciplines meet on a common plane instead of serving as

handmaidens to each other

(Panofsky [1955] p 39)

The concept of intrinsic meaning of a work of art

was elaborated by Panofsky much earlier (1925) when

he interpreted in his own way the concept of Kunst-

wollen introduced by A Riegl to research in art

Panofsky understood this ldquoartistic volitionrdquo as an im-

manent ultimate meaning of a work of art which is

manifested in the way basic artistic problems are solved

in that work He used the same concept further to bring

art closer to the other fields of human activity Since

the ldquoimmanent ultimate senserdquo of the work of art is

nothing else than uniformity in the way of solving basic

artistic problems it is possible to compare that imma-

nent sense with immanent senses of the other human

works in various fields Panofsky did it for instance

when in one of his later works he compared the struc-

tural principles of Gothic architecture with those of

scholastic thinking (1951)

The system elaborated by Panofsky and exemplified

by his own work in art history was the first consistent

system of an integral interpretation of a work of visual

arts based on the analysis of content In principle

Panofskys system takes into account all the elements

of the work of art since it takes as the point of depar-

ture the sensual exterior shape of the work It is

however clear that its main scope is not the inter-

pretation of form as a bearer of meaning but the

understanding and interpretation of conventional alle-

gories literary themes and symbols as symptoms of

the history of the human mind It was that method

in the history of art which programmatically fostered

a collaboration with all the other disciplines of histori-

cal studies It was therefore one of the most influential

methods not only among art historians but also among

representatives of the other branches of humanistic

studies Although there were art historians who ex-

pressed a critical attitude toward ldquoiconologyrdquo as the

new method was soon baptized its influence was over-

whelming

3 It is not only but mainly due to Panofsky that

one can venture to call ldquoiconographicalrdquo that period

of art history as a historical discipline which followed

the Second World War and to oppose it to the ldquostylis-

ticrdquo one which preceded it It does not mean of course

that no iconographic research took place in the

twenties or thirties the works of Macircle Knipping van

Marle Wilpert Saxl and of Panofsky himself would

contradict such a statement Neither is it true that

purely formal research aiming at stylistic classification

and analysis discontinued after World War II It is

evident that in the last decades (from 1940 on) icono-

graphic interests came to the fore and became domi-

nant in many countries Iconographical studies grew

so much in number and importance that they made

it possible to undertake and to publish new reference

works of iconographic character like dictionaries

written by one scholar (Guy de Tervarent Aurenham-

mer) as well as larger works based on a collaboration

of several scholars (Encyclopedias of German art of

Antiquity and Christian civilization of Byzantine art)

Interest in meaning and iconography has appeared

also among historians of political social and religious

institutions The symbolism of signs ceremonies cos-

tumes and arms was studied by such scholars as A

Alfoumlldi ldquoInsignien und Tracht der roumlmischen Kaiserrdquo

Mitteilungen des deutschen Archaumlologischen Instituts

Roumlmische Abteilung (1935) 1ff ldquoDie Geburt der

kaiserlichen Bildsymbolikrdquo museum Helveticum 9

(1952) 204ff also by A Grabar Martyrium (Paris

1943-46) by E H Kantorowicz laudes Regiae

(Berkeley and Los Angeles 1946) The Kings Two

Bodies (Princeton 1957) by H P L Orange Studies

in the Iconography of Cosmic Kingship in the Ancient

World (Oslo 1953) Art Forms and Civic Life in the

Late Roman Empire (Princeton 1965) and by P E

Schramm herrschaftszeichen und Staatssymbolik

(Stuttgart 1954-56) In their studies iconography far

transcends the borders of art and it helps to build up

a history of ideas by following their various visual

expressions

Pioneering studies by K Giehlow F Saxl and E

Panofsky enlarged iconographical interests above all

to encompass the large field of secular art whereas

they had been mainly limited to religious iconography

in the work of preceding generations of scholars The

whole complicated and hardly known large body of

meanings disguised by the cryptic language of hiero-

glyphs emblems and iconologies became one of the

main topics of study

This established a collaboration between historians

of art and literature Mario Prazs admirable study of

emblems and his bibliography of emblem books

(1939-47) belongs now to the foundations of studies

in that field Publications by W S Heckscher and

A K Wirth by R S Clements E F von Monroy and

538

H M von Erffa E de Jongh and H Miedema and

several other scholars have elucidated the structure

and meaning of emblems and have shown their tre-

mendous influence on art even in its most monumental

and dignified forms An uninterrupted flow of reprints

of emblem books which brought within the reach of

modern students inaccessible volumes of sixteenth- and

seventeenth-century emblem writers were crowned by

the monumental undertaking of Arthur Henkel and

Albrecht Schoumlne who compiled an excellent volume

including almost all the texts and images needed for

the study of emblemsmdashEmblemata Handbuch zur

Sinnbildkunst des XVI und XVII Jahrhunderts

(Stuttgart 1967) Research was under way on hiero-

glyphs (Erik Iversen) and on the imprese (the late

Robert Klein) as well as on iconologies and allegories

These studies have disclosed meanings of the art of

the Renaissance of mannerism and of the baroque not

understood by nineteenth-century scholars

E Panofsky deciphered extremely farfetched and

individualistic programs of decoration of such famous

ensembles as the Camera di San Paolo by Correggio

in Parma the Gallery of Franccedilois I at Fontainebleau

Edgar Wind Andreacute Chastel and other scholars inter-

preted Raphaels decorations in the Popes apartments

Michelangelos art furnished material to detailed com-

prehensive studies by Panofsky Ch de Tolnay H von

Einem and Pope-Hennessy in which the share of

Neo-Platonic thinking in the ideological background

of the celebrated works of Michelangelo was discussed

Innumerable studies have been devoted to Titians

mythological paintings J R Martin presented expla-

nations of the Carracci frescoes in the Camerino Far-

nese and in the great gallery of the Palazzo Farnese

Bruegel considered in the nineteenth century as a drocircle

painter of peasant life has been shown by de Tolnay

Stridbeck and others to be an allegorist expressing a

skeptical humanistic outlook J S Held and W

Stechow contributed several articles to the under-

standing of mythological and allegorical contents in

Flemish and Dutch art of the sixteenth and seventeenth

centuries Rembrandts iconography was put into new

light by the two above-mentioned scholars as well as

by H M Rotermund H van de Waal J G van Gelder

H von Einem and Ch Tuumlmpel The intricate symbol-

ism and subject matter of historical and mythological

pictures by Nicolas Poussin were elucidated by such

masters of iconographic research as E H Gombrich

W Friedlaumlnder E Panofsky and above all by A Blunt

who in his monograph on Poussin presented a new

deep synthetic view of the ideas expressed by that

artists works Goyas individualistic secret symbolism

was also studied with the help of emblems and the

allegorical tradition Berninis works received iconolo

gical treatment by R Wittkower and H Kauffmann

All of this research does not mean that there was a

lack of interest in religious iconography M Schapiro

A Katzenellenbogen H Bober F Wormald and V

Elbern among others have contributed considerably

to deepen our understanding of the not completely

explained motifs and prominent works of medieval art

Panofsky has also shed a new light on several problems

of sepulchral iconography studies by such scholars as

R Berliner G von der Osten L Kalinowski S

Ringbom and T Dobrzeniecki contributed to late

medieval iconography in a new way Berliner stressed

the autonomous invention of visual artists or their

patrons while according to the traditional view popu-

larized by Macircle late medieval art should have followed

strictly literary sources

The religious content of modern art especially its

allegorical form in the late baroque period has been

examined and thanks to studies by such scholars as

W Mrazek and H Bauer has become better known

and understandable A great change was introduced

by ldquoiconologyrdquo into architectural history Buildings

which were formerly interpreted from aesthetic and

functional points of view only have been shown to

present allegorical symbolical or even emblematic

ideas Publications by leading art historians (R Witt-

kower B Smith G Bandmann O von Simson and

G C Argan) have presented medieval and modern

architecture as a bearer of meaning and have essen-

tially changed the character of architectural history

The iconography of classicism and romanticism

received a thorough treatment in books by W Hof-

mann and R Rosenblum as well as in several studies

devoted to individual themes and pictures G Hersey

has for example shown how much Delacroixs decora-

tion of the library in the Palais Bourbon owed to

Giambattista Vicos ideas about history More recently

studies on ldquoSymbolismrdquo have been undertaken Vincent

van Goghs symbolic language and iconography were

the object of studies by J Seznec C Nordenfalk and

other scholars On Ceacutezannes iconography interesting

remarks have been published by M Schapiro

Along with the development of iconographic studies

the establishment of centers of documentation has

advanced The ldquoFrenchrdquo stage in the development of

iconography has not left any marked trace in this

respect It was in America thanks to C R Morey that

the famous Index of Christian Art at the Department

of Art and Archaeology of Princeton University was

founded at first limited to the early Middle Ages then

enlarged so as to include art up to the end of the

medieval period Copies of the Princeton Index are

to be found also at the Istituto Pontificio dArcheolo-

gia in Rome and in the Dumbarton Oaks Library and

539

Collection in Washington DC But that Index ends

ldquowhere art beginsrdquomdashas Panofsky used to say jokingly

The need for systematic iconographic files for modern

art was strongly felt In 1956 A Pigler published a

very useful book Barockthemen in which he listed

thousands of works of art of the baroque period ac-

cording to their subjects It was however far from

being a systematic work The first essay in establishing

a systematic iconographic index for art of any time

was done by The Netherlands Institute for Art History

at the Hague then directed by H Gerson which took

the initiative around 1950 of publishing a postcard-size

photographic index of its rich collection of photographs

of Netherlandish art ordered according to an icono-

graphic principle Once such an idea was formulated

the need for a comprehensive consistent and clear

iconographic classification was urgent H van de Waal

of Leiden University devised such a system of classifi-

cation based on decimal divisions consistent and easy

to read He based his system on experiences of ethnol-

ogy and on such elaborated systems of classification

as that devised by Stith Thompson in his Motif-Index

of Folk Literature Vols I-VI (Bloomington Ind

1932-36 rev ed 1955-58) Van de Waal has elabor-

ated a system in which the first five main sections

classify five fundamental groups of portrayable things

namely (1) The Supernatural (2) Nature (3) Man (4)

Society (5) Abstracts The last four classify specific

subjects such as (6) History (7) The Bible (8) Myths

Legends and Tales (with the exception of classical

antiquity) (9) Myths and Legends of Classical Antiq-

uity Van de Waal combines the classification in the

first and in the second group in order to classify general

as well as specific subjects Christ in his system is

described with the sign ldquo11 Drdquo (ldquo1rdquo standing for Su-

pernatural ldquo11rdquo for Christianity ldquoDrdquo for Christ) the

adult Christ = 11 D 3 since ldquoshepherdrdquo on the other

hand bears the signature 47 I 221 the adult Christ

as a shepherd can be described in this system by the

following formula 11 D 3 = 47 I 221 Van de Waal

has also provided means to describe more complex

images which he expresses by adding elements between

brackets The Annunciation with God the Father and

a winged Angel is expressed by the following formula

73 A 5 (+1 +41) ldquo1rdquo standing for God the Father

and ldquo41rdquo for a winged Angel (van de Waal 1952) This

system elaborated for many years by its inventor and

prepared for publication in many volumes has proved

most useful in the practical arrangement of the Icono-

graphical Index of the Netherlandish Art and as the

only one until now in existence it became used more

and more in spite of some ambiguities and difficulties

As an endeavor to classify ldquoall portrayablerdquo things

persons events and ideas and to create a consistent

method to describe every possible image van de Waals

system may be considered as one of the important

achievements of the ldquoiconographical stagerdquo in the

development of art history Iconographic files exist of

course in many institutions as for example in the Ikon-

ologisch Instituut of Utrecht University one of the

main centers of study in emblematics and of course

in the most venerable institution of iconographic re-

search the Warburg Institute of the London University

and in other places

4 What was the result of this ldquoiconographicrdquo turn

in the development of the history of art One thing

is certain that this discipline by necessity has come

closer to other humanistic disciplines Since the

ldquointrinsicrdquo meaningmdashin Panofskys terminologymdashof a

work of art cannot be described in terms used by the

history of art but only in terms borrowed from the

history of philosophy of religion of social structures

of science and so on the ldquoiconological methodrdquo took

for granted and provoked such a collaboration Art

history was perhaps the first or one of the first to show

new interest in investigation of meaning It was fol-

lowed by similar developments in ethnology and in

linguistics

We have mentioned above a parallel development

in Byzantine and classical studies Panofskys influence

has been considerable in the other fields of humanistic

research Since ldquoiconologyrdquo aimed at discovering ideas

expressed by a work of art it awoke in art historians

an interest in the history of ideas This general shift

of emphasis and of the direction of studies from mainly

formal ones to studies aiming at ideas underlying art

was perhaps responsible among others for the fact that

several contributions to the Journal of the History of

Ideas have been written by historians of art

It is not difficult to see that such a development

should have provoked criticism on the side of those

who care about the purity and autonomy of methods

Iconology was criticized as far as its internal coherence

and also as far as its claim to be the integral method

of the study of art are concerned (Białostocki 1962)

Studies by R Klein E Forssman G Previtali G

Kubler B Teyssegravedre C Ginzburg and G Hermeren

expressed critical opinions in one or the other respect

Iconology linked art with the rest of history but it

disrupted the links between the work of art and other

things (Kubler 1962) Concentrating on meaning

iconology neglected art as form as individual expres-

sion Iconology implied a rational relationship between

intellectual content and artistic form On the one hand

one spoke of ldquoiconological diminutionsrdquo (Kubler

1962)mdashlimitations of research to meaning only But

on the other hand the overstatements of iconology

were criticized its representatives sometimes seemed

540

to assume everything symbolized something And some

iconologists seemed to consider important in art not

that which makes art a different field of human activity

but that which connects art with other fieldsmdashwith

the history of ideas

There were of course critics who had the opposite

opinion Since the end of the eighteenth century a

direct experience of art was more and more valued

and its symbolical function considered as a burden

J G von Herder said ein Kunstwerk ist der Kunst

wegen da aber bei einem Symbole ist die Kunst

dienend (ldquoA work of art is there because of art but

with a symbol art is a servicerdquo) Similar opinions were

expressed by nineteenth-century art writers and in this

century they have been voiced by Benedetto Croce and

by other Italian opponents of contenutismo by which

they meant interest in content For such critics to put

stress on iconography was to miss the essential in art

and to focus attention on a subordinate function of art

Also among scholars who considered the function

of representation and of communication as a legitimate

and important function of art criticism was expressed

not against the principle of an iconographical or icon-

ological investigation but against overstatements in

their application The introduction of the idea of ldquodis-

guised symbolismrdquo has created a danger of course of

opening the way to fanciful interpretations The alle-

gorical and symbolical function of mythological imag-

ery in classical art is also difficult to interpret precisely

Since no literary sources give a key to an interpretation

of the iconography of the sarcophagi very divergent

theories have been expressed concerning their meaning

Some archaeologists like F Cumont (1942) believe

that mythological and allegorical imagery (Anadyo-

mene Sea-Thiasos Personifications of the Seasons) is

to be read symbolically The Sea-Thiasos for instance

is to be interpreted as a symbol of the journey of the

souls of the deceased to the islands of the blessed

Others like A D Nock (1946) do not find enough

evidence to accept other than a decorative function

in such imagery

The intrusion of some representatives of psychology

eg C G Jung into iconographic studies giving them

an unhistorical turn in their search for ldquoarchetypal

imagesrdquo has complicated the situation although art

historians in general understandably have not accepted

that kind of approach to symbolism (Frankfort 1958

Gombrich 1965)

The fact that iconographic interpretations sometimes

lack satisfactory proofs does not detract from the im-

portance of such investigations so long as they are

conducted according to the requirements of historical

methods and take into account the corrective princi-

ples established by Panofsky A correct acquaintance

with the way of thinking of the artist the patron or the

viewer based on a satisfactory knowledge of documen-

tary visual and literary sources an awareness of the

choice situations produced by historical developments

may enable art historians to discover the secondary

meaning of a work of art as well as its intrinsic mean-

ing It is of course possible that the art historian will

meet some works for which it will not be possible to re-

construct in a satisfactory way the world of ideas that

would account for the meaning of those works In such

cases a reliable interpretation is simply not possible

R Berliner (1945 1966) criticized the widespread

opinion according to which content of the works of

visual arts in the Middle Ages had to be checked

against the literary sources considered as the only

medium in which ideological innovations were per-

mitted Berliner pleaded for assuming a considerable

ldquofreedomrdquo in the medieval artist and he considered

iconographic innovation possible even when no writ-

ten evidence could be found Meyer Schapiro (1947)

presented proofs that sometimes purely aesthetic rea-

sons decided the character of the work of art even as

early as the Romanesque period

We can only touch on some specific discussions going

on in the field of iconographic research But iconogra-

phic research is far from being a closed system and

the relative share of iconographic and stylistic criticism

in the work of art historians is always a matter of

discussion It is certain that the ldquoiconographicrdquo period

in the study of art has enlarged in a considerable way

the understanding of the art of the past and that it

has connected art history in a way unknown before

with the other historical disciplines and above all others

with the history of ideas

BIBLIOGRAPHY

L B Alberti On Painting ed J Spencer (New Haven

1956 revised ed 1966) E Auerbach ldquoFigurardquo (1944) trans

and published in Scenes From the Drama of European Liter-

ature (New York 1959) pp 11-76 K Bauch ldquoImagordquo

(1960) Studien zur Kunstgeschichte (Berlin 1967) pp 1-20

G P Bellori Descrizione delle imagini dipinte da Raffaello

(Rome 1695 ed used is 1751) R Berliner ldquoThe Free-

dom of Medieval Artrdquo Gazette des Beaux-Arts 628 (1945)

263-88 idem ldquoBemerkungen zu einigen Darstellungen des

Erloumlsers als Schmerzensmannrdquo Das Muumlnster 9 (1956)

97-117x J Białostocki ldquoIconografia e Iconologiardquo Enciclo-

pedia Universale dellArte (1962) Vol VII cols 163-75

trans as Encyclopedia of World Art (1966) Vol VII cols

769-85 lists almost all important older contributions to this

field idem ldquoRomantische Ikonographierdquo Stil und Ikonog-

raphie (Dresden 1966) pp 156-81 idem ldquoKompozycja

emblematyczna epitafioacutew ślaskich XVI wiekurdquo (ldquoEmblem-

atic Composition of Silesian Epitaphs of the Sixteenth Cen-

turyrdquo) Ze studioacutew nad Sztuka XVI wieku na Řlasku

(Wrocław 1968) pp 77-93 idem ldquoEsilio Privatordquo Bulletin

du Museacutee National de Varsovie 10 (1969) 95-101 J

541

Chydenius The Theory of Medieval Symbolism (Helsingfors

1960) Series of the Societas Scientiarum Fennica Com-

mentationes Humanarum Litterarum 27 2 R J Clements

Picta Poesis (Rome 1960) F Creuzer Symbolik und

Mythologie der Alten Voumllker (Leipzig and Darmstadt 1810

revised ed 1819) F Cumont Recherches sur le symbolisme

funeacuteraire des Romains (Paris 1942) L Eitner ldquoThe Open

Window and the Storm-Tossed Boatrdquo Art Bulletin 37

(1955) 281-90 H Frankfort ldquoThe Archetype in Analytical

Psychology and the History of Religionrdquo Journal of the

Warburg and Courtauld Institutes 21 (1958) 166-78

K Garas ldquoAllegorie und Geschichte in der Venezianischen

Malerei des 18 Jahrhundertsrdquo in proceedings of the XXI

International Congress of the History of Art Bonn Stil und

Uumlberlieferung in der Kunst des Abendlandes (Berlin 1967)

3 280-83 K Giehlow ldquoDie Hieroglyphenkunde des

Humanismus in der Allegorie der Renaissancerdquo Jahrbuch

der Kunsthistorischen Sammlungen des Allerhochsten

Kaiserhauses 32 (1915) 1-232 C Gilbert ldquoOn Subject and

Not-Subject in Italian Renaissance Picturesrdquo Art Bulletin

34 (1952) 202-16 C Ginzburg ldquoDa A Warburg a E H

Gombrich Note su un problema di metodordquo Studi medi-

evali series 3 7 (1966) 1015-65 E H Gombrich ldquoIcones

Symbolicae The Visual Image in Neo-Platonic Thoughtrdquo

Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes 11 (1948)

163-92 idem ldquoThe Use of Art for the Study of Symbolsrdquo

American Psychologist 20 (1965) A Grabar Liconoclasme

byzantin Dossier archeacuteologique (Paris 1957) idem Chris-

tian Iconography A Study of Its Origins (Princeton 1969)

S J Gudlaugsson De Comedianten bij Jan Steen en zijn

tijdgenooten (s-Gravenhage 1945) W S Heckscher ldquoThe

Genesis of Iconologyrdquo Stl und Uumlberlieferung in der Kunst

des Abendlandes Akten des XXI Internationalen Kon-

gresses fuumlr Kunstgeschichte (Berlin 1967) 3 239-62 G

Hermereacuten Representation and Meaning in the Visual Arts

A Study in the Methodology of Iconography and Iconology

Lund Studies in Philosophy Vol I (Lund 1969) R Hinks

Myth and Allegory in Ancient Art (London 1939) W

Hofmann Das Irdische Paradies (Munich 1960) G J

Hoogewerff ldquoLIconologie et son importance pour leacutetude

systeacutematique de lart chreacutetienrdquo Rivista dArcheologia Cris-

tiana 8 (1931) 53-82 E de Jongh Zinne- en minnebeelden

in de schilderkunst van de zeventiende eeuw (mdash1967) idem

ldquoErotica in Vogelperspectief De dubbelzinnigheid van een

reeks 17de eeuwse genrevoorstellingenrdquo Simiolus 3

(1968-69) 22-72 L Kalinowski ldquoTreści ideowe i estetyczne

Drzwi Gnieźnieńskichrdquo (ldquoIdeological and Aesthetic Content

of the Gniezno Bronze Doorsrdquo) in Drzwi Gnieźnieńskie ed

M Walicki (Wroclaw 1959) 2 7-160 H Keller Tizians

Poesie fuumlr Koumlnig Philip II von Spanien (Wiesbaden 1969)

R Klein ldquoLa theacuteorie de lexpression figureacutee dans les traiteacutes

italiens sur les imprese 1555-1612rdquo Bibliothegraveque dHu-

manisme et Renaissance 19 (1957) 320-41 republished with

the other relevant studies in la forme et lintelligible (Paris

1969) R Klibansky E Panofsky F Saxl Saturn and Melan-

choly (London 1964) J B Knipping Ikonografie van de

Contra-Reformatie in de Nederlanden (Hilversum 1939-40)

G Kubler The Shape of Time (New Haven and London

1962) R W Lee ldquoUt pictura poesisrdquo Art Bulletin 22

(1940) 197-269 E Macircle Lart religieux du XIIIe siegravecle en

France (Paris 1898) English ed used (New York 1958)

idem Lart religieux de la fin du Moyen-Age en France

(Paris 1908) idem Lart religieux du XIIe siegravecle en France

(Paris 1922) idem Lart religieux apregraves le Concile de Trente

(Paris 1932) J Maurin Białostocka Lessing i sztuki plas-

tyczne (ldquoLessing and the visual artsrdquo) (Wroclaw Warszawa

Krakoacutew 1969) E F von Monroy Embleme und Emblem-

buumlcher in den Niederlanden 1560-1630 ed H M von Erffa

(Utrecht 1964) J Montagu ldquoThe Painted Enigma and

French Seventeenth Century Artrdquo Journal of the Warburg

and Courtauld Institutes 31 (1968) 307-35 W Mrazek

Ikonologie der barocken Deckenmalerei (Vienna 1953)

Uumlsterreichische Akademie der Wissenschaften Philo-

sophisch-historische Klasse Sitzungsberichte 2283 A D

Nock ldquoSarcophagi and Symbolismrdquo American Journal of

Archaeology 50 (1946) 166ff D Panofsky and E Panofsky

ldquoThe Iconography of the Galeacuterie Franccedilois Ier at Fontaine-

bleaurdquo Gazette des Beaux-Arts 652 (1958) 113-90

E Panofsky ldquoUumlber das Verhaumlltnis der Kunstgeschichte zur

Kunsttheorierdquo Zeitschrift fuumlr Aesthetik und allgemeine

Kunstwissenschaft 18 (1925) 129-61 idem Studies in

Iconology (New York 1939) idem ed Abbot Suger (Prince-

ton 1946) idem Gothic Architecture and Scholasticism

(Latrobe Pa 1951) idem Early Netherlandish Painting

(Cambridge Mass 1953) idem Meaning in the Visual Arts

(Garden City N Y 1955) idem Renaissance and Renas-

cences in Western Art (Stockholm 1960) idem Tomb Sculp-

ture (New York 1964) E Panofsky and F Saxl ldquoClassical

Mythology in Medieval Artrdquo Metropolitan Museum Studies

4 (1932-33) 228-80 M Praz Studies in Seventeenth Cen-

tury Imagery (London 1939-47 2nd ed Rome 1964) S

Ringbom ldquoDevotional Images and Imaginative Devotions

Notes on the Place of Art in Late Medieval Private Pietyrdquo

Gazette des Beaux-Arts 6 73 (1969) 159-70 Joseph Sauer

Symbolik des Kirchengebaumludes und seiner Ausstattung in

der Auffassung des Mittelalters 2nd ed (Freiburg i B

1924) F Saxl ldquoFruumlhes Christentum und spaumltes Heidentum

in ihren kuumlnstlerischen Ausdrucksformenrdquo Wiener Jahrbuch

fuumlr Kunstgeschichte 2 (1923) 63-121 M Schapiro ldquoThe

Ruthwell Crossrdquo Art Bulletin 26 (1944) 232-45 idem ldquoOn

the Aesthetic Attitude in Romanesque Artrdquo in Art and

Thought issued in Honour of Ananda Coomaraswamy

(London 1947) 139-50 J Seznec The Survival of the Pagan

Gods (New York 1953) O G von Simson The Gothic

Cathedral (New York 1956) R E Spear ldquoThe Literary

Source of Poussins Realm of Florardquo The Burlington Maga-

zine 107 (1965) 563-69 L Volkmann Bilderschriften der

Renaissance (Leipzig 1923) Hans van de Waal Drie

eeuwen vaderlandsche geschieduitbeelding 1500-1800 (s-

Gravenhage 1952) idem ldquoSome Principles of a General

Iconographical Classificationrdquo in Actes du XVIIe Congregraves

International dHistoire de lArt Amsterdam 1952 (La Haye

1955) 601-06 E Wind ldquoCharity the Case History of a

Patternrdquo Journal of the Warburg Institute 1 (1937) 322ff

JAN BIAŁOSTOCKI

[See also Allegory Baroque Classicism Criticism Enlight-

enment Motif Myth Naturalism in Art Neo-Platonism

Renaissance Humanism Romanticism Symbolism Tem-

perance Ut pictura poesis]

Areopagite His influence promoted to a great extent

medieval ideas about the symbolism of light The sym-

bolism of light found its highest achievement in the

creation of Gothic architecture dominated by the

mysticism of light (von Simson 1956) Abbot Suger

the auctor intellectualis of Gothic architecture pre-

sented in his writings an excellent record of that atti-

tude toward symbolism In his De rebus in adminis-

tratione sua gestis (XVII) he writes about the doors

with gilt bronze reliefs ldquoBright is the noble work but

being nobly bright the work should brighten the

minds so that they may travel through the true lights

to the true light where Christ is the true door

The dull mind rises to truth through that which

is materialrdquo (Panofsky [1946] pp 46-49) Con-

templating precious stones transports Sugers mind to

a contemplation of the supernatural

Whenmdashout of my delight in the beauty of the house of

Godmdashthe loveliness of the many-colored stones has called

me away from external cares and worthy meditation has

induced me to reflect transferring that which is material

to that which is immaterial on the diversity of the sacred

virtues then it seems to me that I see myself dwelling as

it were in some strange region of the universe which neither

exists entirely in the slime of the earth nor entirely in the

purity of Heaven and that by the Grace of God I can

be transported from this inferior to that higher world in

an anagogical mannerrdquo

(ibid pp 63-65)

To a similar sphere of mystical symbols the specific

symbolism of numbers also belongs Numbers in the

Bible and those referring to quantitative relations in

architecture were considered as having a mystical

meaning ldquothe Divine Wisdom is reflected in the num-

bers impressed on all thingsrdquo (Saint Augustine De

libero arbitrio II XVI) The belief in the mystical signi-

ficance of numbers which originated in Pythagorean-

ism and was revived by Neo-Platonism was transmitted

to the Middle Ages by the Fathers of the Church (Macircle

[1898] English ed [1958] p 10) Complicated ramifi-

cations of this numerical symbolism in the field of

medieval architectural iconography are studied by J

Sauer (1924) as well as by E Macircle (ibid p 10) The

number eight for example connected with the idea

of new life by the Fathers (since it comes after seven

the terminal number of human life and of the world)

expresses the concept of resurrection and therefore that

of the Baptism because of that early belief baptisteries

and baptismal fonts are octagonal (Macircle ibid p 14)

One may trace in such use of numerical symbolism

a mystical rather than a didactic attitude

The general adoption of a symbolic attitude does

not mean that in the Middle Ages no actual events

were represented in art However since medieval art

was very much traditional and remained faithful to

exempla or compositional visual patterns the actual

events when they were sometimes taken as subjects

of representation used to be transformed to fit precon-

ceived traditional patterns The written lives of the

saints have been composed according to literary and

mythical topoi The same may be observed in art

When a new subject had to be represented it used to

be molded according to existing patterns As an exam-

ple we may adduce the story of Saint Adalbert repre-

sented on the bronze doors of the twelfth century at

Gniezno Poland The formerly executed European

bronze church doors represented Christological narra-

tive or allegorical figures or ornaments The fairly

recent hagiographic story had to be given visual shape

It is not surprising that the representations in most

cases follow the patterns of Christological iconography

(Kalinowski 1959) Secular subjects as for example

528

the conquest of England by William the Conqueror

and its circumstances represented on the so-called

Bayeux Tapestry followed in the general idea the

classical tradition It seems that perhaps more of a

direct experience of the actual medieval life found its

way into art than is usually admitted but the relative

share of symbolism and realism of system and freedom

is still a matter of discussion among medievalists

(Berliner 1945 1956)

In the late Middle Ages the general system of icon-

ography persisted but new subjects especially the

representations of the most human episodes and rela-

tionships in Christs life namely of His infancy and

His emotional connections (with the Virgin and Saint

John) as well as His Passion and the episodes of Our

Ladys life come to the fore Although symbolical and

didactic thinking maintained its importance the means

to communicate with the faithful changed most sub-

jects popular in the late Middle Ages appeal to the

beholders emotions rather than to his reason Scholars

have selected a group of so-called devotional pictures

as opposed to dogmatic and to historical repre-

sentations but the precise delimitation of such a group

is still a matter of discussion as is also the question

of how much this art was influenced by literature and

especially by pious poetry With the development of

the graphic arts new cheap pictures spread widely the

typological imagery systematized in the Biblia pau-

perum and in the Speculum humanae salvationis

Great collections of religious meditations compiled in

monasteries like Meditations on the Life of Christ by

Pseudo-Bonaventure (ed I Ragusa and R B Green

1961) spread widely a new emotional approach to

iconography Also the religious theater had some influ-

ence on the way stories in art were told

4 In the iconography of the Renaissance art ldquohis-

toryrdquo was shifted to the fore at the expense of symbol-

ism It does not mean that symbols ceased to exist

Pictorial allegory and symbolism played a very impor-

tant part in the conception of humanistic art But what

was placed in the center of the new art theory was

the concept of istoria The first and the most important

task of the work of art according to L B Alberti (De

pictura 1435 Della pittura 1436) is to present a story

This story had to be selected from authoritative literary

sources either sacred or profane it should represent

in a possibly convincing and expressive way an episode

from the Holy Scriptures from sacred or classical

history from mythology or legend This new concept

of istoria which was to dominate iconographic consid-

erations for more than three hundred years (the mean-

ing of the term istoria or storia changed of course in

that period) was one of the consequences of the Ren-

aissance idea of the priority of literature over the visual

arts There were several reasons for that priority one

being a complete lack of known classical theory of art

In its stead the theories of poetry and rhetoric were

adopted as guiding principles for the visual arts Hence

the dominating Horatian principle Ut pictura poesis

which subordinated the visual arts to the rules of liter-

ary theory This identification of literature and art

lasted until G E Lessing in 1766 revolted against it

in his Laokooumln (R W Lee 1940) In the humanistic

theory of visual arts the concept of istoria took the

central place Istoria had to be chosen for its moral

value (Alberti chose as his examples the subjects show-

ing stoic moral firmness as the ldquoDeath of Meleagerrdquo

the ldquoImmolation of Iphigeniardquo or the ldquoCalumnyrdquo of

Apelles) it had to be represented according to the

principle of decorum and costume ie with regard to

its dignity and most truthfully to the literary proto-

type Everything should be suitable in ldquosize function

kind color and other similar thingsrdquo Alberti stressed

the necessity of varied and convincing expressions of

emotions by suitable gestures

The dependence of post-medieval iconography on

literature increased with time and in the seventeenth

century the truthfulness of the pictorial formulation

of literary subjects became one of the most valued

qualities of a work of visual arts ldquoRead the story and

the picture at the same timerdquo Nicolas Poussin wrote

to M de Chantelou one of his customers In the French

Royal Academy of Painting and Sculpture lengthy

discussions were going on concerning the relation of

pictures to literary sources To be able to represent

well subjects taken from poetry the artist had to be

a doctus artifex well-informed in various fields G P

Bellori (1695) stressed however the fact that not

everything good in writing comes out well in painting

Therefore the painter to be able to transform the

story had to acquire ldquoan universal knowledge of things

and he should contemplate precisely nature and reali-

tiesrdquo Some freedom was given to the artist from the

beginning Alberti was far from limiting the painter

too much by this dependence on literature He stressed

the specific requirements of the visual arts as for ex-

ample the necessity to limit the number of represented

figures in order to keep a balance between ldquocopious-

nessrdquo and ldquosolitude in paintingrdquo This made it of

course necessary to reduce crowded scenes to an easily

graspable number of figures in order to avoid ldquodissolute

confusionrdquo (Spencer [1956] pp 23-28)

The interest of early Renaissance art theorists in

iconography was not great They concentrated their

attention chiefly on the discussion of the means needed

to achieve a convincing and beautiful representation

of the istoria and on the specific problems of repre-

sentationmdashcorrect (by adoption of the rules of per-

529

spective) and beautiful (by adoption of the rules of

proportion) Leonardo da Vinci does not show a spe-

cific interest in iconography but in some passages of

his incompleted Treatise on Painting he gives literary

programs of pictures remarkably however the pic-

tures are not of stories but of representations of pow-

erful natural or human happenings such as storms and

battles Here the naturalistic interests of the Renais-

sance come to the fore

An important achievement of the Renaissance partly

affecting iconography was the reunionmdashas noticed and

described by E Panofsky and F Saxl (1932) and Panof-

sky (1960)mdashof the literary and visual traditions of

classical antiquity during the fifteenth century During

the Middle Ages the literary tradition of classical sub-

ject matter was separated from the visual tradition of

classical artistic motifs so that there was no awareness

of their belonging together The classical subjects for

example those taken from Ovid used to be represented

in contemporary medieval stylistic forms classical

artistic motifs on the other hand for example the forms

of garment folds human types gestures compositional

patterns and so on were used to represent Christian

subject matter as in the western portals of the Reims

cathedral or in the pulpits of Nicola or Giovanni

Pisano It was only in the High Renaissance eg in

the works of Raphael Titian Michelangelo and Cor-

reggio that forms and iconography themes and motifs

became reintegrated In this way the classical vision

of classical subjects became sometimes so perfect that

some works created around 1500 could have been

taken for classical originals (for example Bacchus by

Michelangelo) The growing understanding of classical

ideas and forms led to another specific Renaissance

phenomenon called by Panofsky ldquopseudomorphosisrdquo

Certain Renaissance figures became invested with a mean-

ing which for all their classicizing appearance had not been

present in their classical prototypes though it had fre-

quently been foreshadowed in classical literature Owing

to its medieval antecedents Renaissance art was often able

to translate into images what classical art had deemed

inexpressible

(Panofsky [1939] pp 70f)

In the north of Italy beside the concept of istoria

poesia appears a fact which also points to a depend-

ence on poetry this was understood mainly as referring

to lyrical poetry and not to epic or heroic Mythologi-

cal pictures by Titian were described in such a way

(Keller [1969] pp 24f) The stress was on the poetical

mood more than on an important human action a

lyrical tonality was preferred to a heroic one The

archaeological interests then current in Padua and

Venice visible for instance in the works by Andrea

Mantegna were moderated by an elegiac poetic mood

in reconstructing the classical world Pictures by Gior-

gione who worked for exclusive circles of humanists

were so hermetic in meaning that several of them like

the Three Philosophers (Vienna) or the Storm (Venice)

are iconographic riddles up to our own day The same

is true of the enigmatic and poetic iconography of some

pictures by Titian (Sacred and Profane Love in the

Borghese Gallery in Rome) by Lorenzo Lotto or by

the Ferrarese Dosso Dossi

The most important document of this romantic ar-

chaeological vision which strongly influenced icono-

graphical invention in Italy and outside of Italy was

a fantastic romance Hypnerotomachia Poliphili attrib-

uted in the most plausible way to a Franciscan monk

Francesco Colonna and published with beautiful

woodcuts by Aldus Manutius in Venice in 1499 Poetic

visions of a dreamy classical landscape full of ruins

in which the lovers Poliphilo and Polia wander influ-

enced the imagination of artists not less than the excel-

lent woodcuts their impact can be found as far and

as late as in the gardens at Versailles The illustrations

to Hypnerotomachia also popularized hieroglyphic

signs which make their appearance in iconography as

a specific phenomenon of the Renaissance

5 Art conceived as a language may be addressed

to large or to small groups It depends on the scope

of communication It can be intended as a message

to a possibly large audience but it can also be limited

in its appeal to a small selected group of observers

In an extreme case the polarization could be that

between a didactic art appealing to everybody and an

elitarian cryptic message understandable only to the

initiated few Medieval art belonged by far to the first

category the art of the Renaissance to the second

Even in the monumental wall-paintings decorating the

most celebrated places of Christianity such as the

Sistine Chapel or the official rooms of the Popes like

the Stanza della Segnatura even in the sepulchral

chapels of the most important families like the Sassetti

and the Medici the iconographic programs and sym-

bolism are extremely complicated The meaning of the

decoration of the great Gallery of Franccedilois I at Fon-

tainebleau is so cryptic that it was hypothetically ex-

plained only recently by the best specialists in icon-

ography (D and E Panofsky 1958) Few works of

medieval art have provoked such a number of inter-

pretations as the well-known and at first glance seem-

ingly easy to understand pictures like Botticellis

mythologies (Birth of Venus Spring The Uffizi Flor-

ence) like Titians Sacred and Profane Love or like

sculptures such as Michelangelos Medici tombs The

same is true of works by Duumlrer Holbein and Bruegel

in the North A deep symbolism a complicated

iconographymdashespecially current in the circles influ-

530

enced by Neo-Platonismmdashbelonged to the perfection

of the work

This idea had a long life it recurs in 1604 in Carel

van Manders Book of the Painter as well as in Berninis

utterances on the beauty of the concept which adorns

the work The more refined the concept the more

difficult the symbolism the narrower the circle of those

who can really understand the work

Art was considered especially in the exclusive court

social groups or among the humanists as a secret

language accessible to the initiated The visual sign

was connected with words into a specific union of

literature and art which flourished at the time of the

Renaissance of mannerism and of the baroque in the

form of impresa of hieroglyph and of emblem The

roots of the impresamdashthe personal sign and mottomdashare

to be found in chivalrous devices and signs popular

in the late Middle Ages it was brought to Italy from

France and connected with Neo-Platonic speculation

(Klein 1957) Hieroglyphs became popular thanks to

the discovery in 1419 of the Hieroglyphica by Hora-

pollo Niliacus (of the second or fourth century AD)

published in 1505 The humanists believed that this

enigmatic image-script disguised a profound wisdom

of the Egyptians ldquothey supposed that the great minds

of Greece had been initiated into these Egyptian

mysteriesmdashwhich in their turn were of course one

more prefiguration of the teachings of Christrdquo (Seznec

[1953] p 100) Emblems originated from an erudite

intellectual play among the humanists aiming however

at a moral lesson and sometimes considered in a Neo-

Platonic way as symbols revealing to those who con-

template them a higher knowledge of divine mysteries

Emblem included a motto called lemma an image

and an epigram Only the whole of the emblem can

be understood each element of it giving only one part

of the meaning All those cryptic codes of expression

connecting words and images originated as secret and

elitarian The problem of the degree of obscurity was

one of the main points discussed by the theorists of

the emblematics (Clements [1964] pp 191-95) Eras-

mus of Rotterdam stressed that one of the virtues of

the impresa is that its meaning can be grasped only

with an intellectual effort Cesare Ripa (Iconologia

1593) demands that symbolic images be composed ldquoin

the form of enigmardquo Sambucus (1564) required ldquoob-

scuritasrdquo and ldquonovitasrdquo from the emblems Paolo

Giovio represented a reasonable middle ldquoThe device

should not be so obscure as to require the Sybil to

interpret it nor yet so obvious that any literal-minded

person can understand itrdquo Later however the crypto-

grams of hieroglyphics and emblem books began to

be popularized and explained Collections of emblems

became widely known New systematization of icon

ography now of a humanistic one was inaugurated

In 1556 Vincenzo Cartari published the first modern

handbook of mythological imagery le imagini colla

sposizione degli dei degli antichi (Venice 1556) In the

same year Pierio Valeriano produced a rich collection

of Hieroglyphica (Basel 1556) Earlier in 1531 Andrea

Alciati had compiled the first emblem book (Emblema-

tum liber Augsburg 1531) The influence of such

books which went through many translations and edi-

tions and which were imitated and continued all over

Europe grew at the close of the sixteenth and in the

seventeenth century In exclusive groups it happened

much earlier that hieroglyphic astrological and em-

blematic imagery influenced the iconography of im-

portant works of art as for example at the court of

Maximilian I (M Giehlow 1915) sometimes this con-

cerned works done by the most distinguished artists

like Duumlrers Melencolia I (Klibansky et al 1964)

Emblematic principle of composition uniting as it did

the image with the verbal formulations found great

popularity in northern Europe perhaps because the

importance of the word so prominent in Protestantism

was stressed (Luther required ldquofragments from the

Holy Writrdquo to be included in the Epitaph-pictures)

Epitaphs and other religious pictures of the Protestant

North connect words and images in the harmonious

indivisible whole (Białostocki 1968)

In the Netherlands emblems played an important

part in the development of realistic painting in the

seventeenth century since they furnished a rich reper-

tory of imagery charged with allegorical meaning (de

Jongh von Monroy) However the meaning of those

images obvious to the viewer who remembered the

original emblematic context eluded for a long time

later interpreters who were no longer conversant with

the emblems

After Cartari and his followers furnished artists and

patrons with images of classical gods there was a need

felt for another handbook which would enable the

artist to represent and the patron to understand the

abstract moral philosophical scientific and other

ideas symbolized Only then was art able to express

complex thoughts This task was fulfilled by Cesare

Ripa of Perugia who in 1593 published his Iconologia

a handbook explaining how to represent all the incor-

poreal concepts In 1603 Iconologia was republished

with illustrations and became one of the most popular

and influential art books With Ripa in hand art

historiansmdashinitially Eacutemile Macircle (1932)mdashwere able to

decipher hundreds of allegorical statements in paint

and stone guided by this alphabet of personifications

Ripas basic entity was a human figure female more

often than male whose costumes attributes gestures

and other particulars express specific qualities of the

531

idea represented With the publication of Ripas workmdash

translated soon into many languages and frequently

republished and revisedmdashthe humanistic system of

allegorical iconography was established classical gods

and personifications hieroglyphic signs and emblems

connecting words and images this was the material

used by the artists of mannerism and the baroque when

they did not choose to keep to the ldquohistoricalrdquo world

ie to borrow their subjects directly from literature

When they did so when they painted stories they used

to select them not only from Ovid and Vergil but also

from the more recent poems by Ariosto and Tasso and

also from the works of less known writers ancient and

modern Valerius Maximus furnished them with exam-

ples of virtuous behavior These historical examples

were in general either connected with allegorical gen-

eralizations (in the big decorations of the late baroque

the central fresco was often an allegory and the ac-

companying canvas-pictures presented historical ex-

amples of virtues Garas pp 280-83) or conceived in

an allegorical way Ovide moraliseacute was popular already

in the late Middle Ages Its influence persisted also

in the time of the baroque Myths and stories under-

went allegorical interpretations along the lines of that

moralizing commentary

What was considered necessary for an artist around

1600 can be seen from Carel van Manders Book of

the Painter (1604) It included a long theoretical poem

a history of classical and modern Italian and Nether-

landish artists a translation and a moral interpretation

of Ovids Metamorphoses and finally a description of

personifications There is no specific section on reli-

gious iconography since artists were well furnished

with books giving them rules in this respect

Against the humanistic conception of art the Council

of Trent proclaimed rules constituting a new system

of religious iconography which put an end to the live

tradition of medieval art These rules were published

officially by the Church and they have been com-

mented upon and elaborated in books by Joannes

Molanus (1570) Saint Carlo Borromeo (1577) Gabriele

Paleotti (1581) Federico Borromeo (1624) and several

others The rules of the Council governed the decora-

tion of churches and other sacred buildings and the

character of pictures representing sacred subjects A

break between the religious and the secular iconogra-

phy became obvious in theoretical literature although

there existed many emblem books of a very distinct

religious character (G de Montenay 1571 B Arias

Montanus 1571 H Hugo 1624) A new strictly for-

mulated system of religious iconography coexisted in

the seventeenth century with humanistic subject mat-

ter symbolism and allegory The classical nude intro-

duced by the Renaissance into art was strictly forbid

den now in religious art but found a free field of

development in secular mythological and allegorical

works Many artists exercised their imagination in both

fields in some specific fields such as sepulchral iconog-

raphy cooperation between religious and humanistic

symbolism was common In the work of P P Rubens

the various aspects of the new iconography found

perhaps their best expression In his art allegorical

concepts classical gods and heroes triumphs of mythi-

cal beings as well as of secular rulers accompany mar-

tyrdoms of Catholic saints and the triumphs of the

Eucharist What began to be separated in theory could

yet coexist in harmony in the work of a great artist

6 In northern European art (before Rubens) the

renewal of the arts during the Renaissance took the

form of the new study of nature and the elaboration

of the most convincing means of representing the ma-

terial world in an illusionistic way traditional medieval

symbolism was transformed in a specific way produc-

ing what E Panofsky called in 1953 ldquodisguised sym-

bolismrdquo The symbolic meaning connected with objects

and qualities persisted but a new mastery reproduced

these symbolical objects with such a degree of realism

that they did not differ any longer from other objects

not charged with any metaphorical meaning Some-

times the symbolical meaning of represented objects

results from the traditional iconography in an unmistak-

able way sometimes the meaning is hinted at by the

inscriptions placed in the picture or on its frame But

in many cases the modern viewer remains perplexed

without any sufficient clue to decide whether in the

picture he observes he has to do with the beginnings

of the representation of reality for its own sake or

whether the search for specific metaphorical meaning

is justified It is still always a matter of discussion to

decide at which moment the representation of some

objects or some scene in life without any symbolical

(or ldquohistoricalrdquo) implications became possible (Gilbert

1952) Observers of the eighteenth and nineteenth

centuries to whom the meaning of old symbols was

wholly forgotten took many images of the fifteenth and

sixteenth centuries for simple representations of life

Bruegel for example was considered as simply a

painter of joking or working peasants Recent studies

in iconography have shown that these pictures are

saturated with disguised meaning and that it is ex-

tremely rare before about 1550 to meet simple repre-

sentations of nature in painting In graphic arts the

direct depiction of life and landscape began earlier

as in the works of Lombard draughtsmen or in the

incredibly fresh convincing drawings and prints by the

Master of the Housebook There are also early excep-

tions in painting like Albrecht Altdorfers landscape

without any human figures But in general it was only

532

during the second half of the sixteenth century that

landscape genre and still-life painting began to ac-

quire equal rights with religious and humanistic history

and allegory predominantly in Venice and in Antwerp

Even then however the representations of people

working in fields (Jacopo or Francesco Bassano) fol-

lowed the old traditions of Calendar-pictures and in

the background of genre scenes as in Pieter Aertsens

pictures a biblical motif may be found which trans-

forms the whole composition into a storia however

unorthodox

With the development of realistic painting in the

seventeenth century there appeared specific iconogra-

phic problems New subjects slowly found convenient

form They entered the scene patterned after the ven-

erable stories of sacred or of profane iconography

H van de Waal described (1952) the process of the for-

mation of national historical iconography in Holland

Scenes depicting recent happenings from a long strug-

gle for national independence appeared first in forms

assimilated to well-known religious or mythical scenes

This was not only an expedient facilitating their com-

position for by this means the new subjects gained the

decorum inherent in the adopted patterns formed to

express traditional stories Similar procedures may be

seen in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries when

more and more sections of reality became interesting

enough to be represented in art

The transfer of decorum from the sacred or allegori-

cal figures to the humans represented is a means used

in what modern iconographers call ldquoallegorical por-

traiturerdquo Renaissance painters had represented real

people under mythological or even sacred disguise

they gave actual faces of living people to the figures

represented with all the attributes and characteristics

of their mythical sacred or even allegorical qualities

Later it was only the pattern which remained still in

the eighteenth century English portraitists patterned

the effigies of contemporary aristocrats after Michel-

angelos Sybils or after allegories like the Caritas

(Wind 1937) J B Oudry represented the Polish King

in exile Stanisław Leszczyński with all the attributes

of the allegory of exile taken from Ripa identifying

him in this way with personification of his most promi-

nent quality (Białostocki 1969)

Dutch realistic painting of the seventeenth century

is a document of an important iconographic conquest

Landscapes seascapes moonlit night scenes snapshots

of people skating in winter landscapes views of market

places church interiors backyards fishermen old

women preparing food fashionable dishes ready for

lunch merchants and artisans elegant gentlemen pay-

ing visits and folk-surgeons performing sensational

street-operations all this became subject matter for

representation and continued to be considered worthy

of depiction until the end of the nineteenth century

It was first considered as such in Holland only then

slowly everyday subject matter was recognized also by

art-theorists in other countries although it was re-

garded as much less dignified than religious mytholog-

ical or allegorical subjects Only in the nineteenth

century did the vogue of realistic representation of

everyday subjects become widespread In Dutch pic-

tures of the seventeenth century we are often con-

fronted with nothing else than representations of pic-

turesque reality Sometimes however these genre

pictures appear to be illustrations of proverbs expres-

sing moralistic folk-wisdom sometimes they recall

scenes from the popular threater of the rederijkers or

rhetoricians especially pictures by Jan Steen (Gud-

laugsson 1945) they contain allusions to emblems

Sometimes the elegant scenes from bourgeois life in-

clude quite indecent erotic allusions (de Jongh 1967

1969) The ambiguity of these pictures was certainly

a source of specific pleasure for those who knew the

key to their true meaning

7 In Catholic countries allegorical art sacred as

well as profane flourished The twofold character of

symbolic representations mentioned above persisted

in the seventeenth century Aristotelian rational sym-

bolism which used images as words was widespread

in the orthodox Catholic iconography of the Counter-

Reformation as well as in the humanistic visual lan-

guage codified by Ripa and others A mystical Neo-

Platonic symbolism transcending reason reappeared

too Its outspoken document is the treatise by Chris-

toforo Giarda Bibliothecae alexandrinae icones sym-

bolicae of 1626 (Gombrich 1948) For Giarda symbolic

images give the beholder a direct insight into the

mysteries of religion which are not accessible to rea-

son

Thanks to symbolic images the mind which is banished from

heaven into this dark cave of the body its actions held in

bondage by the senses can behold the beauty and form

of the Virtues and Sciences divorced from all matter and

yet adumbrated if not perfectly expressed in colours and

is thus roused to an even more fervent love and desire for

them Who then can sufficiently estimate the magni-

tude of the debt we owe to those who expressed the Arts

and Sciences themselves in images and so brought it about

that we could not only know them but look at them as

it were with our eyes that we can meet them and almost

converse with them

(Gombrich [1948] pp 188f)

Great allegorical compositions covering the ceilings of

baroque churches are often realizations of this princi-

ple For those however who conceived allegory as a

rational operation as a language used for didactic aims

the main problem remained the clarity of the allegori-

533

cal message The larger the audience to whom allegory

was addressed the simpler more obvious its symbolism

should have been The banality of allegorical language

provoked criticism in the eighteenth century Fran-

cesco Algarotti (1762) prefers without any doubt his-

torical representations to the ldquoempty allegories and

complicated mythological allusionsrdquo (Garas [1967] p

280) Especially criticized was the obscurity of these

allegories in which completely original unknown sym-

bols were used Roger de Piles praises his favorite

master Rubens who ldquointroduced only such allegories

elements of which were already known from ancient

artrdquo and opposes him to Charles Lebrun who ldquoinstead

of taking symbols from some known source as the

ancient fable and medals has invented almost all of

them and thus the pictures of this kind became riddles

which the beholder does not want to take the task to

solverdquo To keep the balance between platitudinous

redundancy and utter incomprehensibility was the

crucial problem of late baroque allegorism What is

interesting however is that the idea of the picture

as a riddle was not foreign to the seventeenth century

It appears in France as well as in Sweden where David

Kloumlcker Ehrenstrahl (1694) proposed that pictures

present riddles that could not be solved by everyone

In France however the ldquopainted enigmardquo fostered

by the Jesuits in their schools flourished especially well

in the seventeenth century (Montagu 1968) These

ldquopainted enigmasrdquo lent themselves to various inter-

pretations and gave interpreters an opportunity to

show their ingenuity These pictures and their inter-

pretations seem to prove that a considerable flexibility

of meaning was intended

We might rather accept that a work of art was regarded

in the seventeenth century as in a certain sense an open

symbol raw material like the myth or sacred story which

it illustrates on which the interpreter might exercise the

power of his ingenuity turning it into an allegory of Chris-

tian doctrine or a panegyric in honour of his patron

(Montagu [1968] p 334)

Such a situation probably existed only in some specific

circles It was a limiting case The other extreme was

to use in an uninteresting routine way Ripas symbolic

images or those of other popular symbolic handbooks

Such practice continued well into the eighteenth cen-

tury The general trend fed by ideas of the Enlighten-

ment was to make allegories more and more obvious

It is understandable that some theorists like the Count

de Caylus looked for new subject matter presenting

as he did Tableaux tireacutes de lIliade (1755) or that

J J Winckelmann tried to revive allegory and to give

it a new force It was however too late In the eight-

eenth century together with the whole system of

humanistic tradition the systems of iconography began

to disintegrate The great break in the tradition con-

cerned not only style but also iconography Emblem-

atic roots may be discovered in Goyas symbolism as

well as in the reasonable allegories of the Enlighten-

ment but generally speaking there was a search for

new not known or not used sourcesmdashas in William

Blakes biblical individualistic imagerymdashor the new

staging of the old ones as in Jacques Louis Davids

classical subjects

The art of romanticism was a definite break with

the past much more in the field of ideas and iconogra-

phy than in a stylistic respect where romanticists

retrospectively looked back either to medieval and

pre-Raphaelite or to baroque sources Symbols and

allegories yielded to an all-pervading mood and the

traditional repertory of religious allegorical mytho-

logical and historical iconography gave way to a new

iconography Although several encompassing images

of Christian and humanistic art survived they received

new content and essentially changed their character

New attitudes of the individual to the world of nature

and history to society and destiny to time and death

and new problems resulting from the striving after

freedom (which was a new perhaps most important

principle of human behavior in all fields of human

activity) found expression in new thematic fields and

in new particular themes such as ldquoStorm-tossed Boatrdquo

ldquoLonely Wanderer in the Mountainsrdquo ldquoA Death of the

Herordquo (Eitner 1955 Hofmann 1960 Białostocki

1966)

Romanticism has not formed and could not have

formed an iconographic system for since they strived

first of all for originality of individual conception the

romantics interpreted images in a subjective way as

expressions of mood Romanticism has on the other

hand introduced new heroes and martyrs into art

instead of religious ones the national social and artis-

tic ones It created a new image of history seen now

as a set of political and moral examplesmdashas in

baroquemdashbut often put together now according to a

very individualistic principle of choice A correlative

to pathetic and heroic romanticism was a bourgeois

and intimate romanticism its expression was for ex-

ample the new imagery of the open window which

shows to the viewer wide perspectives but shelters him

at the same time from the dangers of the unknown

(Eitner 1955)

When the world of ideas and images created at the

moment of the flowering of romanticism began to be

popularized for the use of the large bourgeois masses

the contentmdashideological and iconographicalmdashof ro-

manticism lost its original authenticity and left be-

hind not a new system of original images but a dispo-

534

sition to melodramatic experiences and an inflation of

a theatrical gesture (Hofmann 1960 Białostocki 1966)

The nineteenth century developed a realistic por-

traiture of man and nature and took over worn out

clicheacutes of the Renaissance and baroque allegories It

introduced new subject matter taken partly from tra-

dition partly from observation of reality tinted with

vague symbolism such as ldquoForgerdquo or the ldquoFuneral of

the Peasantrdquo but it did not create a new system of

iconography in spite of short-lived revivals of symbol-

istic attitudes in such movementsmdashincidentally not

limited to and not initiated in the visual artsmdashas

ldquosymbolismrdquo

New ephemeral artistic movements which consti-

tuted the history of European art in the last hundred

years show an interesting bracketing of style and icon-

ography in spite of a preponderant lack of iconogra-

phic interest Their representatives chose subjects suit-

able to specific artistic aims and means which they

developed and were interested in Impressionists

painted seaside scenes landscapes and genre pictures

showing the life of artistic and intellectual milieus

Cubists introduced a specific repertory of still-life

motifs symbols of the artists atelier and of the life

of the bohegraveme bottles musical instruments books

fruits flowers newspapers How much these motifs

were connected with specific cubist style appears when

one looks at works of artists foreign to the original

cubist group but imitating its style as for instance

several Czech artists like Emil Filla They adopted

cubist iconography together with cubist style Abstract

movements in general lacked iconography although

they were not foreign to symbolic tendencies espe-

cially in sculpture (Brancusi Moore) Only in the dec-

ades of 1950-70 can a revival of more articulated and

programmatic symbolism be observed One may sup-

pose that this revival is at least in part brought about

by the development of research in iconography and

symbolism which took place in the second and third

quarters of our century

II

1 The origins of ldquointerpretative iconographyrdquo may

be seen in the descriptions (ekphrasis) of works of art

known in classical literature But these descriptions

like those by Philostratus the Elder or Lucian are

limited simply to description and lack in general any

interpretation Moreover it is not certain whether they

are descriptions of actual or fictitious works of art at

least opinions in this respect vary Brief medieval tituli

which formulated in words the content of religious

images were to be sure interpretative sometimes but

they were short and cannot be connected with the

tradition of artistic erudition We have to look to

modern times to indicate the beginnings of iconogra-

phic interpretation and research From Vasaris Rag-

ionamenti in which interpretations of the paintings

decorating the Palazzo Vecchio in Florence are given

we learn how complicated and how undecipherable

iconographic concepts might have been even to peo-

ple living in buildings decorated by paintings expres-

sing these concepts But perhaps the first really to be

considered as interested in iconographic research was

the seventeenth-century archaeologist and art theorist

Giovanni Pietro Bellori In the introduction to his Lives

of Artists (1672) Bellori stressed that he paid special

attention to the content of the works of art he was

talking about and he even credited the painter Nicolas

Poussin with having directed his attention to iconogra-

phy In his Lives Bellori presented short interpretative

descriptions of pictures and he sometimes developed

these interpretations further in small iconographic

essays the influence of classical ekphrasis on him is

a possibility Sometimes his errors took deep roots in

the subsequent history of art as when he explained

Poussins Triumph of Flora (Dresden) by designating

Ovids Metamorphoses as its source The true source

Marinos Adona was finally found by R E Spear in

1965

What is interesting in Belloris procedure is that he

first identifies the motifs tries to connect them with

classical or modern literary sources and then proceeds

to find out the deep meaning the general symbolic

idea of the work Therefore he may be considered as

one of the pioneers not only of iconography as a disci-

pline of research but also of iconology as formulated

by its recent partisans That even in the second half

of the sixteenth century some observers were inclined

to look for hidden meaning in each element of the work

of art we learn from Joannes Molanus (1570) who in

De picturis et imaginibus sacris states reasonably that

ldquoit is not necessary to ask for meaning of everything

that can be observed in a picture in such cases a lot

of absurd things may resultrdquo But the consciousness of

the importance of iconography increased and at the

end of the seventeenth century Andreacute Feacutelibien stressed

that in order to attribute a picture to a painter it is

not enough to know the way he uses his brush one

needs also to know his esprit to learn his geacutenie and

to be able to foresee in which way he is able to form

his conceptions Thus iconographic analysis was con-

sidered necessary even for the purpose of attribution

Descriptive interpretations of the works of ancient

art appeared in the big archaeological publications of

the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries such as

Jacques Spons Miscellanea eruditae antiquitatis (1679)

G P Belloris Admiranda romanarum antiquitatum ac

veteris sculpturae vestigia (1693) P de Caylus Recueil

535

dantiquiteacutes eacutegyptiennes eacutetrusques grecques et

romaines (1752-67) and in an interesting endeavor

(although very much criticized by Lessing) of Joseph

Spence to explain classical poets through works of art

and vice versa (Polymetis 1747) Classical archaeology

however has not been especially interested in iconog-

raphy and the use of the term itself by archaeolo-

gists was limited to portraiture The first great devel-

opment of iconographic studies was connected with

the romantic movement although an important pre-

lude for it was hagiographical collections of sources

such as Acta sanctorum published by the Bollandists

(1643-1794 resumed later) Among the pre-romantic

scholars in iconography the eminent German poet

G E Lessing is to be noted His study of the repre-

sentation of death in classical times can be considered

as one of the first essays in interpretative iconography

which is now called iconology In Wie die Alten den

Tod gebildet (1769) Lessing tries to interpret the classi-

cal iconographic type of Amor with the inverted torch

and to find its ldquointrinsic meaningrdquo by taking into ac-

count the religion customs and philosophy of the

classical world The work of art is interpreted by Less-

ing as ldquoa symptom of something elserdquo While Lessings

predecessors (like B de Montfaucon) ldquoexplained the

classical past by monumentsrdquo he for the first time did

the opposite ldquohe explained the monuments by Antiq-

uityrdquo (Maurin Białostocka [1969] pp 92-100)

Pre-romantic and romantic interests in myth and

symbol found their expression in publications and dis-

cussions by German philosophers and scholars like F

Schlegel J Herder J J von Goumlrres and F Creuzer

Creuzers work Symbolik und Mythologie der alten

Voumllker (1810) which shows the influence of mystical

Neo-Platonic ideas on symbols (Gombrich 1965) was

the most influential in the romantic period in Ger-

many Under the impact of Chateaubriands le Geacutenie

du christianisme (1802) research in medieval iconog-

raphy developed mainly in France Works by French

scholars mostly clergymen which were indeed con-

cerned with Christian medieval art dominated icon-

ographical study in the nineteenth century Since most

of these writers were not professional scholars their

work was often amateurish in character but it is unde-

niable that books by A N Didron Histoire de Dieu

(Paris 1843) the first part of a comprehensive pro-

jected but not completed iconography of Christian art

A Crosnier Iconographie chreacutetienne (Caen 1848) C

Cahier Caracteacuteristiques des saints (Paris 1867) C

Rohault de Fleury Archeacuteologie chreacutetienne les saints

de la messe et leurs monuments 12 vols (Paris

1893-1900) L Breacutehier Lart chreacutetien son deacuteveloppe-

ment iconographique des origines agrave nos jours (Paris

1918) P Perdrizet V Leroquais and G de Jerphanion

have built up a solid body of iconographical knowl-

edge on which scholars of the twentieth century were

able to erect a modern comprehensive structure In

the field of Byzantine iconography it was Gabriel

Millets Recherches sur liconographie de leacutevangile aux

XIVe XVe et XVIe siegravecles (Paris 1916 reprint

1960) that was basic for any further study For Western

chiefly French art a well-written and learned work

appealing to the general reader as well as to the

scholar was produced by Eacutemile Macircle who in his four

volumes of the history of religious art (1898-1932) has

presented a well-composed synthetic image of icono-

graphical development A lexicographic summary of

these studies of generations of French scholars is pre-

sented in the Dictionnaire darcheacuteologie chreacutetienne et

de liturgie published from 1907 to 1953 and edited

by F Cabrol and H Leclerq A recent reference work

is that by L Reacuteau Iconographie de lart chreacutetien (Paris

1955-59) Russian scholars have done important work

in the field of Byzantine and Orthodox iconography

of religious art The most prominent are N P Kon-

dakov Ikonografia Bogomatieri (St Petersburg 1911

2nd ed 1914-15) D V Ainalov Mosaiki IV i V vekov

(St Petersburg 1895) and N Pokrovski Otcherki

pamyatnikov christianskogo isskusstva i ikonografii (St

Petersburg 1894 3rd ed 1910) V Lasarev and M

Alpatov belonging to the mid-twentieth-century gen-

eration of Russian scholars discuss iconography in

several works on religious art German scholarship

produced in the nineteenth century works by F Piper

A Springer and H Detzel Useful compendia were

produced in the early twentieth century by J Sauer

W Molsdorf K Kuumlnstle and J Braun Dutch scholars

C Smits J B Knipping and J J M Timmers contrib-

uted to iconographic studies in recent times Knip-

pings book (1939-40) being the most important work

on the iconography of the Counter-Reformation and

supplementing Macircles volume of 1932 In the twentieth

century on C R Moreys initiative iconographic

studies were inaugurated in North America Focused

on earlier medieval art these studies developed at

Princeton University

A new direction characteristic of iconographic

studies in the twentieth century has been given to

them by the international school of art historical re-

search inaugurated by the Hamburg scholar Aby

Warburg At the International Congress for the History

of Art at Rome in 1912 he presented a sensational

astrological interpretation of the frescoes painted by

Francesco Cossa and his collaborators in Palazzo

Schifanoja at Ferrara Warburg solved the secret of

those representations which had puzzled the ingenuity

of several former students interpreting them as images

of zodiacal signs and their decans But he did not limit

536

his contribution to the presentation of his results He

wanted to stress the importance of his approach and

of the method of study which later became connected

with his name He said

I hope that through the method used by me for explication

of the frescoes at the Palazzo Schifanoja of Ferrara I have

proved that an iconological analysis which does not allow

itself to be diverted by the rules of frontier police from

considering antiquity Middle Ages and modern times as

interconnected periods nor from analyzing the most liberal

and the most applied works of art as equally important

documents of expression that this method endeavoring as

it does to throw light upon one dark spot clears up at

the same time great interconnected developments

(Warburg 1912 Heckscher 1967)

Warburgs influence on the history of art was very

great although he himself did not write much It was

mainly the posthumous impact of his ideas promul-

gated as they were by Fritz Saxl which contributed

to the specific direction of studies concentrated in the

library Warburg founded in Hamburg and which Saxl

succeeded in transplanting during the Nazi era to

London where it became the Warburg Institute of the

University of London While the object of study of the

nineteenth-century iconographers was mainly religious

art in its relation to religious literary sources and lit-

urgy for Warburg the study of images was a study

of their relations to religion to poetry to myth to

science and to social and political life Art was for

him closely connected with the polyphonic structure

of historical life

Warburgs ideas had a great importance for the most

influential theory of iconographic interpretation in our

century that elaborated by Erwin Panofsky In Ham-

burg where Warburg Saxl and Panofsky were active

in the twenties Ernst Cassirer built up his philosophy

of symbolic forms which constituted an additional

background for Panofskys system being derived as

his own methodology was from the traditions of

Kantian philosophy Around 1930 Panofskys ideas

ripened into a system which found formulation in his

book herkules am Scheidewege (1930) and later in a

theoretical article of 1932 G J Hoogewerff was how-

ever the first to propose the word ldquoiconologyrdquo as a

name for the method of an analysis of content in a

work of art (Warburg spoke of iconological analysis)

In 1931 he proposed distinguishing between iconogra-

phy as a descriptive science aiming at the identifica-

tion of themes and ldquoiconologyrdquo aiming at the under-

standing ldquoof symbolic dogmatic or mystical meaning

which is expressed (or hidden) in figurative formsrdquo He

stressed that ldquoiconologyrdquo deals with works of art with-

out classifying them according to the technique used

or to the achieved perfection taking into account only

their meaning Hoogewerff saw the last aim of iconol-

ogy in finding out the cultural and ideological back-

ground expressed by works of art and the cultural and

social significance which can be attributed to certain

forms and to means of expression in the same time

Hoogewerffs part in the expansion of iconology was

limited because he did not endorse his methodical

proposals with examples of historical interpretations

Erwin Panofsky with whose name iconology has

been connected ever since not only developed its

theoretical foundations but contributed by his practi-

cal work in art history to the main triumph of iconol-

ogy after the Second World War The most influential

book by Panofsky has been Studies in Iconology (1939)

in which his masterly presentation of the method was

connected with its equally excellent exemplification

2 Panofsky considers the interpretation of a work

of art as falling on three levels On the first level the

object of interpretation is the primary or natural sub-

ject matter The function of interpretation is called

ldquopre-iconographical descriptionrdquo In order to be able

to arrive at a correct interpretation on that level the

interpreter must have a practical experience (ldquofamili-

arity with objects and eventsrdquo) common to everybody

at least in one cultural sphere However he has to

control his observations by a ldquocorrective knowledge

of the history of stylerdquo (ldquoinsight into the manner in

which under varying historical conditions objects and

events were expressed by formsrdquo) On the second level

the function of interpretation is called ldquoiconographical

analysisrdquo its object is the ldquosecondary or conventional

subject matterrdquo constituting the world of images his-

tories and allegories The interpreters equipment in

this case is obviously the knowledge of literary sources

giving him a ldquofamiliarity with specific themes and

conceptsrdquo The interpreter has to control his observa-

tions by ldquothe insight into the manner in which under

varying historical conditions specific themes or con-

cepts were expressed by objects and eventsrdquo On the

third level the function of interpreting is called ldquoicon-

ographical analysis in a deeper senserdquo (1939) or ldquoicon-

ological analysisrdquo (1955) Its object is the ldquointrinsic

meaning or contentrdquo of a work of art The interpreters

equipment on that level should be a ldquofamiliarity with

the essential tendencies of the human mindrdquo and he

has to control his interpretation by the ldquoinsight into

the manner in which under varying historical condi-

tions essential tendencies of the human mind were

expressed by specific themes and conceptsrdquo Thus

taking all the time into account what Panofsky calls

the history of tradition the interpreter has to aim at

understanding the work of art its ldquoprimaryrdquo as well

as ldquosecondary subject matterrdquo as symptoms of some

fundamental tendency of the human mind typical of

537

a place a time a civilization and of an individual

responsible for the creation of the work ldquoIconologyrdquomdash

for Panofskymdashldquois a method of interpretation which

arises from synthesis rather than analysisrdquo Trying to

find the intrinsic meaning of a work of art

The art historian will have to check what he thinks is the

intrinsic meaning of the work or group of works against

what he thinks is the intrinsic meaning of as many other

documents of civilization historically related to that work

or group of works as he can master It is in the search

for intrinsic meaning or content that the various humanistic

disciplines meet on a common plane instead of serving as

handmaidens to each other

(Panofsky [1955] p 39)

The concept of intrinsic meaning of a work of art

was elaborated by Panofsky much earlier (1925) when

he interpreted in his own way the concept of Kunst-

wollen introduced by A Riegl to research in art

Panofsky understood this ldquoartistic volitionrdquo as an im-

manent ultimate meaning of a work of art which is

manifested in the way basic artistic problems are solved

in that work He used the same concept further to bring

art closer to the other fields of human activity Since

the ldquoimmanent ultimate senserdquo of the work of art is

nothing else than uniformity in the way of solving basic

artistic problems it is possible to compare that imma-

nent sense with immanent senses of the other human

works in various fields Panofsky did it for instance

when in one of his later works he compared the struc-

tural principles of Gothic architecture with those of

scholastic thinking (1951)

The system elaborated by Panofsky and exemplified

by his own work in art history was the first consistent

system of an integral interpretation of a work of visual

arts based on the analysis of content In principle

Panofskys system takes into account all the elements

of the work of art since it takes as the point of depar-

ture the sensual exterior shape of the work It is

however clear that its main scope is not the inter-

pretation of form as a bearer of meaning but the

understanding and interpretation of conventional alle-

gories literary themes and symbols as symptoms of

the history of the human mind It was that method

in the history of art which programmatically fostered

a collaboration with all the other disciplines of histori-

cal studies It was therefore one of the most influential

methods not only among art historians but also among

representatives of the other branches of humanistic

studies Although there were art historians who ex-

pressed a critical attitude toward ldquoiconologyrdquo as the

new method was soon baptized its influence was over-

whelming

3 It is not only but mainly due to Panofsky that

one can venture to call ldquoiconographicalrdquo that period

of art history as a historical discipline which followed

the Second World War and to oppose it to the ldquostylis-

ticrdquo one which preceded it It does not mean of course

that no iconographic research took place in the

twenties or thirties the works of Macircle Knipping van

Marle Wilpert Saxl and of Panofsky himself would

contradict such a statement Neither is it true that

purely formal research aiming at stylistic classification

and analysis discontinued after World War II It is

evident that in the last decades (from 1940 on) icono-

graphic interests came to the fore and became domi-

nant in many countries Iconographical studies grew

so much in number and importance that they made

it possible to undertake and to publish new reference

works of iconographic character like dictionaries

written by one scholar (Guy de Tervarent Aurenham-

mer) as well as larger works based on a collaboration

of several scholars (Encyclopedias of German art of

Antiquity and Christian civilization of Byzantine art)

Interest in meaning and iconography has appeared

also among historians of political social and religious

institutions The symbolism of signs ceremonies cos-

tumes and arms was studied by such scholars as A

Alfoumlldi ldquoInsignien und Tracht der roumlmischen Kaiserrdquo

Mitteilungen des deutschen Archaumlologischen Instituts

Roumlmische Abteilung (1935) 1ff ldquoDie Geburt der

kaiserlichen Bildsymbolikrdquo museum Helveticum 9

(1952) 204ff also by A Grabar Martyrium (Paris

1943-46) by E H Kantorowicz laudes Regiae

(Berkeley and Los Angeles 1946) The Kings Two

Bodies (Princeton 1957) by H P L Orange Studies

in the Iconography of Cosmic Kingship in the Ancient

World (Oslo 1953) Art Forms and Civic Life in the

Late Roman Empire (Princeton 1965) and by P E

Schramm herrschaftszeichen und Staatssymbolik

(Stuttgart 1954-56) In their studies iconography far

transcends the borders of art and it helps to build up

a history of ideas by following their various visual

expressions

Pioneering studies by K Giehlow F Saxl and E

Panofsky enlarged iconographical interests above all

to encompass the large field of secular art whereas

they had been mainly limited to religious iconography

in the work of preceding generations of scholars The

whole complicated and hardly known large body of

meanings disguised by the cryptic language of hiero-

glyphs emblems and iconologies became one of the

main topics of study

This established a collaboration between historians

of art and literature Mario Prazs admirable study of

emblems and his bibliography of emblem books

(1939-47) belongs now to the foundations of studies

in that field Publications by W S Heckscher and

A K Wirth by R S Clements E F von Monroy and

538

H M von Erffa E de Jongh and H Miedema and

several other scholars have elucidated the structure

and meaning of emblems and have shown their tre-

mendous influence on art even in its most monumental

and dignified forms An uninterrupted flow of reprints

of emblem books which brought within the reach of

modern students inaccessible volumes of sixteenth- and

seventeenth-century emblem writers were crowned by

the monumental undertaking of Arthur Henkel and

Albrecht Schoumlne who compiled an excellent volume

including almost all the texts and images needed for

the study of emblemsmdashEmblemata Handbuch zur

Sinnbildkunst des XVI und XVII Jahrhunderts

(Stuttgart 1967) Research was under way on hiero-

glyphs (Erik Iversen) and on the imprese (the late

Robert Klein) as well as on iconologies and allegories

These studies have disclosed meanings of the art of

the Renaissance of mannerism and of the baroque not

understood by nineteenth-century scholars

E Panofsky deciphered extremely farfetched and

individualistic programs of decoration of such famous

ensembles as the Camera di San Paolo by Correggio

in Parma the Gallery of Franccedilois I at Fontainebleau

Edgar Wind Andreacute Chastel and other scholars inter-

preted Raphaels decorations in the Popes apartments

Michelangelos art furnished material to detailed com-

prehensive studies by Panofsky Ch de Tolnay H von

Einem and Pope-Hennessy in which the share of

Neo-Platonic thinking in the ideological background

of the celebrated works of Michelangelo was discussed

Innumerable studies have been devoted to Titians

mythological paintings J R Martin presented expla-

nations of the Carracci frescoes in the Camerino Far-

nese and in the great gallery of the Palazzo Farnese

Bruegel considered in the nineteenth century as a drocircle

painter of peasant life has been shown by de Tolnay

Stridbeck and others to be an allegorist expressing a

skeptical humanistic outlook J S Held and W

Stechow contributed several articles to the under-

standing of mythological and allegorical contents in

Flemish and Dutch art of the sixteenth and seventeenth

centuries Rembrandts iconography was put into new

light by the two above-mentioned scholars as well as

by H M Rotermund H van de Waal J G van Gelder

H von Einem and Ch Tuumlmpel The intricate symbol-

ism and subject matter of historical and mythological

pictures by Nicolas Poussin were elucidated by such

masters of iconographic research as E H Gombrich

W Friedlaumlnder E Panofsky and above all by A Blunt

who in his monograph on Poussin presented a new

deep synthetic view of the ideas expressed by that

artists works Goyas individualistic secret symbolism

was also studied with the help of emblems and the

allegorical tradition Berninis works received iconolo

gical treatment by R Wittkower and H Kauffmann

All of this research does not mean that there was a

lack of interest in religious iconography M Schapiro

A Katzenellenbogen H Bober F Wormald and V

Elbern among others have contributed considerably

to deepen our understanding of the not completely

explained motifs and prominent works of medieval art

Panofsky has also shed a new light on several problems

of sepulchral iconography studies by such scholars as

R Berliner G von der Osten L Kalinowski S

Ringbom and T Dobrzeniecki contributed to late

medieval iconography in a new way Berliner stressed

the autonomous invention of visual artists or their

patrons while according to the traditional view popu-

larized by Macircle late medieval art should have followed

strictly literary sources

The religious content of modern art especially its

allegorical form in the late baroque period has been

examined and thanks to studies by such scholars as

W Mrazek and H Bauer has become better known

and understandable A great change was introduced

by ldquoiconologyrdquo into architectural history Buildings

which were formerly interpreted from aesthetic and

functional points of view only have been shown to

present allegorical symbolical or even emblematic

ideas Publications by leading art historians (R Witt-

kower B Smith G Bandmann O von Simson and

G C Argan) have presented medieval and modern

architecture as a bearer of meaning and have essen-

tially changed the character of architectural history

The iconography of classicism and romanticism

received a thorough treatment in books by W Hof-

mann and R Rosenblum as well as in several studies

devoted to individual themes and pictures G Hersey

has for example shown how much Delacroixs decora-

tion of the library in the Palais Bourbon owed to

Giambattista Vicos ideas about history More recently

studies on ldquoSymbolismrdquo have been undertaken Vincent

van Goghs symbolic language and iconography were

the object of studies by J Seznec C Nordenfalk and

other scholars On Ceacutezannes iconography interesting

remarks have been published by M Schapiro

Along with the development of iconographic studies

the establishment of centers of documentation has

advanced The ldquoFrenchrdquo stage in the development of

iconography has not left any marked trace in this

respect It was in America thanks to C R Morey that

the famous Index of Christian Art at the Department

of Art and Archaeology of Princeton University was

founded at first limited to the early Middle Ages then

enlarged so as to include art up to the end of the

medieval period Copies of the Princeton Index are

to be found also at the Istituto Pontificio dArcheolo-

gia in Rome and in the Dumbarton Oaks Library and

539

Collection in Washington DC But that Index ends

ldquowhere art beginsrdquomdashas Panofsky used to say jokingly

The need for systematic iconographic files for modern

art was strongly felt In 1956 A Pigler published a

very useful book Barockthemen in which he listed

thousands of works of art of the baroque period ac-

cording to their subjects It was however far from

being a systematic work The first essay in establishing

a systematic iconographic index for art of any time

was done by The Netherlands Institute for Art History

at the Hague then directed by H Gerson which took

the initiative around 1950 of publishing a postcard-size

photographic index of its rich collection of photographs

of Netherlandish art ordered according to an icono-

graphic principle Once such an idea was formulated

the need for a comprehensive consistent and clear

iconographic classification was urgent H van de Waal

of Leiden University devised such a system of classifi-

cation based on decimal divisions consistent and easy

to read He based his system on experiences of ethnol-

ogy and on such elaborated systems of classification

as that devised by Stith Thompson in his Motif-Index

of Folk Literature Vols I-VI (Bloomington Ind

1932-36 rev ed 1955-58) Van de Waal has elabor-

ated a system in which the first five main sections

classify five fundamental groups of portrayable things

namely (1) The Supernatural (2) Nature (3) Man (4)

Society (5) Abstracts The last four classify specific

subjects such as (6) History (7) The Bible (8) Myths

Legends and Tales (with the exception of classical

antiquity) (9) Myths and Legends of Classical Antiq-

uity Van de Waal combines the classification in the

first and in the second group in order to classify general

as well as specific subjects Christ in his system is

described with the sign ldquo11 Drdquo (ldquo1rdquo standing for Su-

pernatural ldquo11rdquo for Christianity ldquoDrdquo for Christ) the

adult Christ = 11 D 3 since ldquoshepherdrdquo on the other

hand bears the signature 47 I 221 the adult Christ

as a shepherd can be described in this system by the

following formula 11 D 3 = 47 I 221 Van de Waal

has also provided means to describe more complex

images which he expresses by adding elements between

brackets The Annunciation with God the Father and

a winged Angel is expressed by the following formula

73 A 5 (+1 +41) ldquo1rdquo standing for God the Father

and ldquo41rdquo for a winged Angel (van de Waal 1952) This

system elaborated for many years by its inventor and

prepared for publication in many volumes has proved

most useful in the practical arrangement of the Icono-

graphical Index of the Netherlandish Art and as the

only one until now in existence it became used more

and more in spite of some ambiguities and difficulties

As an endeavor to classify ldquoall portrayablerdquo things

persons events and ideas and to create a consistent

method to describe every possible image van de Waals

system may be considered as one of the important

achievements of the ldquoiconographical stagerdquo in the

development of art history Iconographic files exist of

course in many institutions as for example in the Ikon-

ologisch Instituut of Utrecht University one of the

main centers of study in emblematics and of course

in the most venerable institution of iconographic re-

search the Warburg Institute of the London University

and in other places

4 What was the result of this ldquoiconographicrdquo turn

in the development of the history of art One thing

is certain that this discipline by necessity has come

closer to other humanistic disciplines Since the

ldquointrinsicrdquo meaningmdashin Panofskys terminologymdashof a

work of art cannot be described in terms used by the

history of art but only in terms borrowed from the

history of philosophy of religion of social structures

of science and so on the ldquoiconological methodrdquo took

for granted and provoked such a collaboration Art

history was perhaps the first or one of the first to show

new interest in investigation of meaning It was fol-

lowed by similar developments in ethnology and in

linguistics

We have mentioned above a parallel development

in Byzantine and classical studies Panofskys influence

has been considerable in the other fields of humanistic

research Since ldquoiconologyrdquo aimed at discovering ideas

expressed by a work of art it awoke in art historians

an interest in the history of ideas This general shift

of emphasis and of the direction of studies from mainly

formal ones to studies aiming at ideas underlying art

was perhaps responsible among others for the fact that

several contributions to the Journal of the History of

Ideas have been written by historians of art

It is not difficult to see that such a development

should have provoked criticism on the side of those

who care about the purity and autonomy of methods

Iconology was criticized as far as its internal coherence

and also as far as its claim to be the integral method

of the study of art are concerned (Białostocki 1962)

Studies by R Klein E Forssman G Previtali G

Kubler B Teyssegravedre C Ginzburg and G Hermeren

expressed critical opinions in one or the other respect

Iconology linked art with the rest of history but it

disrupted the links between the work of art and other

things (Kubler 1962) Concentrating on meaning

iconology neglected art as form as individual expres-

sion Iconology implied a rational relationship between

intellectual content and artistic form On the one hand

one spoke of ldquoiconological diminutionsrdquo (Kubler

1962)mdashlimitations of research to meaning only But

on the other hand the overstatements of iconology

were criticized its representatives sometimes seemed

540

to assume everything symbolized something And some

iconologists seemed to consider important in art not

that which makes art a different field of human activity

but that which connects art with other fieldsmdashwith

the history of ideas

There were of course critics who had the opposite

opinion Since the end of the eighteenth century a

direct experience of art was more and more valued

and its symbolical function considered as a burden

J G von Herder said ein Kunstwerk ist der Kunst

wegen da aber bei einem Symbole ist die Kunst

dienend (ldquoA work of art is there because of art but

with a symbol art is a servicerdquo) Similar opinions were

expressed by nineteenth-century art writers and in this

century they have been voiced by Benedetto Croce and

by other Italian opponents of contenutismo by which

they meant interest in content For such critics to put

stress on iconography was to miss the essential in art

and to focus attention on a subordinate function of art

Also among scholars who considered the function

of representation and of communication as a legitimate

and important function of art criticism was expressed

not against the principle of an iconographical or icon-

ological investigation but against overstatements in

their application The introduction of the idea of ldquodis-

guised symbolismrdquo has created a danger of course of

opening the way to fanciful interpretations The alle-

gorical and symbolical function of mythological imag-

ery in classical art is also difficult to interpret precisely

Since no literary sources give a key to an interpretation

of the iconography of the sarcophagi very divergent

theories have been expressed concerning their meaning

Some archaeologists like F Cumont (1942) believe

that mythological and allegorical imagery (Anadyo-

mene Sea-Thiasos Personifications of the Seasons) is

to be read symbolically The Sea-Thiasos for instance

is to be interpreted as a symbol of the journey of the

souls of the deceased to the islands of the blessed

Others like A D Nock (1946) do not find enough

evidence to accept other than a decorative function

in such imagery

The intrusion of some representatives of psychology

eg C G Jung into iconographic studies giving them

an unhistorical turn in their search for ldquoarchetypal

imagesrdquo has complicated the situation although art

historians in general understandably have not accepted

that kind of approach to symbolism (Frankfort 1958

Gombrich 1965)

The fact that iconographic interpretations sometimes

lack satisfactory proofs does not detract from the im-

portance of such investigations so long as they are

conducted according to the requirements of historical

methods and take into account the corrective princi-

ples established by Panofsky A correct acquaintance

with the way of thinking of the artist the patron or the

viewer based on a satisfactory knowledge of documen-

tary visual and literary sources an awareness of the

choice situations produced by historical developments

may enable art historians to discover the secondary

meaning of a work of art as well as its intrinsic mean-

ing It is of course possible that the art historian will

meet some works for which it will not be possible to re-

construct in a satisfactory way the world of ideas that

would account for the meaning of those works In such

cases a reliable interpretation is simply not possible

R Berliner (1945 1966) criticized the widespread

opinion according to which content of the works of

visual arts in the Middle Ages had to be checked

against the literary sources considered as the only

medium in which ideological innovations were per-

mitted Berliner pleaded for assuming a considerable

ldquofreedomrdquo in the medieval artist and he considered

iconographic innovation possible even when no writ-

ten evidence could be found Meyer Schapiro (1947)

presented proofs that sometimes purely aesthetic rea-

sons decided the character of the work of art even as

early as the Romanesque period

We can only touch on some specific discussions going

on in the field of iconographic research But iconogra-

phic research is far from being a closed system and

the relative share of iconographic and stylistic criticism

in the work of art historians is always a matter of

discussion It is certain that the ldquoiconographicrdquo period

in the study of art has enlarged in a considerable way

the understanding of the art of the past and that it

has connected art history in a way unknown before

with the other historical disciplines and above all others

with the history of ideas

BIBLIOGRAPHY

L B Alberti On Painting ed J Spencer (New Haven

1956 revised ed 1966) E Auerbach ldquoFigurardquo (1944) trans

and published in Scenes From the Drama of European Liter-

ature (New York 1959) pp 11-76 K Bauch ldquoImagordquo

(1960) Studien zur Kunstgeschichte (Berlin 1967) pp 1-20

G P Bellori Descrizione delle imagini dipinte da Raffaello

(Rome 1695 ed used is 1751) R Berliner ldquoThe Free-

dom of Medieval Artrdquo Gazette des Beaux-Arts 628 (1945)

263-88 idem ldquoBemerkungen zu einigen Darstellungen des

Erloumlsers als Schmerzensmannrdquo Das Muumlnster 9 (1956)

97-117x J Białostocki ldquoIconografia e Iconologiardquo Enciclo-

pedia Universale dellArte (1962) Vol VII cols 163-75

trans as Encyclopedia of World Art (1966) Vol VII cols

769-85 lists almost all important older contributions to this

field idem ldquoRomantische Ikonographierdquo Stil und Ikonog-

raphie (Dresden 1966) pp 156-81 idem ldquoKompozycja

emblematyczna epitafioacutew ślaskich XVI wiekurdquo (ldquoEmblem-

atic Composition of Silesian Epitaphs of the Sixteenth Cen-

turyrdquo) Ze studioacutew nad Sztuka XVI wieku na Řlasku

(Wrocław 1968) pp 77-93 idem ldquoEsilio Privatordquo Bulletin

du Museacutee National de Varsovie 10 (1969) 95-101 J

541

Chydenius The Theory of Medieval Symbolism (Helsingfors

1960) Series of the Societas Scientiarum Fennica Com-

mentationes Humanarum Litterarum 27 2 R J Clements

Picta Poesis (Rome 1960) F Creuzer Symbolik und

Mythologie der Alten Voumllker (Leipzig and Darmstadt 1810

revised ed 1819) F Cumont Recherches sur le symbolisme

funeacuteraire des Romains (Paris 1942) L Eitner ldquoThe Open

Window and the Storm-Tossed Boatrdquo Art Bulletin 37

(1955) 281-90 H Frankfort ldquoThe Archetype in Analytical

Psychology and the History of Religionrdquo Journal of the

Warburg and Courtauld Institutes 21 (1958) 166-78

K Garas ldquoAllegorie und Geschichte in der Venezianischen

Malerei des 18 Jahrhundertsrdquo in proceedings of the XXI

International Congress of the History of Art Bonn Stil und

Uumlberlieferung in der Kunst des Abendlandes (Berlin 1967)

3 280-83 K Giehlow ldquoDie Hieroglyphenkunde des

Humanismus in der Allegorie der Renaissancerdquo Jahrbuch

der Kunsthistorischen Sammlungen des Allerhochsten

Kaiserhauses 32 (1915) 1-232 C Gilbert ldquoOn Subject and

Not-Subject in Italian Renaissance Picturesrdquo Art Bulletin

34 (1952) 202-16 C Ginzburg ldquoDa A Warburg a E H

Gombrich Note su un problema di metodordquo Studi medi-

evali series 3 7 (1966) 1015-65 E H Gombrich ldquoIcones

Symbolicae The Visual Image in Neo-Platonic Thoughtrdquo

Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes 11 (1948)

163-92 idem ldquoThe Use of Art for the Study of Symbolsrdquo

American Psychologist 20 (1965) A Grabar Liconoclasme

byzantin Dossier archeacuteologique (Paris 1957) idem Chris-

tian Iconography A Study of Its Origins (Princeton 1969)

S J Gudlaugsson De Comedianten bij Jan Steen en zijn

tijdgenooten (s-Gravenhage 1945) W S Heckscher ldquoThe

Genesis of Iconologyrdquo Stl und Uumlberlieferung in der Kunst

des Abendlandes Akten des XXI Internationalen Kon-

gresses fuumlr Kunstgeschichte (Berlin 1967) 3 239-62 G

Hermereacuten Representation and Meaning in the Visual Arts

A Study in the Methodology of Iconography and Iconology

Lund Studies in Philosophy Vol I (Lund 1969) R Hinks

Myth and Allegory in Ancient Art (London 1939) W

Hofmann Das Irdische Paradies (Munich 1960) G J

Hoogewerff ldquoLIconologie et son importance pour leacutetude

systeacutematique de lart chreacutetienrdquo Rivista dArcheologia Cris-

tiana 8 (1931) 53-82 E de Jongh Zinne- en minnebeelden

in de schilderkunst van de zeventiende eeuw (mdash1967) idem

ldquoErotica in Vogelperspectief De dubbelzinnigheid van een

reeks 17de eeuwse genrevoorstellingenrdquo Simiolus 3

(1968-69) 22-72 L Kalinowski ldquoTreści ideowe i estetyczne

Drzwi Gnieźnieńskichrdquo (ldquoIdeological and Aesthetic Content

of the Gniezno Bronze Doorsrdquo) in Drzwi Gnieźnieńskie ed

M Walicki (Wroclaw 1959) 2 7-160 H Keller Tizians

Poesie fuumlr Koumlnig Philip II von Spanien (Wiesbaden 1969)

R Klein ldquoLa theacuteorie de lexpression figureacutee dans les traiteacutes

italiens sur les imprese 1555-1612rdquo Bibliothegraveque dHu-

manisme et Renaissance 19 (1957) 320-41 republished with

the other relevant studies in la forme et lintelligible (Paris

1969) R Klibansky E Panofsky F Saxl Saturn and Melan-

choly (London 1964) J B Knipping Ikonografie van de

Contra-Reformatie in de Nederlanden (Hilversum 1939-40)

G Kubler The Shape of Time (New Haven and London

1962) R W Lee ldquoUt pictura poesisrdquo Art Bulletin 22

(1940) 197-269 E Macircle Lart religieux du XIIIe siegravecle en

France (Paris 1898) English ed used (New York 1958)

idem Lart religieux de la fin du Moyen-Age en France

(Paris 1908) idem Lart religieux du XIIe siegravecle en France

(Paris 1922) idem Lart religieux apregraves le Concile de Trente

(Paris 1932) J Maurin Białostocka Lessing i sztuki plas-

tyczne (ldquoLessing and the visual artsrdquo) (Wroclaw Warszawa

Krakoacutew 1969) E F von Monroy Embleme und Emblem-

buumlcher in den Niederlanden 1560-1630 ed H M von Erffa

(Utrecht 1964) J Montagu ldquoThe Painted Enigma and

French Seventeenth Century Artrdquo Journal of the Warburg

and Courtauld Institutes 31 (1968) 307-35 W Mrazek

Ikonologie der barocken Deckenmalerei (Vienna 1953)

Uumlsterreichische Akademie der Wissenschaften Philo-

sophisch-historische Klasse Sitzungsberichte 2283 A D

Nock ldquoSarcophagi and Symbolismrdquo American Journal of

Archaeology 50 (1946) 166ff D Panofsky and E Panofsky

ldquoThe Iconography of the Galeacuterie Franccedilois Ier at Fontaine-

bleaurdquo Gazette des Beaux-Arts 652 (1958) 113-90

E Panofsky ldquoUumlber das Verhaumlltnis der Kunstgeschichte zur

Kunsttheorierdquo Zeitschrift fuumlr Aesthetik und allgemeine

Kunstwissenschaft 18 (1925) 129-61 idem Studies in

Iconology (New York 1939) idem ed Abbot Suger (Prince-

ton 1946) idem Gothic Architecture and Scholasticism

(Latrobe Pa 1951) idem Early Netherlandish Painting

(Cambridge Mass 1953) idem Meaning in the Visual Arts

(Garden City N Y 1955) idem Renaissance and Renas-

cences in Western Art (Stockholm 1960) idem Tomb Sculp-

ture (New York 1964) E Panofsky and F Saxl ldquoClassical

Mythology in Medieval Artrdquo Metropolitan Museum Studies

4 (1932-33) 228-80 M Praz Studies in Seventeenth Cen-

tury Imagery (London 1939-47 2nd ed Rome 1964) S

Ringbom ldquoDevotional Images and Imaginative Devotions

Notes on the Place of Art in Late Medieval Private Pietyrdquo

Gazette des Beaux-Arts 6 73 (1969) 159-70 Joseph Sauer

Symbolik des Kirchengebaumludes und seiner Ausstattung in

der Auffassung des Mittelalters 2nd ed (Freiburg i B

1924) F Saxl ldquoFruumlhes Christentum und spaumltes Heidentum

in ihren kuumlnstlerischen Ausdrucksformenrdquo Wiener Jahrbuch

fuumlr Kunstgeschichte 2 (1923) 63-121 M Schapiro ldquoThe

Ruthwell Crossrdquo Art Bulletin 26 (1944) 232-45 idem ldquoOn

the Aesthetic Attitude in Romanesque Artrdquo in Art and

Thought issued in Honour of Ananda Coomaraswamy

(London 1947) 139-50 J Seznec The Survival of the Pagan

Gods (New York 1953) O G von Simson The Gothic

Cathedral (New York 1956) R E Spear ldquoThe Literary

Source of Poussins Realm of Florardquo The Burlington Maga-

zine 107 (1965) 563-69 L Volkmann Bilderschriften der

Renaissance (Leipzig 1923) Hans van de Waal Drie

eeuwen vaderlandsche geschieduitbeelding 1500-1800 (s-

Gravenhage 1952) idem ldquoSome Principles of a General

Iconographical Classificationrdquo in Actes du XVIIe Congregraves

International dHistoire de lArt Amsterdam 1952 (La Haye

1955) 601-06 E Wind ldquoCharity the Case History of a

Patternrdquo Journal of the Warburg Institute 1 (1937) 322ff

JAN BIAŁOSTOCKI

[See also Allegory Baroque Classicism Criticism Enlight-

enment Motif Myth Naturalism in Art Neo-Platonism

Renaissance Humanism Romanticism Symbolism Tem-

perance Ut pictura poesis]

of the Baptism because of that early belief baptisteries

and baptismal fonts are octagonal (Macircle ibid p 14)

One may trace in such use of numerical symbolism

a mystical rather than a didactic attitude

The general adoption of a symbolic attitude does

not mean that in the Middle Ages no actual events

were represented in art However since medieval art

was very much traditional and remained faithful to

exempla or compositional visual patterns the actual

events when they were sometimes taken as subjects

of representation used to be transformed to fit precon-

ceived traditional patterns The written lives of the

saints have been composed according to literary and

mythical topoi The same may be observed in art

When a new subject had to be represented it used to

be molded according to existing patterns As an exam-

ple we may adduce the story of Saint Adalbert repre-

sented on the bronze doors of the twelfth century at

Gniezno Poland The formerly executed European

bronze church doors represented Christological narra-

tive or allegorical figures or ornaments The fairly

recent hagiographic story had to be given visual shape

It is not surprising that the representations in most

cases follow the patterns of Christological iconography

(Kalinowski 1959) Secular subjects as for example

528

the conquest of England by William the Conqueror

and its circumstances represented on the so-called

Bayeux Tapestry followed in the general idea the

classical tradition It seems that perhaps more of a

direct experience of the actual medieval life found its

way into art than is usually admitted but the relative

share of symbolism and realism of system and freedom

is still a matter of discussion among medievalists

(Berliner 1945 1956)

In the late Middle Ages the general system of icon-

ography persisted but new subjects especially the

representations of the most human episodes and rela-

tionships in Christs life namely of His infancy and

His emotional connections (with the Virgin and Saint

John) as well as His Passion and the episodes of Our

Ladys life come to the fore Although symbolical and

didactic thinking maintained its importance the means

to communicate with the faithful changed most sub-

jects popular in the late Middle Ages appeal to the

beholders emotions rather than to his reason Scholars

have selected a group of so-called devotional pictures

as opposed to dogmatic and to historical repre-

sentations but the precise delimitation of such a group

is still a matter of discussion as is also the question

of how much this art was influenced by literature and

especially by pious poetry With the development of

the graphic arts new cheap pictures spread widely the

typological imagery systematized in the Biblia pau-

perum and in the Speculum humanae salvationis

Great collections of religious meditations compiled in

monasteries like Meditations on the Life of Christ by

Pseudo-Bonaventure (ed I Ragusa and R B Green

1961) spread widely a new emotional approach to

iconography Also the religious theater had some influ-

ence on the way stories in art were told

4 In the iconography of the Renaissance art ldquohis-

toryrdquo was shifted to the fore at the expense of symbol-

ism It does not mean that symbols ceased to exist

Pictorial allegory and symbolism played a very impor-

tant part in the conception of humanistic art But what

was placed in the center of the new art theory was

the concept of istoria The first and the most important

task of the work of art according to L B Alberti (De

pictura 1435 Della pittura 1436) is to present a story

This story had to be selected from authoritative literary

sources either sacred or profane it should represent

in a possibly convincing and expressive way an episode

from the Holy Scriptures from sacred or classical

history from mythology or legend This new concept

of istoria which was to dominate iconographic consid-

erations for more than three hundred years (the mean-

ing of the term istoria or storia changed of course in

that period) was one of the consequences of the Ren-

aissance idea of the priority of literature over the visual

arts There were several reasons for that priority one

being a complete lack of known classical theory of art

In its stead the theories of poetry and rhetoric were

adopted as guiding principles for the visual arts Hence

the dominating Horatian principle Ut pictura poesis

which subordinated the visual arts to the rules of liter-

ary theory This identification of literature and art

lasted until G E Lessing in 1766 revolted against it

in his Laokooumln (R W Lee 1940) In the humanistic

theory of visual arts the concept of istoria took the

central place Istoria had to be chosen for its moral

value (Alberti chose as his examples the subjects show-

ing stoic moral firmness as the ldquoDeath of Meleagerrdquo

the ldquoImmolation of Iphigeniardquo or the ldquoCalumnyrdquo of

Apelles) it had to be represented according to the

principle of decorum and costume ie with regard to

its dignity and most truthfully to the literary proto-

type Everything should be suitable in ldquosize function

kind color and other similar thingsrdquo Alberti stressed

the necessity of varied and convincing expressions of

emotions by suitable gestures

The dependence of post-medieval iconography on

literature increased with time and in the seventeenth

century the truthfulness of the pictorial formulation

of literary subjects became one of the most valued

qualities of a work of visual arts ldquoRead the story and

the picture at the same timerdquo Nicolas Poussin wrote

to M de Chantelou one of his customers In the French

Royal Academy of Painting and Sculpture lengthy

discussions were going on concerning the relation of

pictures to literary sources To be able to represent

well subjects taken from poetry the artist had to be

a doctus artifex well-informed in various fields G P

Bellori (1695) stressed however the fact that not

everything good in writing comes out well in painting

Therefore the painter to be able to transform the

story had to acquire ldquoan universal knowledge of things

and he should contemplate precisely nature and reali-

tiesrdquo Some freedom was given to the artist from the

beginning Alberti was far from limiting the painter

too much by this dependence on literature He stressed

the specific requirements of the visual arts as for ex-

ample the necessity to limit the number of represented

figures in order to keep a balance between ldquocopious-

nessrdquo and ldquosolitude in paintingrdquo This made it of

course necessary to reduce crowded scenes to an easily

graspable number of figures in order to avoid ldquodissolute

confusionrdquo (Spencer [1956] pp 23-28)

The interest of early Renaissance art theorists in

iconography was not great They concentrated their

attention chiefly on the discussion of the means needed

to achieve a convincing and beautiful representation

of the istoria and on the specific problems of repre-

sentationmdashcorrect (by adoption of the rules of per-

529

spective) and beautiful (by adoption of the rules of

proportion) Leonardo da Vinci does not show a spe-

cific interest in iconography but in some passages of

his incompleted Treatise on Painting he gives literary

programs of pictures remarkably however the pic-

tures are not of stories but of representations of pow-

erful natural or human happenings such as storms and

battles Here the naturalistic interests of the Renais-

sance come to the fore

An important achievement of the Renaissance partly

affecting iconography was the reunionmdashas noticed and

described by E Panofsky and F Saxl (1932) and Panof-

sky (1960)mdashof the literary and visual traditions of

classical antiquity during the fifteenth century During

the Middle Ages the literary tradition of classical sub-

ject matter was separated from the visual tradition of

classical artistic motifs so that there was no awareness

of their belonging together The classical subjects for

example those taken from Ovid used to be represented

in contemporary medieval stylistic forms classical

artistic motifs on the other hand for example the forms

of garment folds human types gestures compositional

patterns and so on were used to represent Christian

subject matter as in the western portals of the Reims

cathedral or in the pulpits of Nicola or Giovanni

Pisano It was only in the High Renaissance eg in

the works of Raphael Titian Michelangelo and Cor-

reggio that forms and iconography themes and motifs

became reintegrated In this way the classical vision

of classical subjects became sometimes so perfect that

some works created around 1500 could have been

taken for classical originals (for example Bacchus by

Michelangelo) The growing understanding of classical

ideas and forms led to another specific Renaissance

phenomenon called by Panofsky ldquopseudomorphosisrdquo

Certain Renaissance figures became invested with a mean-

ing which for all their classicizing appearance had not been

present in their classical prototypes though it had fre-

quently been foreshadowed in classical literature Owing

to its medieval antecedents Renaissance art was often able

to translate into images what classical art had deemed

inexpressible

(Panofsky [1939] pp 70f)

In the north of Italy beside the concept of istoria

poesia appears a fact which also points to a depend-

ence on poetry this was understood mainly as referring

to lyrical poetry and not to epic or heroic Mythologi-

cal pictures by Titian were described in such a way

(Keller [1969] pp 24f) The stress was on the poetical

mood more than on an important human action a

lyrical tonality was preferred to a heroic one The

archaeological interests then current in Padua and

Venice visible for instance in the works by Andrea

Mantegna were moderated by an elegiac poetic mood

in reconstructing the classical world Pictures by Gior-

gione who worked for exclusive circles of humanists

were so hermetic in meaning that several of them like

the Three Philosophers (Vienna) or the Storm (Venice)

are iconographic riddles up to our own day The same

is true of the enigmatic and poetic iconography of some

pictures by Titian (Sacred and Profane Love in the

Borghese Gallery in Rome) by Lorenzo Lotto or by

the Ferrarese Dosso Dossi

The most important document of this romantic ar-

chaeological vision which strongly influenced icono-

graphical invention in Italy and outside of Italy was

a fantastic romance Hypnerotomachia Poliphili attrib-

uted in the most plausible way to a Franciscan monk

Francesco Colonna and published with beautiful

woodcuts by Aldus Manutius in Venice in 1499 Poetic

visions of a dreamy classical landscape full of ruins

in which the lovers Poliphilo and Polia wander influ-

enced the imagination of artists not less than the excel-

lent woodcuts their impact can be found as far and

as late as in the gardens at Versailles The illustrations

to Hypnerotomachia also popularized hieroglyphic

signs which make their appearance in iconography as

a specific phenomenon of the Renaissance

5 Art conceived as a language may be addressed

to large or to small groups It depends on the scope

of communication It can be intended as a message

to a possibly large audience but it can also be limited

in its appeal to a small selected group of observers

In an extreme case the polarization could be that

between a didactic art appealing to everybody and an

elitarian cryptic message understandable only to the

initiated few Medieval art belonged by far to the first

category the art of the Renaissance to the second

Even in the monumental wall-paintings decorating the

most celebrated places of Christianity such as the

Sistine Chapel or the official rooms of the Popes like

the Stanza della Segnatura even in the sepulchral

chapels of the most important families like the Sassetti

and the Medici the iconographic programs and sym-

bolism are extremely complicated The meaning of the

decoration of the great Gallery of Franccedilois I at Fon-

tainebleau is so cryptic that it was hypothetically ex-

plained only recently by the best specialists in icon-

ography (D and E Panofsky 1958) Few works of

medieval art have provoked such a number of inter-

pretations as the well-known and at first glance seem-

ingly easy to understand pictures like Botticellis

mythologies (Birth of Venus Spring The Uffizi Flor-

ence) like Titians Sacred and Profane Love or like

sculptures such as Michelangelos Medici tombs The

same is true of works by Duumlrer Holbein and Bruegel

in the North A deep symbolism a complicated

iconographymdashespecially current in the circles influ-

530

enced by Neo-Platonismmdashbelonged to the perfection

of the work

This idea had a long life it recurs in 1604 in Carel

van Manders Book of the Painter as well as in Berninis

utterances on the beauty of the concept which adorns

the work The more refined the concept the more

difficult the symbolism the narrower the circle of those

who can really understand the work

Art was considered especially in the exclusive court

social groups or among the humanists as a secret

language accessible to the initiated The visual sign

was connected with words into a specific union of

literature and art which flourished at the time of the

Renaissance of mannerism and of the baroque in the

form of impresa of hieroglyph and of emblem The

roots of the impresamdashthe personal sign and mottomdashare

to be found in chivalrous devices and signs popular

in the late Middle Ages it was brought to Italy from

France and connected with Neo-Platonic speculation

(Klein 1957) Hieroglyphs became popular thanks to

the discovery in 1419 of the Hieroglyphica by Hora-

pollo Niliacus (of the second or fourth century AD)

published in 1505 The humanists believed that this

enigmatic image-script disguised a profound wisdom

of the Egyptians ldquothey supposed that the great minds

of Greece had been initiated into these Egyptian

mysteriesmdashwhich in their turn were of course one

more prefiguration of the teachings of Christrdquo (Seznec

[1953] p 100) Emblems originated from an erudite

intellectual play among the humanists aiming however

at a moral lesson and sometimes considered in a Neo-

Platonic way as symbols revealing to those who con-

template them a higher knowledge of divine mysteries

Emblem included a motto called lemma an image

and an epigram Only the whole of the emblem can

be understood each element of it giving only one part

of the meaning All those cryptic codes of expression

connecting words and images originated as secret and

elitarian The problem of the degree of obscurity was

one of the main points discussed by the theorists of

the emblematics (Clements [1964] pp 191-95) Eras-

mus of Rotterdam stressed that one of the virtues of

the impresa is that its meaning can be grasped only

with an intellectual effort Cesare Ripa (Iconologia

1593) demands that symbolic images be composed ldquoin

the form of enigmardquo Sambucus (1564) required ldquoob-

scuritasrdquo and ldquonovitasrdquo from the emblems Paolo

Giovio represented a reasonable middle ldquoThe device

should not be so obscure as to require the Sybil to

interpret it nor yet so obvious that any literal-minded

person can understand itrdquo Later however the crypto-

grams of hieroglyphics and emblem books began to

be popularized and explained Collections of emblems

became widely known New systematization of icon

ography now of a humanistic one was inaugurated

In 1556 Vincenzo Cartari published the first modern

handbook of mythological imagery le imagini colla

sposizione degli dei degli antichi (Venice 1556) In the

same year Pierio Valeriano produced a rich collection

of Hieroglyphica (Basel 1556) Earlier in 1531 Andrea

Alciati had compiled the first emblem book (Emblema-

tum liber Augsburg 1531) The influence of such

books which went through many translations and edi-

tions and which were imitated and continued all over

Europe grew at the close of the sixteenth and in the

seventeenth century In exclusive groups it happened

much earlier that hieroglyphic astrological and em-

blematic imagery influenced the iconography of im-

portant works of art as for example at the court of

Maximilian I (M Giehlow 1915) sometimes this con-

cerned works done by the most distinguished artists

like Duumlrers Melencolia I (Klibansky et al 1964)

Emblematic principle of composition uniting as it did

the image with the verbal formulations found great

popularity in northern Europe perhaps because the

importance of the word so prominent in Protestantism

was stressed (Luther required ldquofragments from the

Holy Writrdquo to be included in the Epitaph-pictures)

Epitaphs and other religious pictures of the Protestant

North connect words and images in the harmonious

indivisible whole (Białostocki 1968)

In the Netherlands emblems played an important

part in the development of realistic painting in the

seventeenth century since they furnished a rich reper-

tory of imagery charged with allegorical meaning (de

Jongh von Monroy) However the meaning of those

images obvious to the viewer who remembered the

original emblematic context eluded for a long time

later interpreters who were no longer conversant with

the emblems

After Cartari and his followers furnished artists and

patrons with images of classical gods there was a need

felt for another handbook which would enable the

artist to represent and the patron to understand the

abstract moral philosophical scientific and other

ideas symbolized Only then was art able to express

complex thoughts This task was fulfilled by Cesare

Ripa of Perugia who in 1593 published his Iconologia

a handbook explaining how to represent all the incor-

poreal concepts In 1603 Iconologia was republished

with illustrations and became one of the most popular

and influential art books With Ripa in hand art

historiansmdashinitially Eacutemile Macircle (1932)mdashwere able to

decipher hundreds of allegorical statements in paint

and stone guided by this alphabet of personifications

Ripas basic entity was a human figure female more

often than male whose costumes attributes gestures

and other particulars express specific qualities of the

531

idea represented With the publication of Ripas workmdash

translated soon into many languages and frequently

republished and revisedmdashthe humanistic system of

allegorical iconography was established classical gods

and personifications hieroglyphic signs and emblems

connecting words and images this was the material

used by the artists of mannerism and the baroque when

they did not choose to keep to the ldquohistoricalrdquo world

ie to borrow their subjects directly from literature

When they did so when they painted stories they used

to select them not only from Ovid and Vergil but also

from the more recent poems by Ariosto and Tasso and

also from the works of less known writers ancient and

modern Valerius Maximus furnished them with exam-

ples of virtuous behavior These historical examples

were in general either connected with allegorical gen-

eralizations (in the big decorations of the late baroque

the central fresco was often an allegory and the ac-

companying canvas-pictures presented historical ex-

amples of virtues Garas pp 280-83) or conceived in

an allegorical way Ovide moraliseacute was popular already

in the late Middle Ages Its influence persisted also

in the time of the baroque Myths and stories under-

went allegorical interpretations along the lines of that

moralizing commentary

What was considered necessary for an artist around

1600 can be seen from Carel van Manders Book of

the Painter (1604) It included a long theoretical poem

a history of classical and modern Italian and Nether-

landish artists a translation and a moral interpretation

of Ovids Metamorphoses and finally a description of

personifications There is no specific section on reli-

gious iconography since artists were well furnished

with books giving them rules in this respect

Against the humanistic conception of art the Council

of Trent proclaimed rules constituting a new system

of religious iconography which put an end to the live

tradition of medieval art These rules were published

officially by the Church and they have been com-

mented upon and elaborated in books by Joannes

Molanus (1570) Saint Carlo Borromeo (1577) Gabriele

Paleotti (1581) Federico Borromeo (1624) and several

others The rules of the Council governed the decora-

tion of churches and other sacred buildings and the

character of pictures representing sacred subjects A

break between the religious and the secular iconogra-

phy became obvious in theoretical literature although

there existed many emblem books of a very distinct

religious character (G de Montenay 1571 B Arias

Montanus 1571 H Hugo 1624) A new strictly for-

mulated system of religious iconography coexisted in

the seventeenth century with humanistic subject mat-

ter symbolism and allegory The classical nude intro-

duced by the Renaissance into art was strictly forbid

den now in religious art but found a free field of

development in secular mythological and allegorical

works Many artists exercised their imagination in both

fields in some specific fields such as sepulchral iconog-

raphy cooperation between religious and humanistic

symbolism was common In the work of P P Rubens

the various aspects of the new iconography found

perhaps their best expression In his art allegorical

concepts classical gods and heroes triumphs of mythi-

cal beings as well as of secular rulers accompany mar-

tyrdoms of Catholic saints and the triumphs of the

Eucharist What began to be separated in theory could

yet coexist in harmony in the work of a great artist

6 In northern European art (before Rubens) the

renewal of the arts during the Renaissance took the

form of the new study of nature and the elaboration

of the most convincing means of representing the ma-

terial world in an illusionistic way traditional medieval

symbolism was transformed in a specific way produc-

ing what E Panofsky called in 1953 ldquodisguised sym-

bolismrdquo The symbolic meaning connected with objects

and qualities persisted but a new mastery reproduced

these symbolical objects with such a degree of realism

that they did not differ any longer from other objects

not charged with any metaphorical meaning Some-

times the symbolical meaning of represented objects

results from the traditional iconography in an unmistak-

able way sometimes the meaning is hinted at by the

inscriptions placed in the picture or on its frame But

in many cases the modern viewer remains perplexed

without any sufficient clue to decide whether in the

picture he observes he has to do with the beginnings

of the representation of reality for its own sake or

whether the search for specific metaphorical meaning

is justified It is still always a matter of discussion to

decide at which moment the representation of some

objects or some scene in life without any symbolical

(or ldquohistoricalrdquo) implications became possible (Gilbert

1952) Observers of the eighteenth and nineteenth

centuries to whom the meaning of old symbols was

wholly forgotten took many images of the fifteenth and

sixteenth centuries for simple representations of life

Bruegel for example was considered as simply a

painter of joking or working peasants Recent studies

in iconography have shown that these pictures are

saturated with disguised meaning and that it is ex-

tremely rare before about 1550 to meet simple repre-

sentations of nature in painting In graphic arts the

direct depiction of life and landscape began earlier

as in the works of Lombard draughtsmen or in the

incredibly fresh convincing drawings and prints by the

Master of the Housebook There are also early excep-

tions in painting like Albrecht Altdorfers landscape

without any human figures But in general it was only

532

during the second half of the sixteenth century that

landscape genre and still-life painting began to ac-

quire equal rights with religious and humanistic history

and allegory predominantly in Venice and in Antwerp

Even then however the representations of people

working in fields (Jacopo or Francesco Bassano) fol-

lowed the old traditions of Calendar-pictures and in

the background of genre scenes as in Pieter Aertsens

pictures a biblical motif may be found which trans-

forms the whole composition into a storia however

unorthodox

With the development of realistic painting in the

seventeenth century there appeared specific iconogra-

phic problems New subjects slowly found convenient

form They entered the scene patterned after the ven-

erable stories of sacred or of profane iconography

H van de Waal described (1952) the process of the for-

mation of national historical iconography in Holland

Scenes depicting recent happenings from a long strug-

gle for national independence appeared first in forms

assimilated to well-known religious or mythical scenes

This was not only an expedient facilitating their com-

position for by this means the new subjects gained the

decorum inherent in the adopted patterns formed to

express traditional stories Similar procedures may be

seen in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries when

more and more sections of reality became interesting

enough to be represented in art

The transfer of decorum from the sacred or allegori-

cal figures to the humans represented is a means used

in what modern iconographers call ldquoallegorical por-

traiturerdquo Renaissance painters had represented real

people under mythological or even sacred disguise

they gave actual faces of living people to the figures

represented with all the attributes and characteristics

of their mythical sacred or even allegorical qualities

Later it was only the pattern which remained still in

the eighteenth century English portraitists patterned

the effigies of contemporary aristocrats after Michel-

angelos Sybils or after allegories like the Caritas

(Wind 1937) J B Oudry represented the Polish King

in exile Stanisław Leszczyński with all the attributes

of the allegory of exile taken from Ripa identifying

him in this way with personification of his most promi-

nent quality (Białostocki 1969)

Dutch realistic painting of the seventeenth century

is a document of an important iconographic conquest

Landscapes seascapes moonlit night scenes snapshots

of people skating in winter landscapes views of market

places church interiors backyards fishermen old

women preparing food fashionable dishes ready for

lunch merchants and artisans elegant gentlemen pay-

ing visits and folk-surgeons performing sensational

street-operations all this became subject matter for

representation and continued to be considered worthy

of depiction until the end of the nineteenth century

It was first considered as such in Holland only then

slowly everyday subject matter was recognized also by

art-theorists in other countries although it was re-

garded as much less dignified than religious mytholog-

ical or allegorical subjects Only in the nineteenth

century did the vogue of realistic representation of

everyday subjects become widespread In Dutch pic-

tures of the seventeenth century we are often con-

fronted with nothing else than representations of pic-

turesque reality Sometimes however these genre

pictures appear to be illustrations of proverbs expres-

sing moralistic folk-wisdom sometimes they recall

scenes from the popular threater of the rederijkers or

rhetoricians especially pictures by Jan Steen (Gud-

laugsson 1945) they contain allusions to emblems

Sometimes the elegant scenes from bourgeois life in-

clude quite indecent erotic allusions (de Jongh 1967

1969) The ambiguity of these pictures was certainly

a source of specific pleasure for those who knew the

key to their true meaning

7 In Catholic countries allegorical art sacred as

well as profane flourished The twofold character of

symbolic representations mentioned above persisted

in the seventeenth century Aristotelian rational sym-

bolism which used images as words was widespread

in the orthodox Catholic iconography of the Counter-

Reformation as well as in the humanistic visual lan-

guage codified by Ripa and others A mystical Neo-

Platonic symbolism transcending reason reappeared

too Its outspoken document is the treatise by Chris-

toforo Giarda Bibliothecae alexandrinae icones sym-

bolicae of 1626 (Gombrich 1948) For Giarda symbolic

images give the beholder a direct insight into the

mysteries of religion which are not accessible to rea-

son

Thanks to symbolic images the mind which is banished from

heaven into this dark cave of the body its actions held in

bondage by the senses can behold the beauty and form

of the Virtues and Sciences divorced from all matter and

yet adumbrated if not perfectly expressed in colours and

is thus roused to an even more fervent love and desire for

them Who then can sufficiently estimate the magni-

tude of the debt we owe to those who expressed the Arts

and Sciences themselves in images and so brought it about

that we could not only know them but look at them as

it were with our eyes that we can meet them and almost

converse with them

(Gombrich [1948] pp 188f)

Great allegorical compositions covering the ceilings of

baroque churches are often realizations of this princi-

ple For those however who conceived allegory as a

rational operation as a language used for didactic aims

the main problem remained the clarity of the allegori-

533

cal message The larger the audience to whom allegory

was addressed the simpler more obvious its symbolism

should have been The banality of allegorical language

provoked criticism in the eighteenth century Fran-

cesco Algarotti (1762) prefers without any doubt his-

torical representations to the ldquoempty allegories and

complicated mythological allusionsrdquo (Garas [1967] p

280) Especially criticized was the obscurity of these

allegories in which completely original unknown sym-

bols were used Roger de Piles praises his favorite

master Rubens who ldquointroduced only such allegories

elements of which were already known from ancient

artrdquo and opposes him to Charles Lebrun who ldquoinstead

of taking symbols from some known source as the

ancient fable and medals has invented almost all of

them and thus the pictures of this kind became riddles

which the beholder does not want to take the task to

solverdquo To keep the balance between platitudinous

redundancy and utter incomprehensibility was the

crucial problem of late baroque allegorism What is

interesting however is that the idea of the picture

as a riddle was not foreign to the seventeenth century

It appears in France as well as in Sweden where David

Kloumlcker Ehrenstrahl (1694) proposed that pictures

present riddles that could not be solved by everyone

In France however the ldquopainted enigmardquo fostered

by the Jesuits in their schools flourished especially well

in the seventeenth century (Montagu 1968) These

ldquopainted enigmasrdquo lent themselves to various inter-

pretations and gave interpreters an opportunity to

show their ingenuity These pictures and their inter-

pretations seem to prove that a considerable flexibility

of meaning was intended

We might rather accept that a work of art was regarded

in the seventeenth century as in a certain sense an open

symbol raw material like the myth or sacred story which

it illustrates on which the interpreter might exercise the

power of his ingenuity turning it into an allegory of Chris-

tian doctrine or a panegyric in honour of his patron

(Montagu [1968] p 334)

Such a situation probably existed only in some specific

circles It was a limiting case The other extreme was

to use in an uninteresting routine way Ripas symbolic

images or those of other popular symbolic handbooks

Such practice continued well into the eighteenth cen-

tury The general trend fed by ideas of the Enlighten-

ment was to make allegories more and more obvious

It is understandable that some theorists like the Count

de Caylus looked for new subject matter presenting

as he did Tableaux tireacutes de lIliade (1755) or that

J J Winckelmann tried to revive allegory and to give

it a new force It was however too late In the eight-

eenth century together with the whole system of

humanistic tradition the systems of iconography began

to disintegrate The great break in the tradition con-

cerned not only style but also iconography Emblem-

atic roots may be discovered in Goyas symbolism as

well as in the reasonable allegories of the Enlighten-

ment but generally speaking there was a search for

new not known or not used sourcesmdashas in William

Blakes biblical individualistic imagerymdashor the new

staging of the old ones as in Jacques Louis Davids

classical subjects

The art of romanticism was a definite break with

the past much more in the field of ideas and iconogra-

phy than in a stylistic respect where romanticists

retrospectively looked back either to medieval and

pre-Raphaelite or to baroque sources Symbols and

allegories yielded to an all-pervading mood and the

traditional repertory of religious allegorical mytho-

logical and historical iconography gave way to a new

iconography Although several encompassing images

of Christian and humanistic art survived they received

new content and essentially changed their character

New attitudes of the individual to the world of nature

and history to society and destiny to time and death

and new problems resulting from the striving after

freedom (which was a new perhaps most important

principle of human behavior in all fields of human

activity) found expression in new thematic fields and

in new particular themes such as ldquoStorm-tossed Boatrdquo

ldquoLonely Wanderer in the Mountainsrdquo ldquoA Death of the

Herordquo (Eitner 1955 Hofmann 1960 Białostocki

1966)

Romanticism has not formed and could not have

formed an iconographic system for since they strived

first of all for originality of individual conception the

romantics interpreted images in a subjective way as

expressions of mood Romanticism has on the other

hand introduced new heroes and martyrs into art

instead of religious ones the national social and artis-

tic ones It created a new image of history seen now

as a set of political and moral examplesmdashas in

baroquemdashbut often put together now according to a

very individualistic principle of choice A correlative

to pathetic and heroic romanticism was a bourgeois

and intimate romanticism its expression was for ex-

ample the new imagery of the open window which

shows to the viewer wide perspectives but shelters him

at the same time from the dangers of the unknown

(Eitner 1955)

When the world of ideas and images created at the

moment of the flowering of romanticism began to be

popularized for the use of the large bourgeois masses

the contentmdashideological and iconographicalmdashof ro-

manticism lost its original authenticity and left be-

hind not a new system of original images but a dispo-

534

sition to melodramatic experiences and an inflation of

a theatrical gesture (Hofmann 1960 Białostocki 1966)

The nineteenth century developed a realistic por-

traiture of man and nature and took over worn out

clicheacutes of the Renaissance and baroque allegories It

introduced new subject matter taken partly from tra-

dition partly from observation of reality tinted with

vague symbolism such as ldquoForgerdquo or the ldquoFuneral of

the Peasantrdquo but it did not create a new system of

iconography in spite of short-lived revivals of symbol-

istic attitudes in such movementsmdashincidentally not

limited to and not initiated in the visual artsmdashas

ldquosymbolismrdquo

New ephemeral artistic movements which consti-

tuted the history of European art in the last hundred

years show an interesting bracketing of style and icon-

ography in spite of a preponderant lack of iconogra-

phic interest Their representatives chose subjects suit-

able to specific artistic aims and means which they

developed and were interested in Impressionists

painted seaside scenes landscapes and genre pictures

showing the life of artistic and intellectual milieus

Cubists introduced a specific repertory of still-life

motifs symbols of the artists atelier and of the life

of the bohegraveme bottles musical instruments books

fruits flowers newspapers How much these motifs

were connected with specific cubist style appears when

one looks at works of artists foreign to the original

cubist group but imitating its style as for instance

several Czech artists like Emil Filla They adopted

cubist iconography together with cubist style Abstract

movements in general lacked iconography although

they were not foreign to symbolic tendencies espe-

cially in sculpture (Brancusi Moore) Only in the dec-

ades of 1950-70 can a revival of more articulated and

programmatic symbolism be observed One may sup-

pose that this revival is at least in part brought about

by the development of research in iconography and

symbolism which took place in the second and third

quarters of our century

II

1 The origins of ldquointerpretative iconographyrdquo may

be seen in the descriptions (ekphrasis) of works of art

known in classical literature But these descriptions

like those by Philostratus the Elder or Lucian are

limited simply to description and lack in general any

interpretation Moreover it is not certain whether they

are descriptions of actual or fictitious works of art at

least opinions in this respect vary Brief medieval tituli

which formulated in words the content of religious

images were to be sure interpretative sometimes but

they were short and cannot be connected with the

tradition of artistic erudition We have to look to

modern times to indicate the beginnings of iconogra-

phic interpretation and research From Vasaris Rag-

ionamenti in which interpretations of the paintings

decorating the Palazzo Vecchio in Florence are given

we learn how complicated and how undecipherable

iconographic concepts might have been even to peo-

ple living in buildings decorated by paintings expres-

sing these concepts But perhaps the first really to be

considered as interested in iconographic research was

the seventeenth-century archaeologist and art theorist

Giovanni Pietro Bellori In the introduction to his Lives

of Artists (1672) Bellori stressed that he paid special

attention to the content of the works of art he was

talking about and he even credited the painter Nicolas

Poussin with having directed his attention to iconogra-

phy In his Lives Bellori presented short interpretative

descriptions of pictures and he sometimes developed

these interpretations further in small iconographic

essays the influence of classical ekphrasis on him is

a possibility Sometimes his errors took deep roots in

the subsequent history of art as when he explained

Poussins Triumph of Flora (Dresden) by designating

Ovids Metamorphoses as its source The true source

Marinos Adona was finally found by R E Spear in

1965

What is interesting in Belloris procedure is that he

first identifies the motifs tries to connect them with

classical or modern literary sources and then proceeds

to find out the deep meaning the general symbolic

idea of the work Therefore he may be considered as

one of the pioneers not only of iconography as a disci-

pline of research but also of iconology as formulated

by its recent partisans That even in the second half

of the sixteenth century some observers were inclined

to look for hidden meaning in each element of the work

of art we learn from Joannes Molanus (1570) who in

De picturis et imaginibus sacris states reasonably that

ldquoit is not necessary to ask for meaning of everything

that can be observed in a picture in such cases a lot

of absurd things may resultrdquo But the consciousness of

the importance of iconography increased and at the

end of the seventeenth century Andreacute Feacutelibien stressed

that in order to attribute a picture to a painter it is

not enough to know the way he uses his brush one

needs also to know his esprit to learn his geacutenie and

to be able to foresee in which way he is able to form

his conceptions Thus iconographic analysis was con-

sidered necessary even for the purpose of attribution

Descriptive interpretations of the works of ancient

art appeared in the big archaeological publications of

the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries such as

Jacques Spons Miscellanea eruditae antiquitatis (1679)

G P Belloris Admiranda romanarum antiquitatum ac

veteris sculpturae vestigia (1693) P de Caylus Recueil

535

dantiquiteacutes eacutegyptiennes eacutetrusques grecques et

romaines (1752-67) and in an interesting endeavor

(although very much criticized by Lessing) of Joseph

Spence to explain classical poets through works of art

and vice versa (Polymetis 1747) Classical archaeology

however has not been especially interested in iconog-

raphy and the use of the term itself by archaeolo-

gists was limited to portraiture The first great devel-

opment of iconographic studies was connected with

the romantic movement although an important pre-

lude for it was hagiographical collections of sources

such as Acta sanctorum published by the Bollandists

(1643-1794 resumed later) Among the pre-romantic

scholars in iconography the eminent German poet

G E Lessing is to be noted His study of the repre-

sentation of death in classical times can be considered

as one of the first essays in interpretative iconography

which is now called iconology In Wie die Alten den

Tod gebildet (1769) Lessing tries to interpret the classi-

cal iconographic type of Amor with the inverted torch

and to find its ldquointrinsic meaningrdquo by taking into ac-

count the religion customs and philosophy of the

classical world The work of art is interpreted by Less-

ing as ldquoa symptom of something elserdquo While Lessings

predecessors (like B de Montfaucon) ldquoexplained the

classical past by monumentsrdquo he for the first time did

the opposite ldquohe explained the monuments by Antiq-

uityrdquo (Maurin Białostocka [1969] pp 92-100)

Pre-romantic and romantic interests in myth and

symbol found their expression in publications and dis-

cussions by German philosophers and scholars like F

Schlegel J Herder J J von Goumlrres and F Creuzer

Creuzers work Symbolik und Mythologie der alten

Voumllker (1810) which shows the influence of mystical

Neo-Platonic ideas on symbols (Gombrich 1965) was

the most influential in the romantic period in Ger-

many Under the impact of Chateaubriands le Geacutenie

du christianisme (1802) research in medieval iconog-

raphy developed mainly in France Works by French

scholars mostly clergymen which were indeed con-

cerned with Christian medieval art dominated icon-

ographical study in the nineteenth century Since most

of these writers were not professional scholars their

work was often amateurish in character but it is unde-

niable that books by A N Didron Histoire de Dieu

(Paris 1843) the first part of a comprehensive pro-

jected but not completed iconography of Christian art

A Crosnier Iconographie chreacutetienne (Caen 1848) C

Cahier Caracteacuteristiques des saints (Paris 1867) C

Rohault de Fleury Archeacuteologie chreacutetienne les saints

de la messe et leurs monuments 12 vols (Paris

1893-1900) L Breacutehier Lart chreacutetien son deacuteveloppe-

ment iconographique des origines agrave nos jours (Paris

1918) P Perdrizet V Leroquais and G de Jerphanion

have built up a solid body of iconographical knowl-

edge on which scholars of the twentieth century were

able to erect a modern comprehensive structure In

the field of Byzantine iconography it was Gabriel

Millets Recherches sur liconographie de leacutevangile aux

XIVe XVe et XVIe siegravecles (Paris 1916 reprint

1960) that was basic for any further study For Western

chiefly French art a well-written and learned work

appealing to the general reader as well as to the

scholar was produced by Eacutemile Macircle who in his four

volumes of the history of religious art (1898-1932) has

presented a well-composed synthetic image of icono-

graphical development A lexicographic summary of

these studies of generations of French scholars is pre-

sented in the Dictionnaire darcheacuteologie chreacutetienne et

de liturgie published from 1907 to 1953 and edited

by F Cabrol and H Leclerq A recent reference work

is that by L Reacuteau Iconographie de lart chreacutetien (Paris

1955-59) Russian scholars have done important work

in the field of Byzantine and Orthodox iconography

of religious art The most prominent are N P Kon-

dakov Ikonografia Bogomatieri (St Petersburg 1911

2nd ed 1914-15) D V Ainalov Mosaiki IV i V vekov

(St Petersburg 1895) and N Pokrovski Otcherki

pamyatnikov christianskogo isskusstva i ikonografii (St

Petersburg 1894 3rd ed 1910) V Lasarev and M

Alpatov belonging to the mid-twentieth-century gen-

eration of Russian scholars discuss iconography in

several works on religious art German scholarship

produced in the nineteenth century works by F Piper

A Springer and H Detzel Useful compendia were

produced in the early twentieth century by J Sauer

W Molsdorf K Kuumlnstle and J Braun Dutch scholars

C Smits J B Knipping and J J M Timmers contrib-

uted to iconographic studies in recent times Knip-

pings book (1939-40) being the most important work

on the iconography of the Counter-Reformation and

supplementing Macircles volume of 1932 In the twentieth

century on C R Moreys initiative iconographic

studies were inaugurated in North America Focused

on earlier medieval art these studies developed at

Princeton University

A new direction characteristic of iconographic

studies in the twentieth century has been given to

them by the international school of art historical re-

search inaugurated by the Hamburg scholar Aby

Warburg At the International Congress for the History

of Art at Rome in 1912 he presented a sensational

astrological interpretation of the frescoes painted by

Francesco Cossa and his collaborators in Palazzo

Schifanoja at Ferrara Warburg solved the secret of

those representations which had puzzled the ingenuity

of several former students interpreting them as images

of zodiacal signs and their decans But he did not limit

536

his contribution to the presentation of his results He

wanted to stress the importance of his approach and

of the method of study which later became connected

with his name He said

I hope that through the method used by me for explication

of the frescoes at the Palazzo Schifanoja of Ferrara I have

proved that an iconological analysis which does not allow

itself to be diverted by the rules of frontier police from

considering antiquity Middle Ages and modern times as

interconnected periods nor from analyzing the most liberal

and the most applied works of art as equally important

documents of expression that this method endeavoring as

it does to throw light upon one dark spot clears up at

the same time great interconnected developments

(Warburg 1912 Heckscher 1967)

Warburgs influence on the history of art was very

great although he himself did not write much It was

mainly the posthumous impact of his ideas promul-

gated as they were by Fritz Saxl which contributed

to the specific direction of studies concentrated in the

library Warburg founded in Hamburg and which Saxl

succeeded in transplanting during the Nazi era to

London where it became the Warburg Institute of the

University of London While the object of study of the

nineteenth-century iconographers was mainly religious

art in its relation to religious literary sources and lit-

urgy for Warburg the study of images was a study

of their relations to religion to poetry to myth to

science and to social and political life Art was for

him closely connected with the polyphonic structure

of historical life

Warburgs ideas had a great importance for the most

influential theory of iconographic interpretation in our

century that elaborated by Erwin Panofsky In Ham-

burg where Warburg Saxl and Panofsky were active

in the twenties Ernst Cassirer built up his philosophy

of symbolic forms which constituted an additional

background for Panofskys system being derived as

his own methodology was from the traditions of

Kantian philosophy Around 1930 Panofskys ideas

ripened into a system which found formulation in his

book herkules am Scheidewege (1930) and later in a

theoretical article of 1932 G J Hoogewerff was how-

ever the first to propose the word ldquoiconologyrdquo as a

name for the method of an analysis of content in a

work of art (Warburg spoke of iconological analysis)

In 1931 he proposed distinguishing between iconogra-

phy as a descriptive science aiming at the identifica-

tion of themes and ldquoiconologyrdquo aiming at the under-

standing ldquoof symbolic dogmatic or mystical meaning

which is expressed (or hidden) in figurative formsrdquo He

stressed that ldquoiconologyrdquo deals with works of art with-

out classifying them according to the technique used

or to the achieved perfection taking into account only

their meaning Hoogewerff saw the last aim of iconol-

ogy in finding out the cultural and ideological back-

ground expressed by works of art and the cultural and

social significance which can be attributed to certain

forms and to means of expression in the same time

Hoogewerffs part in the expansion of iconology was

limited because he did not endorse his methodical

proposals with examples of historical interpretations

Erwin Panofsky with whose name iconology has

been connected ever since not only developed its

theoretical foundations but contributed by his practi-

cal work in art history to the main triumph of iconol-

ogy after the Second World War The most influential

book by Panofsky has been Studies in Iconology (1939)

in which his masterly presentation of the method was

connected with its equally excellent exemplification

2 Panofsky considers the interpretation of a work

of art as falling on three levels On the first level the

object of interpretation is the primary or natural sub-

ject matter The function of interpretation is called

ldquopre-iconographical descriptionrdquo In order to be able

to arrive at a correct interpretation on that level the

interpreter must have a practical experience (ldquofamili-

arity with objects and eventsrdquo) common to everybody

at least in one cultural sphere However he has to

control his observations by a ldquocorrective knowledge

of the history of stylerdquo (ldquoinsight into the manner in

which under varying historical conditions objects and

events were expressed by formsrdquo) On the second level

the function of interpretation is called ldquoiconographical

analysisrdquo its object is the ldquosecondary or conventional

subject matterrdquo constituting the world of images his-

tories and allegories The interpreters equipment in

this case is obviously the knowledge of literary sources

giving him a ldquofamiliarity with specific themes and

conceptsrdquo The interpreter has to control his observa-

tions by ldquothe insight into the manner in which under

varying historical conditions specific themes or con-

cepts were expressed by objects and eventsrdquo On the

third level the function of interpreting is called ldquoicon-

ographical analysis in a deeper senserdquo (1939) or ldquoicon-

ological analysisrdquo (1955) Its object is the ldquointrinsic

meaning or contentrdquo of a work of art The interpreters

equipment on that level should be a ldquofamiliarity with

the essential tendencies of the human mindrdquo and he

has to control his interpretation by the ldquoinsight into

the manner in which under varying historical condi-

tions essential tendencies of the human mind were

expressed by specific themes and conceptsrdquo Thus

taking all the time into account what Panofsky calls

the history of tradition the interpreter has to aim at

understanding the work of art its ldquoprimaryrdquo as well

as ldquosecondary subject matterrdquo as symptoms of some

fundamental tendency of the human mind typical of

537

a place a time a civilization and of an individual

responsible for the creation of the work ldquoIconologyrdquomdash

for Panofskymdashldquois a method of interpretation which

arises from synthesis rather than analysisrdquo Trying to

find the intrinsic meaning of a work of art

The art historian will have to check what he thinks is the

intrinsic meaning of the work or group of works against

what he thinks is the intrinsic meaning of as many other

documents of civilization historically related to that work

or group of works as he can master It is in the search

for intrinsic meaning or content that the various humanistic

disciplines meet on a common plane instead of serving as

handmaidens to each other

(Panofsky [1955] p 39)

The concept of intrinsic meaning of a work of art

was elaborated by Panofsky much earlier (1925) when

he interpreted in his own way the concept of Kunst-

wollen introduced by A Riegl to research in art

Panofsky understood this ldquoartistic volitionrdquo as an im-

manent ultimate meaning of a work of art which is

manifested in the way basic artistic problems are solved

in that work He used the same concept further to bring

art closer to the other fields of human activity Since

the ldquoimmanent ultimate senserdquo of the work of art is

nothing else than uniformity in the way of solving basic

artistic problems it is possible to compare that imma-

nent sense with immanent senses of the other human

works in various fields Panofsky did it for instance

when in one of his later works he compared the struc-

tural principles of Gothic architecture with those of

scholastic thinking (1951)

The system elaborated by Panofsky and exemplified

by his own work in art history was the first consistent

system of an integral interpretation of a work of visual

arts based on the analysis of content In principle

Panofskys system takes into account all the elements

of the work of art since it takes as the point of depar-

ture the sensual exterior shape of the work It is

however clear that its main scope is not the inter-

pretation of form as a bearer of meaning but the

understanding and interpretation of conventional alle-

gories literary themes and symbols as symptoms of

the history of the human mind It was that method

in the history of art which programmatically fostered

a collaboration with all the other disciplines of histori-

cal studies It was therefore one of the most influential

methods not only among art historians but also among

representatives of the other branches of humanistic

studies Although there were art historians who ex-

pressed a critical attitude toward ldquoiconologyrdquo as the

new method was soon baptized its influence was over-

whelming

3 It is not only but mainly due to Panofsky that

one can venture to call ldquoiconographicalrdquo that period

of art history as a historical discipline which followed

the Second World War and to oppose it to the ldquostylis-

ticrdquo one which preceded it It does not mean of course

that no iconographic research took place in the

twenties or thirties the works of Macircle Knipping van

Marle Wilpert Saxl and of Panofsky himself would

contradict such a statement Neither is it true that

purely formal research aiming at stylistic classification

and analysis discontinued after World War II It is

evident that in the last decades (from 1940 on) icono-

graphic interests came to the fore and became domi-

nant in many countries Iconographical studies grew

so much in number and importance that they made

it possible to undertake and to publish new reference

works of iconographic character like dictionaries

written by one scholar (Guy de Tervarent Aurenham-

mer) as well as larger works based on a collaboration

of several scholars (Encyclopedias of German art of

Antiquity and Christian civilization of Byzantine art)

Interest in meaning and iconography has appeared

also among historians of political social and religious

institutions The symbolism of signs ceremonies cos-

tumes and arms was studied by such scholars as A

Alfoumlldi ldquoInsignien und Tracht der roumlmischen Kaiserrdquo

Mitteilungen des deutschen Archaumlologischen Instituts

Roumlmische Abteilung (1935) 1ff ldquoDie Geburt der

kaiserlichen Bildsymbolikrdquo museum Helveticum 9

(1952) 204ff also by A Grabar Martyrium (Paris

1943-46) by E H Kantorowicz laudes Regiae

(Berkeley and Los Angeles 1946) The Kings Two

Bodies (Princeton 1957) by H P L Orange Studies

in the Iconography of Cosmic Kingship in the Ancient

World (Oslo 1953) Art Forms and Civic Life in the

Late Roman Empire (Princeton 1965) and by P E

Schramm herrschaftszeichen und Staatssymbolik

(Stuttgart 1954-56) In their studies iconography far

transcends the borders of art and it helps to build up

a history of ideas by following their various visual

expressions

Pioneering studies by K Giehlow F Saxl and E

Panofsky enlarged iconographical interests above all

to encompass the large field of secular art whereas

they had been mainly limited to religious iconography

in the work of preceding generations of scholars The

whole complicated and hardly known large body of

meanings disguised by the cryptic language of hiero-

glyphs emblems and iconologies became one of the

main topics of study

This established a collaboration between historians

of art and literature Mario Prazs admirable study of

emblems and his bibliography of emblem books

(1939-47) belongs now to the foundations of studies

in that field Publications by W S Heckscher and

A K Wirth by R S Clements E F von Monroy and

538

H M von Erffa E de Jongh and H Miedema and

several other scholars have elucidated the structure

and meaning of emblems and have shown their tre-

mendous influence on art even in its most monumental

and dignified forms An uninterrupted flow of reprints

of emblem books which brought within the reach of

modern students inaccessible volumes of sixteenth- and

seventeenth-century emblem writers were crowned by

the monumental undertaking of Arthur Henkel and

Albrecht Schoumlne who compiled an excellent volume

including almost all the texts and images needed for

the study of emblemsmdashEmblemata Handbuch zur

Sinnbildkunst des XVI und XVII Jahrhunderts

(Stuttgart 1967) Research was under way on hiero-

glyphs (Erik Iversen) and on the imprese (the late

Robert Klein) as well as on iconologies and allegories

These studies have disclosed meanings of the art of

the Renaissance of mannerism and of the baroque not

understood by nineteenth-century scholars

E Panofsky deciphered extremely farfetched and

individualistic programs of decoration of such famous

ensembles as the Camera di San Paolo by Correggio

in Parma the Gallery of Franccedilois I at Fontainebleau

Edgar Wind Andreacute Chastel and other scholars inter-

preted Raphaels decorations in the Popes apartments

Michelangelos art furnished material to detailed com-

prehensive studies by Panofsky Ch de Tolnay H von

Einem and Pope-Hennessy in which the share of

Neo-Platonic thinking in the ideological background

of the celebrated works of Michelangelo was discussed

Innumerable studies have been devoted to Titians

mythological paintings J R Martin presented expla-

nations of the Carracci frescoes in the Camerino Far-

nese and in the great gallery of the Palazzo Farnese

Bruegel considered in the nineteenth century as a drocircle

painter of peasant life has been shown by de Tolnay

Stridbeck and others to be an allegorist expressing a

skeptical humanistic outlook J S Held and W

Stechow contributed several articles to the under-

standing of mythological and allegorical contents in

Flemish and Dutch art of the sixteenth and seventeenth

centuries Rembrandts iconography was put into new

light by the two above-mentioned scholars as well as

by H M Rotermund H van de Waal J G van Gelder

H von Einem and Ch Tuumlmpel The intricate symbol-

ism and subject matter of historical and mythological

pictures by Nicolas Poussin were elucidated by such

masters of iconographic research as E H Gombrich

W Friedlaumlnder E Panofsky and above all by A Blunt

who in his monograph on Poussin presented a new

deep synthetic view of the ideas expressed by that

artists works Goyas individualistic secret symbolism

was also studied with the help of emblems and the

allegorical tradition Berninis works received iconolo

gical treatment by R Wittkower and H Kauffmann

All of this research does not mean that there was a

lack of interest in religious iconography M Schapiro

A Katzenellenbogen H Bober F Wormald and V

Elbern among others have contributed considerably

to deepen our understanding of the not completely

explained motifs and prominent works of medieval art

Panofsky has also shed a new light on several problems

of sepulchral iconography studies by such scholars as

R Berliner G von der Osten L Kalinowski S

Ringbom and T Dobrzeniecki contributed to late

medieval iconography in a new way Berliner stressed

the autonomous invention of visual artists or their

patrons while according to the traditional view popu-

larized by Macircle late medieval art should have followed

strictly literary sources

The religious content of modern art especially its

allegorical form in the late baroque period has been

examined and thanks to studies by such scholars as

W Mrazek and H Bauer has become better known

and understandable A great change was introduced

by ldquoiconologyrdquo into architectural history Buildings

which were formerly interpreted from aesthetic and

functional points of view only have been shown to

present allegorical symbolical or even emblematic

ideas Publications by leading art historians (R Witt-

kower B Smith G Bandmann O von Simson and

G C Argan) have presented medieval and modern

architecture as a bearer of meaning and have essen-

tially changed the character of architectural history

The iconography of classicism and romanticism

received a thorough treatment in books by W Hof-

mann and R Rosenblum as well as in several studies

devoted to individual themes and pictures G Hersey

has for example shown how much Delacroixs decora-

tion of the library in the Palais Bourbon owed to

Giambattista Vicos ideas about history More recently

studies on ldquoSymbolismrdquo have been undertaken Vincent

van Goghs symbolic language and iconography were

the object of studies by J Seznec C Nordenfalk and

other scholars On Ceacutezannes iconography interesting

remarks have been published by M Schapiro

Along with the development of iconographic studies

the establishment of centers of documentation has

advanced The ldquoFrenchrdquo stage in the development of

iconography has not left any marked trace in this

respect It was in America thanks to C R Morey that

the famous Index of Christian Art at the Department

of Art and Archaeology of Princeton University was

founded at first limited to the early Middle Ages then

enlarged so as to include art up to the end of the

medieval period Copies of the Princeton Index are

to be found also at the Istituto Pontificio dArcheolo-

gia in Rome and in the Dumbarton Oaks Library and

539

Collection in Washington DC But that Index ends

ldquowhere art beginsrdquomdashas Panofsky used to say jokingly

The need for systematic iconographic files for modern

art was strongly felt In 1956 A Pigler published a

very useful book Barockthemen in which he listed

thousands of works of art of the baroque period ac-

cording to their subjects It was however far from

being a systematic work The first essay in establishing

a systematic iconographic index for art of any time

was done by The Netherlands Institute for Art History

at the Hague then directed by H Gerson which took

the initiative around 1950 of publishing a postcard-size

photographic index of its rich collection of photographs

of Netherlandish art ordered according to an icono-

graphic principle Once such an idea was formulated

the need for a comprehensive consistent and clear

iconographic classification was urgent H van de Waal

of Leiden University devised such a system of classifi-

cation based on decimal divisions consistent and easy

to read He based his system on experiences of ethnol-

ogy and on such elaborated systems of classification

as that devised by Stith Thompson in his Motif-Index

of Folk Literature Vols I-VI (Bloomington Ind

1932-36 rev ed 1955-58) Van de Waal has elabor-

ated a system in which the first five main sections

classify five fundamental groups of portrayable things

namely (1) The Supernatural (2) Nature (3) Man (4)

Society (5) Abstracts The last four classify specific

subjects such as (6) History (7) The Bible (8) Myths

Legends and Tales (with the exception of classical

antiquity) (9) Myths and Legends of Classical Antiq-

uity Van de Waal combines the classification in the

first and in the second group in order to classify general

as well as specific subjects Christ in his system is

described with the sign ldquo11 Drdquo (ldquo1rdquo standing for Su-

pernatural ldquo11rdquo for Christianity ldquoDrdquo for Christ) the

adult Christ = 11 D 3 since ldquoshepherdrdquo on the other

hand bears the signature 47 I 221 the adult Christ

as a shepherd can be described in this system by the

following formula 11 D 3 = 47 I 221 Van de Waal

has also provided means to describe more complex

images which he expresses by adding elements between

brackets The Annunciation with God the Father and

a winged Angel is expressed by the following formula

73 A 5 (+1 +41) ldquo1rdquo standing for God the Father

and ldquo41rdquo for a winged Angel (van de Waal 1952) This

system elaborated for many years by its inventor and

prepared for publication in many volumes has proved

most useful in the practical arrangement of the Icono-

graphical Index of the Netherlandish Art and as the

only one until now in existence it became used more

and more in spite of some ambiguities and difficulties

As an endeavor to classify ldquoall portrayablerdquo things

persons events and ideas and to create a consistent

method to describe every possible image van de Waals

system may be considered as one of the important

achievements of the ldquoiconographical stagerdquo in the

development of art history Iconographic files exist of

course in many institutions as for example in the Ikon-

ologisch Instituut of Utrecht University one of the

main centers of study in emblematics and of course

in the most venerable institution of iconographic re-

search the Warburg Institute of the London University

and in other places

4 What was the result of this ldquoiconographicrdquo turn

in the development of the history of art One thing

is certain that this discipline by necessity has come

closer to other humanistic disciplines Since the

ldquointrinsicrdquo meaningmdashin Panofskys terminologymdashof a

work of art cannot be described in terms used by the

history of art but only in terms borrowed from the

history of philosophy of religion of social structures

of science and so on the ldquoiconological methodrdquo took

for granted and provoked such a collaboration Art

history was perhaps the first or one of the first to show

new interest in investigation of meaning It was fol-

lowed by similar developments in ethnology and in

linguistics

We have mentioned above a parallel development

in Byzantine and classical studies Panofskys influence

has been considerable in the other fields of humanistic

research Since ldquoiconologyrdquo aimed at discovering ideas

expressed by a work of art it awoke in art historians

an interest in the history of ideas This general shift

of emphasis and of the direction of studies from mainly

formal ones to studies aiming at ideas underlying art

was perhaps responsible among others for the fact that

several contributions to the Journal of the History of

Ideas have been written by historians of art

It is not difficult to see that such a development

should have provoked criticism on the side of those

who care about the purity and autonomy of methods

Iconology was criticized as far as its internal coherence

and also as far as its claim to be the integral method

of the study of art are concerned (Białostocki 1962)

Studies by R Klein E Forssman G Previtali G

Kubler B Teyssegravedre C Ginzburg and G Hermeren

expressed critical opinions in one or the other respect

Iconology linked art with the rest of history but it

disrupted the links between the work of art and other

things (Kubler 1962) Concentrating on meaning

iconology neglected art as form as individual expres-

sion Iconology implied a rational relationship between

intellectual content and artistic form On the one hand

one spoke of ldquoiconological diminutionsrdquo (Kubler

1962)mdashlimitations of research to meaning only But

on the other hand the overstatements of iconology

were criticized its representatives sometimes seemed

540

to assume everything symbolized something And some

iconologists seemed to consider important in art not

that which makes art a different field of human activity

but that which connects art with other fieldsmdashwith

the history of ideas

There were of course critics who had the opposite

opinion Since the end of the eighteenth century a

direct experience of art was more and more valued

and its symbolical function considered as a burden

J G von Herder said ein Kunstwerk ist der Kunst

wegen da aber bei einem Symbole ist die Kunst

dienend (ldquoA work of art is there because of art but

with a symbol art is a servicerdquo) Similar opinions were

expressed by nineteenth-century art writers and in this

century they have been voiced by Benedetto Croce and

by other Italian opponents of contenutismo by which

they meant interest in content For such critics to put

stress on iconography was to miss the essential in art

and to focus attention on a subordinate function of art

Also among scholars who considered the function

of representation and of communication as a legitimate

and important function of art criticism was expressed

not against the principle of an iconographical or icon-

ological investigation but against overstatements in

their application The introduction of the idea of ldquodis-

guised symbolismrdquo has created a danger of course of

opening the way to fanciful interpretations The alle-

gorical and symbolical function of mythological imag-

ery in classical art is also difficult to interpret precisely

Since no literary sources give a key to an interpretation

of the iconography of the sarcophagi very divergent

theories have been expressed concerning their meaning

Some archaeologists like F Cumont (1942) believe

that mythological and allegorical imagery (Anadyo-

mene Sea-Thiasos Personifications of the Seasons) is

to be read symbolically The Sea-Thiasos for instance

is to be interpreted as a symbol of the journey of the

souls of the deceased to the islands of the blessed

Others like A D Nock (1946) do not find enough

evidence to accept other than a decorative function

in such imagery

The intrusion of some representatives of psychology

eg C G Jung into iconographic studies giving them

an unhistorical turn in their search for ldquoarchetypal

imagesrdquo has complicated the situation although art

historians in general understandably have not accepted

that kind of approach to symbolism (Frankfort 1958

Gombrich 1965)

The fact that iconographic interpretations sometimes

lack satisfactory proofs does not detract from the im-

portance of such investigations so long as they are

conducted according to the requirements of historical

methods and take into account the corrective princi-

ples established by Panofsky A correct acquaintance

with the way of thinking of the artist the patron or the

viewer based on a satisfactory knowledge of documen-

tary visual and literary sources an awareness of the

choice situations produced by historical developments

may enable art historians to discover the secondary

meaning of a work of art as well as its intrinsic mean-

ing It is of course possible that the art historian will

meet some works for which it will not be possible to re-

construct in a satisfactory way the world of ideas that

would account for the meaning of those works In such

cases a reliable interpretation is simply not possible

R Berliner (1945 1966) criticized the widespread

opinion according to which content of the works of

visual arts in the Middle Ages had to be checked

against the literary sources considered as the only

medium in which ideological innovations were per-

mitted Berliner pleaded for assuming a considerable

ldquofreedomrdquo in the medieval artist and he considered

iconographic innovation possible even when no writ-

ten evidence could be found Meyer Schapiro (1947)

presented proofs that sometimes purely aesthetic rea-

sons decided the character of the work of art even as

early as the Romanesque period

We can only touch on some specific discussions going

on in the field of iconographic research But iconogra-

phic research is far from being a closed system and

the relative share of iconographic and stylistic criticism

in the work of art historians is always a matter of

discussion It is certain that the ldquoiconographicrdquo period

in the study of art has enlarged in a considerable way

the understanding of the art of the past and that it

has connected art history in a way unknown before

with the other historical disciplines and above all others

with the history of ideas

BIBLIOGRAPHY

L B Alberti On Painting ed J Spencer (New Haven

1956 revised ed 1966) E Auerbach ldquoFigurardquo (1944) trans

and published in Scenes From the Drama of European Liter-

ature (New York 1959) pp 11-76 K Bauch ldquoImagordquo

(1960) Studien zur Kunstgeschichte (Berlin 1967) pp 1-20

G P Bellori Descrizione delle imagini dipinte da Raffaello

(Rome 1695 ed used is 1751) R Berliner ldquoThe Free-

dom of Medieval Artrdquo Gazette des Beaux-Arts 628 (1945)

263-88 idem ldquoBemerkungen zu einigen Darstellungen des

Erloumlsers als Schmerzensmannrdquo Das Muumlnster 9 (1956)

97-117x J Białostocki ldquoIconografia e Iconologiardquo Enciclo-

pedia Universale dellArte (1962) Vol VII cols 163-75

trans as Encyclopedia of World Art (1966) Vol VII cols

769-85 lists almost all important older contributions to this

field idem ldquoRomantische Ikonographierdquo Stil und Ikonog-

raphie (Dresden 1966) pp 156-81 idem ldquoKompozycja

emblematyczna epitafioacutew ślaskich XVI wiekurdquo (ldquoEmblem-

atic Composition of Silesian Epitaphs of the Sixteenth Cen-

turyrdquo) Ze studioacutew nad Sztuka XVI wieku na Řlasku

(Wrocław 1968) pp 77-93 idem ldquoEsilio Privatordquo Bulletin

du Museacutee National de Varsovie 10 (1969) 95-101 J

541

Chydenius The Theory of Medieval Symbolism (Helsingfors

1960) Series of the Societas Scientiarum Fennica Com-

mentationes Humanarum Litterarum 27 2 R J Clements

Picta Poesis (Rome 1960) F Creuzer Symbolik und

Mythologie der Alten Voumllker (Leipzig and Darmstadt 1810

revised ed 1819) F Cumont Recherches sur le symbolisme

funeacuteraire des Romains (Paris 1942) L Eitner ldquoThe Open

Window and the Storm-Tossed Boatrdquo Art Bulletin 37

(1955) 281-90 H Frankfort ldquoThe Archetype in Analytical

Psychology and the History of Religionrdquo Journal of the

Warburg and Courtauld Institutes 21 (1958) 166-78

K Garas ldquoAllegorie und Geschichte in der Venezianischen

Malerei des 18 Jahrhundertsrdquo in proceedings of the XXI

International Congress of the History of Art Bonn Stil und

Uumlberlieferung in der Kunst des Abendlandes (Berlin 1967)

3 280-83 K Giehlow ldquoDie Hieroglyphenkunde des

Humanismus in der Allegorie der Renaissancerdquo Jahrbuch

der Kunsthistorischen Sammlungen des Allerhochsten

Kaiserhauses 32 (1915) 1-232 C Gilbert ldquoOn Subject and

Not-Subject in Italian Renaissance Picturesrdquo Art Bulletin

34 (1952) 202-16 C Ginzburg ldquoDa A Warburg a E H

Gombrich Note su un problema di metodordquo Studi medi-

evali series 3 7 (1966) 1015-65 E H Gombrich ldquoIcones

Symbolicae The Visual Image in Neo-Platonic Thoughtrdquo

Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes 11 (1948)

163-92 idem ldquoThe Use of Art for the Study of Symbolsrdquo

American Psychologist 20 (1965) A Grabar Liconoclasme

byzantin Dossier archeacuteologique (Paris 1957) idem Chris-

tian Iconography A Study of Its Origins (Princeton 1969)

S J Gudlaugsson De Comedianten bij Jan Steen en zijn

tijdgenooten (s-Gravenhage 1945) W S Heckscher ldquoThe

Genesis of Iconologyrdquo Stl und Uumlberlieferung in der Kunst

des Abendlandes Akten des XXI Internationalen Kon-

gresses fuumlr Kunstgeschichte (Berlin 1967) 3 239-62 G

Hermereacuten Representation and Meaning in the Visual Arts

A Study in the Methodology of Iconography and Iconology

Lund Studies in Philosophy Vol I (Lund 1969) R Hinks

Myth and Allegory in Ancient Art (London 1939) W

Hofmann Das Irdische Paradies (Munich 1960) G J

Hoogewerff ldquoLIconologie et son importance pour leacutetude

systeacutematique de lart chreacutetienrdquo Rivista dArcheologia Cris-

tiana 8 (1931) 53-82 E de Jongh Zinne- en minnebeelden

in de schilderkunst van de zeventiende eeuw (mdash1967) idem

ldquoErotica in Vogelperspectief De dubbelzinnigheid van een

reeks 17de eeuwse genrevoorstellingenrdquo Simiolus 3

(1968-69) 22-72 L Kalinowski ldquoTreści ideowe i estetyczne

Drzwi Gnieźnieńskichrdquo (ldquoIdeological and Aesthetic Content

of the Gniezno Bronze Doorsrdquo) in Drzwi Gnieźnieńskie ed

M Walicki (Wroclaw 1959) 2 7-160 H Keller Tizians

Poesie fuumlr Koumlnig Philip II von Spanien (Wiesbaden 1969)

R Klein ldquoLa theacuteorie de lexpression figureacutee dans les traiteacutes

italiens sur les imprese 1555-1612rdquo Bibliothegraveque dHu-

manisme et Renaissance 19 (1957) 320-41 republished with

the other relevant studies in la forme et lintelligible (Paris

1969) R Klibansky E Panofsky F Saxl Saturn and Melan-

choly (London 1964) J B Knipping Ikonografie van de

Contra-Reformatie in de Nederlanden (Hilversum 1939-40)

G Kubler The Shape of Time (New Haven and London

1962) R W Lee ldquoUt pictura poesisrdquo Art Bulletin 22

(1940) 197-269 E Macircle Lart religieux du XIIIe siegravecle en

France (Paris 1898) English ed used (New York 1958)

idem Lart religieux de la fin du Moyen-Age en France

(Paris 1908) idem Lart religieux du XIIe siegravecle en France

(Paris 1922) idem Lart religieux apregraves le Concile de Trente

(Paris 1932) J Maurin Białostocka Lessing i sztuki plas-

tyczne (ldquoLessing and the visual artsrdquo) (Wroclaw Warszawa

Krakoacutew 1969) E F von Monroy Embleme und Emblem-

buumlcher in den Niederlanden 1560-1630 ed H M von Erffa

(Utrecht 1964) J Montagu ldquoThe Painted Enigma and

French Seventeenth Century Artrdquo Journal of the Warburg

and Courtauld Institutes 31 (1968) 307-35 W Mrazek

Ikonologie der barocken Deckenmalerei (Vienna 1953)

Uumlsterreichische Akademie der Wissenschaften Philo-

sophisch-historische Klasse Sitzungsberichte 2283 A D

Nock ldquoSarcophagi and Symbolismrdquo American Journal of

Archaeology 50 (1946) 166ff D Panofsky and E Panofsky

ldquoThe Iconography of the Galeacuterie Franccedilois Ier at Fontaine-

bleaurdquo Gazette des Beaux-Arts 652 (1958) 113-90

E Panofsky ldquoUumlber das Verhaumlltnis der Kunstgeschichte zur

Kunsttheorierdquo Zeitschrift fuumlr Aesthetik und allgemeine

Kunstwissenschaft 18 (1925) 129-61 idem Studies in

Iconology (New York 1939) idem ed Abbot Suger (Prince-

ton 1946) idem Gothic Architecture and Scholasticism

(Latrobe Pa 1951) idem Early Netherlandish Painting

(Cambridge Mass 1953) idem Meaning in the Visual Arts

(Garden City N Y 1955) idem Renaissance and Renas-

cences in Western Art (Stockholm 1960) idem Tomb Sculp-

ture (New York 1964) E Panofsky and F Saxl ldquoClassical

Mythology in Medieval Artrdquo Metropolitan Museum Studies

4 (1932-33) 228-80 M Praz Studies in Seventeenth Cen-

tury Imagery (London 1939-47 2nd ed Rome 1964) S

Ringbom ldquoDevotional Images and Imaginative Devotions

Notes on the Place of Art in Late Medieval Private Pietyrdquo

Gazette des Beaux-Arts 6 73 (1969) 159-70 Joseph Sauer

Symbolik des Kirchengebaumludes und seiner Ausstattung in

der Auffassung des Mittelalters 2nd ed (Freiburg i B

1924) F Saxl ldquoFruumlhes Christentum und spaumltes Heidentum

in ihren kuumlnstlerischen Ausdrucksformenrdquo Wiener Jahrbuch

fuumlr Kunstgeschichte 2 (1923) 63-121 M Schapiro ldquoThe

Ruthwell Crossrdquo Art Bulletin 26 (1944) 232-45 idem ldquoOn

the Aesthetic Attitude in Romanesque Artrdquo in Art and

Thought issued in Honour of Ananda Coomaraswamy

(London 1947) 139-50 J Seznec The Survival of the Pagan

Gods (New York 1953) O G von Simson The Gothic

Cathedral (New York 1956) R E Spear ldquoThe Literary

Source of Poussins Realm of Florardquo The Burlington Maga-

zine 107 (1965) 563-69 L Volkmann Bilderschriften der

Renaissance (Leipzig 1923) Hans van de Waal Drie

eeuwen vaderlandsche geschieduitbeelding 1500-1800 (s-

Gravenhage 1952) idem ldquoSome Principles of a General

Iconographical Classificationrdquo in Actes du XVIIe Congregraves

International dHistoire de lArt Amsterdam 1952 (La Haye

1955) 601-06 E Wind ldquoCharity the Case History of a

Patternrdquo Journal of the Warburg Institute 1 (1937) 322ff

JAN BIAŁOSTOCKI

[See also Allegory Baroque Classicism Criticism Enlight-

enment Motif Myth Naturalism in Art Neo-Platonism

Renaissance Humanism Romanticism Symbolism Tem-

perance Ut pictura poesis]

beholders emotions rather than to his reason Scholars

have selected a group of so-called devotional pictures

as opposed to dogmatic and to historical repre-

sentations but the precise delimitation of such a group

is still a matter of discussion as is also the question

of how much this art was influenced by literature and

especially by pious poetry With the development of

the graphic arts new cheap pictures spread widely the

typological imagery systematized in the Biblia pau-

perum and in the Speculum humanae salvationis

Great collections of religious meditations compiled in

monasteries like Meditations on the Life of Christ by

Pseudo-Bonaventure (ed I Ragusa and R B Green

1961) spread widely a new emotional approach to

iconography Also the religious theater had some influ-

ence on the way stories in art were told

4 In the iconography of the Renaissance art ldquohis-

toryrdquo was shifted to the fore at the expense of symbol-

ism It does not mean that symbols ceased to exist

Pictorial allegory and symbolism played a very impor-

tant part in the conception of humanistic art But what

was placed in the center of the new art theory was

the concept of istoria The first and the most important

task of the work of art according to L B Alberti (De

pictura 1435 Della pittura 1436) is to present a story

This story had to be selected from authoritative literary

sources either sacred or profane it should represent

in a possibly convincing and expressive way an episode

from the Holy Scriptures from sacred or classical

history from mythology or legend This new concept

of istoria which was to dominate iconographic consid-

erations for more than three hundred years (the mean-

ing of the term istoria or storia changed of course in

that period) was one of the consequences of the Ren-

aissance idea of the priority of literature over the visual

arts There were several reasons for that priority one

being a complete lack of known classical theory of art

In its stead the theories of poetry and rhetoric were

adopted as guiding principles for the visual arts Hence

the dominating Horatian principle Ut pictura poesis

which subordinated the visual arts to the rules of liter-

ary theory This identification of literature and art

lasted until G E Lessing in 1766 revolted against it

in his Laokooumln (R W Lee 1940) In the humanistic

theory of visual arts the concept of istoria took the

central place Istoria had to be chosen for its moral

value (Alberti chose as his examples the subjects show-

ing stoic moral firmness as the ldquoDeath of Meleagerrdquo

the ldquoImmolation of Iphigeniardquo or the ldquoCalumnyrdquo of

Apelles) it had to be represented according to the

principle of decorum and costume ie with regard to

its dignity and most truthfully to the literary proto-

type Everything should be suitable in ldquosize function

kind color and other similar thingsrdquo Alberti stressed

the necessity of varied and convincing expressions of

emotions by suitable gestures

The dependence of post-medieval iconography on

literature increased with time and in the seventeenth

century the truthfulness of the pictorial formulation

of literary subjects became one of the most valued

qualities of a work of visual arts ldquoRead the story and

the picture at the same timerdquo Nicolas Poussin wrote

to M de Chantelou one of his customers In the French

Royal Academy of Painting and Sculpture lengthy

discussions were going on concerning the relation of

pictures to literary sources To be able to represent

well subjects taken from poetry the artist had to be

a doctus artifex well-informed in various fields G P

Bellori (1695) stressed however the fact that not

everything good in writing comes out well in painting

Therefore the painter to be able to transform the

story had to acquire ldquoan universal knowledge of things

and he should contemplate precisely nature and reali-

tiesrdquo Some freedom was given to the artist from the

beginning Alberti was far from limiting the painter

too much by this dependence on literature He stressed

the specific requirements of the visual arts as for ex-

ample the necessity to limit the number of represented

figures in order to keep a balance between ldquocopious-

nessrdquo and ldquosolitude in paintingrdquo This made it of

course necessary to reduce crowded scenes to an easily

graspable number of figures in order to avoid ldquodissolute

confusionrdquo (Spencer [1956] pp 23-28)

The interest of early Renaissance art theorists in

iconography was not great They concentrated their

attention chiefly on the discussion of the means needed

to achieve a convincing and beautiful representation

of the istoria and on the specific problems of repre-

sentationmdashcorrect (by adoption of the rules of per-

529

spective) and beautiful (by adoption of the rules of

proportion) Leonardo da Vinci does not show a spe-

cific interest in iconography but in some passages of

his incompleted Treatise on Painting he gives literary

programs of pictures remarkably however the pic-

tures are not of stories but of representations of pow-

erful natural or human happenings such as storms and

battles Here the naturalistic interests of the Renais-

sance come to the fore

An important achievement of the Renaissance partly

affecting iconography was the reunionmdashas noticed and

described by E Panofsky and F Saxl (1932) and Panof-

sky (1960)mdashof the literary and visual traditions of

classical antiquity during the fifteenth century During

the Middle Ages the literary tradition of classical sub-

ject matter was separated from the visual tradition of

classical artistic motifs so that there was no awareness

of their belonging together The classical subjects for

example those taken from Ovid used to be represented

in contemporary medieval stylistic forms classical

artistic motifs on the other hand for example the forms

of garment folds human types gestures compositional

patterns and so on were used to represent Christian

subject matter as in the western portals of the Reims

cathedral or in the pulpits of Nicola or Giovanni

Pisano It was only in the High Renaissance eg in

the works of Raphael Titian Michelangelo and Cor-

reggio that forms and iconography themes and motifs

became reintegrated In this way the classical vision

of classical subjects became sometimes so perfect that

some works created around 1500 could have been

taken for classical originals (for example Bacchus by

Michelangelo) The growing understanding of classical

ideas and forms led to another specific Renaissance

phenomenon called by Panofsky ldquopseudomorphosisrdquo

Certain Renaissance figures became invested with a mean-

ing which for all their classicizing appearance had not been

present in their classical prototypes though it had fre-

quently been foreshadowed in classical literature Owing

to its medieval antecedents Renaissance art was often able

to translate into images what classical art had deemed

inexpressible

(Panofsky [1939] pp 70f)

In the north of Italy beside the concept of istoria

poesia appears a fact which also points to a depend-

ence on poetry this was understood mainly as referring

to lyrical poetry and not to epic or heroic Mythologi-

cal pictures by Titian were described in such a way

(Keller [1969] pp 24f) The stress was on the poetical

mood more than on an important human action a

lyrical tonality was preferred to a heroic one The

archaeological interests then current in Padua and

Venice visible for instance in the works by Andrea

Mantegna were moderated by an elegiac poetic mood

in reconstructing the classical world Pictures by Gior-

gione who worked for exclusive circles of humanists

were so hermetic in meaning that several of them like

the Three Philosophers (Vienna) or the Storm (Venice)

are iconographic riddles up to our own day The same

is true of the enigmatic and poetic iconography of some

pictures by Titian (Sacred and Profane Love in the

Borghese Gallery in Rome) by Lorenzo Lotto or by

the Ferrarese Dosso Dossi

The most important document of this romantic ar-

chaeological vision which strongly influenced icono-

graphical invention in Italy and outside of Italy was

a fantastic romance Hypnerotomachia Poliphili attrib-

uted in the most plausible way to a Franciscan monk

Francesco Colonna and published with beautiful

woodcuts by Aldus Manutius in Venice in 1499 Poetic

visions of a dreamy classical landscape full of ruins

in which the lovers Poliphilo and Polia wander influ-

enced the imagination of artists not less than the excel-

lent woodcuts their impact can be found as far and

as late as in the gardens at Versailles The illustrations

to Hypnerotomachia also popularized hieroglyphic

signs which make their appearance in iconography as

a specific phenomenon of the Renaissance

5 Art conceived as a language may be addressed

to large or to small groups It depends on the scope

of communication It can be intended as a message

to a possibly large audience but it can also be limited

in its appeal to a small selected group of observers

In an extreme case the polarization could be that

between a didactic art appealing to everybody and an

elitarian cryptic message understandable only to the

initiated few Medieval art belonged by far to the first

category the art of the Renaissance to the second

Even in the monumental wall-paintings decorating the

most celebrated places of Christianity such as the

Sistine Chapel or the official rooms of the Popes like

the Stanza della Segnatura even in the sepulchral

chapels of the most important families like the Sassetti

and the Medici the iconographic programs and sym-

bolism are extremely complicated The meaning of the

decoration of the great Gallery of Franccedilois I at Fon-

tainebleau is so cryptic that it was hypothetically ex-

plained only recently by the best specialists in icon-

ography (D and E Panofsky 1958) Few works of

medieval art have provoked such a number of inter-

pretations as the well-known and at first glance seem-

ingly easy to understand pictures like Botticellis

mythologies (Birth of Venus Spring The Uffizi Flor-

ence) like Titians Sacred and Profane Love or like

sculptures such as Michelangelos Medici tombs The

same is true of works by Duumlrer Holbein and Bruegel

in the North A deep symbolism a complicated

iconographymdashespecially current in the circles influ-

530

enced by Neo-Platonismmdashbelonged to the perfection

of the work

This idea had a long life it recurs in 1604 in Carel

van Manders Book of the Painter as well as in Berninis

utterances on the beauty of the concept which adorns

the work The more refined the concept the more

difficult the symbolism the narrower the circle of those

who can really understand the work

Art was considered especially in the exclusive court

social groups or among the humanists as a secret

language accessible to the initiated The visual sign

was connected with words into a specific union of

literature and art which flourished at the time of the

Renaissance of mannerism and of the baroque in the

form of impresa of hieroglyph and of emblem The

roots of the impresamdashthe personal sign and mottomdashare

to be found in chivalrous devices and signs popular

in the late Middle Ages it was brought to Italy from

France and connected with Neo-Platonic speculation

(Klein 1957) Hieroglyphs became popular thanks to

the discovery in 1419 of the Hieroglyphica by Hora-

pollo Niliacus (of the second or fourth century AD)

published in 1505 The humanists believed that this

enigmatic image-script disguised a profound wisdom

of the Egyptians ldquothey supposed that the great minds

of Greece had been initiated into these Egyptian

mysteriesmdashwhich in their turn were of course one

more prefiguration of the teachings of Christrdquo (Seznec

[1953] p 100) Emblems originated from an erudite

intellectual play among the humanists aiming however

at a moral lesson and sometimes considered in a Neo-

Platonic way as symbols revealing to those who con-

template them a higher knowledge of divine mysteries

Emblem included a motto called lemma an image

and an epigram Only the whole of the emblem can

be understood each element of it giving only one part

of the meaning All those cryptic codes of expression

connecting words and images originated as secret and

elitarian The problem of the degree of obscurity was

one of the main points discussed by the theorists of

the emblematics (Clements [1964] pp 191-95) Eras-

mus of Rotterdam stressed that one of the virtues of

the impresa is that its meaning can be grasped only

with an intellectual effort Cesare Ripa (Iconologia

1593) demands that symbolic images be composed ldquoin

the form of enigmardquo Sambucus (1564) required ldquoob-

scuritasrdquo and ldquonovitasrdquo from the emblems Paolo

Giovio represented a reasonable middle ldquoThe device

should not be so obscure as to require the Sybil to

interpret it nor yet so obvious that any literal-minded

person can understand itrdquo Later however the crypto-

grams of hieroglyphics and emblem books began to

be popularized and explained Collections of emblems

became widely known New systematization of icon

ography now of a humanistic one was inaugurated

In 1556 Vincenzo Cartari published the first modern

handbook of mythological imagery le imagini colla

sposizione degli dei degli antichi (Venice 1556) In the

same year Pierio Valeriano produced a rich collection

of Hieroglyphica (Basel 1556) Earlier in 1531 Andrea

Alciati had compiled the first emblem book (Emblema-

tum liber Augsburg 1531) The influence of such

books which went through many translations and edi-

tions and which were imitated and continued all over

Europe grew at the close of the sixteenth and in the

seventeenth century In exclusive groups it happened

much earlier that hieroglyphic astrological and em-

blematic imagery influenced the iconography of im-

portant works of art as for example at the court of

Maximilian I (M Giehlow 1915) sometimes this con-

cerned works done by the most distinguished artists

like Duumlrers Melencolia I (Klibansky et al 1964)

Emblematic principle of composition uniting as it did

the image with the verbal formulations found great

popularity in northern Europe perhaps because the

importance of the word so prominent in Protestantism

was stressed (Luther required ldquofragments from the

Holy Writrdquo to be included in the Epitaph-pictures)

Epitaphs and other religious pictures of the Protestant

North connect words and images in the harmonious

indivisible whole (Białostocki 1968)

In the Netherlands emblems played an important

part in the development of realistic painting in the

seventeenth century since they furnished a rich reper-

tory of imagery charged with allegorical meaning (de

Jongh von Monroy) However the meaning of those

images obvious to the viewer who remembered the

original emblematic context eluded for a long time

later interpreters who were no longer conversant with

the emblems

After Cartari and his followers furnished artists and

patrons with images of classical gods there was a need

felt for another handbook which would enable the

artist to represent and the patron to understand the

abstract moral philosophical scientific and other

ideas symbolized Only then was art able to express

complex thoughts This task was fulfilled by Cesare

Ripa of Perugia who in 1593 published his Iconologia

a handbook explaining how to represent all the incor-

poreal concepts In 1603 Iconologia was republished

with illustrations and became one of the most popular

and influential art books With Ripa in hand art

historiansmdashinitially Eacutemile Macircle (1932)mdashwere able to

decipher hundreds of allegorical statements in paint

and stone guided by this alphabet of personifications

Ripas basic entity was a human figure female more

often than male whose costumes attributes gestures

and other particulars express specific qualities of the

531

idea represented With the publication of Ripas workmdash

translated soon into many languages and frequently

republished and revisedmdashthe humanistic system of

allegorical iconography was established classical gods

and personifications hieroglyphic signs and emblems

connecting words and images this was the material

used by the artists of mannerism and the baroque when

they did not choose to keep to the ldquohistoricalrdquo world

ie to borrow their subjects directly from literature

When they did so when they painted stories they used

to select them not only from Ovid and Vergil but also

from the more recent poems by Ariosto and Tasso and

also from the works of less known writers ancient and

modern Valerius Maximus furnished them with exam-

ples of virtuous behavior These historical examples

were in general either connected with allegorical gen-

eralizations (in the big decorations of the late baroque

the central fresco was often an allegory and the ac-

companying canvas-pictures presented historical ex-

amples of virtues Garas pp 280-83) or conceived in

an allegorical way Ovide moraliseacute was popular already

in the late Middle Ages Its influence persisted also

in the time of the baroque Myths and stories under-

went allegorical interpretations along the lines of that

moralizing commentary

What was considered necessary for an artist around

1600 can be seen from Carel van Manders Book of

the Painter (1604) It included a long theoretical poem

a history of classical and modern Italian and Nether-

landish artists a translation and a moral interpretation

of Ovids Metamorphoses and finally a description of

personifications There is no specific section on reli-

gious iconography since artists were well furnished

with books giving them rules in this respect

Against the humanistic conception of art the Council

of Trent proclaimed rules constituting a new system

of religious iconography which put an end to the live

tradition of medieval art These rules were published

officially by the Church and they have been com-

mented upon and elaborated in books by Joannes

Molanus (1570) Saint Carlo Borromeo (1577) Gabriele

Paleotti (1581) Federico Borromeo (1624) and several

others The rules of the Council governed the decora-

tion of churches and other sacred buildings and the

character of pictures representing sacred subjects A

break between the religious and the secular iconogra-

phy became obvious in theoretical literature although

there existed many emblem books of a very distinct

religious character (G de Montenay 1571 B Arias

Montanus 1571 H Hugo 1624) A new strictly for-

mulated system of religious iconography coexisted in

the seventeenth century with humanistic subject mat-

ter symbolism and allegory The classical nude intro-

duced by the Renaissance into art was strictly forbid

den now in religious art but found a free field of

development in secular mythological and allegorical

works Many artists exercised their imagination in both

fields in some specific fields such as sepulchral iconog-

raphy cooperation between religious and humanistic

symbolism was common In the work of P P Rubens

the various aspects of the new iconography found

perhaps their best expression In his art allegorical

concepts classical gods and heroes triumphs of mythi-

cal beings as well as of secular rulers accompany mar-

tyrdoms of Catholic saints and the triumphs of the

Eucharist What began to be separated in theory could

yet coexist in harmony in the work of a great artist

6 In northern European art (before Rubens) the

renewal of the arts during the Renaissance took the

form of the new study of nature and the elaboration

of the most convincing means of representing the ma-

terial world in an illusionistic way traditional medieval

symbolism was transformed in a specific way produc-

ing what E Panofsky called in 1953 ldquodisguised sym-

bolismrdquo The symbolic meaning connected with objects

and qualities persisted but a new mastery reproduced

these symbolical objects with such a degree of realism

that they did not differ any longer from other objects

not charged with any metaphorical meaning Some-

times the symbolical meaning of represented objects

results from the traditional iconography in an unmistak-

able way sometimes the meaning is hinted at by the

inscriptions placed in the picture or on its frame But

in many cases the modern viewer remains perplexed

without any sufficient clue to decide whether in the

picture he observes he has to do with the beginnings

of the representation of reality for its own sake or

whether the search for specific metaphorical meaning

is justified It is still always a matter of discussion to

decide at which moment the representation of some

objects or some scene in life without any symbolical

(or ldquohistoricalrdquo) implications became possible (Gilbert

1952) Observers of the eighteenth and nineteenth

centuries to whom the meaning of old symbols was

wholly forgotten took many images of the fifteenth and

sixteenth centuries for simple representations of life

Bruegel for example was considered as simply a

painter of joking or working peasants Recent studies

in iconography have shown that these pictures are

saturated with disguised meaning and that it is ex-

tremely rare before about 1550 to meet simple repre-

sentations of nature in painting In graphic arts the

direct depiction of life and landscape began earlier

as in the works of Lombard draughtsmen or in the

incredibly fresh convincing drawings and prints by the

Master of the Housebook There are also early excep-

tions in painting like Albrecht Altdorfers landscape

without any human figures But in general it was only

532

during the second half of the sixteenth century that

landscape genre and still-life painting began to ac-

quire equal rights with religious and humanistic history

and allegory predominantly in Venice and in Antwerp

Even then however the representations of people

working in fields (Jacopo or Francesco Bassano) fol-

lowed the old traditions of Calendar-pictures and in

the background of genre scenes as in Pieter Aertsens

pictures a biblical motif may be found which trans-

forms the whole composition into a storia however

unorthodox

With the development of realistic painting in the

seventeenth century there appeared specific iconogra-

phic problems New subjects slowly found convenient

form They entered the scene patterned after the ven-

erable stories of sacred or of profane iconography

H van de Waal described (1952) the process of the for-

mation of national historical iconography in Holland

Scenes depicting recent happenings from a long strug-

gle for national independence appeared first in forms

assimilated to well-known religious or mythical scenes

This was not only an expedient facilitating their com-

position for by this means the new subjects gained the

decorum inherent in the adopted patterns formed to

express traditional stories Similar procedures may be

seen in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries when

more and more sections of reality became interesting

enough to be represented in art

The transfer of decorum from the sacred or allegori-

cal figures to the humans represented is a means used

in what modern iconographers call ldquoallegorical por-

traiturerdquo Renaissance painters had represented real

people under mythological or even sacred disguise

they gave actual faces of living people to the figures

represented with all the attributes and characteristics

of their mythical sacred or even allegorical qualities

Later it was only the pattern which remained still in

the eighteenth century English portraitists patterned

the effigies of contemporary aristocrats after Michel-

angelos Sybils or after allegories like the Caritas

(Wind 1937) J B Oudry represented the Polish King

in exile Stanisław Leszczyński with all the attributes

of the allegory of exile taken from Ripa identifying

him in this way with personification of his most promi-

nent quality (Białostocki 1969)

Dutch realistic painting of the seventeenth century

is a document of an important iconographic conquest

Landscapes seascapes moonlit night scenes snapshots

of people skating in winter landscapes views of market

places church interiors backyards fishermen old

women preparing food fashionable dishes ready for

lunch merchants and artisans elegant gentlemen pay-

ing visits and folk-surgeons performing sensational

street-operations all this became subject matter for

representation and continued to be considered worthy

of depiction until the end of the nineteenth century

It was first considered as such in Holland only then

slowly everyday subject matter was recognized also by

art-theorists in other countries although it was re-

garded as much less dignified than religious mytholog-

ical or allegorical subjects Only in the nineteenth

century did the vogue of realistic representation of

everyday subjects become widespread In Dutch pic-

tures of the seventeenth century we are often con-

fronted with nothing else than representations of pic-

turesque reality Sometimes however these genre

pictures appear to be illustrations of proverbs expres-

sing moralistic folk-wisdom sometimes they recall

scenes from the popular threater of the rederijkers or

rhetoricians especially pictures by Jan Steen (Gud-

laugsson 1945) they contain allusions to emblems

Sometimes the elegant scenes from bourgeois life in-

clude quite indecent erotic allusions (de Jongh 1967

1969) The ambiguity of these pictures was certainly

a source of specific pleasure for those who knew the

key to their true meaning

7 In Catholic countries allegorical art sacred as

well as profane flourished The twofold character of

symbolic representations mentioned above persisted

in the seventeenth century Aristotelian rational sym-

bolism which used images as words was widespread

in the orthodox Catholic iconography of the Counter-

Reformation as well as in the humanistic visual lan-

guage codified by Ripa and others A mystical Neo-

Platonic symbolism transcending reason reappeared

too Its outspoken document is the treatise by Chris-

toforo Giarda Bibliothecae alexandrinae icones sym-

bolicae of 1626 (Gombrich 1948) For Giarda symbolic

images give the beholder a direct insight into the

mysteries of religion which are not accessible to rea-

son

Thanks to symbolic images the mind which is banished from

heaven into this dark cave of the body its actions held in

bondage by the senses can behold the beauty and form

of the Virtues and Sciences divorced from all matter and

yet adumbrated if not perfectly expressed in colours and

is thus roused to an even more fervent love and desire for

them Who then can sufficiently estimate the magni-

tude of the debt we owe to those who expressed the Arts

and Sciences themselves in images and so brought it about

that we could not only know them but look at them as

it were with our eyes that we can meet them and almost

converse with them

(Gombrich [1948] pp 188f)

Great allegorical compositions covering the ceilings of

baroque churches are often realizations of this princi-

ple For those however who conceived allegory as a

rational operation as a language used for didactic aims

the main problem remained the clarity of the allegori-

533

cal message The larger the audience to whom allegory

was addressed the simpler more obvious its symbolism

should have been The banality of allegorical language

provoked criticism in the eighteenth century Fran-

cesco Algarotti (1762) prefers without any doubt his-

torical representations to the ldquoempty allegories and

complicated mythological allusionsrdquo (Garas [1967] p

280) Especially criticized was the obscurity of these

allegories in which completely original unknown sym-

bols were used Roger de Piles praises his favorite

master Rubens who ldquointroduced only such allegories

elements of which were already known from ancient

artrdquo and opposes him to Charles Lebrun who ldquoinstead

of taking symbols from some known source as the

ancient fable and medals has invented almost all of

them and thus the pictures of this kind became riddles

which the beholder does not want to take the task to

solverdquo To keep the balance between platitudinous

redundancy and utter incomprehensibility was the

crucial problem of late baroque allegorism What is

interesting however is that the idea of the picture

as a riddle was not foreign to the seventeenth century

It appears in France as well as in Sweden where David

Kloumlcker Ehrenstrahl (1694) proposed that pictures

present riddles that could not be solved by everyone

In France however the ldquopainted enigmardquo fostered

by the Jesuits in their schools flourished especially well

in the seventeenth century (Montagu 1968) These

ldquopainted enigmasrdquo lent themselves to various inter-

pretations and gave interpreters an opportunity to

show their ingenuity These pictures and their inter-

pretations seem to prove that a considerable flexibility

of meaning was intended

We might rather accept that a work of art was regarded

in the seventeenth century as in a certain sense an open

symbol raw material like the myth or sacred story which

it illustrates on which the interpreter might exercise the

power of his ingenuity turning it into an allegory of Chris-

tian doctrine or a panegyric in honour of his patron

(Montagu [1968] p 334)

Such a situation probably existed only in some specific

circles It was a limiting case The other extreme was

to use in an uninteresting routine way Ripas symbolic

images or those of other popular symbolic handbooks

Such practice continued well into the eighteenth cen-

tury The general trend fed by ideas of the Enlighten-

ment was to make allegories more and more obvious

It is understandable that some theorists like the Count

de Caylus looked for new subject matter presenting

as he did Tableaux tireacutes de lIliade (1755) or that

J J Winckelmann tried to revive allegory and to give

it a new force It was however too late In the eight-

eenth century together with the whole system of

humanistic tradition the systems of iconography began

to disintegrate The great break in the tradition con-

cerned not only style but also iconography Emblem-

atic roots may be discovered in Goyas symbolism as

well as in the reasonable allegories of the Enlighten-

ment but generally speaking there was a search for

new not known or not used sourcesmdashas in William

Blakes biblical individualistic imagerymdashor the new

staging of the old ones as in Jacques Louis Davids

classical subjects

The art of romanticism was a definite break with

the past much more in the field of ideas and iconogra-

phy than in a stylistic respect where romanticists

retrospectively looked back either to medieval and

pre-Raphaelite or to baroque sources Symbols and

allegories yielded to an all-pervading mood and the

traditional repertory of religious allegorical mytho-

logical and historical iconography gave way to a new

iconography Although several encompassing images

of Christian and humanistic art survived they received

new content and essentially changed their character

New attitudes of the individual to the world of nature

and history to society and destiny to time and death

and new problems resulting from the striving after

freedom (which was a new perhaps most important

principle of human behavior in all fields of human

activity) found expression in new thematic fields and

in new particular themes such as ldquoStorm-tossed Boatrdquo

ldquoLonely Wanderer in the Mountainsrdquo ldquoA Death of the

Herordquo (Eitner 1955 Hofmann 1960 Białostocki

1966)

Romanticism has not formed and could not have

formed an iconographic system for since they strived

first of all for originality of individual conception the

romantics interpreted images in a subjective way as

expressions of mood Romanticism has on the other

hand introduced new heroes and martyrs into art

instead of religious ones the national social and artis-

tic ones It created a new image of history seen now

as a set of political and moral examplesmdashas in

baroquemdashbut often put together now according to a

very individualistic principle of choice A correlative

to pathetic and heroic romanticism was a bourgeois

and intimate romanticism its expression was for ex-

ample the new imagery of the open window which

shows to the viewer wide perspectives but shelters him

at the same time from the dangers of the unknown

(Eitner 1955)

When the world of ideas and images created at the

moment of the flowering of romanticism began to be

popularized for the use of the large bourgeois masses

the contentmdashideological and iconographicalmdashof ro-

manticism lost its original authenticity and left be-

hind not a new system of original images but a dispo-

534

sition to melodramatic experiences and an inflation of

a theatrical gesture (Hofmann 1960 Białostocki 1966)

The nineteenth century developed a realistic por-

traiture of man and nature and took over worn out

clicheacutes of the Renaissance and baroque allegories It

introduced new subject matter taken partly from tra-

dition partly from observation of reality tinted with

vague symbolism such as ldquoForgerdquo or the ldquoFuneral of

the Peasantrdquo but it did not create a new system of

iconography in spite of short-lived revivals of symbol-

istic attitudes in such movementsmdashincidentally not

limited to and not initiated in the visual artsmdashas

ldquosymbolismrdquo

New ephemeral artistic movements which consti-

tuted the history of European art in the last hundred

years show an interesting bracketing of style and icon-

ography in spite of a preponderant lack of iconogra-

phic interest Their representatives chose subjects suit-

able to specific artistic aims and means which they

developed and were interested in Impressionists

painted seaside scenes landscapes and genre pictures

showing the life of artistic and intellectual milieus

Cubists introduced a specific repertory of still-life

motifs symbols of the artists atelier and of the life

of the bohegraveme bottles musical instruments books

fruits flowers newspapers How much these motifs

were connected with specific cubist style appears when

one looks at works of artists foreign to the original

cubist group but imitating its style as for instance

several Czech artists like Emil Filla They adopted

cubist iconography together with cubist style Abstract

movements in general lacked iconography although

they were not foreign to symbolic tendencies espe-

cially in sculpture (Brancusi Moore) Only in the dec-

ades of 1950-70 can a revival of more articulated and

programmatic symbolism be observed One may sup-

pose that this revival is at least in part brought about

by the development of research in iconography and

symbolism which took place in the second and third

quarters of our century

II

1 The origins of ldquointerpretative iconographyrdquo may

be seen in the descriptions (ekphrasis) of works of art

known in classical literature But these descriptions

like those by Philostratus the Elder or Lucian are

limited simply to description and lack in general any

interpretation Moreover it is not certain whether they

are descriptions of actual or fictitious works of art at

least opinions in this respect vary Brief medieval tituli

which formulated in words the content of religious

images were to be sure interpretative sometimes but

they were short and cannot be connected with the

tradition of artistic erudition We have to look to

modern times to indicate the beginnings of iconogra-

phic interpretation and research From Vasaris Rag-

ionamenti in which interpretations of the paintings

decorating the Palazzo Vecchio in Florence are given

we learn how complicated and how undecipherable

iconographic concepts might have been even to peo-

ple living in buildings decorated by paintings expres-

sing these concepts But perhaps the first really to be

considered as interested in iconographic research was

the seventeenth-century archaeologist and art theorist

Giovanni Pietro Bellori In the introduction to his Lives

of Artists (1672) Bellori stressed that he paid special

attention to the content of the works of art he was

talking about and he even credited the painter Nicolas

Poussin with having directed his attention to iconogra-

phy In his Lives Bellori presented short interpretative

descriptions of pictures and he sometimes developed

these interpretations further in small iconographic

essays the influence of classical ekphrasis on him is

a possibility Sometimes his errors took deep roots in

the subsequent history of art as when he explained

Poussins Triumph of Flora (Dresden) by designating

Ovids Metamorphoses as its source The true source

Marinos Adona was finally found by R E Spear in

1965

What is interesting in Belloris procedure is that he

first identifies the motifs tries to connect them with

classical or modern literary sources and then proceeds

to find out the deep meaning the general symbolic

idea of the work Therefore he may be considered as

one of the pioneers not only of iconography as a disci-

pline of research but also of iconology as formulated

by its recent partisans That even in the second half

of the sixteenth century some observers were inclined

to look for hidden meaning in each element of the work

of art we learn from Joannes Molanus (1570) who in

De picturis et imaginibus sacris states reasonably that

ldquoit is not necessary to ask for meaning of everything

that can be observed in a picture in such cases a lot

of absurd things may resultrdquo But the consciousness of

the importance of iconography increased and at the

end of the seventeenth century Andreacute Feacutelibien stressed

that in order to attribute a picture to a painter it is

not enough to know the way he uses his brush one

needs also to know his esprit to learn his geacutenie and

to be able to foresee in which way he is able to form

his conceptions Thus iconographic analysis was con-

sidered necessary even for the purpose of attribution

Descriptive interpretations of the works of ancient

art appeared in the big archaeological publications of

the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries such as

Jacques Spons Miscellanea eruditae antiquitatis (1679)

G P Belloris Admiranda romanarum antiquitatum ac

veteris sculpturae vestigia (1693) P de Caylus Recueil

535

dantiquiteacutes eacutegyptiennes eacutetrusques grecques et

romaines (1752-67) and in an interesting endeavor

(although very much criticized by Lessing) of Joseph

Spence to explain classical poets through works of art

and vice versa (Polymetis 1747) Classical archaeology

however has not been especially interested in iconog-

raphy and the use of the term itself by archaeolo-

gists was limited to portraiture The first great devel-

opment of iconographic studies was connected with

the romantic movement although an important pre-

lude for it was hagiographical collections of sources

such as Acta sanctorum published by the Bollandists

(1643-1794 resumed later) Among the pre-romantic

scholars in iconography the eminent German poet

G E Lessing is to be noted His study of the repre-

sentation of death in classical times can be considered

as one of the first essays in interpretative iconography

which is now called iconology In Wie die Alten den

Tod gebildet (1769) Lessing tries to interpret the classi-

cal iconographic type of Amor with the inverted torch

and to find its ldquointrinsic meaningrdquo by taking into ac-

count the religion customs and philosophy of the

classical world The work of art is interpreted by Less-

ing as ldquoa symptom of something elserdquo While Lessings

predecessors (like B de Montfaucon) ldquoexplained the

classical past by monumentsrdquo he for the first time did

the opposite ldquohe explained the monuments by Antiq-

uityrdquo (Maurin Białostocka [1969] pp 92-100)

Pre-romantic and romantic interests in myth and

symbol found their expression in publications and dis-

cussions by German philosophers and scholars like F

Schlegel J Herder J J von Goumlrres and F Creuzer

Creuzers work Symbolik und Mythologie der alten

Voumllker (1810) which shows the influence of mystical

Neo-Platonic ideas on symbols (Gombrich 1965) was

the most influential in the romantic period in Ger-

many Under the impact of Chateaubriands le Geacutenie

du christianisme (1802) research in medieval iconog-

raphy developed mainly in France Works by French

scholars mostly clergymen which were indeed con-

cerned with Christian medieval art dominated icon-

ographical study in the nineteenth century Since most

of these writers were not professional scholars their

work was often amateurish in character but it is unde-

niable that books by A N Didron Histoire de Dieu

(Paris 1843) the first part of a comprehensive pro-

jected but not completed iconography of Christian art

A Crosnier Iconographie chreacutetienne (Caen 1848) C

Cahier Caracteacuteristiques des saints (Paris 1867) C

Rohault de Fleury Archeacuteologie chreacutetienne les saints

de la messe et leurs monuments 12 vols (Paris

1893-1900) L Breacutehier Lart chreacutetien son deacuteveloppe-

ment iconographique des origines agrave nos jours (Paris

1918) P Perdrizet V Leroquais and G de Jerphanion

have built up a solid body of iconographical knowl-

edge on which scholars of the twentieth century were

able to erect a modern comprehensive structure In

the field of Byzantine iconography it was Gabriel

Millets Recherches sur liconographie de leacutevangile aux

XIVe XVe et XVIe siegravecles (Paris 1916 reprint

1960) that was basic for any further study For Western

chiefly French art a well-written and learned work

appealing to the general reader as well as to the

scholar was produced by Eacutemile Macircle who in his four

volumes of the history of religious art (1898-1932) has

presented a well-composed synthetic image of icono-

graphical development A lexicographic summary of

these studies of generations of French scholars is pre-

sented in the Dictionnaire darcheacuteologie chreacutetienne et

de liturgie published from 1907 to 1953 and edited

by F Cabrol and H Leclerq A recent reference work

is that by L Reacuteau Iconographie de lart chreacutetien (Paris

1955-59) Russian scholars have done important work

in the field of Byzantine and Orthodox iconography

of religious art The most prominent are N P Kon-

dakov Ikonografia Bogomatieri (St Petersburg 1911

2nd ed 1914-15) D V Ainalov Mosaiki IV i V vekov

(St Petersburg 1895) and N Pokrovski Otcherki

pamyatnikov christianskogo isskusstva i ikonografii (St

Petersburg 1894 3rd ed 1910) V Lasarev and M

Alpatov belonging to the mid-twentieth-century gen-

eration of Russian scholars discuss iconography in

several works on religious art German scholarship

produced in the nineteenth century works by F Piper

A Springer and H Detzel Useful compendia were

produced in the early twentieth century by J Sauer

W Molsdorf K Kuumlnstle and J Braun Dutch scholars

C Smits J B Knipping and J J M Timmers contrib-

uted to iconographic studies in recent times Knip-

pings book (1939-40) being the most important work

on the iconography of the Counter-Reformation and

supplementing Macircles volume of 1932 In the twentieth

century on C R Moreys initiative iconographic

studies were inaugurated in North America Focused

on earlier medieval art these studies developed at

Princeton University

A new direction characteristic of iconographic

studies in the twentieth century has been given to

them by the international school of art historical re-

search inaugurated by the Hamburg scholar Aby

Warburg At the International Congress for the History

of Art at Rome in 1912 he presented a sensational

astrological interpretation of the frescoes painted by

Francesco Cossa and his collaborators in Palazzo

Schifanoja at Ferrara Warburg solved the secret of

those representations which had puzzled the ingenuity

of several former students interpreting them as images

of zodiacal signs and their decans But he did not limit

536

his contribution to the presentation of his results He

wanted to stress the importance of his approach and

of the method of study which later became connected

with his name He said

I hope that through the method used by me for explication

of the frescoes at the Palazzo Schifanoja of Ferrara I have

proved that an iconological analysis which does not allow

itself to be diverted by the rules of frontier police from

considering antiquity Middle Ages and modern times as

interconnected periods nor from analyzing the most liberal

and the most applied works of art as equally important

documents of expression that this method endeavoring as

it does to throw light upon one dark spot clears up at

the same time great interconnected developments

(Warburg 1912 Heckscher 1967)

Warburgs influence on the history of art was very

great although he himself did not write much It was

mainly the posthumous impact of his ideas promul-

gated as they were by Fritz Saxl which contributed

to the specific direction of studies concentrated in the

library Warburg founded in Hamburg and which Saxl

succeeded in transplanting during the Nazi era to

London where it became the Warburg Institute of the

University of London While the object of study of the

nineteenth-century iconographers was mainly religious

art in its relation to religious literary sources and lit-

urgy for Warburg the study of images was a study

of their relations to religion to poetry to myth to

science and to social and political life Art was for

him closely connected with the polyphonic structure

of historical life

Warburgs ideas had a great importance for the most

influential theory of iconographic interpretation in our

century that elaborated by Erwin Panofsky In Ham-

burg where Warburg Saxl and Panofsky were active

in the twenties Ernst Cassirer built up his philosophy

of symbolic forms which constituted an additional

background for Panofskys system being derived as

his own methodology was from the traditions of

Kantian philosophy Around 1930 Panofskys ideas

ripened into a system which found formulation in his

book herkules am Scheidewege (1930) and later in a

theoretical article of 1932 G J Hoogewerff was how-

ever the first to propose the word ldquoiconologyrdquo as a

name for the method of an analysis of content in a

work of art (Warburg spoke of iconological analysis)

In 1931 he proposed distinguishing between iconogra-

phy as a descriptive science aiming at the identifica-

tion of themes and ldquoiconologyrdquo aiming at the under-

standing ldquoof symbolic dogmatic or mystical meaning

which is expressed (or hidden) in figurative formsrdquo He

stressed that ldquoiconologyrdquo deals with works of art with-

out classifying them according to the technique used

or to the achieved perfection taking into account only

their meaning Hoogewerff saw the last aim of iconol-

ogy in finding out the cultural and ideological back-

ground expressed by works of art and the cultural and

social significance which can be attributed to certain

forms and to means of expression in the same time

Hoogewerffs part in the expansion of iconology was

limited because he did not endorse his methodical

proposals with examples of historical interpretations

Erwin Panofsky with whose name iconology has

been connected ever since not only developed its

theoretical foundations but contributed by his practi-

cal work in art history to the main triumph of iconol-

ogy after the Second World War The most influential

book by Panofsky has been Studies in Iconology (1939)

in which his masterly presentation of the method was

connected with its equally excellent exemplification

2 Panofsky considers the interpretation of a work

of art as falling on three levels On the first level the

object of interpretation is the primary or natural sub-

ject matter The function of interpretation is called

ldquopre-iconographical descriptionrdquo In order to be able

to arrive at a correct interpretation on that level the

interpreter must have a practical experience (ldquofamili-

arity with objects and eventsrdquo) common to everybody

at least in one cultural sphere However he has to

control his observations by a ldquocorrective knowledge

of the history of stylerdquo (ldquoinsight into the manner in

which under varying historical conditions objects and

events were expressed by formsrdquo) On the second level

the function of interpretation is called ldquoiconographical

analysisrdquo its object is the ldquosecondary or conventional

subject matterrdquo constituting the world of images his-

tories and allegories The interpreters equipment in

this case is obviously the knowledge of literary sources

giving him a ldquofamiliarity with specific themes and

conceptsrdquo The interpreter has to control his observa-

tions by ldquothe insight into the manner in which under

varying historical conditions specific themes or con-

cepts were expressed by objects and eventsrdquo On the

third level the function of interpreting is called ldquoicon-

ographical analysis in a deeper senserdquo (1939) or ldquoicon-

ological analysisrdquo (1955) Its object is the ldquointrinsic

meaning or contentrdquo of a work of art The interpreters

equipment on that level should be a ldquofamiliarity with

the essential tendencies of the human mindrdquo and he

has to control his interpretation by the ldquoinsight into

the manner in which under varying historical condi-

tions essential tendencies of the human mind were

expressed by specific themes and conceptsrdquo Thus

taking all the time into account what Panofsky calls

the history of tradition the interpreter has to aim at

understanding the work of art its ldquoprimaryrdquo as well

as ldquosecondary subject matterrdquo as symptoms of some

fundamental tendency of the human mind typical of

537

a place a time a civilization and of an individual

responsible for the creation of the work ldquoIconologyrdquomdash

for Panofskymdashldquois a method of interpretation which

arises from synthesis rather than analysisrdquo Trying to

find the intrinsic meaning of a work of art

The art historian will have to check what he thinks is the

intrinsic meaning of the work or group of works against

what he thinks is the intrinsic meaning of as many other

documents of civilization historically related to that work

or group of works as he can master It is in the search

for intrinsic meaning or content that the various humanistic

disciplines meet on a common plane instead of serving as

handmaidens to each other

(Panofsky [1955] p 39)

The concept of intrinsic meaning of a work of art

was elaborated by Panofsky much earlier (1925) when

he interpreted in his own way the concept of Kunst-

wollen introduced by A Riegl to research in art

Panofsky understood this ldquoartistic volitionrdquo as an im-

manent ultimate meaning of a work of art which is

manifested in the way basic artistic problems are solved

in that work He used the same concept further to bring

art closer to the other fields of human activity Since

the ldquoimmanent ultimate senserdquo of the work of art is

nothing else than uniformity in the way of solving basic

artistic problems it is possible to compare that imma-

nent sense with immanent senses of the other human

works in various fields Panofsky did it for instance

when in one of his later works he compared the struc-

tural principles of Gothic architecture with those of

scholastic thinking (1951)

The system elaborated by Panofsky and exemplified

by his own work in art history was the first consistent

system of an integral interpretation of a work of visual

arts based on the analysis of content In principle

Panofskys system takes into account all the elements

of the work of art since it takes as the point of depar-

ture the sensual exterior shape of the work It is

however clear that its main scope is not the inter-

pretation of form as a bearer of meaning but the

understanding and interpretation of conventional alle-

gories literary themes and symbols as symptoms of

the history of the human mind It was that method

in the history of art which programmatically fostered

a collaboration with all the other disciplines of histori-

cal studies It was therefore one of the most influential

methods not only among art historians but also among

representatives of the other branches of humanistic

studies Although there were art historians who ex-

pressed a critical attitude toward ldquoiconologyrdquo as the

new method was soon baptized its influence was over-

whelming

3 It is not only but mainly due to Panofsky that

one can venture to call ldquoiconographicalrdquo that period

of art history as a historical discipline which followed

the Second World War and to oppose it to the ldquostylis-

ticrdquo one which preceded it It does not mean of course

that no iconographic research took place in the

twenties or thirties the works of Macircle Knipping van

Marle Wilpert Saxl and of Panofsky himself would

contradict such a statement Neither is it true that

purely formal research aiming at stylistic classification

and analysis discontinued after World War II It is

evident that in the last decades (from 1940 on) icono-

graphic interests came to the fore and became domi-

nant in many countries Iconographical studies grew

so much in number and importance that they made

it possible to undertake and to publish new reference

works of iconographic character like dictionaries

written by one scholar (Guy de Tervarent Aurenham-

mer) as well as larger works based on a collaboration

of several scholars (Encyclopedias of German art of

Antiquity and Christian civilization of Byzantine art)

Interest in meaning and iconography has appeared

also among historians of political social and religious

institutions The symbolism of signs ceremonies cos-

tumes and arms was studied by such scholars as A

Alfoumlldi ldquoInsignien und Tracht der roumlmischen Kaiserrdquo

Mitteilungen des deutschen Archaumlologischen Instituts

Roumlmische Abteilung (1935) 1ff ldquoDie Geburt der

kaiserlichen Bildsymbolikrdquo museum Helveticum 9

(1952) 204ff also by A Grabar Martyrium (Paris

1943-46) by E H Kantorowicz laudes Regiae

(Berkeley and Los Angeles 1946) The Kings Two

Bodies (Princeton 1957) by H P L Orange Studies

in the Iconography of Cosmic Kingship in the Ancient

World (Oslo 1953) Art Forms and Civic Life in the

Late Roman Empire (Princeton 1965) and by P E

Schramm herrschaftszeichen und Staatssymbolik

(Stuttgart 1954-56) In their studies iconography far

transcends the borders of art and it helps to build up

a history of ideas by following their various visual

expressions

Pioneering studies by K Giehlow F Saxl and E

Panofsky enlarged iconographical interests above all

to encompass the large field of secular art whereas

they had been mainly limited to religious iconography

in the work of preceding generations of scholars The

whole complicated and hardly known large body of

meanings disguised by the cryptic language of hiero-

glyphs emblems and iconologies became one of the

main topics of study

This established a collaboration between historians

of art and literature Mario Prazs admirable study of

emblems and his bibliography of emblem books

(1939-47) belongs now to the foundations of studies

in that field Publications by W S Heckscher and

A K Wirth by R S Clements E F von Monroy and

538

H M von Erffa E de Jongh and H Miedema and

several other scholars have elucidated the structure

and meaning of emblems and have shown their tre-

mendous influence on art even in its most monumental

and dignified forms An uninterrupted flow of reprints

of emblem books which brought within the reach of

modern students inaccessible volumes of sixteenth- and

seventeenth-century emblem writers were crowned by

the monumental undertaking of Arthur Henkel and

Albrecht Schoumlne who compiled an excellent volume

including almost all the texts and images needed for

the study of emblemsmdashEmblemata Handbuch zur

Sinnbildkunst des XVI und XVII Jahrhunderts

(Stuttgart 1967) Research was under way on hiero-

glyphs (Erik Iversen) and on the imprese (the late

Robert Klein) as well as on iconologies and allegories

These studies have disclosed meanings of the art of

the Renaissance of mannerism and of the baroque not

understood by nineteenth-century scholars

E Panofsky deciphered extremely farfetched and

individualistic programs of decoration of such famous

ensembles as the Camera di San Paolo by Correggio

in Parma the Gallery of Franccedilois I at Fontainebleau

Edgar Wind Andreacute Chastel and other scholars inter-

preted Raphaels decorations in the Popes apartments

Michelangelos art furnished material to detailed com-

prehensive studies by Panofsky Ch de Tolnay H von

Einem and Pope-Hennessy in which the share of

Neo-Platonic thinking in the ideological background

of the celebrated works of Michelangelo was discussed

Innumerable studies have been devoted to Titians

mythological paintings J R Martin presented expla-

nations of the Carracci frescoes in the Camerino Far-

nese and in the great gallery of the Palazzo Farnese

Bruegel considered in the nineteenth century as a drocircle

painter of peasant life has been shown by de Tolnay

Stridbeck and others to be an allegorist expressing a

skeptical humanistic outlook J S Held and W

Stechow contributed several articles to the under-

standing of mythological and allegorical contents in

Flemish and Dutch art of the sixteenth and seventeenth

centuries Rembrandts iconography was put into new

light by the two above-mentioned scholars as well as

by H M Rotermund H van de Waal J G van Gelder

H von Einem and Ch Tuumlmpel The intricate symbol-

ism and subject matter of historical and mythological

pictures by Nicolas Poussin were elucidated by such

masters of iconographic research as E H Gombrich

W Friedlaumlnder E Panofsky and above all by A Blunt

who in his monograph on Poussin presented a new

deep synthetic view of the ideas expressed by that

artists works Goyas individualistic secret symbolism

was also studied with the help of emblems and the

allegorical tradition Berninis works received iconolo

gical treatment by R Wittkower and H Kauffmann

All of this research does not mean that there was a

lack of interest in religious iconography M Schapiro

A Katzenellenbogen H Bober F Wormald and V

Elbern among others have contributed considerably

to deepen our understanding of the not completely

explained motifs and prominent works of medieval art

Panofsky has also shed a new light on several problems

of sepulchral iconography studies by such scholars as

R Berliner G von der Osten L Kalinowski S

Ringbom and T Dobrzeniecki contributed to late

medieval iconography in a new way Berliner stressed

the autonomous invention of visual artists or their

patrons while according to the traditional view popu-

larized by Macircle late medieval art should have followed

strictly literary sources

The religious content of modern art especially its

allegorical form in the late baroque period has been

examined and thanks to studies by such scholars as

W Mrazek and H Bauer has become better known

and understandable A great change was introduced

by ldquoiconologyrdquo into architectural history Buildings

which were formerly interpreted from aesthetic and

functional points of view only have been shown to

present allegorical symbolical or even emblematic

ideas Publications by leading art historians (R Witt-

kower B Smith G Bandmann O von Simson and

G C Argan) have presented medieval and modern

architecture as a bearer of meaning and have essen-

tially changed the character of architectural history

The iconography of classicism and romanticism

received a thorough treatment in books by W Hof-

mann and R Rosenblum as well as in several studies

devoted to individual themes and pictures G Hersey

has for example shown how much Delacroixs decora-

tion of the library in the Palais Bourbon owed to

Giambattista Vicos ideas about history More recently

studies on ldquoSymbolismrdquo have been undertaken Vincent

van Goghs symbolic language and iconography were

the object of studies by J Seznec C Nordenfalk and

other scholars On Ceacutezannes iconography interesting

remarks have been published by M Schapiro

Along with the development of iconographic studies

the establishment of centers of documentation has

advanced The ldquoFrenchrdquo stage in the development of

iconography has not left any marked trace in this

respect It was in America thanks to C R Morey that

the famous Index of Christian Art at the Department

of Art and Archaeology of Princeton University was

founded at first limited to the early Middle Ages then

enlarged so as to include art up to the end of the

medieval period Copies of the Princeton Index are

to be found also at the Istituto Pontificio dArcheolo-

gia in Rome and in the Dumbarton Oaks Library and

539

Collection in Washington DC But that Index ends

ldquowhere art beginsrdquomdashas Panofsky used to say jokingly

The need for systematic iconographic files for modern

art was strongly felt In 1956 A Pigler published a

very useful book Barockthemen in which he listed

thousands of works of art of the baroque period ac-

cording to their subjects It was however far from

being a systematic work The first essay in establishing

a systematic iconographic index for art of any time

was done by The Netherlands Institute for Art History

at the Hague then directed by H Gerson which took

the initiative around 1950 of publishing a postcard-size

photographic index of its rich collection of photographs

of Netherlandish art ordered according to an icono-

graphic principle Once such an idea was formulated

the need for a comprehensive consistent and clear

iconographic classification was urgent H van de Waal

of Leiden University devised such a system of classifi-

cation based on decimal divisions consistent and easy

to read He based his system on experiences of ethnol-

ogy and on such elaborated systems of classification

as that devised by Stith Thompson in his Motif-Index

of Folk Literature Vols I-VI (Bloomington Ind

1932-36 rev ed 1955-58) Van de Waal has elabor-

ated a system in which the first five main sections

classify five fundamental groups of portrayable things

namely (1) The Supernatural (2) Nature (3) Man (4)

Society (5) Abstracts The last four classify specific

subjects such as (6) History (7) The Bible (8) Myths

Legends and Tales (with the exception of classical

antiquity) (9) Myths and Legends of Classical Antiq-

uity Van de Waal combines the classification in the

first and in the second group in order to classify general

as well as specific subjects Christ in his system is

described with the sign ldquo11 Drdquo (ldquo1rdquo standing for Su-

pernatural ldquo11rdquo for Christianity ldquoDrdquo for Christ) the

adult Christ = 11 D 3 since ldquoshepherdrdquo on the other

hand bears the signature 47 I 221 the adult Christ

as a shepherd can be described in this system by the

following formula 11 D 3 = 47 I 221 Van de Waal

has also provided means to describe more complex

images which he expresses by adding elements between

brackets The Annunciation with God the Father and

a winged Angel is expressed by the following formula

73 A 5 (+1 +41) ldquo1rdquo standing for God the Father

and ldquo41rdquo for a winged Angel (van de Waal 1952) This

system elaborated for many years by its inventor and

prepared for publication in many volumes has proved

most useful in the practical arrangement of the Icono-

graphical Index of the Netherlandish Art and as the

only one until now in existence it became used more

and more in spite of some ambiguities and difficulties

As an endeavor to classify ldquoall portrayablerdquo things

persons events and ideas and to create a consistent

method to describe every possible image van de Waals

system may be considered as one of the important

achievements of the ldquoiconographical stagerdquo in the

development of art history Iconographic files exist of

course in many institutions as for example in the Ikon-

ologisch Instituut of Utrecht University one of the

main centers of study in emblematics and of course

in the most venerable institution of iconographic re-

search the Warburg Institute of the London University

and in other places

4 What was the result of this ldquoiconographicrdquo turn

in the development of the history of art One thing

is certain that this discipline by necessity has come

closer to other humanistic disciplines Since the

ldquointrinsicrdquo meaningmdashin Panofskys terminologymdashof a

work of art cannot be described in terms used by the

history of art but only in terms borrowed from the

history of philosophy of religion of social structures

of science and so on the ldquoiconological methodrdquo took

for granted and provoked such a collaboration Art

history was perhaps the first or one of the first to show

new interest in investigation of meaning It was fol-

lowed by similar developments in ethnology and in

linguistics

We have mentioned above a parallel development

in Byzantine and classical studies Panofskys influence

has been considerable in the other fields of humanistic

research Since ldquoiconologyrdquo aimed at discovering ideas

expressed by a work of art it awoke in art historians

an interest in the history of ideas This general shift

of emphasis and of the direction of studies from mainly

formal ones to studies aiming at ideas underlying art

was perhaps responsible among others for the fact that

several contributions to the Journal of the History of

Ideas have been written by historians of art

It is not difficult to see that such a development

should have provoked criticism on the side of those

who care about the purity and autonomy of methods

Iconology was criticized as far as its internal coherence

and also as far as its claim to be the integral method

of the study of art are concerned (Białostocki 1962)

Studies by R Klein E Forssman G Previtali G

Kubler B Teyssegravedre C Ginzburg and G Hermeren

expressed critical opinions in one or the other respect

Iconology linked art with the rest of history but it

disrupted the links between the work of art and other

things (Kubler 1962) Concentrating on meaning

iconology neglected art as form as individual expres-

sion Iconology implied a rational relationship between

intellectual content and artistic form On the one hand

one spoke of ldquoiconological diminutionsrdquo (Kubler

1962)mdashlimitations of research to meaning only But

on the other hand the overstatements of iconology

were criticized its representatives sometimes seemed

540

to assume everything symbolized something And some

iconologists seemed to consider important in art not

that which makes art a different field of human activity

but that which connects art with other fieldsmdashwith

the history of ideas

There were of course critics who had the opposite

opinion Since the end of the eighteenth century a

direct experience of art was more and more valued

and its symbolical function considered as a burden

J G von Herder said ein Kunstwerk ist der Kunst

wegen da aber bei einem Symbole ist die Kunst

dienend (ldquoA work of art is there because of art but

with a symbol art is a servicerdquo) Similar opinions were

expressed by nineteenth-century art writers and in this

century they have been voiced by Benedetto Croce and

by other Italian opponents of contenutismo by which

they meant interest in content For such critics to put

stress on iconography was to miss the essential in art

and to focus attention on a subordinate function of art

Also among scholars who considered the function

of representation and of communication as a legitimate

and important function of art criticism was expressed

not against the principle of an iconographical or icon-

ological investigation but against overstatements in

their application The introduction of the idea of ldquodis-

guised symbolismrdquo has created a danger of course of

opening the way to fanciful interpretations The alle-

gorical and symbolical function of mythological imag-

ery in classical art is also difficult to interpret precisely

Since no literary sources give a key to an interpretation

of the iconography of the sarcophagi very divergent

theories have been expressed concerning their meaning

Some archaeologists like F Cumont (1942) believe

that mythological and allegorical imagery (Anadyo-

mene Sea-Thiasos Personifications of the Seasons) is

to be read symbolically The Sea-Thiasos for instance

is to be interpreted as a symbol of the journey of the

souls of the deceased to the islands of the blessed

Others like A D Nock (1946) do not find enough

evidence to accept other than a decorative function

in such imagery

The intrusion of some representatives of psychology

eg C G Jung into iconographic studies giving them

an unhistorical turn in their search for ldquoarchetypal

imagesrdquo has complicated the situation although art

historians in general understandably have not accepted

that kind of approach to symbolism (Frankfort 1958

Gombrich 1965)

The fact that iconographic interpretations sometimes

lack satisfactory proofs does not detract from the im-

portance of such investigations so long as they are

conducted according to the requirements of historical

methods and take into account the corrective princi-

ples established by Panofsky A correct acquaintance

with the way of thinking of the artist the patron or the

viewer based on a satisfactory knowledge of documen-

tary visual and literary sources an awareness of the

choice situations produced by historical developments

may enable art historians to discover the secondary

meaning of a work of art as well as its intrinsic mean-

ing It is of course possible that the art historian will

meet some works for which it will not be possible to re-

construct in a satisfactory way the world of ideas that

would account for the meaning of those works In such

cases a reliable interpretation is simply not possible

R Berliner (1945 1966) criticized the widespread

opinion according to which content of the works of

visual arts in the Middle Ages had to be checked

against the literary sources considered as the only

medium in which ideological innovations were per-

mitted Berliner pleaded for assuming a considerable

ldquofreedomrdquo in the medieval artist and he considered

iconographic innovation possible even when no writ-

ten evidence could be found Meyer Schapiro (1947)

presented proofs that sometimes purely aesthetic rea-

sons decided the character of the work of art even as

early as the Romanesque period

We can only touch on some specific discussions going

on in the field of iconographic research But iconogra-

phic research is far from being a closed system and

the relative share of iconographic and stylistic criticism

in the work of art historians is always a matter of

discussion It is certain that the ldquoiconographicrdquo period

in the study of art has enlarged in a considerable way

the understanding of the art of the past and that it

has connected art history in a way unknown before

with the other historical disciplines and above all others

with the history of ideas

BIBLIOGRAPHY

L B Alberti On Painting ed J Spencer (New Haven

1956 revised ed 1966) E Auerbach ldquoFigurardquo (1944) trans

and published in Scenes From the Drama of European Liter-

ature (New York 1959) pp 11-76 K Bauch ldquoImagordquo

(1960) Studien zur Kunstgeschichte (Berlin 1967) pp 1-20

G P Bellori Descrizione delle imagini dipinte da Raffaello

(Rome 1695 ed used is 1751) R Berliner ldquoThe Free-

dom of Medieval Artrdquo Gazette des Beaux-Arts 628 (1945)

263-88 idem ldquoBemerkungen zu einigen Darstellungen des

Erloumlsers als Schmerzensmannrdquo Das Muumlnster 9 (1956)

97-117x J Białostocki ldquoIconografia e Iconologiardquo Enciclo-

pedia Universale dellArte (1962) Vol VII cols 163-75

trans as Encyclopedia of World Art (1966) Vol VII cols

769-85 lists almost all important older contributions to this

field idem ldquoRomantische Ikonographierdquo Stil und Ikonog-

raphie (Dresden 1966) pp 156-81 idem ldquoKompozycja

emblematyczna epitafioacutew ślaskich XVI wiekurdquo (ldquoEmblem-

atic Composition of Silesian Epitaphs of the Sixteenth Cen-

turyrdquo) Ze studioacutew nad Sztuka XVI wieku na Řlasku

(Wrocław 1968) pp 77-93 idem ldquoEsilio Privatordquo Bulletin

du Museacutee National de Varsovie 10 (1969) 95-101 J

541

Chydenius The Theory of Medieval Symbolism (Helsingfors

1960) Series of the Societas Scientiarum Fennica Com-

mentationes Humanarum Litterarum 27 2 R J Clements

Picta Poesis (Rome 1960) F Creuzer Symbolik und

Mythologie der Alten Voumllker (Leipzig and Darmstadt 1810

revised ed 1819) F Cumont Recherches sur le symbolisme

funeacuteraire des Romains (Paris 1942) L Eitner ldquoThe Open

Window and the Storm-Tossed Boatrdquo Art Bulletin 37

(1955) 281-90 H Frankfort ldquoThe Archetype in Analytical

Psychology and the History of Religionrdquo Journal of the

Warburg and Courtauld Institutes 21 (1958) 166-78

K Garas ldquoAllegorie und Geschichte in der Venezianischen

Malerei des 18 Jahrhundertsrdquo in proceedings of the XXI

International Congress of the History of Art Bonn Stil und

Uumlberlieferung in der Kunst des Abendlandes (Berlin 1967)

3 280-83 K Giehlow ldquoDie Hieroglyphenkunde des

Humanismus in der Allegorie der Renaissancerdquo Jahrbuch

der Kunsthistorischen Sammlungen des Allerhochsten

Kaiserhauses 32 (1915) 1-232 C Gilbert ldquoOn Subject and

Not-Subject in Italian Renaissance Picturesrdquo Art Bulletin

34 (1952) 202-16 C Ginzburg ldquoDa A Warburg a E H

Gombrich Note su un problema di metodordquo Studi medi-

evali series 3 7 (1966) 1015-65 E H Gombrich ldquoIcones

Symbolicae The Visual Image in Neo-Platonic Thoughtrdquo

Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes 11 (1948)

163-92 idem ldquoThe Use of Art for the Study of Symbolsrdquo

American Psychologist 20 (1965) A Grabar Liconoclasme

byzantin Dossier archeacuteologique (Paris 1957) idem Chris-

tian Iconography A Study of Its Origins (Princeton 1969)

S J Gudlaugsson De Comedianten bij Jan Steen en zijn

tijdgenooten (s-Gravenhage 1945) W S Heckscher ldquoThe

Genesis of Iconologyrdquo Stl und Uumlberlieferung in der Kunst

des Abendlandes Akten des XXI Internationalen Kon-

gresses fuumlr Kunstgeschichte (Berlin 1967) 3 239-62 G

Hermereacuten Representation and Meaning in the Visual Arts

A Study in the Methodology of Iconography and Iconology

Lund Studies in Philosophy Vol I (Lund 1969) R Hinks

Myth and Allegory in Ancient Art (London 1939) W

Hofmann Das Irdische Paradies (Munich 1960) G J

Hoogewerff ldquoLIconologie et son importance pour leacutetude

systeacutematique de lart chreacutetienrdquo Rivista dArcheologia Cris-

tiana 8 (1931) 53-82 E de Jongh Zinne- en minnebeelden

in de schilderkunst van de zeventiende eeuw (mdash1967) idem

ldquoErotica in Vogelperspectief De dubbelzinnigheid van een

reeks 17de eeuwse genrevoorstellingenrdquo Simiolus 3

(1968-69) 22-72 L Kalinowski ldquoTreści ideowe i estetyczne

Drzwi Gnieźnieńskichrdquo (ldquoIdeological and Aesthetic Content

of the Gniezno Bronze Doorsrdquo) in Drzwi Gnieźnieńskie ed

M Walicki (Wroclaw 1959) 2 7-160 H Keller Tizians

Poesie fuumlr Koumlnig Philip II von Spanien (Wiesbaden 1969)

R Klein ldquoLa theacuteorie de lexpression figureacutee dans les traiteacutes

italiens sur les imprese 1555-1612rdquo Bibliothegraveque dHu-

manisme et Renaissance 19 (1957) 320-41 republished with

the other relevant studies in la forme et lintelligible (Paris

1969) R Klibansky E Panofsky F Saxl Saturn and Melan-

choly (London 1964) J B Knipping Ikonografie van de

Contra-Reformatie in de Nederlanden (Hilversum 1939-40)

G Kubler The Shape of Time (New Haven and London

1962) R W Lee ldquoUt pictura poesisrdquo Art Bulletin 22

(1940) 197-269 E Macircle Lart religieux du XIIIe siegravecle en

France (Paris 1898) English ed used (New York 1958)

idem Lart religieux de la fin du Moyen-Age en France

(Paris 1908) idem Lart religieux du XIIe siegravecle en France

(Paris 1922) idem Lart religieux apregraves le Concile de Trente

(Paris 1932) J Maurin Białostocka Lessing i sztuki plas-

tyczne (ldquoLessing and the visual artsrdquo) (Wroclaw Warszawa

Krakoacutew 1969) E F von Monroy Embleme und Emblem-

buumlcher in den Niederlanden 1560-1630 ed H M von Erffa

(Utrecht 1964) J Montagu ldquoThe Painted Enigma and

French Seventeenth Century Artrdquo Journal of the Warburg

and Courtauld Institutes 31 (1968) 307-35 W Mrazek

Ikonologie der barocken Deckenmalerei (Vienna 1953)

Uumlsterreichische Akademie der Wissenschaften Philo-

sophisch-historische Klasse Sitzungsberichte 2283 A D

Nock ldquoSarcophagi and Symbolismrdquo American Journal of

Archaeology 50 (1946) 166ff D Panofsky and E Panofsky

ldquoThe Iconography of the Galeacuterie Franccedilois Ier at Fontaine-

bleaurdquo Gazette des Beaux-Arts 652 (1958) 113-90

E Panofsky ldquoUumlber das Verhaumlltnis der Kunstgeschichte zur

Kunsttheorierdquo Zeitschrift fuumlr Aesthetik und allgemeine

Kunstwissenschaft 18 (1925) 129-61 idem Studies in

Iconology (New York 1939) idem ed Abbot Suger (Prince-

ton 1946) idem Gothic Architecture and Scholasticism

(Latrobe Pa 1951) idem Early Netherlandish Painting

(Cambridge Mass 1953) idem Meaning in the Visual Arts

(Garden City N Y 1955) idem Renaissance and Renas-

cences in Western Art (Stockholm 1960) idem Tomb Sculp-

ture (New York 1964) E Panofsky and F Saxl ldquoClassical

Mythology in Medieval Artrdquo Metropolitan Museum Studies

4 (1932-33) 228-80 M Praz Studies in Seventeenth Cen-

tury Imagery (London 1939-47 2nd ed Rome 1964) S

Ringbom ldquoDevotional Images and Imaginative Devotions

Notes on the Place of Art in Late Medieval Private Pietyrdquo

Gazette des Beaux-Arts 6 73 (1969) 159-70 Joseph Sauer

Symbolik des Kirchengebaumludes und seiner Ausstattung in

der Auffassung des Mittelalters 2nd ed (Freiburg i B

1924) F Saxl ldquoFruumlhes Christentum und spaumltes Heidentum

in ihren kuumlnstlerischen Ausdrucksformenrdquo Wiener Jahrbuch

fuumlr Kunstgeschichte 2 (1923) 63-121 M Schapiro ldquoThe

Ruthwell Crossrdquo Art Bulletin 26 (1944) 232-45 idem ldquoOn

the Aesthetic Attitude in Romanesque Artrdquo in Art and

Thought issued in Honour of Ananda Coomaraswamy

(London 1947) 139-50 J Seznec The Survival of the Pagan

Gods (New York 1953) O G von Simson The Gothic

Cathedral (New York 1956) R E Spear ldquoThe Literary

Source of Poussins Realm of Florardquo The Burlington Maga-

zine 107 (1965) 563-69 L Volkmann Bilderschriften der

Renaissance (Leipzig 1923) Hans van de Waal Drie

eeuwen vaderlandsche geschieduitbeelding 1500-1800 (s-

Gravenhage 1952) idem ldquoSome Principles of a General

Iconographical Classificationrdquo in Actes du XVIIe Congregraves

International dHistoire de lArt Amsterdam 1952 (La Haye

1955) 601-06 E Wind ldquoCharity the Case History of a

Patternrdquo Journal of the Warburg Institute 1 (1937) 322ff

JAN BIAŁOSTOCKI

[See also Allegory Baroque Classicism Criticism Enlight-

enment Motif Myth Naturalism in Art Neo-Platonism

Renaissance Humanism Romanticism Symbolism Tem-

perance Ut pictura poesis]

Apelles) it had to be represented according to the

principle of decorum and costume ie with regard to

its dignity and most truthfully to the literary proto-

type Everything should be suitable in ldquosize function

kind color and other similar thingsrdquo Alberti stressed

the necessity of varied and convincing expressions of

emotions by suitable gestures

The dependence of post-medieval iconography on

literature increased with time and in the seventeenth

century the truthfulness of the pictorial formulation

of literary subjects became one of the most valued

qualities of a work of visual arts ldquoRead the story and

the picture at the same timerdquo Nicolas Poussin wrote

to M de Chantelou one of his customers In the French

Royal Academy of Painting and Sculpture lengthy

discussions were going on concerning the relation of

pictures to literary sources To be able to represent

well subjects taken from poetry the artist had to be

a doctus artifex well-informed in various fields G P

Bellori (1695) stressed however the fact that not

everything good in writing comes out well in painting

Therefore the painter to be able to transform the

story had to acquire ldquoan universal knowledge of things

and he should contemplate precisely nature and reali-

tiesrdquo Some freedom was given to the artist from the

beginning Alberti was far from limiting the painter

too much by this dependence on literature He stressed

the specific requirements of the visual arts as for ex-

ample the necessity to limit the number of represented

figures in order to keep a balance between ldquocopious-

nessrdquo and ldquosolitude in paintingrdquo This made it of

course necessary to reduce crowded scenes to an easily

graspable number of figures in order to avoid ldquodissolute

confusionrdquo (Spencer [1956] pp 23-28)

The interest of early Renaissance art theorists in

iconography was not great They concentrated their

attention chiefly on the discussion of the means needed

to achieve a convincing and beautiful representation

of the istoria and on the specific problems of repre-

sentationmdashcorrect (by adoption of the rules of per-

529

spective) and beautiful (by adoption of the rules of

proportion) Leonardo da Vinci does not show a spe-

cific interest in iconography but in some passages of

his incompleted Treatise on Painting he gives literary

programs of pictures remarkably however the pic-

tures are not of stories but of representations of pow-

erful natural or human happenings such as storms and

battles Here the naturalistic interests of the Renais-

sance come to the fore

An important achievement of the Renaissance partly

affecting iconography was the reunionmdashas noticed and

described by E Panofsky and F Saxl (1932) and Panof-

sky (1960)mdashof the literary and visual traditions of

classical antiquity during the fifteenth century During

the Middle Ages the literary tradition of classical sub-

ject matter was separated from the visual tradition of

classical artistic motifs so that there was no awareness

of their belonging together The classical subjects for

example those taken from Ovid used to be represented

in contemporary medieval stylistic forms classical

artistic motifs on the other hand for example the forms

of garment folds human types gestures compositional

patterns and so on were used to represent Christian

subject matter as in the western portals of the Reims

cathedral or in the pulpits of Nicola or Giovanni

Pisano It was only in the High Renaissance eg in

the works of Raphael Titian Michelangelo and Cor-

reggio that forms and iconography themes and motifs

became reintegrated In this way the classical vision

of classical subjects became sometimes so perfect that

some works created around 1500 could have been

taken for classical originals (for example Bacchus by

Michelangelo) The growing understanding of classical

ideas and forms led to another specific Renaissance

phenomenon called by Panofsky ldquopseudomorphosisrdquo

Certain Renaissance figures became invested with a mean-

ing which for all their classicizing appearance had not been

present in their classical prototypes though it had fre-

quently been foreshadowed in classical literature Owing

to its medieval antecedents Renaissance art was often able

to translate into images what classical art had deemed

inexpressible

(Panofsky [1939] pp 70f)

In the north of Italy beside the concept of istoria

poesia appears a fact which also points to a depend-

ence on poetry this was understood mainly as referring

to lyrical poetry and not to epic or heroic Mythologi-

cal pictures by Titian were described in such a way

(Keller [1969] pp 24f) The stress was on the poetical

mood more than on an important human action a

lyrical tonality was preferred to a heroic one The

archaeological interests then current in Padua and

Venice visible for instance in the works by Andrea

Mantegna were moderated by an elegiac poetic mood

in reconstructing the classical world Pictures by Gior-

gione who worked for exclusive circles of humanists

were so hermetic in meaning that several of them like

the Three Philosophers (Vienna) or the Storm (Venice)

are iconographic riddles up to our own day The same

is true of the enigmatic and poetic iconography of some

pictures by Titian (Sacred and Profane Love in the

Borghese Gallery in Rome) by Lorenzo Lotto or by

the Ferrarese Dosso Dossi

The most important document of this romantic ar-

chaeological vision which strongly influenced icono-

graphical invention in Italy and outside of Italy was

a fantastic romance Hypnerotomachia Poliphili attrib-

uted in the most plausible way to a Franciscan monk

Francesco Colonna and published with beautiful

woodcuts by Aldus Manutius in Venice in 1499 Poetic

visions of a dreamy classical landscape full of ruins

in which the lovers Poliphilo and Polia wander influ-

enced the imagination of artists not less than the excel-

lent woodcuts their impact can be found as far and

as late as in the gardens at Versailles The illustrations

to Hypnerotomachia also popularized hieroglyphic

signs which make their appearance in iconography as

a specific phenomenon of the Renaissance

5 Art conceived as a language may be addressed

to large or to small groups It depends on the scope

of communication It can be intended as a message

to a possibly large audience but it can also be limited

in its appeal to a small selected group of observers

In an extreme case the polarization could be that

between a didactic art appealing to everybody and an

elitarian cryptic message understandable only to the

initiated few Medieval art belonged by far to the first

category the art of the Renaissance to the second

Even in the monumental wall-paintings decorating the

most celebrated places of Christianity such as the

Sistine Chapel or the official rooms of the Popes like

the Stanza della Segnatura even in the sepulchral

chapels of the most important families like the Sassetti

and the Medici the iconographic programs and sym-

bolism are extremely complicated The meaning of the

decoration of the great Gallery of Franccedilois I at Fon-

tainebleau is so cryptic that it was hypothetically ex-

plained only recently by the best specialists in icon-

ography (D and E Panofsky 1958) Few works of

medieval art have provoked such a number of inter-

pretations as the well-known and at first glance seem-

ingly easy to understand pictures like Botticellis

mythologies (Birth of Venus Spring The Uffizi Flor-

ence) like Titians Sacred and Profane Love or like

sculptures such as Michelangelos Medici tombs The

same is true of works by Duumlrer Holbein and Bruegel

in the North A deep symbolism a complicated

iconographymdashespecially current in the circles influ-

530

enced by Neo-Platonismmdashbelonged to the perfection

of the work

This idea had a long life it recurs in 1604 in Carel

van Manders Book of the Painter as well as in Berninis

utterances on the beauty of the concept which adorns

the work The more refined the concept the more

difficult the symbolism the narrower the circle of those

who can really understand the work

Art was considered especially in the exclusive court

social groups or among the humanists as a secret

language accessible to the initiated The visual sign

was connected with words into a specific union of

literature and art which flourished at the time of the

Renaissance of mannerism and of the baroque in the

form of impresa of hieroglyph and of emblem The

roots of the impresamdashthe personal sign and mottomdashare

to be found in chivalrous devices and signs popular

in the late Middle Ages it was brought to Italy from

France and connected with Neo-Platonic speculation

(Klein 1957) Hieroglyphs became popular thanks to

the discovery in 1419 of the Hieroglyphica by Hora-

pollo Niliacus (of the second or fourth century AD)

published in 1505 The humanists believed that this

enigmatic image-script disguised a profound wisdom

of the Egyptians ldquothey supposed that the great minds

of Greece had been initiated into these Egyptian

mysteriesmdashwhich in their turn were of course one

more prefiguration of the teachings of Christrdquo (Seznec

[1953] p 100) Emblems originated from an erudite

intellectual play among the humanists aiming however

at a moral lesson and sometimes considered in a Neo-

Platonic way as symbols revealing to those who con-

template them a higher knowledge of divine mysteries

Emblem included a motto called lemma an image

and an epigram Only the whole of the emblem can

be understood each element of it giving only one part

of the meaning All those cryptic codes of expression

connecting words and images originated as secret and

elitarian The problem of the degree of obscurity was

one of the main points discussed by the theorists of

the emblematics (Clements [1964] pp 191-95) Eras-

mus of Rotterdam stressed that one of the virtues of

the impresa is that its meaning can be grasped only

with an intellectual effort Cesare Ripa (Iconologia

1593) demands that symbolic images be composed ldquoin

the form of enigmardquo Sambucus (1564) required ldquoob-

scuritasrdquo and ldquonovitasrdquo from the emblems Paolo

Giovio represented a reasonable middle ldquoThe device

should not be so obscure as to require the Sybil to

interpret it nor yet so obvious that any literal-minded

person can understand itrdquo Later however the crypto-

grams of hieroglyphics and emblem books began to

be popularized and explained Collections of emblems

became widely known New systematization of icon

ography now of a humanistic one was inaugurated

In 1556 Vincenzo Cartari published the first modern

handbook of mythological imagery le imagini colla

sposizione degli dei degli antichi (Venice 1556) In the

same year Pierio Valeriano produced a rich collection

of Hieroglyphica (Basel 1556) Earlier in 1531 Andrea

Alciati had compiled the first emblem book (Emblema-

tum liber Augsburg 1531) The influence of such

books which went through many translations and edi-

tions and which were imitated and continued all over

Europe grew at the close of the sixteenth and in the

seventeenth century In exclusive groups it happened

much earlier that hieroglyphic astrological and em-

blematic imagery influenced the iconography of im-

portant works of art as for example at the court of

Maximilian I (M Giehlow 1915) sometimes this con-

cerned works done by the most distinguished artists

like Duumlrers Melencolia I (Klibansky et al 1964)

Emblematic principle of composition uniting as it did

the image with the verbal formulations found great

popularity in northern Europe perhaps because the

importance of the word so prominent in Protestantism

was stressed (Luther required ldquofragments from the

Holy Writrdquo to be included in the Epitaph-pictures)

Epitaphs and other religious pictures of the Protestant

North connect words and images in the harmonious

indivisible whole (Białostocki 1968)

In the Netherlands emblems played an important

part in the development of realistic painting in the

seventeenth century since they furnished a rich reper-

tory of imagery charged with allegorical meaning (de

Jongh von Monroy) However the meaning of those

images obvious to the viewer who remembered the

original emblematic context eluded for a long time

later interpreters who were no longer conversant with

the emblems

After Cartari and his followers furnished artists and

patrons with images of classical gods there was a need

felt for another handbook which would enable the

artist to represent and the patron to understand the

abstract moral philosophical scientific and other

ideas symbolized Only then was art able to express

complex thoughts This task was fulfilled by Cesare

Ripa of Perugia who in 1593 published his Iconologia

a handbook explaining how to represent all the incor-

poreal concepts In 1603 Iconologia was republished

with illustrations and became one of the most popular

and influential art books With Ripa in hand art

historiansmdashinitially Eacutemile Macircle (1932)mdashwere able to

decipher hundreds of allegorical statements in paint

and stone guided by this alphabet of personifications

Ripas basic entity was a human figure female more

often than male whose costumes attributes gestures

and other particulars express specific qualities of the

531

idea represented With the publication of Ripas workmdash

translated soon into many languages and frequently

republished and revisedmdashthe humanistic system of

allegorical iconography was established classical gods

and personifications hieroglyphic signs and emblems

connecting words and images this was the material

used by the artists of mannerism and the baroque when

they did not choose to keep to the ldquohistoricalrdquo world

ie to borrow their subjects directly from literature

When they did so when they painted stories they used

to select them not only from Ovid and Vergil but also

from the more recent poems by Ariosto and Tasso and

also from the works of less known writers ancient and

modern Valerius Maximus furnished them with exam-

ples of virtuous behavior These historical examples

were in general either connected with allegorical gen-

eralizations (in the big decorations of the late baroque

the central fresco was often an allegory and the ac-

companying canvas-pictures presented historical ex-

amples of virtues Garas pp 280-83) or conceived in

an allegorical way Ovide moraliseacute was popular already

in the late Middle Ages Its influence persisted also

in the time of the baroque Myths and stories under-

went allegorical interpretations along the lines of that

moralizing commentary

What was considered necessary for an artist around

1600 can be seen from Carel van Manders Book of

the Painter (1604) It included a long theoretical poem

a history of classical and modern Italian and Nether-

landish artists a translation and a moral interpretation

of Ovids Metamorphoses and finally a description of

personifications There is no specific section on reli-

gious iconography since artists were well furnished

with books giving them rules in this respect

Against the humanistic conception of art the Council

of Trent proclaimed rules constituting a new system

of religious iconography which put an end to the live

tradition of medieval art These rules were published

officially by the Church and they have been com-

mented upon and elaborated in books by Joannes

Molanus (1570) Saint Carlo Borromeo (1577) Gabriele

Paleotti (1581) Federico Borromeo (1624) and several

others The rules of the Council governed the decora-

tion of churches and other sacred buildings and the

character of pictures representing sacred subjects A

break between the religious and the secular iconogra-

phy became obvious in theoretical literature although

there existed many emblem books of a very distinct

religious character (G de Montenay 1571 B Arias

Montanus 1571 H Hugo 1624) A new strictly for-

mulated system of religious iconography coexisted in

the seventeenth century with humanistic subject mat-

ter symbolism and allegory The classical nude intro-

duced by the Renaissance into art was strictly forbid

den now in religious art but found a free field of

development in secular mythological and allegorical

works Many artists exercised their imagination in both

fields in some specific fields such as sepulchral iconog-

raphy cooperation between religious and humanistic

symbolism was common In the work of P P Rubens

the various aspects of the new iconography found

perhaps their best expression In his art allegorical

concepts classical gods and heroes triumphs of mythi-

cal beings as well as of secular rulers accompany mar-

tyrdoms of Catholic saints and the triumphs of the

Eucharist What began to be separated in theory could

yet coexist in harmony in the work of a great artist

6 In northern European art (before Rubens) the

renewal of the arts during the Renaissance took the

form of the new study of nature and the elaboration

of the most convincing means of representing the ma-

terial world in an illusionistic way traditional medieval

symbolism was transformed in a specific way produc-

ing what E Panofsky called in 1953 ldquodisguised sym-

bolismrdquo The symbolic meaning connected with objects

and qualities persisted but a new mastery reproduced

these symbolical objects with such a degree of realism

that they did not differ any longer from other objects

not charged with any metaphorical meaning Some-

times the symbolical meaning of represented objects

results from the traditional iconography in an unmistak-

able way sometimes the meaning is hinted at by the

inscriptions placed in the picture or on its frame But

in many cases the modern viewer remains perplexed

without any sufficient clue to decide whether in the

picture he observes he has to do with the beginnings

of the representation of reality for its own sake or

whether the search for specific metaphorical meaning

is justified It is still always a matter of discussion to

decide at which moment the representation of some

objects or some scene in life without any symbolical

(or ldquohistoricalrdquo) implications became possible (Gilbert

1952) Observers of the eighteenth and nineteenth

centuries to whom the meaning of old symbols was

wholly forgotten took many images of the fifteenth and

sixteenth centuries for simple representations of life

Bruegel for example was considered as simply a

painter of joking or working peasants Recent studies

in iconography have shown that these pictures are

saturated with disguised meaning and that it is ex-

tremely rare before about 1550 to meet simple repre-

sentations of nature in painting In graphic arts the

direct depiction of life and landscape began earlier

as in the works of Lombard draughtsmen or in the

incredibly fresh convincing drawings and prints by the

Master of the Housebook There are also early excep-

tions in painting like Albrecht Altdorfers landscape

without any human figures But in general it was only

532

during the second half of the sixteenth century that

landscape genre and still-life painting began to ac-

quire equal rights with religious and humanistic history

and allegory predominantly in Venice and in Antwerp

Even then however the representations of people

working in fields (Jacopo or Francesco Bassano) fol-

lowed the old traditions of Calendar-pictures and in

the background of genre scenes as in Pieter Aertsens

pictures a biblical motif may be found which trans-

forms the whole composition into a storia however

unorthodox

With the development of realistic painting in the

seventeenth century there appeared specific iconogra-

phic problems New subjects slowly found convenient

form They entered the scene patterned after the ven-

erable stories of sacred or of profane iconography

H van de Waal described (1952) the process of the for-

mation of national historical iconography in Holland

Scenes depicting recent happenings from a long strug-

gle for national independence appeared first in forms

assimilated to well-known religious or mythical scenes

This was not only an expedient facilitating their com-

position for by this means the new subjects gained the

decorum inherent in the adopted patterns formed to

express traditional stories Similar procedures may be

seen in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries when

more and more sections of reality became interesting

enough to be represented in art

The transfer of decorum from the sacred or allegori-

cal figures to the humans represented is a means used

in what modern iconographers call ldquoallegorical por-

traiturerdquo Renaissance painters had represented real

people under mythological or even sacred disguise

they gave actual faces of living people to the figures

represented with all the attributes and characteristics

of their mythical sacred or even allegorical qualities

Later it was only the pattern which remained still in

the eighteenth century English portraitists patterned

the effigies of contemporary aristocrats after Michel-

angelos Sybils or after allegories like the Caritas

(Wind 1937) J B Oudry represented the Polish King

in exile Stanisław Leszczyński with all the attributes

of the allegory of exile taken from Ripa identifying

him in this way with personification of his most promi-

nent quality (Białostocki 1969)

Dutch realistic painting of the seventeenth century

is a document of an important iconographic conquest

Landscapes seascapes moonlit night scenes snapshots

of people skating in winter landscapes views of market

places church interiors backyards fishermen old

women preparing food fashionable dishes ready for

lunch merchants and artisans elegant gentlemen pay-

ing visits and folk-surgeons performing sensational

street-operations all this became subject matter for

representation and continued to be considered worthy

of depiction until the end of the nineteenth century

It was first considered as such in Holland only then

slowly everyday subject matter was recognized also by

art-theorists in other countries although it was re-

garded as much less dignified than religious mytholog-

ical or allegorical subjects Only in the nineteenth

century did the vogue of realistic representation of

everyday subjects become widespread In Dutch pic-

tures of the seventeenth century we are often con-

fronted with nothing else than representations of pic-

turesque reality Sometimes however these genre

pictures appear to be illustrations of proverbs expres-

sing moralistic folk-wisdom sometimes they recall

scenes from the popular threater of the rederijkers or

rhetoricians especially pictures by Jan Steen (Gud-

laugsson 1945) they contain allusions to emblems

Sometimes the elegant scenes from bourgeois life in-

clude quite indecent erotic allusions (de Jongh 1967

1969) The ambiguity of these pictures was certainly

a source of specific pleasure for those who knew the

key to their true meaning

7 In Catholic countries allegorical art sacred as

well as profane flourished The twofold character of

symbolic representations mentioned above persisted

in the seventeenth century Aristotelian rational sym-

bolism which used images as words was widespread

in the orthodox Catholic iconography of the Counter-

Reformation as well as in the humanistic visual lan-

guage codified by Ripa and others A mystical Neo-

Platonic symbolism transcending reason reappeared

too Its outspoken document is the treatise by Chris-

toforo Giarda Bibliothecae alexandrinae icones sym-

bolicae of 1626 (Gombrich 1948) For Giarda symbolic

images give the beholder a direct insight into the

mysteries of religion which are not accessible to rea-

son

Thanks to symbolic images the mind which is banished from

heaven into this dark cave of the body its actions held in

bondage by the senses can behold the beauty and form

of the Virtues and Sciences divorced from all matter and

yet adumbrated if not perfectly expressed in colours and

is thus roused to an even more fervent love and desire for

them Who then can sufficiently estimate the magni-

tude of the debt we owe to those who expressed the Arts

and Sciences themselves in images and so brought it about

that we could not only know them but look at them as

it were with our eyes that we can meet them and almost

converse with them

(Gombrich [1948] pp 188f)

Great allegorical compositions covering the ceilings of

baroque churches are often realizations of this princi-

ple For those however who conceived allegory as a

rational operation as a language used for didactic aims

the main problem remained the clarity of the allegori-

533

cal message The larger the audience to whom allegory

was addressed the simpler more obvious its symbolism

should have been The banality of allegorical language

provoked criticism in the eighteenth century Fran-

cesco Algarotti (1762) prefers without any doubt his-

torical representations to the ldquoempty allegories and

complicated mythological allusionsrdquo (Garas [1967] p

280) Especially criticized was the obscurity of these

allegories in which completely original unknown sym-

bols were used Roger de Piles praises his favorite

master Rubens who ldquointroduced only such allegories

elements of which were already known from ancient

artrdquo and opposes him to Charles Lebrun who ldquoinstead

of taking symbols from some known source as the

ancient fable and medals has invented almost all of

them and thus the pictures of this kind became riddles

which the beholder does not want to take the task to

solverdquo To keep the balance between platitudinous

redundancy and utter incomprehensibility was the

crucial problem of late baroque allegorism What is

interesting however is that the idea of the picture

as a riddle was not foreign to the seventeenth century

It appears in France as well as in Sweden where David

Kloumlcker Ehrenstrahl (1694) proposed that pictures

present riddles that could not be solved by everyone

In France however the ldquopainted enigmardquo fostered

by the Jesuits in their schools flourished especially well

in the seventeenth century (Montagu 1968) These

ldquopainted enigmasrdquo lent themselves to various inter-

pretations and gave interpreters an opportunity to

show their ingenuity These pictures and their inter-

pretations seem to prove that a considerable flexibility

of meaning was intended

We might rather accept that a work of art was regarded

in the seventeenth century as in a certain sense an open

symbol raw material like the myth or sacred story which

it illustrates on which the interpreter might exercise the

power of his ingenuity turning it into an allegory of Chris-

tian doctrine or a panegyric in honour of his patron

(Montagu [1968] p 334)

Such a situation probably existed only in some specific

circles It was a limiting case The other extreme was

to use in an uninteresting routine way Ripas symbolic

images or those of other popular symbolic handbooks

Such practice continued well into the eighteenth cen-

tury The general trend fed by ideas of the Enlighten-

ment was to make allegories more and more obvious

It is understandable that some theorists like the Count

de Caylus looked for new subject matter presenting

as he did Tableaux tireacutes de lIliade (1755) or that

J J Winckelmann tried to revive allegory and to give

it a new force It was however too late In the eight-

eenth century together with the whole system of

humanistic tradition the systems of iconography began

to disintegrate The great break in the tradition con-

cerned not only style but also iconography Emblem-

atic roots may be discovered in Goyas symbolism as

well as in the reasonable allegories of the Enlighten-

ment but generally speaking there was a search for

new not known or not used sourcesmdashas in William

Blakes biblical individualistic imagerymdashor the new

staging of the old ones as in Jacques Louis Davids

classical subjects

The art of romanticism was a definite break with

the past much more in the field of ideas and iconogra-

phy than in a stylistic respect where romanticists

retrospectively looked back either to medieval and

pre-Raphaelite or to baroque sources Symbols and

allegories yielded to an all-pervading mood and the

traditional repertory of religious allegorical mytho-

logical and historical iconography gave way to a new

iconography Although several encompassing images

of Christian and humanistic art survived they received

new content and essentially changed their character

New attitudes of the individual to the world of nature

and history to society and destiny to time and death

and new problems resulting from the striving after

freedom (which was a new perhaps most important

principle of human behavior in all fields of human

activity) found expression in new thematic fields and

in new particular themes such as ldquoStorm-tossed Boatrdquo

ldquoLonely Wanderer in the Mountainsrdquo ldquoA Death of the

Herordquo (Eitner 1955 Hofmann 1960 Białostocki

1966)

Romanticism has not formed and could not have

formed an iconographic system for since they strived

first of all for originality of individual conception the

romantics interpreted images in a subjective way as

expressions of mood Romanticism has on the other

hand introduced new heroes and martyrs into art

instead of religious ones the national social and artis-

tic ones It created a new image of history seen now

as a set of political and moral examplesmdashas in

baroquemdashbut often put together now according to a

very individualistic principle of choice A correlative

to pathetic and heroic romanticism was a bourgeois

and intimate romanticism its expression was for ex-

ample the new imagery of the open window which

shows to the viewer wide perspectives but shelters him

at the same time from the dangers of the unknown

(Eitner 1955)

When the world of ideas and images created at the

moment of the flowering of romanticism began to be

popularized for the use of the large bourgeois masses

the contentmdashideological and iconographicalmdashof ro-

manticism lost its original authenticity and left be-

hind not a new system of original images but a dispo-

534

sition to melodramatic experiences and an inflation of

a theatrical gesture (Hofmann 1960 Białostocki 1966)

The nineteenth century developed a realistic por-

traiture of man and nature and took over worn out

clicheacutes of the Renaissance and baroque allegories It

introduced new subject matter taken partly from tra-

dition partly from observation of reality tinted with

vague symbolism such as ldquoForgerdquo or the ldquoFuneral of

the Peasantrdquo but it did not create a new system of

iconography in spite of short-lived revivals of symbol-

istic attitudes in such movementsmdashincidentally not

limited to and not initiated in the visual artsmdashas

ldquosymbolismrdquo

New ephemeral artistic movements which consti-

tuted the history of European art in the last hundred

years show an interesting bracketing of style and icon-

ography in spite of a preponderant lack of iconogra-

phic interest Their representatives chose subjects suit-

able to specific artistic aims and means which they

developed and were interested in Impressionists

painted seaside scenes landscapes and genre pictures

showing the life of artistic and intellectual milieus

Cubists introduced a specific repertory of still-life

motifs symbols of the artists atelier and of the life

of the bohegraveme bottles musical instruments books

fruits flowers newspapers How much these motifs

were connected with specific cubist style appears when

one looks at works of artists foreign to the original

cubist group but imitating its style as for instance

several Czech artists like Emil Filla They adopted

cubist iconography together with cubist style Abstract

movements in general lacked iconography although

they were not foreign to symbolic tendencies espe-

cially in sculpture (Brancusi Moore) Only in the dec-

ades of 1950-70 can a revival of more articulated and

programmatic symbolism be observed One may sup-

pose that this revival is at least in part brought about

by the development of research in iconography and

symbolism which took place in the second and third

quarters of our century

II

1 The origins of ldquointerpretative iconographyrdquo may

be seen in the descriptions (ekphrasis) of works of art

known in classical literature But these descriptions

like those by Philostratus the Elder or Lucian are

limited simply to description and lack in general any

interpretation Moreover it is not certain whether they

are descriptions of actual or fictitious works of art at

least opinions in this respect vary Brief medieval tituli

which formulated in words the content of religious

images were to be sure interpretative sometimes but

they were short and cannot be connected with the

tradition of artistic erudition We have to look to

modern times to indicate the beginnings of iconogra-

phic interpretation and research From Vasaris Rag-

ionamenti in which interpretations of the paintings

decorating the Palazzo Vecchio in Florence are given

we learn how complicated and how undecipherable

iconographic concepts might have been even to peo-

ple living in buildings decorated by paintings expres-

sing these concepts But perhaps the first really to be

considered as interested in iconographic research was

the seventeenth-century archaeologist and art theorist

Giovanni Pietro Bellori In the introduction to his Lives

of Artists (1672) Bellori stressed that he paid special

attention to the content of the works of art he was

talking about and he even credited the painter Nicolas

Poussin with having directed his attention to iconogra-

phy In his Lives Bellori presented short interpretative

descriptions of pictures and he sometimes developed

these interpretations further in small iconographic

essays the influence of classical ekphrasis on him is

a possibility Sometimes his errors took deep roots in

the subsequent history of art as when he explained

Poussins Triumph of Flora (Dresden) by designating

Ovids Metamorphoses as its source The true source

Marinos Adona was finally found by R E Spear in

1965

What is interesting in Belloris procedure is that he

first identifies the motifs tries to connect them with

classical or modern literary sources and then proceeds

to find out the deep meaning the general symbolic

idea of the work Therefore he may be considered as

one of the pioneers not only of iconography as a disci-

pline of research but also of iconology as formulated

by its recent partisans That even in the second half

of the sixteenth century some observers were inclined

to look for hidden meaning in each element of the work

of art we learn from Joannes Molanus (1570) who in

De picturis et imaginibus sacris states reasonably that

ldquoit is not necessary to ask for meaning of everything

that can be observed in a picture in such cases a lot

of absurd things may resultrdquo But the consciousness of

the importance of iconography increased and at the

end of the seventeenth century Andreacute Feacutelibien stressed

that in order to attribute a picture to a painter it is

not enough to know the way he uses his brush one

needs also to know his esprit to learn his geacutenie and

to be able to foresee in which way he is able to form

his conceptions Thus iconographic analysis was con-

sidered necessary even for the purpose of attribution

Descriptive interpretations of the works of ancient

art appeared in the big archaeological publications of

the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries such as

Jacques Spons Miscellanea eruditae antiquitatis (1679)

G P Belloris Admiranda romanarum antiquitatum ac

veteris sculpturae vestigia (1693) P de Caylus Recueil

535

dantiquiteacutes eacutegyptiennes eacutetrusques grecques et

romaines (1752-67) and in an interesting endeavor

(although very much criticized by Lessing) of Joseph

Spence to explain classical poets through works of art

and vice versa (Polymetis 1747) Classical archaeology

however has not been especially interested in iconog-

raphy and the use of the term itself by archaeolo-

gists was limited to portraiture The first great devel-

opment of iconographic studies was connected with

the romantic movement although an important pre-

lude for it was hagiographical collections of sources

such as Acta sanctorum published by the Bollandists

(1643-1794 resumed later) Among the pre-romantic

scholars in iconography the eminent German poet

G E Lessing is to be noted His study of the repre-

sentation of death in classical times can be considered

as one of the first essays in interpretative iconography

which is now called iconology In Wie die Alten den

Tod gebildet (1769) Lessing tries to interpret the classi-

cal iconographic type of Amor with the inverted torch

and to find its ldquointrinsic meaningrdquo by taking into ac-

count the religion customs and philosophy of the

classical world The work of art is interpreted by Less-

ing as ldquoa symptom of something elserdquo While Lessings

predecessors (like B de Montfaucon) ldquoexplained the

classical past by monumentsrdquo he for the first time did

the opposite ldquohe explained the monuments by Antiq-

uityrdquo (Maurin Białostocka [1969] pp 92-100)

Pre-romantic and romantic interests in myth and

symbol found their expression in publications and dis-

cussions by German philosophers and scholars like F

Schlegel J Herder J J von Goumlrres and F Creuzer

Creuzers work Symbolik und Mythologie der alten

Voumllker (1810) which shows the influence of mystical

Neo-Platonic ideas on symbols (Gombrich 1965) was

the most influential in the romantic period in Ger-

many Under the impact of Chateaubriands le Geacutenie

du christianisme (1802) research in medieval iconog-

raphy developed mainly in France Works by French

scholars mostly clergymen which were indeed con-

cerned with Christian medieval art dominated icon-

ographical study in the nineteenth century Since most

of these writers were not professional scholars their

work was often amateurish in character but it is unde-

niable that books by A N Didron Histoire de Dieu

(Paris 1843) the first part of a comprehensive pro-

jected but not completed iconography of Christian art

A Crosnier Iconographie chreacutetienne (Caen 1848) C

Cahier Caracteacuteristiques des saints (Paris 1867) C

Rohault de Fleury Archeacuteologie chreacutetienne les saints

de la messe et leurs monuments 12 vols (Paris

1893-1900) L Breacutehier Lart chreacutetien son deacuteveloppe-

ment iconographique des origines agrave nos jours (Paris

1918) P Perdrizet V Leroquais and G de Jerphanion

have built up a solid body of iconographical knowl-

edge on which scholars of the twentieth century were

able to erect a modern comprehensive structure In

the field of Byzantine iconography it was Gabriel

Millets Recherches sur liconographie de leacutevangile aux

XIVe XVe et XVIe siegravecles (Paris 1916 reprint

1960) that was basic for any further study For Western

chiefly French art a well-written and learned work

appealing to the general reader as well as to the

scholar was produced by Eacutemile Macircle who in his four

volumes of the history of religious art (1898-1932) has

presented a well-composed synthetic image of icono-

graphical development A lexicographic summary of

these studies of generations of French scholars is pre-

sented in the Dictionnaire darcheacuteologie chreacutetienne et

de liturgie published from 1907 to 1953 and edited

by F Cabrol and H Leclerq A recent reference work

is that by L Reacuteau Iconographie de lart chreacutetien (Paris

1955-59) Russian scholars have done important work

in the field of Byzantine and Orthodox iconography

of religious art The most prominent are N P Kon-

dakov Ikonografia Bogomatieri (St Petersburg 1911

2nd ed 1914-15) D V Ainalov Mosaiki IV i V vekov

(St Petersburg 1895) and N Pokrovski Otcherki

pamyatnikov christianskogo isskusstva i ikonografii (St

Petersburg 1894 3rd ed 1910) V Lasarev and M

Alpatov belonging to the mid-twentieth-century gen-

eration of Russian scholars discuss iconography in

several works on religious art German scholarship

produced in the nineteenth century works by F Piper

A Springer and H Detzel Useful compendia were

produced in the early twentieth century by J Sauer

W Molsdorf K Kuumlnstle and J Braun Dutch scholars

C Smits J B Knipping and J J M Timmers contrib-

uted to iconographic studies in recent times Knip-

pings book (1939-40) being the most important work

on the iconography of the Counter-Reformation and

supplementing Macircles volume of 1932 In the twentieth

century on C R Moreys initiative iconographic

studies were inaugurated in North America Focused

on earlier medieval art these studies developed at

Princeton University

A new direction characteristic of iconographic

studies in the twentieth century has been given to

them by the international school of art historical re-

search inaugurated by the Hamburg scholar Aby

Warburg At the International Congress for the History

of Art at Rome in 1912 he presented a sensational

astrological interpretation of the frescoes painted by

Francesco Cossa and his collaborators in Palazzo

Schifanoja at Ferrara Warburg solved the secret of

those representations which had puzzled the ingenuity

of several former students interpreting them as images

of zodiacal signs and their decans But he did not limit

536

his contribution to the presentation of his results He

wanted to stress the importance of his approach and

of the method of study which later became connected

with his name He said

I hope that through the method used by me for explication

of the frescoes at the Palazzo Schifanoja of Ferrara I have

proved that an iconological analysis which does not allow

itself to be diverted by the rules of frontier police from

considering antiquity Middle Ages and modern times as

interconnected periods nor from analyzing the most liberal

and the most applied works of art as equally important

documents of expression that this method endeavoring as

it does to throw light upon one dark spot clears up at

the same time great interconnected developments

(Warburg 1912 Heckscher 1967)

Warburgs influence on the history of art was very

great although he himself did not write much It was

mainly the posthumous impact of his ideas promul-

gated as they were by Fritz Saxl which contributed

to the specific direction of studies concentrated in the

library Warburg founded in Hamburg and which Saxl

succeeded in transplanting during the Nazi era to

London where it became the Warburg Institute of the

University of London While the object of study of the

nineteenth-century iconographers was mainly religious

art in its relation to religious literary sources and lit-

urgy for Warburg the study of images was a study

of their relations to religion to poetry to myth to

science and to social and political life Art was for

him closely connected with the polyphonic structure

of historical life

Warburgs ideas had a great importance for the most

influential theory of iconographic interpretation in our

century that elaborated by Erwin Panofsky In Ham-

burg where Warburg Saxl and Panofsky were active

in the twenties Ernst Cassirer built up his philosophy

of symbolic forms which constituted an additional

background for Panofskys system being derived as

his own methodology was from the traditions of

Kantian philosophy Around 1930 Panofskys ideas

ripened into a system which found formulation in his

book herkules am Scheidewege (1930) and later in a

theoretical article of 1932 G J Hoogewerff was how-

ever the first to propose the word ldquoiconologyrdquo as a

name for the method of an analysis of content in a

work of art (Warburg spoke of iconological analysis)

In 1931 he proposed distinguishing between iconogra-

phy as a descriptive science aiming at the identifica-

tion of themes and ldquoiconologyrdquo aiming at the under-

standing ldquoof symbolic dogmatic or mystical meaning

which is expressed (or hidden) in figurative formsrdquo He

stressed that ldquoiconologyrdquo deals with works of art with-

out classifying them according to the technique used

or to the achieved perfection taking into account only

their meaning Hoogewerff saw the last aim of iconol-

ogy in finding out the cultural and ideological back-

ground expressed by works of art and the cultural and

social significance which can be attributed to certain

forms and to means of expression in the same time

Hoogewerffs part in the expansion of iconology was

limited because he did not endorse his methodical

proposals with examples of historical interpretations

Erwin Panofsky with whose name iconology has

been connected ever since not only developed its

theoretical foundations but contributed by his practi-

cal work in art history to the main triumph of iconol-

ogy after the Second World War The most influential

book by Panofsky has been Studies in Iconology (1939)

in which his masterly presentation of the method was

connected with its equally excellent exemplification

2 Panofsky considers the interpretation of a work

of art as falling on three levels On the first level the

object of interpretation is the primary or natural sub-

ject matter The function of interpretation is called

ldquopre-iconographical descriptionrdquo In order to be able

to arrive at a correct interpretation on that level the

interpreter must have a practical experience (ldquofamili-

arity with objects and eventsrdquo) common to everybody

at least in one cultural sphere However he has to

control his observations by a ldquocorrective knowledge

of the history of stylerdquo (ldquoinsight into the manner in

which under varying historical conditions objects and

events were expressed by formsrdquo) On the second level

the function of interpretation is called ldquoiconographical

analysisrdquo its object is the ldquosecondary or conventional

subject matterrdquo constituting the world of images his-

tories and allegories The interpreters equipment in

this case is obviously the knowledge of literary sources

giving him a ldquofamiliarity with specific themes and

conceptsrdquo The interpreter has to control his observa-

tions by ldquothe insight into the manner in which under

varying historical conditions specific themes or con-

cepts were expressed by objects and eventsrdquo On the

third level the function of interpreting is called ldquoicon-

ographical analysis in a deeper senserdquo (1939) or ldquoicon-

ological analysisrdquo (1955) Its object is the ldquointrinsic

meaning or contentrdquo of a work of art The interpreters

equipment on that level should be a ldquofamiliarity with

the essential tendencies of the human mindrdquo and he

has to control his interpretation by the ldquoinsight into

the manner in which under varying historical condi-

tions essential tendencies of the human mind were

expressed by specific themes and conceptsrdquo Thus

taking all the time into account what Panofsky calls

the history of tradition the interpreter has to aim at

understanding the work of art its ldquoprimaryrdquo as well

as ldquosecondary subject matterrdquo as symptoms of some

fundamental tendency of the human mind typical of

537

a place a time a civilization and of an individual

responsible for the creation of the work ldquoIconologyrdquomdash

for Panofskymdashldquois a method of interpretation which

arises from synthesis rather than analysisrdquo Trying to

find the intrinsic meaning of a work of art

The art historian will have to check what he thinks is the

intrinsic meaning of the work or group of works against

what he thinks is the intrinsic meaning of as many other

documents of civilization historically related to that work

or group of works as he can master It is in the search

for intrinsic meaning or content that the various humanistic

disciplines meet on a common plane instead of serving as

handmaidens to each other

(Panofsky [1955] p 39)

The concept of intrinsic meaning of a work of art

was elaborated by Panofsky much earlier (1925) when

he interpreted in his own way the concept of Kunst-

wollen introduced by A Riegl to research in art

Panofsky understood this ldquoartistic volitionrdquo as an im-

manent ultimate meaning of a work of art which is

manifested in the way basic artistic problems are solved

in that work He used the same concept further to bring

art closer to the other fields of human activity Since

the ldquoimmanent ultimate senserdquo of the work of art is

nothing else than uniformity in the way of solving basic

artistic problems it is possible to compare that imma-

nent sense with immanent senses of the other human

works in various fields Panofsky did it for instance

when in one of his later works he compared the struc-

tural principles of Gothic architecture with those of

scholastic thinking (1951)

The system elaborated by Panofsky and exemplified

by his own work in art history was the first consistent

system of an integral interpretation of a work of visual

arts based on the analysis of content In principle

Panofskys system takes into account all the elements

of the work of art since it takes as the point of depar-

ture the sensual exterior shape of the work It is

however clear that its main scope is not the inter-

pretation of form as a bearer of meaning but the

understanding and interpretation of conventional alle-

gories literary themes and symbols as symptoms of

the history of the human mind It was that method

in the history of art which programmatically fostered

a collaboration with all the other disciplines of histori-

cal studies It was therefore one of the most influential

methods not only among art historians but also among

representatives of the other branches of humanistic

studies Although there were art historians who ex-

pressed a critical attitude toward ldquoiconologyrdquo as the

new method was soon baptized its influence was over-

whelming

3 It is not only but mainly due to Panofsky that

one can venture to call ldquoiconographicalrdquo that period

of art history as a historical discipline which followed

the Second World War and to oppose it to the ldquostylis-

ticrdquo one which preceded it It does not mean of course

that no iconographic research took place in the

twenties or thirties the works of Macircle Knipping van

Marle Wilpert Saxl and of Panofsky himself would

contradict such a statement Neither is it true that

purely formal research aiming at stylistic classification

and analysis discontinued after World War II It is

evident that in the last decades (from 1940 on) icono-

graphic interests came to the fore and became domi-

nant in many countries Iconographical studies grew

so much in number and importance that they made

it possible to undertake and to publish new reference

works of iconographic character like dictionaries

written by one scholar (Guy de Tervarent Aurenham-

mer) as well as larger works based on a collaboration

of several scholars (Encyclopedias of German art of

Antiquity and Christian civilization of Byzantine art)

Interest in meaning and iconography has appeared

also among historians of political social and religious

institutions The symbolism of signs ceremonies cos-

tumes and arms was studied by such scholars as A

Alfoumlldi ldquoInsignien und Tracht der roumlmischen Kaiserrdquo

Mitteilungen des deutschen Archaumlologischen Instituts

Roumlmische Abteilung (1935) 1ff ldquoDie Geburt der

kaiserlichen Bildsymbolikrdquo museum Helveticum 9

(1952) 204ff also by A Grabar Martyrium (Paris

1943-46) by E H Kantorowicz laudes Regiae

(Berkeley and Los Angeles 1946) The Kings Two

Bodies (Princeton 1957) by H P L Orange Studies

in the Iconography of Cosmic Kingship in the Ancient

World (Oslo 1953) Art Forms and Civic Life in the

Late Roman Empire (Princeton 1965) and by P E

Schramm herrschaftszeichen und Staatssymbolik

(Stuttgart 1954-56) In their studies iconography far

transcends the borders of art and it helps to build up

a history of ideas by following their various visual

expressions

Pioneering studies by K Giehlow F Saxl and E

Panofsky enlarged iconographical interests above all

to encompass the large field of secular art whereas

they had been mainly limited to religious iconography

in the work of preceding generations of scholars The

whole complicated and hardly known large body of

meanings disguised by the cryptic language of hiero-

glyphs emblems and iconologies became one of the

main topics of study

This established a collaboration between historians

of art and literature Mario Prazs admirable study of

emblems and his bibliography of emblem books

(1939-47) belongs now to the foundations of studies

in that field Publications by W S Heckscher and

A K Wirth by R S Clements E F von Monroy and

538

H M von Erffa E de Jongh and H Miedema and

several other scholars have elucidated the structure

and meaning of emblems and have shown their tre-

mendous influence on art even in its most monumental

and dignified forms An uninterrupted flow of reprints

of emblem books which brought within the reach of

modern students inaccessible volumes of sixteenth- and

seventeenth-century emblem writers were crowned by

the monumental undertaking of Arthur Henkel and

Albrecht Schoumlne who compiled an excellent volume

including almost all the texts and images needed for

the study of emblemsmdashEmblemata Handbuch zur

Sinnbildkunst des XVI und XVII Jahrhunderts

(Stuttgart 1967) Research was under way on hiero-

glyphs (Erik Iversen) and on the imprese (the late

Robert Klein) as well as on iconologies and allegories

These studies have disclosed meanings of the art of

the Renaissance of mannerism and of the baroque not

understood by nineteenth-century scholars

E Panofsky deciphered extremely farfetched and

individualistic programs of decoration of such famous

ensembles as the Camera di San Paolo by Correggio

in Parma the Gallery of Franccedilois I at Fontainebleau

Edgar Wind Andreacute Chastel and other scholars inter-

preted Raphaels decorations in the Popes apartments

Michelangelos art furnished material to detailed com-

prehensive studies by Panofsky Ch de Tolnay H von

Einem and Pope-Hennessy in which the share of

Neo-Platonic thinking in the ideological background

of the celebrated works of Michelangelo was discussed

Innumerable studies have been devoted to Titians

mythological paintings J R Martin presented expla-

nations of the Carracci frescoes in the Camerino Far-

nese and in the great gallery of the Palazzo Farnese

Bruegel considered in the nineteenth century as a drocircle

painter of peasant life has been shown by de Tolnay

Stridbeck and others to be an allegorist expressing a

skeptical humanistic outlook J S Held and W

Stechow contributed several articles to the under-

standing of mythological and allegorical contents in

Flemish and Dutch art of the sixteenth and seventeenth

centuries Rembrandts iconography was put into new

light by the two above-mentioned scholars as well as

by H M Rotermund H van de Waal J G van Gelder

H von Einem and Ch Tuumlmpel The intricate symbol-

ism and subject matter of historical and mythological

pictures by Nicolas Poussin were elucidated by such

masters of iconographic research as E H Gombrich

W Friedlaumlnder E Panofsky and above all by A Blunt

who in his monograph on Poussin presented a new

deep synthetic view of the ideas expressed by that

artists works Goyas individualistic secret symbolism

was also studied with the help of emblems and the

allegorical tradition Berninis works received iconolo

gical treatment by R Wittkower and H Kauffmann

All of this research does not mean that there was a

lack of interest in religious iconography M Schapiro

A Katzenellenbogen H Bober F Wormald and V

Elbern among others have contributed considerably

to deepen our understanding of the not completely

explained motifs and prominent works of medieval art

Panofsky has also shed a new light on several problems

of sepulchral iconography studies by such scholars as

R Berliner G von der Osten L Kalinowski S

Ringbom and T Dobrzeniecki contributed to late

medieval iconography in a new way Berliner stressed

the autonomous invention of visual artists or their

patrons while according to the traditional view popu-

larized by Macircle late medieval art should have followed

strictly literary sources

The religious content of modern art especially its

allegorical form in the late baroque period has been

examined and thanks to studies by such scholars as

W Mrazek and H Bauer has become better known

and understandable A great change was introduced

by ldquoiconologyrdquo into architectural history Buildings

which were formerly interpreted from aesthetic and

functional points of view only have been shown to

present allegorical symbolical or even emblematic

ideas Publications by leading art historians (R Witt-

kower B Smith G Bandmann O von Simson and

G C Argan) have presented medieval and modern

architecture as a bearer of meaning and have essen-

tially changed the character of architectural history

The iconography of classicism and romanticism

received a thorough treatment in books by W Hof-

mann and R Rosenblum as well as in several studies

devoted to individual themes and pictures G Hersey

has for example shown how much Delacroixs decora-

tion of the library in the Palais Bourbon owed to

Giambattista Vicos ideas about history More recently

studies on ldquoSymbolismrdquo have been undertaken Vincent

van Goghs symbolic language and iconography were

the object of studies by J Seznec C Nordenfalk and

other scholars On Ceacutezannes iconography interesting

remarks have been published by M Schapiro

Along with the development of iconographic studies

the establishment of centers of documentation has

advanced The ldquoFrenchrdquo stage in the development of

iconography has not left any marked trace in this

respect It was in America thanks to C R Morey that

the famous Index of Christian Art at the Department

of Art and Archaeology of Princeton University was

founded at first limited to the early Middle Ages then

enlarged so as to include art up to the end of the

medieval period Copies of the Princeton Index are

to be found also at the Istituto Pontificio dArcheolo-

gia in Rome and in the Dumbarton Oaks Library and

539

Collection in Washington DC But that Index ends

ldquowhere art beginsrdquomdashas Panofsky used to say jokingly

The need for systematic iconographic files for modern

art was strongly felt In 1956 A Pigler published a

very useful book Barockthemen in which he listed

thousands of works of art of the baroque period ac-

cording to their subjects It was however far from

being a systematic work The first essay in establishing

a systematic iconographic index for art of any time

was done by The Netherlands Institute for Art History

at the Hague then directed by H Gerson which took

the initiative around 1950 of publishing a postcard-size

photographic index of its rich collection of photographs

of Netherlandish art ordered according to an icono-

graphic principle Once such an idea was formulated

the need for a comprehensive consistent and clear

iconographic classification was urgent H van de Waal

of Leiden University devised such a system of classifi-

cation based on decimal divisions consistent and easy

to read He based his system on experiences of ethnol-

ogy and on such elaborated systems of classification

as that devised by Stith Thompson in his Motif-Index

of Folk Literature Vols I-VI (Bloomington Ind

1932-36 rev ed 1955-58) Van de Waal has elabor-

ated a system in which the first five main sections

classify five fundamental groups of portrayable things

namely (1) The Supernatural (2) Nature (3) Man (4)

Society (5) Abstracts The last four classify specific

subjects such as (6) History (7) The Bible (8) Myths

Legends and Tales (with the exception of classical

antiquity) (9) Myths and Legends of Classical Antiq-

uity Van de Waal combines the classification in the

first and in the second group in order to classify general

as well as specific subjects Christ in his system is

described with the sign ldquo11 Drdquo (ldquo1rdquo standing for Su-

pernatural ldquo11rdquo for Christianity ldquoDrdquo for Christ) the

adult Christ = 11 D 3 since ldquoshepherdrdquo on the other

hand bears the signature 47 I 221 the adult Christ

as a shepherd can be described in this system by the

following formula 11 D 3 = 47 I 221 Van de Waal

has also provided means to describe more complex

images which he expresses by adding elements between

brackets The Annunciation with God the Father and

a winged Angel is expressed by the following formula

73 A 5 (+1 +41) ldquo1rdquo standing for God the Father

and ldquo41rdquo for a winged Angel (van de Waal 1952) This

system elaborated for many years by its inventor and

prepared for publication in many volumes has proved

most useful in the practical arrangement of the Icono-

graphical Index of the Netherlandish Art and as the

only one until now in existence it became used more

and more in spite of some ambiguities and difficulties

As an endeavor to classify ldquoall portrayablerdquo things

persons events and ideas and to create a consistent

method to describe every possible image van de Waals

system may be considered as one of the important

achievements of the ldquoiconographical stagerdquo in the

development of art history Iconographic files exist of

course in many institutions as for example in the Ikon-

ologisch Instituut of Utrecht University one of the

main centers of study in emblematics and of course

in the most venerable institution of iconographic re-

search the Warburg Institute of the London University

and in other places

4 What was the result of this ldquoiconographicrdquo turn

in the development of the history of art One thing

is certain that this discipline by necessity has come

closer to other humanistic disciplines Since the

ldquointrinsicrdquo meaningmdashin Panofskys terminologymdashof a

work of art cannot be described in terms used by the

history of art but only in terms borrowed from the

history of philosophy of religion of social structures

of science and so on the ldquoiconological methodrdquo took

for granted and provoked such a collaboration Art

history was perhaps the first or one of the first to show

new interest in investigation of meaning It was fol-

lowed by similar developments in ethnology and in

linguistics

We have mentioned above a parallel development

in Byzantine and classical studies Panofskys influence

has been considerable in the other fields of humanistic

research Since ldquoiconologyrdquo aimed at discovering ideas

expressed by a work of art it awoke in art historians

an interest in the history of ideas This general shift

of emphasis and of the direction of studies from mainly

formal ones to studies aiming at ideas underlying art

was perhaps responsible among others for the fact that

several contributions to the Journal of the History of

Ideas have been written by historians of art

It is not difficult to see that such a development

should have provoked criticism on the side of those

who care about the purity and autonomy of methods

Iconology was criticized as far as its internal coherence

and also as far as its claim to be the integral method

of the study of art are concerned (Białostocki 1962)

Studies by R Klein E Forssman G Previtali G

Kubler B Teyssegravedre C Ginzburg and G Hermeren

expressed critical opinions in one or the other respect

Iconology linked art with the rest of history but it

disrupted the links between the work of art and other

things (Kubler 1962) Concentrating on meaning

iconology neglected art as form as individual expres-

sion Iconology implied a rational relationship between

intellectual content and artistic form On the one hand

one spoke of ldquoiconological diminutionsrdquo (Kubler

1962)mdashlimitations of research to meaning only But

on the other hand the overstatements of iconology

were criticized its representatives sometimes seemed

540

to assume everything symbolized something And some

iconologists seemed to consider important in art not

that which makes art a different field of human activity

but that which connects art with other fieldsmdashwith

the history of ideas

There were of course critics who had the opposite

opinion Since the end of the eighteenth century a

direct experience of art was more and more valued

and its symbolical function considered as a burden

J G von Herder said ein Kunstwerk ist der Kunst

wegen da aber bei einem Symbole ist die Kunst

dienend (ldquoA work of art is there because of art but

with a symbol art is a servicerdquo) Similar opinions were

expressed by nineteenth-century art writers and in this

century they have been voiced by Benedetto Croce and

by other Italian opponents of contenutismo by which

they meant interest in content For such critics to put

stress on iconography was to miss the essential in art

and to focus attention on a subordinate function of art

Also among scholars who considered the function

of representation and of communication as a legitimate

and important function of art criticism was expressed

not against the principle of an iconographical or icon-

ological investigation but against overstatements in

their application The introduction of the idea of ldquodis-

guised symbolismrdquo has created a danger of course of

opening the way to fanciful interpretations The alle-

gorical and symbolical function of mythological imag-

ery in classical art is also difficult to interpret precisely

Since no literary sources give a key to an interpretation

of the iconography of the sarcophagi very divergent

theories have been expressed concerning their meaning

Some archaeologists like F Cumont (1942) believe

that mythological and allegorical imagery (Anadyo-

mene Sea-Thiasos Personifications of the Seasons) is

to be read symbolically The Sea-Thiasos for instance

is to be interpreted as a symbol of the journey of the

souls of the deceased to the islands of the blessed

Others like A D Nock (1946) do not find enough

evidence to accept other than a decorative function

in such imagery

The intrusion of some representatives of psychology

eg C G Jung into iconographic studies giving them

an unhistorical turn in their search for ldquoarchetypal

imagesrdquo has complicated the situation although art

historians in general understandably have not accepted

that kind of approach to symbolism (Frankfort 1958

Gombrich 1965)

The fact that iconographic interpretations sometimes

lack satisfactory proofs does not detract from the im-

portance of such investigations so long as they are

conducted according to the requirements of historical

methods and take into account the corrective princi-

ples established by Panofsky A correct acquaintance

with the way of thinking of the artist the patron or the

viewer based on a satisfactory knowledge of documen-

tary visual and literary sources an awareness of the

choice situations produced by historical developments

may enable art historians to discover the secondary

meaning of a work of art as well as its intrinsic mean-

ing It is of course possible that the art historian will

meet some works for which it will not be possible to re-

construct in a satisfactory way the world of ideas that

would account for the meaning of those works In such

cases a reliable interpretation is simply not possible

R Berliner (1945 1966) criticized the widespread

opinion according to which content of the works of

visual arts in the Middle Ages had to be checked

against the literary sources considered as the only

medium in which ideological innovations were per-

mitted Berliner pleaded for assuming a considerable

ldquofreedomrdquo in the medieval artist and he considered

iconographic innovation possible even when no writ-

ten evidence could be found Meyer Schapiro (1947)

presented proofs that sometimes purely aesthetic rea-

sons decided the character of the work of art even as

early as the Romanesque period

We can only touch on some specific discussions going

on in the field of iconographic research But iconogra-

phic research is far from being a closed system and

the relative share of iconographic and stylistic criticism

in the work of art historians is always a matter of

discussion It is certain that the ldquoiconographicrdquo period

in the study of art has enlarged in a considerable way

the understanding of the art of the past and that it

has connected art history in a way unknown before

with the other historical disciplines and above all others

with the history of ideas

BIBLIOGRAPHY

L B Alberti On Painting ed J Spencer (New Haven

1956 revised ed 1966) E Auerbach ldquoFigurardquo (1944) trans

and published in Scenes From the Drama of European Liter-

ature (New York 1959) pp 11-76 K Bauch ldquoImagordquo

(1960) Studien zur Kunstgeschichte (Berlin 1967) pp 1-20

G P Bellori Descrizione delle imagini dipinte da Raffaello

(Rome 1695 ed used is 1751) R Berliner ldquoThe Free-

dom of Medieval Artrdquo Gazette des Beaux-Arts 628 (1945)

263-88 idem ldquoBemerkungen zu einigen Darstellungen des

Erloumlsers als Schmerzensmannrdquo Das Muumlnster 9 (1956)

97-117x J Białostocki ldquoIconografia e Iconologiardquo Enciclo-

pedia Universale dellArte (1962) Vol VII cols 163-75

trans as Encyclopedia of World Art (1966) Vol VII cols

769-85 lists almost all important older contributions to this

field idem ldquoRomantische Ikonographierdquo Stil und Ikonog-

raphie (Dresden 1966) pp 156-81 idem ldquoKompozycja

emblematyczna epitafioacutew ślaskich XVI wiekurdquo (ldquoEmblem-

atic Composition of Silesian Epitaphs of the Sixteenth Cen-

turyrdquo) Ze studioacutew nad Sztuka XVI wieku na Řlasku

(Wrocław 1968) pp 77-93 idem ldquoEsilio Privatordquo Bulletin

du Museacutee National de Varsovie 10 (1969) 95-101 J

541

Chydenius The Theory of Medieval Symbolism (Helsingfors

1960) Series of the Societas Scientiarum Fennica Com-

mentationes Humanarum Litterarum 27 2 R J Clements

Picta Poesis (Rome 1960) F Creuzer Symbolik und

Mythologie der Alten Voumllker (Leipzig and Darmstadt 1810

revised ed 1819) F Cumont Recherches sur le symbolisme

funeacuteraire des Romains (Paris 1942) L Eitner ldquoThe Open

Window and the Storm-Tossed Boatrdquo Art Bulletin 37

(1955) 281-90 H Frankfort ldquoThe Archetype in Analytical

Psychology and the History of Religionrdquo Journal of the

Warburg and Courtauld Institutes 21 (1958) 166-78

K Garas ldquoAllegorie und Geschichte in der Venezianischen

Malerei des 18 Jahrhundertsrdquo in proceedings of the XXI

International Congress of the History of Art Bonn Stil und

Uumlberlieferung in der Kunst des Abendlandes (Berlin 1967)

3 280-83 K Giehlow ldquoDie Hieroglyphenkunde des

Humanismus in der Allegorie der Renaissancerdquo Jahrbuch

der Kunsthistorischen Sammlungen des Allerhochsten

Kaiserhauses 32 (1915) 1-232 C Gilbert ldquoOn Subject and

Not-Subject in Italian Renaissance Picturesrdquo Art Bulletin

34 (1952) 202-16 C Ginzburg ldquoDa A Warburg a E H

Gombrich Note su un problema di metodordquo Studi medi-

evali series 3 7 (1966) 1015-65 E H Gombrich ldquoIcones

Symbolicae The Visual Image in Neo-Platonic Thoughtrdquo

Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes 11 (1948)

163-92 idem ldquoThe Use of Art for the Study of Symbolsrdquo

American Psychologist 20 (1965) A Grabar Liconoclasme

byzantin Dossier archeacuteologique (Paris 1957) idem Chris-

tian Iconography A Study of Its Origins (Princeton 1969)

S J Gudlaugsson De Comedianten bij Jan Steen en zijn

tijdgenooten (s-Gravenhage 1945) W S Heckscher ldquoThe

Genesis of Iconologyrdquo Stl und Uumlberlieferung in der Kunst

des Abendlandes Akten des XXI Internationalen Kon-

gresses fuumlr Kunstgeschichte (Berlin 1967) 3 239-62 G

Hermereacuten Representation and Meaning in the Visual Arts

A Study in the Methodology of Iconography and Iconology

Lund Studies in Philosophy Vol I (Lund 1969) R Hinks

Myth and Allegory in Ancient Art (London 1939) W

Hofmann Das Irdische Paradies (Munich 1960) G J

Hoogewerff ldquoLIconologie et son importance pour leacutetude

systeacutematique de lart chreacutetienrdquo Rivista dArcheologia Cris-

tiana 8 (1931) 53-82 E de Jongh Zinne- en minnebeelden

in de schilderkunst van de zeventiende eeuw (mdash1967) idem

ldquoErotica in Vogelperspectief De dubbelzinnigheid van een

reeks 17de eeuwse genrevoorstellingenrdquo Simiolus 3

(1968-69) 22-72 L Kalinowski ldquoTreści ideowe i estetyczne

Drzwi Gnieźnieńskichrdquo (ldquoIdeological and Aesthetic Content

of the Gniezno Bronze Doorsrdquo) in Drzwi Gnieźnieńskie ed

M Walicki (Wroclaw 1959) 2 7-160 H Keller Tizians

Poesie fuumlr Koumlnig Philip II von Spanien (Wiesbaden 1969)

R Klein ldquoLa theacuteorie de lexpression figureacutee dans les traiteacutes

italiens sur les imprese 1555-1612rdquo Bibliothegraveque dHu-

manisme et Renaissance 19 (1957) 320-41 republished with

the other relevant studies in la forme et lintelligible (Paris

1969) R Klibansky E Panofsky F Saxl Saturn and Melan-

choly (London 1964) J B Knipping Ikonografie van de

Contra-Reformatie in de Nederlanden (Hilversum 1939-40)

G Kubler The Shape of Time (New Haven and London

1962) R W Lee ldquoUt pictura poesisrdquo Art Bulletin 22

(1940) 197-269 E Macircle Lart religieux du XIIIe siegravecle en

France (Paris 1898) English ed used (New York 1958)

idem Lart religieux de la fin du Moyen-Age en France

(Paris 1908) idem Lart religieux du XIIe siegravecle en France

(Paris 1922) idem Lart religieux apregraves le Concile de Trente

(Paris 1932) J Maurin Białostocka Lessing i sztuki plas-

tyczne (ldquoLessing and the visual artsrdquo) (Wroclaw Warszawa

Krakoacutew 1969) E F von Monroy Embleme und Emblem-

buumlcher in den Niederlanden 1560-1630 ed H M von Erffa

(Utrecht 1964) J Montagu ldquoThe Painted Enigma and

French Seventeenth Century Artrdquo Journal of the Warburg

and Courtauld Institutes 31 (1968) 307-35 W Mrazek

Ikonologie der barocken Deckenmalerei (Vienna 1953)

Uumlsterreichische Akademie der Wissenschaften Philo-

sophisch-historische Klasse Sitzungsberichte 2283 A D

Nock ldquoSarcophagi and Symbolismrdquo American Journal of

Archaeology 50 (1946) 166ff D Panofsky and E Panofsky

ldquoThe Iconography of the Galeacuterie Franccedilois Ier at Fontaine-

bleaurdquo Gazette des Beaux-Arts 652 (1958) 113-90

E Panofsky ldquoUumlber das Verhaumlltnis der Kunstgeschichte zur

Kunsttheorierdquo Zeitschrift fuumlr Aesthetik und allgemeine

Kunstwissenschaft 18 (1925) 129-61 idem Studies in

Iconology (New York 1939) idem ed Abbot Suger (Prince-

ton 1946) idem Gothic Architecture and Scholasticism

(Latrobe Pa 1951) idem Early Netherlandish Painting

(Cambridge Mass 1953) idem Meaning in the Visual Arts

(Garden City N Y 1955) idem Renaissance and Renas-

cences in Western Art (Stockholm 1960) idem Tomb Sculp-

ture (New York 1964) E Panofsky and F Saxl ldquoClassical

Mythology in Medieval Artrdquo Metropolitan Museum Studies

4 (1932-33) 228-80 M Praz Studies in Seventeenth Cen-

tury Imagery (London 1939-47 2nd ed Rome 1964) S

Ringbom ldquoDevotional Images and Imaginative Devotions

Notes on the Place of Art in Late Medieval Private Pietyrdquo

Gazette des Beaux-Arts 6 73 (1969) 159-70 Joseph Sauer

Symbolik des Kirchengebaumludes und seiner Ausstattung in

der Auffassung des Mittelalters 2nd ed (Freiburg i B

1924) F Saxl ldquoFruumlhes Christentum und spaumltes Heidentum

in ihren kuumlnstlerischen Ausdrucksformenrdquo Wiener Jahrbuch

fuumlr Kunstgeschichte 2 (1923) 63-121 M Schapiro ldquoThe

Ruthwell Crossrdquo Art Bulletin 26 (1944) 232-45 idem ldquoOn

the Aesthetic Attitude in Romanesque Artrdquo in Art and

Thought issued in Honour of Ananda Coomaraswamy

(London 1947) 139-50 J Seznec The Survival of the Pagan

Gods (New York 1953) O G von Simson The Gothic

Cathedral (New York 1956) R E Spear ldquoThe Literary

Source of Poussins Realm of Florardquo The Burlington Maga-

zine 107 (1965) 563-69 L Volkmann Bilderschriften der

Renaissance (Leipzig 1923) Hans van de Waal Drie

eeuwen vaderlandsche geschieduitbeelding 1500-1800 (s-

Gravenhage 1952) idem ldquoSome Principles of a General

Iconographical Classificationrdquo in Actes du XVIIe Congregraves

International dHistoire de lArt Amsterdam 1952 (La Haye

1955) 601-06 E Wind ldquoCharity the Case History of a

Patternrdquo Journal of the Warburg Institute 1 (1937) 322ff

JAN BIAŁOSTOCKI

[See also Allegory Baroque Classicism Criticism Enlight-

enment Motif Myth Naturalism in Art Neo-Platonism

Renaissance Humanism Romanticism Symbolism Tem-

perance Ut pictura poesis]

programs of pictures remarkably however the pic-

tures are not of stories but of representations of pow-

erful natural or human happenings such as storms and

battles Here the naturalistic interests of the Renais-

sance come to the fore

An important achievement of the Renaissance partly

affecting iconography was the reunionmdashas noticed and

described by E Panofsky and F Saxl (1932) and Panof-

sky (1960)mdashof the literary and visual traditions of

classical antiquity during the fifteenth century During

the Middle Ages the literary tradition of classical sub-

ject matter was separated from the visual tradition of

classical artistic motifs so that there was no awareness

of their belonging together The classical subjects for

example those taken from Ovid used to be represented

in contemporary medieval stylistic forms classical

artistic motifs on the other hand for example the forms

of garment folds human types gestures compositional

patterns and so on were used to represent Christian

subject matter as in the western portals of the Reims

cathedral or in the pulpits of Nicola or Giovanni

Pisano It was only in the High Renaissance eg in

the works of Raphael Titian Michelangelo and Cor-

reggio that forms and iconography themes and motifs

became reintegrated In this way the classical vision

of classical subjects became sometimes so perfect that

some works created around 1500 could have been

taken for classical originals (for example Bacchus by

Michelangelo) The growing understanding of classical

ideas and forms led to another specific Renaissance

phenomenon called by Panofsky ldquopseudomorphosisrdquo

Certain Renaissance figures became invested with a mean-

ing which for all their classicizing appearance had not been

present in their classical prototypes though it had fre-

quently been foreshadowed in classical literature Owing

to its medieval antecedents Renaissance art was often able

to translate into images what classical art had deemed

inexpressible

(Panofsky [1939] pp 70f)

In the north of Italy beside the concept of istoria

poesia appears a fact which also points to a depend-

ence on poetry this was understood mainly as referring

to lyrical poetry and not to epic or heroic Mythologi-

cal pictures by Titian were described in such a way

(Keller [1969] pp 24f) The stress was on the poetical

mood more than on an important human action a

lyrical tonality was preferred to a heroic one The

archaeological interests then current in Padua and

Venice visible for instance in the works by Andrea

Mantegna were moderated by an elegiac poetic mood

in reconstructing the classical world Pictures by Gior-

gione who worked for exclusive circles of humanists

were so hermetic in meaning that several of them like

the Three Philosophers (Vienna) or the Storm (Venice)

are iconographic riddles up to our own day The same

is true of the enigmatic and poetic iconography of some

pictures by Titian (Sacred and Profane Love in the

Borghese Gallery in Rome) by Lorenzo Lotto or by

the Ferrarese Dosso Dossi

The most important document of this romantic ar-

chaeological vision which strongly influenced icono-

graphical invention in Italy and outside of Italy was

a fantastic romance Hypnerotomachia Poliphili attrib-

uted in the most plausible way to a Franciscan monk

Francesco Colonna and published with beautiful

woodcuts by Aldus Manutius in Venice in 1499 Poetic

visions of a dreamy classical landscape full of ruins

in which the lovers Poliphilo and Polia wander influ-

enced the imagination of artists not less than the excel-

lent woodcuts their impact can be found as far and

as late as in the gardens at Versailles The illustrations

to Hypnerotomachia also popularized hieroglyphic

signs which make their appearance in iconography as

a specific phenomenon of the Renaissance

5 Art conceived as a language may be addressed

to large or to small groups It depends on the scope

of communication It can be intended as a message

to a possibly large audience but it can also be limited

in its appeal to a small selected group of observers

In an extreme case the polarization could be that

between a didactic art appealing to everybody and an

elitarian cryptic message understandable only to the

initiated few Medieval art belonged by far to the first

category the art of the Renaissance to the second

Even in the monumental wall-paintings decorating the

most celebrated places of Christianity such as the

Sistine Chapel or the official rooms of the Popes like

the Stanza della Segnatura even in the sepulchral

chapels of the most important families like the Sassetti

and the Medici the iconographic programs and sym-

bolism are extremely complicated The meaning of the

decoration of the great Gallery of Franccedilois I at Fon-

tainebleau is so cryptic that it was hypothetically ex-

plained only recently by the best specialists in icon-

ography (D and E Panofsky 1958) Few works of

medieval art have provoked such a number of inter-

pretations as the well-known and at first glance seem-

ingly easy to understand pictures like Botticellis

mythologies (Birth of Venus Spring The Uffizi Flor-

ence) like Titians Sacred and Profane Love or like

sculptures such as Michelangelos Medici tombs The

same is true of works by Duumlrer Holbein and Bruegel

in the North A deep symbolism a complicated

iconographymdashespecially current in the circles influ-

530

enced by Neo-Platonismmdashbelonged to the perfection

of the work

This idea had a long life it recurs in 1604 in Carel

van Manders Book of the Painter as well as in Berninis

utterances on the beauty of the concept which adorns

the work The more refined the concept the more

difficult the symbolism the narrower the circle of those

who can really understand the work

Art was considered especially in the exclusive court

social groups or among the humanists as a secret

language accessible to the initiated The visual sign

was connected with words into a specific union of

literature and art which flourished at the time of the

Renaissance of mannerism and of the baroque in the

form of impresa of hieroglyph and of emblem The

roots of the impresamdashthe personal sign and mottomdashare

to be found in chivalrous devices and signs popular

in the late Middle Ages it was brought to Italy from

France and connected with Neo-Platonic speculation

(Klein 1957) Hieroglyphs became popular thanks to

the discovery in 1419 of the Hieroglyphica by Hora-

pollo Niliacus (of the second or fourth century AD)

published in 1505 The humanists believed that this

enigmatic image-script disguised a profound wisdom

of the Egyptians ldquothey supposed that the great minds

of Greece had been initiated into these Egyptian

mysteriesmdashwhich in their turn were of course one

more prefiguration of the teachings of Christrdquo (Seznec

[1953] p 100) Emblems originated from an erudite

intellectual play among the humanists aiming however

at a moral lesson and sometimes considered in a Neo-

Platonic way as symbols revealing to those who con-

template them a higher knowledge of divine mysteries

Emblem included a motto called lemma an image

and an epigram Only the whole of the emblem can

be understood each element of it giving only one part

of the meaning All those cryptic codes of expression

connecting words and images originated as secret and

elitarian The problem of the degree of obscurity was

one of the main points discussed by the theorists of

the emblematics (Clements [1964] pp 191-95) Eras-

mus of Rotterdam stressed that one of the virtues of

the impresa is that its meaning can be grasped only

with an intellectual effort Cesare Ripa (Iconologia

1593) demands that symbolic images be composed ldquoin

the form of enigmardquo Sambucus (1564) required ldquoob-

scuritasrdquo and ldquonovitasrdquo from the emblems Paolo

Giovio represented a reasonable middle ldquoThe device

should not be so obscure as to require the Sybil to

interpret it nor yet so obvious that any literal-minded

person can understand itrdquo Later however the crypto-

grams of hieroglyphics and emblem books began to

be popularized and explained Collections of emblems

became widely known New systematization of icon

ography now of a humanistic one was inaugurated

In 1556 Vincenzo Cartari published the first modern

handbook of mythological imagery le imagini colla

sposizione degli dei degli antichi (Venice 1556) In the

same year Pierio Valeriano produced a rich collection

of Hieroglyphica (Basel 1556) Earlier in 1531 Andrea

Alciati had compiled the first emblem book (Emblema-

tum liber Augsburg 1531) The influence of such

books which went through many translations and edi-

tions and which were imitated and continued all over

Europe grew at the close of the sixteenth and in the

seventeenth century In exclusive groups it happened

much earlier that hieroglyphic astrological and em-

blematic imagery influenced the iconography of im-

portant works of art as for example at the court of

Maximilian I (M Giehlow 1915) sometimes this con-

cerned works done by the most distinguished artists

like Duumlrers Melencolia I (Klibansky et al 1964)

Emblematic principle of composition uniting as it did

the image with the verbal formulations found great

popularity in northern Europe perhaps because the

importance of the word so prominent in Protestantism

was stressed (Luther required ldquofragments from the

Holy Writrdquo to be included in the Epitaph-pictures)

Epitaphs and other religious pictures of the Protestant

North connect words and images in the harmonious

indivisible whole (Białostocki 1968)

In the Netherlands emblems played an important

part in the development of realistic painting in the

seventeenth century since they furnished a rich reper-

tory of imagery charged with allegorical meaning (de

Jongh von Monroy) However the meaning of those

images obvious to the viewer who remembered the

original emblematic context eluded for a long time

later interpreters who were no longer conversant with

the emblems

After Cartari and his followers furnished artists and

patrons with images of classical gods there was a need

felt for another handbook which would enable the

artist to represent and the patron to understand the

abstract moral philosophical scientific and other

ideas symbolized Only then was art able to express

complex thoughts This task was fulfilled by Cesare

Ripa of Perugia who in 1593 published his Iconologia

a handbook explaining how to represent all the incor-

poreal concepts In 1603 Iconologia was republished

with illustrations and became one of the most popular

and influential art books With Ripa in hand art

historiansmdashinitially Eacutemile Macircle (1932)mdashwere able to

decipher hundreds of allegorical statements in paint

and stone guided by this alphabet of personifications

Ripas basic entity was a human figure female more

often than male whose costumes attributes gestures

and other particulars express specific qualities of the

531

idea represented With the publication of Ripas workmdash

translated soon into many languages and frequently

republished and revisedmdashthe humanistic system of

allegorical iconography was established classical gods

and personifications hieroglyphic signs and emblems

connecting words and images this was the material

used by the artists of mannerism and the baroque when

they did not choose to keep to the ldquohistoricalrdquo world

ie to borrow their subjects directly from literature

When they did so when they painted stories they used

to select them not only from Ovid and Vergil but also

from the more recent poems by Ariosto and Tasso and

also from the works of less known writers ancient and

modern Valerius Maximus furnished them with exam-

ples of virtuous behavior These historical examples

were in general either connected with allegorical gen-

eralizations (in the big decorations of the late baroque

the central fresco was often an allegory and the ac-

companying canvas-pictures presented historical ex-

amples of virtues Garas pp 280-83) or conceived in

an allegorical way Ovide moraliseacute was popular already

in the late Middle Ages Its influence persisted also

in the time of the baroque Myths and stories under-

went allegorical interpretations along the lines of that

moralizing commentary

What was considered necessary for an artist around

1600 can be seen from Carel van Manders Book of

the Painter (1604) It included a long theoretical poem

a history of classical and modern Italian and Nether-

landish artists a translation and a moral interpretation

of Ovids Metamorphoses and finally a description of

personifications There is no specific section on reli-

gious iconography since artists were well furnished

with books giving them rules in this respect

Against the humanistic conception of art the Council

of Trent proclaimed rules constituting a new system

of religious iconography which put an end to the live

tradition of medieval art These rules were published

officially by the Church and they have been com-

mented upon and elaborated in books by Joannes

Molanus (1570) Saint Carlo Borromeo (1577) Gabriele

Paleotti (1581) Federico Borromeo (1624) and several

others The rules of the Council governed the decora-

tion of churches and other sacred buildings and the

character of pictures representing sacred subjects A

break between the religious and the secular iconogra-

phy became obvious in theoretical literature although

there existed many emblem books of a very distinct

religious character (G de Montenay 1571 B Arias

Montanus 1571 H Hugo 1624) A new strictly for-

mulated system of religious iconography coexisted in

the seventeenth century with humanistic subject mat-

ter symbolism and allegory The classical nude intro-

duced by the Renaissance into art was strictly forbid

den now in religious art but found a free field of

development in secular mythological and allegorical

works Many artists exercised their imagination in both

fields in some specific fields such as sepulchral iconog-

raphy cooperation between religious and humanistic

symbolism was common In the work of P P Rubens

the various aspects of the new iconography found

perhaps their best expression In his art allegorical

concepts classical gods and heroes triumphs of mythi-

cal beings as well as of secular rulers accompany mar-

tyrdoms of Catholic saints and the triumphs of the

Eucharist What began to be separated in theory could

yet coexist in harmony in the work of a great artist

6 In northern European art (before Rubens) the

renewal of the arts during the Renaissance took the

form of the new study of nature and the elaboration

of the most convincing means of representing the ma-

terial world in an illusionistic way traditional medieval

symbolism was transformed in a specific way produc-

ing what E Panofsky called in 1953 ldquodisguised sym-

bolismrdquo The symbolic meaning connected with objects

and qualities persisted but a new mastery reproduced

these symbolical objects with such a degree of realism

that they did not differ any longer from other objects

not charged with any metaphorical meaning Some-

times the symbolical meaning of represented objects

results from the traditional iconography in an unmistak-

able way sometimes the meaning is hinted at by the

inscriptions placed in the picture or on its frame But

in many cases the modern viewer remains perplexed

without any sufficient clue to decide whether in the

picture he observes he has to do with the beginnings

of the representation of reality for its own sake or

whether the search for specific metaphorical meaning

is justified It is still always a matter of discussion to

decide at which moment the representation of some

objects or some scene in life without any symbolical

(or ldquohistoricalrdquo) implications became possible (Gilbert

1952) Observers of the eighteenth and nineteenth

centuries to whom the meaning of old symbols was

wholly forgotten took many images of the fifteenth and

sixteenth centuries for simple representations of life

Bruegel for example was considered as simply a

painter of joking or working peasants Recent studies

in iconography have shown that these pictures are

saturated with disguised meaning and that it is ex-

tremely rare before about 1550 to meet simple repre-

sentations of nature in painting In graphic arts the

direct depiction of life and landscape began earlier

as in the works of Lombard draughtsmen or in the

incredibly fresh convincing drawings and prints by the

Master of the Housebook There are also early excep-

tions in painting like Albrecht Altdorfers landscape

without any human figures But in general it was only

532

during the second half of the sixteenth century that

landscape genre and still-life painting began to ac-

quire equal rights with religious and humanistic history

and allegory predominantly in Venice and in Antwerp

Even then however the representations of people

working in fields (Jacopo or Francesco Bassano) fol-

lowed the old traditions of Calendar-pictures and in

the background of genre scenes as in Pieter Aertsens

pictures a biblical motif may be found which trans-

forms the whole composition into a storia however

unorthodox

With the development of realistic painting in the

seventeenth century there appeared specific iconogra-

phic problems New subjects slowly found convenient

form They entered the scene patterned after the ven-

erable stories of sacred or of profane iconography

H van de Waal described (1952) the process of the for-

mation of national historical iconography in Holland

Scenes depicting recent happenings from a long strug-

gle for national independence appeared first in forms

assimilated to well-known religious or mythical scenes

This was not only an expedient facilitating their com-

position for by this means the new subjects gained the

decorum inherent in the adopted patterns formed to

express traditional stories Similar procedures may be

seen in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries when

more and more sections of reality became interesting

enough to be represented in art

The transfer of decorum from the sacred or allegori-

cal figures to the humans represented is a means used

in what modern iconographers call ldquoallegorical por-

traiturerdquo Renaissance painters had represented real

people under mythological or even sacred disguise

they gave actual faces of living people to the figures

represented with all the attributes and characteristics

of their mythical sacred or even allegorical qualities

Later it was only the pattern which remained still in

the eighteenth century English portraitists patterned

the effigies of contemporary aristocrats after Michel-

angelos Sybils or after allegories like the Caritas

(Wind 1937) J B Oudry represented the Polish King

in exile Stanisław Leszczyński with all the attributes

of the allegory of exile taken from Ripa identifying

him in this way with personification of his most promi-

nent quality (Białostocki 1969)

Dutch realistic painting of the seventeenth century

is a document of an important iconographic conquest

Landscapes seascapes moonlit night scenes snapshots

of people skating in winter landscapes views of market

places church interiors backyards fishermen old

women preparing food fashionable dishes ready for

lunch merchants and artisans elegant gentlemen pay-

ing visits and folk-surgeons performing sensational

street-operations all this became subject matter for

representation and continued to be considered worthy

of depiction until the end of the nineteenth century

It was first considered as such in Holland only then

slowly everyday subject matter was recognized also by

art-theorists in other countries although it was re-

garded as much less dignified than religious mytholog-

ical or allegorical subjects Only in the nineteenth

century did the vogue of realistic representation of

everyday subjects become widespread In Dutch pic-

tures of the seventeenth century we are often con-

fronted with nothing else than representations of pic-

turesque reality Sometimes however these genre

pictures appear to be illustrations of proverbs expres-

sing moralistic folk-wisdom sometimes they recall

scenes from the popular threater of the rederijkers or

rhetoricians especially pictures by Jan Steen (Gud-

laugsson 1945) they contain allusions to emblems

Sometimes the elegant scenes from bourgeois life in-

clude quite indecent erotic allusions (de Jongh 1967

1969) The ambiguity of these pictures was certainly

a source of specific pleasure for those who knew the

key to their true meaning

7 In Catholic countries allegorical art sacred as

well as profane flourished The twofold character of

symbolic representations mentioned above persisted

in the seventeenth century Aristotelian rational sym-

bolism which used images as words was widespread

in the orthodox Catholic iconography of the Counter-

Reformation as well as in the humanistic visual lan-

guage codified by Ripa and others A mystical Neo-

Platonic symbolism transcending reason reappeared

too Its outspoken document is the treatise by Chris-

toforo Giarda Bibliothecae alexandrinae icones sym-

bolicae of 1626 (Gombrich 1948) For Giarda symbolic

images give the beholder a direct insight into the

mysteries of religion which are not accessible to rea-

son

Thanks to symbolic images the mind which is banished from

heaven into this dark cave of the body its actions held in

bondage by the senses can behold the beauty and form

of the Virtues and Sciences divorced from all matter and

yet adumbrated if not perfectly expressed in colours and

is thus roused to an even more fervent love and desire for

them Who then can sufficiently estimate the magni-

tude of the debt we owe to those who expressed the Arts

and Sciences themselves in images and so brought it about

that we could not only know them but look at them as

it were with our eyes that we can meet them and almost

converse with them

(Gombrich [1948] pp 188f)

Great allegorical compositions covering the ceilings of

baroque churches are often realizations of this princi-

ple For those however who conceived allegory as a

rational operation as a language used for didactic aims

the main problem remained the clarity of the allegori-

533

cal message The larger the audience to whom allegory

was addressed the simpler more obvious its symbolism

should have been The banality of allegorical language

provoked criticism in the eighteenth century Fran-

cesco Algarotti (1762) prefers without any doubt his-

torical representations to the ldquoempty allegories and

complicated mythological allusionsrdquo (Garas [1967] p

280) Especially criticized was the obscurity of these

allegories in which completely original unknown sym-

bols were used Roger de Piles praises his favorite

master Rubens who ldquointroduced only such allegories

elements of which were already known from ancient

artrdquo and opposes him to Charles Lebrun who ldquoinstead

of taking symbols from some known source as the

ancient fable and medals has invented almost all of

them and thus the pictures of this kind became riddles

which the beholder does not want to take the task to

solverdquo To keep the balance between platitudinous

redundancy and utter incomprehensibility was the

crucial problem of late baroque allegorism What is

interesting however is that the idea of the picture

as a riddle was not foreign to the seventeenth century

It appears in France as well as in Sweden where David

Kloumlcker Ehrenstrahl (1694) proposed that pictures

present riddles that could not be solved by everyone

In France however the ldquopainted enigmardquo fostered

by the Jesuits in their schools flourished especially well

in the seventeenth century (Montagu 1968) These

ldquopainted enigmasrdquo lent themselves to various inter-

pretations and gave interpreters an opportunity to

show their ingenuity These pictures and their inter-

pretations seem to prove that a considerable flexibility

of meaning was intended

We might rather accept that a work of art was regarded

in the seventeenth century as in a certain sense an open

symbol raw material like the myth or sacred story which

it illustrates on which the interpreter might exercise the

power of his ingenuity turning it into an allegory of Chris-

tian doctrine or a panegyric in honour of his patron

(Montagu [1968] p 334)

Such a situation probably existed only in some specific

circles It was a limiting case The other extreme was

to use in an uninteresting routine way Ripas symbolic

images or those of other popular symbolic handbooks

Such practice continued well into the eighteenth cen-

tury The general trend fed by ideas of the Enlighten-

ment was to make allegories more and more obvious

It is understandable that some theorists like the Count

de Caylus looked for new subject matter presenting

as he did Tableaux tireacutes de lIliade (1755) or that

J J Winckelmann tried to revive allegory and to give

it a new force It was however too late In the eight-

eenth century together with the whole system of

humanistic tradition the systems of iconography began

to disintegrate The great break in the tradition con-

cerned not only style but also iconography Emblem-

atic roots may be discovered in Goyas symbolism as

well as in the reasonable allegories of the Enlighten-

ment but generally speaking there was a search for

new not known or not used sourcesmdashas in William

Blakes biblical individualistic imagerymdashor the new

staging of the old ones as in Jacques Louis Davids

classical subjects

The art of romanticism was a definite break with

the past much more in the field of ideas and iconogra-

phy than in a stylistic respect where romanticists

retrospectively looked back either to medieval and

pre-Raphaelite or to baroque sources Symbols and

allegories yielded to an all-pervading mood and the

traditional repertory of religious allegorical mytho-

logical and historical iconography gave way to a new

iconography Although several encompassing images

of Christian and humanistic art survived they received

new content and essentially changed their character

New attitudes of the individual to the world of nature

and history to society and destiny to time and death

and new problems resulting from the striving after

freedom (which was a new perhaps most important

principle of human behavior in all fields of human

activity) found expression in new thematic fields and

in new particular themes such as ldquoStorm-tossed Boatrdquo

ldquoLonely Wanderer in the Mountainsrdquo ldquoA Death of the

Herordquo (Eitner 1955 Hofmann 1960 Białostocki

1966)

Romanticism has not formed and could not have

formed an iconographic system for since they strived

first of all for originality of individual conception the

romantics interpreted images in a subjective way as

expressions of mood Romanticism has on the other

hand introduced new heroes and martyrs into art

instead of religious ones the national social and artis-

tic ones It created a new image of history seen now

as a set of political and moral examplesmdashas in

baroquemdashbut often put together now according to a

very individualistic principle of choice A correlative

to pathetic and heroic romanticism was a bourgeois

and intimate romanticism its expression was for ex-

ample the new imagery of the open window which

shows to the viewer wide perspectives but shelters him

at the same time from the dangers of the unknown

(Eitner 1955)

When the world of ideas and images created at the

moment of the flowering of romanticism began to be

popularized for the use of the large bourgeois masses

the contentmdashideological and iconographicalmdashof ro-

manticism lost its original authenticity and left be-

hind not a new system of original images but a dispo-

534

sition to melodramatic experiences and an inflation of

a theatrical gesture (Hofmann 1960 Białostocki 1966)

The nineteenth century developed a realistic por-

traiture of man and nature and took over worn out

clicheacutes of the Renaissance and baroque allegories It

introduced new subject matter taken partly from tra-

dition partly from observation of reality tinted with

vague symbolism such as ldquoForgerdquo or the ldquoFuneral of

the Peasantrdquo but it did not create a new system of

iconography in spite of short-lived revivals of symbol-

istic attitudes in such movementsmdashincidentally not

limited to and not initiated in the visual artsmdashas

ldquosymbolismrdquo

New ephemeral artistic movements which consti-

tuted the history of European art in the last hundred

years show an interesting bracketing of style and icon-

ography in spite of a preponderant lack of iconogra-

phic interest Their representatives chose subjects suit-

able to specific artistic aims and means which they

developed and were interested in Impressionists

painted seaside scenes landscapes and genre pictures

showing the life of artistic and intellectual milieus

Cubists introduced a specific repertory of still-life

motifs symbols of the artists atelier and of the life

of the bohegraveme bottles musical instruments books

fruits flowers newspapers How much these motifs

were connected with specific cubist style appears when

one looks at works of artists foreign to the original

cubist group but imitating its style as for instance

several Czech artists like Emil Filla They adopted

cubist iconography together with cubist style Abstract

movements in general lacked iconography although

they were not foreign to symbolic tendencies espe-

cially in sculpture (Brancusi Moore) Only in the dec-

ades of 1950-70 can a revival of more articulated and

programmatic symbolism be observed One may sup-

pose that this revival is at least in part brought about

by the development of research in iconography and

symbolism which took place in the second and third

quarters of our century

II

1 The origins of ldquointerpretative iconographyrdquo may

be seen in the descriptions (ekphrasis) of works of art

known in classical literature But these descriptions

like those by Philostratus the Elder or Lucian are

limited simply to description and lack in general any

interpretation Moreover it is not certain whether they

are descriptions of actual or fictitious works of art at

least opinions in this respect vary Brief medieval tituli

which formulated in words the content of religious

images were to be sure interpretative sometimes but

they were short and cannot be connected with the

tradition of artistic erudition We have to look to

modern times to indicate the beginnings of iconogra-

phic interpretation and research From Vasaris Rag-

ionamenti in which interpretations of the paintings

decorating the Palazzo Vecchio in Florence are given

we learn how complicated and how undecipherable

iconographic concepts might have been even to peo-

ple living in buildings decorated by paintings expres-

sing these concepts But perhaps the first really to be

considered as interested in iconographic research was

the seventeenth-century archaeologist and art theorist

Giovanni Pietro Bellori In the introduction to his Lives

of Artists (1672) Bellori stressed that he paid special

attention to the content of the works of art he was

talking about and he even credited the painter Nicolas

Poussin with having directed his attention to iconogra-

phy In his Lives Bellori presented short interpretative

descriptions of pictures and he sometimes developed

these interpretations further in small iconographic

essays the influence of classical ekphrasis on him is

a possibility Sometimes his errors took deep roots in

the subsequent history of art as when he explained

Poussins Triumph of Flora (Dresden) by designating

Ovids Metamorphoses as its source The true source

Marinos Adona was finally found by R E Spear in

1965

What is interesting in Belloris procedure is that he

first identifies the motifs tries to connect them with

classical or modern literary sources and then proceeds

to find out the deep meaning the general symbolic

idea of the work Therefore he may be considered as

one of the pioneers not only of iconography as a disci-

pline of research but also of iconology as formulated

by its recent partisans That even in the second half

of the sixteenth century some observers were inclined

to look for hidden meaning in each element of the work

of art we learn from Joannes Molanus (1570) who in

De picturis et imaginibus sacris states reasonably that

ldquoit is not necessary to ask for meaning of everything

that can be observed in a picture in such cases a lot

of absurd things may resultrdquo But the consciousness of

the importance of iconography increased and at the

end of the seventeenth century Andreacute Feacutelibien stressed

that in order to attribute a picture to a painter it is

not enough to know the way he uses his brush one

needs also to know his esprit to learn his geacutenie and

to be able to foresee in which way he is able to form

his conceptions Thus iconographic analysis was con-

sidered necessary even for the purpose of attribution

Descriptive interpretations of the works of ancient

art appeared in the big archaeological publications of

the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries such as

Jacques Spons Miscellanea eruditae antiquitatis (1679)

G P Belloris Admiranda romanarum antiquitatum ac

veteris sculpturae vestigia (1693) P de Caylus Recueil

535

dantiquiteacutes eacutegyptiennes eacutetrusques grecques et

romaines (1752-67) and in an interesting endeavor

(although very much criticized by Lessing) of Joseph

Spence to explain classical poets through works of art

and vice versa (Polymetis 1747) Classical archaeology

however has not been especially interested in iconog-

raphy and the use of the term itself by archaeolo-

gists was limited to portraiture The first great devel-

opment of iconographic studies was connected with

the romantic movement although an important pre-

lude for it was hagiographical collections of sources

such as Acta sanctorum published by the Bollandists

(1643-1794 resumed later) Among the pre-romantic

scholars in iconography the eminent German poet

G E Lessing is to be noted His study of the repre-

sentation of death in classical times can be considered

as one of the first essays in interpretative iconography

which is now called iconology In Wie die Alten den

Tod gebildet (1769) Lessing tries to interpret the classi-

cal iconographic type of Amor with the inverted torch

and to find its ldquointrinsic meaningrdquo by taking into ac-

count the religion customs and philosophy of the

classical world The work of art is interpreted by Less-

ing as ldquoa symptom of something elserdquo While Lessings

predecessors (like B de Montfaucon) ldquoexplained the

classical past by monumentsrdquo he for the first time did

the opposite ldquohe explained the monuments by Antiq-

uityrdquo (Maurin Białostocka [1969] pp 92-100)

Pre-romantic and romantic interests in myth and

symbol found their expression in publications and dis-

cussions by German philosophers and scholars like F

Schlegel J Herder J J von Goumlrres and F Creuzer

Creuzers work Symbolik und Mythologie der alten

Voumllker (1810) which shows the influence of mystical

Neo-Platonic ideas on symbols (Gombrich 1965) was

the most influential in the romantic period in Ger-

many Under the impact of Chateaubriands le Geacutenie

du christianisme (1802) research in medieval iconog-

raphy developed mainly in France Works by French

scholars mostly clergymen which were indeed con-

cerned with Christian medieval art dominated icon-

ographical study in the nineteenth century Since most

of these writers were not professional scholars their

work was often amateurish in character but it is unde-

niable that books by A N Didron Histoire de Dieu

(Paris 1843) the first part of a comprehensive pro-

jected but not completed iconography of Christian art

A Crosnier Iconographie chreacutetienne (Caen 1848) C

Cahier Caracteacuteristiques des saints (Paris 1867) C

Rohault de Fleury Archeacuteologie chreacutetienne les saints

de la messe et leurs monuments 12 vols (Paris

1893-1900) L Breacutehier Lart chreacutetien son deacuteveloppe-

ment iconographique des origines agrave nos jours (Paris

1918) P Perdrizet V Leroquais and G de Jerphanion

have built up a solid body of iconographical knowl-

edge on which scholars of the twentieth century were

able to erect a modern comprehensive structure In

the field of Byzantine iconography it was Gabriel

Millets Recherches sur liconographie de leacutevangile aux

XIVe XVe et XVIe siegravecles (Paris 1916 reprint

1960) that was basic for any further study For Western

chiefly French art a well-written and learned work

appealing to the general reader as well as to the

scholar was produced by Eacutemile Macircle who in his four

volumes of the history of religious art (1898-1932) has

presented a well-composed synthetic image of icono-

graphical development A lexicographic summary of

these studies of generations of French scholars is pre-

sented in the Dictionnaire darcheacuteologie chreacutetienne et

de liturgie published from 1907 to 1953 and edited

by F Cabrol and H Leclerq A recent reference work

is that by L Reacuteau Iconographie de lart chreacutetien (Paris

1955-59) Russian scholars have done important work

in the field of Byzantine and Orthodox iconography

of religious art The most prominent are N P Kon-

dakov Ikonografia Bogomatieri (St Petersburg 1911

2nd ed 1914-15) D V Ainalov Mosaiki IV i V vekov

(St Petersburg 1895) and N Pokrovski Otcherki

pamyatnikov christianskogo isskusstva i ikonografii (St

Petersburg 1894 3rd ed 1910) V Lasarev and M

Alpatov belonging to the mid-twentieth-century gen-

eration of Russian scholars discuss iconography in

several works on religious art German scholarship

produced in the nineteenth century works by F Piper

A Springer and H Detzel Useful compendia were

produced in the early twentieth century by J Sauer

W Molsdorf K Kuumlnstle and J Braun Dutch scholars

C Smits J B Knipping and J J M Timmers contrib-

uted to iconographic studies in recent times Knip-

pings book (1939-40) being the most important work

on the iconography of the Counter-Reformation and

supplementing Macircles volume of 1932 In the twentieth

century on C R Moreys initiative iconographic

studies were inaugurated in North America Focused

on earlier medieval art these studies developed at

Princeton University

A new direction characteristic of iconographic

studies in the twentieth century has been given to

them by the international school of art historical re-

search inaugurated by the Hamburg scholar Aby

Warburg At the International Congress for the History

of Art at Rome in 1912 he presented a sensational

astrological interpretation of the frescoes painted by

Francesco Cossa and his collaborators in Palazzo

Schifanoja at Ferrara Warburg solved the secret of

those representations which had puzzled the ingenuity

of several former students interpreting them as images

of zodiacal signs and their decans But he did not limit

536

his contribution to the presentation of his results He

wanted to stress the importance of his approach and

of the method of study which later became connected

with his name He said

I hope that through the method used by me for explication

of the frescoes at the Palazzo Schifanoja of Ferrara I have

proved that an iconological analysis which does not allow

itself to be diverted by the rules of frontier police from

considering antiquity Middle Ages and modern times as

interconnected periods nor from analyzing the most liberal

and the most applied works of art as equally important

documents of expression that this method endeavoring as

it does to throw light upon one dark spot clears up at

the same time great interconnected developments

(Warburg 1912 Heckscher 1967)

Warburgs influence on the history of art was very

great although he himself did not write much It was

mainly the posthumous impact of his ideas promul-

gated as they were by Fritz Saxl which contributed

to the specific direction of studies concentrated in the

library Warburg founded in Hamburg and which Saxl

succeeded in transplanting during the Nazi era to

London where it became the Warburg Institute of the

University of London While the object of study of the

nineteenth-century iconographers was mainly religious

art in its relation to religious literary sources and lit-

urgy for Warburg the study of images was a study

of their relations to religion to poetry to myth to

science and to social and political life Art was for

him closely connected with the polyphonic structure

of historical life

Warburgs ideas had a great importance for the most

influential theory of iconographic interpretation in our

century that elaborated by Erwin Panofsky In Ham-

burg where Warburg Saxl and Panofsky were active

in the twenties Ernst Cassirer built up his philosophy

of symbolic forms which constituted an additional

background for Panofskys system being derived as

his own methodology was from the traditions of

Kantian philosophy Around 1930 Panofskys ideas

ripened into a system which found formulation in his

book herkules am Scheidewege (1930) and later in a

theoretical article of 1932 G J Hoogewerff was how-

ever the first to propose the word ldquoiconologyrdquo as a

name for the method of an analysis of content in a

work of art (Warburg spoke of iconological analysis)

In 1931 he proposed distinguishing between iconogra-

phy as a descriptive science aiming at the identifica-

tion of themes and ldquoiconologyrdquo aiming at the under-

standing ldquoof symbolic dogmatic or mystical meaning

which is expressed (or hidden) in figurative formsrdquo He

stressed that ldquoiconologyrdquo deals with works of art with-

out classifying them according to the technique used

or to the achieved perfection taking into account only

their meaning Hoogewerff saw the last aim of iconol-

ogy in finding out the cultural and ideological back-

ground expressed by works of art and the cultural and

social significance which can be attributed to certain

forms and to means of expression in the same time

Hoogewerffs part in the expansion of iconology was

limited because he did not endorse his methodical

proposals with examples of historical interpretations

Erwin Panofsky with whose name iconology has

been connected ever since not only developed its

theoretical foundations but contributed by his practi-

cal work in art history to the main triumph of iconol-

ogy after the Second World War The most influential

book by Panofsky has been Studies in Iconology (1939)

in which his masterly presentation of the method was

connected with its equally excellent exemplification

2 Panofsky considers the interpretation of a work

of art as falling on three levels On the first level the

object of interpretation is the primary or natural sub-

ject matter The function of interpretation is called

ldquopre-iconographical descriptionrdquo In order to be able

to arrive at a correct interpretation on that level the

interpreter must have a practical experience (ldquofamili-

arity with objects and eventsrdquo) common to everybody

at least in one cultural sphere However he has to

control his observations by a ldquocorrective knowledge

of the history of stylerdquo (ldquoinsight into the manner in

which under varying historical conditions objects and

events were expressed by formsrdquo) On the second level

the function of interpretation is called ldquoiconographical

analysisrdquo its object is the ldquosecondary or conventional

subject matterrdquo constituting the world of images his-

tories and allegories The interpreters equipment in

this case is obviously the knowledge of literary sources

giving him a ldquofamiliarity with specific themes and

conceptsrdquo The interpreter has to control his observa-

tions by ldquothe insight into the manner in which under

varying historical conditions specific themes or con-

cepts were expressed by objects and eventsrdquo On the

third level the function of interpreting is called ldquoicon-

ographical analysis in a deeper senserdquo (1939) or ldquoicon-

ological analysisrdquo (1955) Its object is the ldquointrinsic

meaning or contentrdquo of a work of art The interpreters

equipment on that level should be a ldquofamiliarity with

the essential tendencies of the human mindrdquo and he

has to control his interpretation by the ldquoinsight into

the manner in which under varying historical condi-

tions essential tendencies of the human mind were

expressed by specific themes and conceptsrdquo Thus

taking all the time into account what Panofsky calls

the history of tradition the interpreter has to aim at

understanding the work of art its ldquoprimaryrdquo as well

as ldquosecondary subject matterrdquo as symptoms of some

fundamental tendency of the human mind typical of

537

a place a time a civilization and of an individual

responsible for the creation of the work ldquoIconologyrdquomdash

for Panofskymdashldquois a method of interpretation which

arises from synthesis rather than analysisrdquo Trying to

find the intrinsic meaning of a work of art

The art historian will have to check what he thinks is the

intrinsic meaning of the work or group of works against

what he thinks is the intrinsic meaning of as many other

documents of civilization historically related to that work

or group of works as he can master It is in the search

for intrinsic meaning or content that the various humanistic

disciplines meet on a common plane instead of serving as

handmaidens to each other

(Panofsky [1955] p 39)

The concept of intrinsic meaning of a work of art

was elaborated by Panofsky much earlier (1925) when

he interpreted in his own way the concept of Kunst-

wollen introduced by A Riegl to research in art

Panofsky understood this ldquoartistic volitionrdquo as an im-

manent ultimate meaning of a work of art which is

manifested in the way basic artistic problems are solved

in that work He used the same concept further to bring

art closer to the other fields of human activity Since

the ldquoimmanent ultimate senserdquo of the work of art is

nothing else than uniformity in the way of solving basic

artistic problems it is possible to compare that imma-

nent sense with immanent senses of the other human

works in various fields Panofsky did it for instance

when in one of his later works he compared the struc-

tural principles of Gothic architecture with those of

scholastic thinking (1951)

The system elaborated by Panofsky and exemplified

by his own work in art history was the first consistent

system of an integral interpretation of a work of visual

arts based on the analysis of content In principle

Panofskys system takes into account all the elements

of the work of art since it takes as the point of depar-

ture the sensual exterior shape of the work It is

however clear that its main scope is not the inter-

pretation of form as a bearer of meaning but the

understanding and interpretation of conventional alle-

gories literary themes and symbols as symptoms of

the history of the human mind It was that method

in the history of art which programmatically fostered

a collaboration with all the other disciplines of histori-

cal studies It was therefore one of the most influential

methods not only among art historians but also among

representatives of the other branches of humanistic

studies Although there were art historians who ex-

pressed a critical attitude toward ldquoiconologyrdquo as the

new method was soon baptized its influence was over-

whelming

3 It is not only but mainly due to Panofsky that

one can venture to call ldquoiconographicalrdquo that period

of art history as a historical discipline which followed

the Second World War and to oppose it to the ldquostylis-

ticrdquo one which preceded it It does not mean of course

that no iconographic research took place in the

twenties or thirties the works of Macircle Knipping van

Marle Wilpert Saxl and of Panofsky himself would

contradict such a statement Neither is it true that

purely formal research aiming at stylistic classification

and analysis discontinued after World War II It is

evident that in the last decades (from 1940 on) icono-

graphic interests came to the fore and became domi-

nant in many countries Iconographical studies grew

so much in number and importance that they made

it possible to undertake and to publish new reference

works of iconographic character like dictionaries

written by one scholar (Guy de Tervarent Aurenham-

mer) as well as larger works based on a collaboration

of several scholars (Encyclopedias of German art of

Antiquity and Christian civilization of Byzantine art)

Interest in meaning and iconography has appeared

also among historians of political social and religious

institutions The symbolism of signs ceremonies cos-

tumes and arms was studied by such scholars as A

Alfoumlldi ldquoInsignien und Tracht der roumlmischen Kaiserrdquo

Mitteilungen des deutschen Archaumlologischen Instituts

Roumlmische Abteilung (1935) 1ff ldquoDie Geburt der

kaiserlichen Bildsymbolikrdquo museum Helveticum 9

(1952) 204ff also by A Grabar Martyrium (Paris

1943-46) by E H Kantorowicz laudes Regiae

(Berkeley and Los Angeles 1946) The Kings Two

Bodies (Princeton 1957) by H P L Orange Studies

in the Iconography of Cosmic Kingship in the Ancient

World (Oslo 1953) Art Forms and Civic Life in the

Late Roman Empire (Princeton 1965) and by P E

Schramm herrschaftszeichen und Staatssymbolik

(Stuttgart 1954-56) In their studies iconography far

transcends the borders of art and it helps to build up

a history of ideas by following their various visual

expressions

Pioneering studies by K Giehlow F Saxl and E

Panofsky enlarged iconographical interests above all

to encompass the large field of secular art whereas

they had been mainly limited to religious iconography

in the work of preceding generations of scholars The

whole complicated and hardly known large body of

meanings disguised by the cryptic language of hiero-

glyphs emblems and iconologies became one of the

main topics of study

This established a collaboration between historians

of art and literature Mario Prazs admirable study of

emblems and his bibliography of emblem books

(1939-47) belongs now to the foundations of studies

in that field Publications by W S Heckscher and

A K Wirth by R S Clements E F von Monroy and

538

H M von Erffa E de Jongh and H Miedema and

several other scholars have elucidated the structure

and meaning of emblems and have shown their tre-

mendous influence on art even in its most monumental

and dignified forms An uninterrupted flow of reprints

of emblem books which brought within the reach of

modern students inaccessible volumes of sixteenth- and

seventeenth-century emblem writers were crowned by

the monumental undertaking of Arthur Henkel and

Albrecht Schoumlne who compiled an excellent volume

including almost all the texts and images needed for

the study of emblemsmdashEmblemata Handbuch zur

Sinnbildkunst des XVI und XVII Jahrhunderts

(Stuttgart 1967) Research was under way on hiero-

glyphs (Erik Iversen) and on the imprese (the late

Robert Klein) as well as on iconologies and allegories

These studies have disclosed meanings of the art of

the Renaissance of mannerism and of the baroque not

understood by nineteenth-century scholars

E Panofsky deciphered extremely farfetched and

individualistic programs of decoration of such famous

ensembles as the Camera di San Paolo by Correggio

in Parma the Gallery of Franccedilois I at Fontainebleau

Edgar Wind Andreacute Chastel and other scholars inter-

preted Raphaels decorations in the Popes apartments

Michelangelos art furnished material to detailed com-

prehensive studies by Panofsky Ch de Tolnay H von

Einem and Pope-Hennessy in which the share of

Neo-Platonic thinking in the ideological background

of the celebrated works of Michelangelo was discussed

Innumerable studies have been devoted to Titians

mythological paintings J R Martin presented expla-

nations of the Carracci frescoes in the Camerino Far-

nese and in the great gallery of the Palazzo Farnese

Bruegel considered in the nineteenth century as a drocircle

painter of peasant life has been shown by de Tolnay

Stridbeck and others to be an allegorist expressing a

skeptical humanistic outlook J S Held and W

Stechow contributed several articles to the under-

standing of mythological and allegorical contents in

Flemish and Dutch art of the sixteenth and seventeenth

centuries Rembrandts iconography was put into new

light by the two above-mentioned scholars as well as

by H M Rotermund H van de Waal J G van Gelder

H von Einem and Ch Tuumlmpel The intricate symbol-

ism and subject matter of historical and mythological

pictures by Nicolas Poussin were elucidated by such

masters of iconographic research as E H Gombrich

W Friedlaumlnder E Panofsky and above all by A Blunt

who in his monograph on Poussin presented a new

deep synthetic view of the ideas expressed by that

artists works Goyas individualistic secret symbolism

was also studied with the help of emblems and the

allegorical tradition Berninis works received iconolo

gical treatment by R Wittkower and H Kauffmann

All of this research does not mean that there was a

lack of interest in religious iconography M Schapiro

A Katzenellenbogen H Bober F Wormald and V

Elbern among others have contributed considerably

to deepen our understanding of the not completely

explained motifs and prominent works of medieval art

Panofsky has also shed a new light on several problems

of sepulchral iconography studies by such scholars as

R Berliner G von der Osten L Kalinowski S

Ringbom and T Dobrzeniecki contributed to late

medieval iconography in a new way Berliner stressed

the autonomous invention of visual artists or their

patrons while according to the traditional view popu-

larized by Macircle late medieval art should have followed

strictly literary sources

The religious content of modern art especially its

allegorical form in the late baroque period has been

examined and thanks to studies by such scholars as

W Mrazek and H Bauer has become better known

and understandable A great change was introduced

by ldquoiconologyrdquo into architectural history Buildings

which were formerly interpreted from aesthetic and

functional points of view only have been shown to

present allegorical symbolical or even emblematic

ideas Publications by leading art historians (R Witt-

kower B Smith G Bandmann O von Simson and

G C Argan) have presented medieval and modern

architecture as a bearer of meaning and have essen-

tially changed the character of architectural history

The iconography of classicism and romanticism

received a thorough treatment in books by W Hof-

mann and R Rosenblum as well as in several studies

devoted to individual themes and pictures G Hersey

has for example shown how much Delacroixs decora-

tion of the library in the Palais Bourbon owed to

Giambattista Vicos ideas about history More recently

studies on ldquoSymbolismrdquo have been undertaken Vincent

van Goghs symbolic language and iconography were

the object of studies by J Seznec C Nordenfalk and

other scholars On Ceacutezannes iconography interesting

remarks have been published by M Schapiro

Along with the development of iconographic studies

the establishment of centers of documentation has

advanced The ldquoFrenchrdquo stage in the development of

iconography has not left any marked trace in this

respect It was in America thanks to C R Morey that

the famous Index of Christian Art at the Department

of Art and Archaeology of Princeton University was

founded at first limited to the early Middle Ages then

enlarged so as to include art up to the end of the

medieval period Copies of the Princeton Index are

to be found also at the Istituto Pontificio dArcheolo-

gia in Rome and in the Dumbarton Oaks Library and

539

Collection in Washington DC But that Index ends

ldquowhere art beginsrdquomdashas Panofsky used to say jokingly

The need for systematic iconographic files for modern

art was strongly felt In 1956 A Pigler published a

very useful book Barockthemen in which he listed

thousands of works of art of the baroque period ac-

cording to their subjects It was however far from

being a systematic work The first essay in establishing

a systematic iconographic index for art of any time

was done by The Netherlands Institute for Art History

at the Hague then directed by H Gerson which took

the initiative around 1950 of publishing a postcard-size

photographic index of its rich collection of photographs

of Netherlandish art ordered according to an icono-

graphic principle Once such an idea was formulated

the need for a comprehensive consistent and clear

iconographic classification was urgent H van de Waal

of Leiden University devised such a system of classifi-

cation based on decimal divisions consistent and easy

to read He based his system on experiences of ethnol-

ogy and on such elaborated systems of classification

as that devised by Stith Thompson in his Motif-Index

of Folk Literature Vols I-VI (Bloomington Ind

1932-36 rev ed 1955-58) Van de Waal has elabor-

ated a system in which the first five main sections

classify five fundamental groups of portrayable things

namely (1) The Supernatural (2) Nature (3) Man (4)

Society (5) Abstracts The last four classify specific

subjects such as (6) History (7) The Bible (8) Myths

Legends and Tales (with the exception of classical

antiquity) (9) Myths and Legends of Classical Antiq-

uity Van de Waal combines the classification in the

first and in the second group in order to classify general

as well as specific subjects Christ in his system is

described with the sign ldquo11 Drdquo (ldquo1rdquo standing for Su-

pernatural ldquo11rdquo for Christianity ldquoDrdquo for Christ) the

adult Christ = 11 D 3 since ldquoshepherdrdquo on the other

hand bears the signature 47 I 221 the adult Christ

as a shepherd can be described in this system by the

following formula 11 D 3 = 47 I 221 Van de Waal

has also provided means to describe more complex

images which he expresses by adding elements between

brackets The Annunciation with God the Father and

a winged Angel is expressed by the following formula

73 A 5 (+1 +41) ldquo1rdquo standing for God the Father

and ldquo41rdquo for a winged Angel (van de Waal 1952) This

system elaborated for many years by its inventor and

prepared for publication in many volumes has proved

most useful in the practical arrangement of the Icono-

graphical Index of the Netherlandish Art and as the

only one until now in existence it became used more

and more in spite of some ambiguities and difficulties

As an endeavor to classify ldquoall portrayablerdquo things

persons events and ideas and to create a consistent

method to describe every possible image van de Waals

system may be considered as one of the important

achievements of the ldquoiconographical stagerdquo in the

development of art history Iconographic files exist of

course in many institutions as for example in the Ikon-

ologisch Instituut of Utrecht University one of the

main centers of study in emblematics and of course

in the most venerable institution of iconographic re-

search the Warburg Institute of the London University

and in other places

4 What was the result of this ldquoiconographicrdquo turn

in the development of the history of art One thing

is certain that this discipline by necessity has come

closer to other humanistic disciplines Since the

ldquointrinsicrdquo meaningmdashin Panofskys terminologymdashof a

work of art cannot be described in terms used by the

history of art but only in terms borrowed from the

history of philosophy of religion of social structures

of science and so on the ldquoiconological methodrdquo took

for granted and provoked such a collaboration Art

history was perhaps the first or one of the first to show

new interest in investigation of meaning It was fol-

lowed by similar developments in ethnology and in

linguistics

We have mentioned above a parallel development

in Byzantine and classical studies Panofskys influence

has been considerable in the other fields of humanistic

research Since ldquoiconologyrdquo aimed at discovering ideas

expressed by a work of art it awoke in art historians

an interest in the history of ideas This general shift

of emphasis and of the direction of studies from mainly

formal ones to studies aiming at ideas underlying art

was perhaps responsible among others for the fact that

several contributions to the Journal of the History of

Ideas have been written by historians of art

It is not difficult to see that such a development

should have provoked criticism on the side of those

who care about the purity and autonomy of methods

Iconology was criticized as far as its internal coherence

and also as far as its claim to be the integral method

of the study of art are concerned (Białostocki 1962)

Studies by R Klein E Forssman G Previtali G

Kubler B Teyssegravedre C Ginzburg and G Hermeren

expressed critical opinions in one or the other respect

Iconology linked art with the rest of history but it

disrupted the links between the work of art and other

things (Kubler 1962) Concentrating on meaning

iconology neglected art as form as individual expres-

sion Iconology implied a rational relationship between

intellectual content and artistic form On the one hand

one spoke of ldquoiconological diminutionsrdquo (Kubler

1962)mdashlimitations of research to meaning only But

on the other hand the overstatements of iconology

were criticized its representatives sometimes seemed

540

to assume everything symbolized something And some

iconologists seemed to consider important in art not

that which makes art a different field of human activity

but that which connects art with other fieldsmdashwith

the history of ideas

There were of course critics who had the opposite

opinion Since the end of the eighteenth century a

direct experience of art was more and more valued

and its symbolical function considered as a burden

J G von Herder said ein Kunstwerk ist der Kunst

wegen da aber bei einem Symbole ist die Kunst

dienend (ldquoA work of art is there because of art but

with a symbol art is a servicerdquo) Similar opinions were

expressed by nineteenth-century art writers and in this

century they have been voiced by Benedetto Croce and

by other Italian opponents of contenutismo by which

they meant interest in content For such critics to put

stress on iconography was to miss the essential in art

and to focus attention on a subordinate function of art

Also among scholars who considered the function

of representation and of communication as a legitimate

and important function of art criticism was expressed

not against the principle of an iconographical or icon-

ological investigation but against overstatements in

their application The introduction of the idea of ldquodis-

guised symbolismrdquo has created a danger of course of

opening the way to fanciful interpretations The alle-

gorical and symbolical function of mythological imag-

ery in classical art is also difficult to interpret precisely

Since no literary sources give a key to an interpretation

of the iconography of the sarcophagi very divergent

theories have been expressed concerning their meaning

Some archaeologists like F Cumont (1942) believe

that mythological and allegorical imagery (Anadyo-

mene Sea-Thiasos Personifications of the Seasons) is

to be read symbolically The Sea-Thiasos for instance

is to be interpreted as a symbol of the journey of the

souls of the deceased to the islands of the blessed

Others like A D Nock (1946) do not find enough

evidence to accept other than a decorative function

in such imagery

The intrusion of some representatives of psychology

eg C G Jung into iconographic studies giving them

an unhistorical turn in their search for ldquoarchetypal

imagesrdquo has complicated the situation although art

historians in general understandably have not accepted

that kind of approach to symbolism (Frankfort 1958

Gombrich 1965)

The fact that iconographic interpretations sometimes

lack satisfactory proofs does not detract from the im-

portance of such investigations so long as they are

conducted according to the requirements of historical

methods and take into account the corrective princi-

ples established by Panofsky A correct acquaintance

with the way of thinking of the artist the patron or the

viewer based on a satisfactory knowledge of documen-

tary visual and literary sources an awareness of the

choice situations produced by historical developments

may enable art historians to discover the secondary

meaning of a work of art as well as its intrinsic mean-

ing It is of course possible that the art historian will

meet some works for which it will not be possible to re-

construct in a satisfactory way the world of ideas that

would account for the meaning of those works In such

cases a reliable interpretation is simply not possible

R Berliner (1945 1966) criticized the widespread

opinion according to which content of the works of

visual arts in the Middle Ages had to be checked

against the literary sources considered as the only

medium in which ideological innovations were per-

mitted Berliner pleaded for assuming a considerable

ldquofreedomrdquo in the medieval artist and he considered

iconographic innovation possible even when no writ-

ten evidence could be found Meyer Schapiro (1947)

presented proofs that sometimes purely aesthetic rea-

sons decided the character of the work of art even as

early as the Romanesque period

We can only touch on some specific discussions going

on in the field of iconographic research But iconogra-

phic research is far from being a closed system and

the relative share of iconographic and stylistic criticism

in the work of art historians is always a matter of

discussion It is certain that the ldquoiconographicrdquo period

in the study of art has enlarged in a considerable way

the understanding of the art of the past and that it

has connected art history in a way unknown before

with the other historical disciplines and above all others

with the history of ideas

BIBLIOGRAPHY

L B Alberti On Painting ed J Spencer (New Haven

1956 revised ed 1966) E Auerbach ldquoFigurardquo (1944) trans

and published in Scenes From the Drama of European Liter-

ature (New York 1959) pp 11-76 K Bauch ldquoImagordquo

(1960) Studien zur Kunstgeschichte (Berlin 1967) pp 1-20

G P Bellori Descrizione delle imagini dipinte da Raffaello

(Rome 1695 ed used is 1751) R Berliner ldquoThe Free-

dom of Medieval Artrdquo Gazette des Beaux-Arts 628 (1945)

263-88 idem ldquoBemerkungen zu einigen Darstellungen des

Erloumlsers als Schmerzensmannrdquo Das Muumlnster 9 (1956)

97-117x J Białostocki ldquoIconografia e Iconologiardquo Enciclo-

pedia Universale dellArte (1962) Vol VII cols 163-75

trans as Encyclopedia of World Art (1966) Vol VII cols

769-85 lists almost all important older contributions to this

field idem ldquoRomantische Ikonographierdquo Stil und Ikonog-

raphie (Dresden 1966) pp 156-81 idem ldquoKompozycja

emblematyczna epitafioacutew ślaskich XVI wiekurdquo (ldquoEmblem-

atic Composition of Silesian Epitaphs of the Sixteenth Cen-

turyrdquo) Ze studioacutew nad Sztuka XVI wieku na Řlasku

(Wrocław 1968) pp 77-93 idem ldquoEsilio Privatordquo Bulletin

du Museacutee National de Varsovie 10 (1969) 95-101 J

541

Chydenius The Theory of Medieval Symbolism (Helsingfors

1960) Series of the Societas Scientiarum Fennica Com-

mentationes Humanarum Litterarum 27 2 R J Clements

Picta Poesis (Rome 1960) F Creuzer Symbolik und

Mythologie der Alten Voumllker (Leipzig and Darmstadt 1810

revised ed 1819) F Cumont Recherches sur le symbolisme

funeacuteraire des Romains (Paris 1942) L Eitner ldquoThe Open

Window and the Storm-Tossed Boatrdquo Art Bulletin 37

(1955) 281-90 H Frankfort ldquoThe Archetype in Analytical

Psychology and the History of Religionrdquo Journal of the

Warburg and Courtauld Institutes 21 (1958) 166-78

K Garas ldquoAllegorie und Geschichte in der Venezianischen

Malerei des 18 Jahrhundertsrdquo in proceedings of the XXI

International Congress of the History of Art Bonn Stil und

Uumlberlieferung in der Kunst des Abendlandes (Berlin 1967)

3 280-83 K Giehlow ldquoDie Hieroglyphenkunde des

Humanismus in der Allegorie der Renaissancerdquo Jahrbuch

der Kunsthistorischen Sammlungen des Allerhochsten

Kaiserhauses 32 (1915) 1-232 C Gilbert ldquoOn Subject and

Not-Subject in Italian Renaissance Picturesrdquo Art Bulletin

34 (1952) 202-16 C Ginzburg ldquoDa A Warburg a E H

Gombrich Note su un problema di metodordquo Studi medi-

evali series 3 7 (1966) 1015-65 E H Gombrich ldquoIcones

Symbolicae The Visual Image in Neo-Platonic Thoughtrdquo

Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes 11 (1948)

163-92 idem ldquoThe Use of Art for the Study of Symbolsrdquo

American Psychologist 20 (1965) A Grabar Liconoclasme

byzantin Dossier archeacuteologique (Paris 1957) idem Chris-

tian Iconography A Study of Its Origins (Princeton 1969)

S J Gudlaugsson De Comedianten bij Jan Steen en zijn

tijdgenooten (s-Gravenhage 1945) W S Heckscher ldquoThe

Genesis of Iconologyrdquo Stl und Uumlberlieferung in der Kunst

des Abendlandes Akten des XXI Internationalen Kon-

gresses fuumlr Kunstgeschichte (Berlin 1967) 3 239-62 G

Hermereacuten Representation and Meaning in the Visual Arts

A Study in the Methodology of Iconography and Iconology

Lund Studies in Philosophy Vol I (Lund 1969) R Hinks

Myth and Allegory in Ancient Art (London 1939) W

Hofmann Das Irdische Paradies (Munich 1960) G J

Hoogewerff ldquoLIconologie et son importance pour leacutetude

systeacutematique de lart chreacutetienrdquo Rivista dArcheologia Cris-

tiana 8 (1931) 53-82 E de Jongh Zinne- en minnebeelden

in de schilderkunst van de zeventiende eeuw (mdash1967) idem

ldquoErotica in Vogelperspectief De dubbelzinnigheid van een

reeks 17de eeuwse genrevoorstellingenrdquo Simiolus 3

(1968-69) 22-72 L Kalinowski ldquoTreści ideowe i estetyczne

Drzwi Gnieźnieńskichrdquo (ldquoIdeological and Aesthetic Content

of the Gniezno Bronze Doorsrdquo) in Drzwi Gnieźnieńskie ed

M Walicki (Wroclaw 1959) 2 7-160 H Keller Tizians

Poesie fuumlr Koumlnig Philip II von Spanien (Wiesbaden 1969)

R Klein ldquoLa theacuteorie de lexpression figureacutee dans les traiteacutes

italiens sur les imprese 1555-1612rdquo Bibliothegraveque dHu-

manisme et Renaissance 19 (1957) 320-41 republished with

the other relevant studies in la forme et lintelligible (Paris

1969) R Klibansky E Panofsky F Saxl Saturn and Melan-

choly (London 1964) J B Knipping Ikonografie van de

Contra-Reformatie in de Nederlanden (Hilversum 1939-40)

G Kubler The Shape of Time (New Haven and London

1962) R W Lee ldquoUt pictura poesisrdquo Art Bulletin 22

(1940) 197-269 E Macircle Lart religieux du XIIIe siegravecle en

France (Paris 1898) English ed used (New York 1958)

idem Lart religieux de la fin du Moyen-Age en France

(Paris 1908) idem Lart religieux du XIIe siegravecle en France

(Paris 1922) idem Lart religieux apregraves le Concile de Trente

(Paris 1932) J Maurin Białostocka Lessing i sztuki plas-

tyczne (ldquoLessing and the visual artsrdquo) (Wroclaw Warszawa

Krakoacutew 1969) E F von Monroy Embleme und Emblem-

buumlcher in den Niederlanden 1560-1630 ed H M von Erffa

(Utrecht 1964) J Montagu ldquoThe Painted Enigma and

French Seventeenth Century Artrdquo Journal of the Warburg

and Courtauld Institutes 31 (1968) 307-35 W Mrazek

Ikonologie der barocken Deckenmalerei (Vienna 1953)

Uumlsterreichische Akademie der Wissenschaften Philo-

sophisch-historische Klasse Sitzungsberichte 2283 A D

Nock ldquoSarcophagi and Symbolismrdquo American Journal of

Archaeology 50 (1946) 166ff D Panofsky and E Panofsky

ldquoThe Iconography of the Galeacuterie Franccedilois Ier at Fontaine-

bleaurdquo Gazette des Beaux-Arts 652 (1958) 113-90

E Panofsky ldquoUumlber das Verhaumlltnis der Kunstgeschichte zur

Kunsttheorierdquo Zeitschrift fuumlr Aesthetik und allgemeine

Kunstwissenschaft 18 (1925) 129-61 idem Studies in

Iconology (New York 1939) idem ed Abbot Suger (Prince-

ton 1946) idem Gothic Architecture and Scholasticism

(Latrobe Pa 1951) idem Early Netherlandish Painting

(Cambridge Mass 1953) idem Meaning in the Visual Arts

(Garden City N Y 1955) idem Renaissance and Renas-

cences in Western Art (Stockholm 1960) idem Tomb Sculp-

ture (New York 1964) E Panofsky and F Saxl ldquoClassical

Mythology in Medieval Artrdquo Metropolitan Museum Studies

4 (1932-33) 228-80 M Praz Studies in Seventeenth Cen-

tury Imagery (London 1939-47 2nd ed Rome 1964) S

Ringbom ldquoDevotional Images and Imaginative Devotions

Notes on the Place of Art in Late Medieval Private Pietyrdquo

Gazette des Beaux-Arts 6 73 (1969) 159-70 Joseph Sauer

Symbolik des Kirchengebaumludes und seiner Ausstattung in

der Auffassung des Mittelalters 2nd ed (Freiburg i B

1924) F Saxl ldquoFruumlhes Christentum und spaumltes Heidentum

in ihren kuumlnstlerischen Ausdrucksformenrdquo Wiener Jahrbuch

fuumlr Kunstgeschichte 2 (1923) 63-121 M Schapiro ldquoThe

Ruthwell Crossrdquo Art Bulletin 26 (1944) 232-45 idem ldquoOn

the Aesthetic Attitude in Romanesque Artrdquo in Art and

Thought issued in Honour of Ananda Coomaraswamy

(London 1947) 139-50 J Seznec The Survival of the Pagan

Gods (New York 1953) O G von Simson The Gothic

Cathedral (New York 1956) R E Spear ldquoThe Literary

Source of Poussins Realm of Florardquo The Burlington Maga-

zine 107 (1965) 563-69 L Volkmann Bilderschriften der

Renaissance (Leipzig 1923) Hans van de Waal Drie

eeuwen vaderlandsche geschieduitbeelding 1500-1800 (s-

Gravenhage 1952) idem ldquoSome Principles of a General

Iconographical Classificationrdquo in Actes du XVIIe Congregraves

International dHistoire de lArt Amsterdam 1952 (La Haye

1955) 601-06 E Wind ldquoCharity the Case History of a

Patternrdquo Journal of the Warburg Institute 1 (1937) 322ff

JAN BIAŁOSTOCKI

[See also Allegory Baroque Classicism Criticism Enlight-

enment Motif Myth Naturalism in Art Neo-Platonism

Renaissance Humanism Romanticism Symbolism Tem-

perance Ut pictura poesis]

lyrical tonality was preferred to a heroic one The

archaeological interests then current in Padua and

Venice visible for instance in the works by Andrea

Mantegna were moderated by an elegiac poetic mood

in reconstructing the classical world Pictures by Gior-

gione who worked for exclusive circles of humanists

were so hermetic in meaning that several of them like

the Three Philosophers (Vienna) or the Storm (Venice)

are iconographic riddles up to our own day The same

is true of the enigmatic and poetic iconography of some

pictures by Titian (Sacred and Profane Love in the

Borghese Gallery in Rome) by Lorenzo Lotto or by

the Ferrarese Dosso Dossi

The most important document of this romantic ar-

chaeological vision which strongly influenced icono-

graphical invention in Italy and outside of Italy was

a fantastic romance Hypnerotomachia Poliphili attrib-

uted in the most plausible way to a Franciscan monk

Francesco Colonna and published with beautiful

woodcuts by Aldus Manutius in Venice in 1499 Poetic

visions of a dreamy classical landscape full of ruins

in which the lovers Poliphilo and Polia wander influ-

enced the imagination of artists not less than the excel-

lent woodcuts their impact can be found as far and

as late as in the gardens at Versailles The illustrations

to Hypnerotomachia also popularized hieroglyphic

signs which make their appearance in iconography as

a specific phenomenon of the Renaissance

5 Art conceived as a language may be addressed

to large or to small groups It depends on the scope

of communication It can be intended as a message

to a possibly large audience but it can also be limited

in its appeal to a small selected group of observers

In an extreme case the polarization could be that

between a didactic art appealing to everybody and an

elitarian cryptic message understandable only to the

initiated few Medieval art belonged by far to the first

category the art of the Renaissance to the second

Even in the monumental wall-paintings decorating the

most celebrated places of Christianity such as the

Sistine Chapel or the official rooms of the Popes like

the Stanza della Segnatura even in the sepulchral

chapels of the most important families like the Sassetti

and the Medici the iconographic programs and sym-

bolism are extremely complicated The meaning of the

decoration of the great Gallery of Franccedilois I at Fon-

tainebleau is so cryptic that it was hypothetically ex-

plained only recently by the best specialists in icon-

ography (D and E Panofsky 1958) Few works of

medieval art have provoked such a number of inter-

pretations as the well-known and at first glance seem-

ingly easy to understand pictures like Botticellis

mythologies (Birth of Venus Spring The Uffizi Flor-

ence) like Titians Sacred and Profane Love or like

sculptures such as Michelangelos Medici tombs The

same is true of works by Duumlrer Holbein and Bruegel

in the North A deep symbolism a complicated

iconographymdashespecially current in the circles influ-

530

enced by Neo-Platonismmdashbelonged to the perfection

of the work

This idea had a long life it recurs in 1604 in Carel

van Manders Book of the Painter as well as in Berninis

utterances on the beauty of the concept which adorns

the work The more refined the concept the more

difficult the symbolism the narrower the circle of those

who can really understand the work

Art was considered especially in the exclusive court

social groups or among the humanists as a secret

language accessible to the initiated The visual sign

was connected with words into a specific union of

literature and art which flourished at the time of the

Renaissance of mannerism and of the baroque in the

form of impresa of hieroglyph and of emblem The

roots of the impresamdashthe personal sign and mottomdashare

to be found in chivalrous devices and signs popular

in the late Middle Ages it was brought to Italy from

France and connected with Neo-Platonic speculation

(Klein 1957) Hieroglyphs became popular thanks to

the discovery in 1419 of the Hieroglyphica by Hora-

pollo Niliacus (of the second or fourth century AD)

published in 1505 The humanists believed that this

enigmatic image-script disguised a profound wisdom

of the Egyptians ldquothey supposed that the great minds

of Greece had been initiated into these Egyptian

mysteriesmdashwhich in their turn were of course one

more prefiguration of the teachings of Christrdquo (Seznec

[1953] p 100) Emblems originated from an erudite

intellectual play among the humanists aiming however

at a moral lesson and sometimes considered in a Neo-

Platonic way as symbols revealing to those who con-

template them a higher knowledge of divine mysteries

Emblem included a motto called lemma an image

and an epigram Only the whole of the emblem can

be understood each element of it giving only one part

of the meaning All those cryptic codes of expression

connecting words and images originated as secret and

elitarian The problem of the degree of obscurity was

one of the main points discussed by the theorists of

the emblematics (Clements [1964] pp 191-95) Eras-

mus of Rotterdam stressed that one of the virtues of

the impresa is that its meaning can be grasped only

with an intellectual effort Cesare Ripa (Iconologia

1593) demands that symbolic images be composed ldquoin

the form of enigmardquo Sambucus (1564) required ldquoob-

scuritasrdquo and ldquonovitasrdquo from the emblems Paolo

Giovio represented a reasonable middle ldquoThe device

should not be so obscure as to require the Sybil to

interpret it nor yet so obvious that any literal-minded

person can understand itrdquo Later however the crypto-

grams of hieroglyphics and emblem books began to

be popularized and explained Collections of emblems

became widely known New systematization of icon

ography now of a humanistic one was inaugurated

In 1556 Vincenzo Cartari published the first modern

handbook of mythological imagery le imagini colla

sposizione degli dei degli antichi (Venice 1556) In the

same year Pierio Valeriano produced a rich collection

of Hieroglyphica (Basel 1556) Earlier in 1531 Andrea

Alciati had compiled the first emblem book (Emblema-

tum liber Augsburg 1531) The influence of such

books which went through many translations and edi-

tions and which were imitated and continued all over

Europe grew at the close of the sixteenth and in the

seventeenth century In exclusive groups it happened

much earlier that hieroglyphic astrological and em-

blematic imagery influenced the iconography of im-

portant works of art as for example at the court of

Maximilian I (M Giehlow 1915) sometimes this con-

cerned works done by the most distinguished artists

like Duumlrers Melencolia I (Klibansky et al 1964)

Emblematic principle of composition uniting as it did

the image with the verbal formulations found great

popularity in northern Europe perhaps because the

importance of the word so prominent in Protestantism

was stressed (Luther required ldquofragments from the

Holy Writrdquo to be included in the Epitaph-pictures)

Epitaphs and other religious pictures of the Protestant

North connect words and images in the harmonious

indivisible whole (Białostocki 1968)

In the Netherlands emblems played an important

part in the development of realistic painting in the

seventeenth century since they furnished a rich reper-

tory of imagery charged with allegorical meaning (de

Jongh von Monroy) However the meaning of those

images obvious to the viewer who remembered the

original emblematic context eluded for a long time

later interpreters who were no longer conversant with

the emblems

After Cartari and his followers furnished artists and

patrons with images of classical gods there was a need

felt for another handbook which would enable the

artist to represent and the patron to understand the

abstract moral philosophical scientific and other

ideas symbolized Only then was art able to express

complex thoughts This task was fulfilled by Cesare

Ripa of Perugia who in 1593 published his Iconologia

a handbook explaining how to represent all the incor-

poreal concepts In 1603 Iconologia was republished

with illustrations and became one of the most popular

and influential art books With Ripa in hand art

historiansmdashinitially Eacutemile Macircle (1932)mdashwere able to

decipher hundreds of allegorical statements in paint

and stone guided by this alphabet of personifications

Ripas basic entity was a human figure female more

often than male whose costumes attributes gestures

and other particulars express specific qualities of the

531

idea represented With the publication of Ripas workmdash

translated soon into many languages and frequently

republished and revisedmdashthe humanistic system of

allegorical iconography was established classical gods

and personifications hieroglyphic signs and emblems

connecting words and images this was the material

used by the artists of mannerism and the baroque when

they did not choose to keep to the ldquohistoricalrdquo world

ie to borrow their subjects directly from literature

When they did so when they painted stories they used

to select them not only from Ovid and Vergil but also

from the more recent poems by Ariosto and Tasso and

also from the works of less known writers ancient and

modern Valerius Maximus furnished them with exam-

ples of virtuous behavior These historical examples

were in general either connected with allegorical gen-

eralizations (in the big decorations of the late baroque

the central fresco was often an allegory and the ac-

companying canvas-pictures presented historical ex-

amples of virtues Garas pp 280-83) or conceived in

an allegorical way Ovide moraliseacute was popular already

in the late Middle Ages Its influence persisted also

in the time of the baroque Myths and stories under-

went allegorical interpretations along the lines of that

moralizing commentary

What was considered necessary for an artist around

1600 can be seen from Carel van Manders Book of

the Painter (1604) It included a long theoretical poem

a history of classical and modern Italian and Nether-

landish artists a translation and a moral interpretation

of Ovids Metamorphoses and finally a description of

personifications There is no specific section on reli-

gious iconography since artists were well furnished

with books giving them rules in this respect

Against the humanistic conception of art the Council

of Trent proclaimed rules constituting a new system

of religious iconography which put an end to the live

tradition of medieval art These rules were published

officially by the Church and they have been com-

mented upon and elaborated in books by Joannes

Molanus (1570) Saint Carlo Borromeo (1577) Gabriele

Paleotti (1581) Federico Borromeo (1624) and several

others The rules of the Council governed the decora-

tion of churches and other sacred buildings and the

character of pictures representing sacred subjects A

break between the religious and the secular iconogra-

phy became obvious in theoretical literature although

there existed many emblem books of a very distinct

religious character (G de Montenay 1571 B Arias

Montanus 1571 H Hugo 1624) A new strictly for-

mulated system of religious iconography coexisted in

the seventeenth century with humanistic subject mat-

ter symbolism and allegory The classical nude intro-

duced by the Renaissance into art was strictly forbid

den now in religious art but found a free field of

development in secular mythological and allegorical

works Many artists exercised their imagination in both

fields in some specific fields such as sepulchral iconog-

raphy cooperation between religious and humanistic

symbolism was common In the work of P P Rubens

the various aspects of the new iconography found

perhaps their best expression In his art allegorical

concepts classical gods and heroes triumphs of mythi-

cal beings as well as of secular rulers accompany mar-

tyrdoms of Catholic saints and the triumphs of the

Eucharist What began to be separated in theory could

yet coexist in harmony in the work of a great artist

6 In northern European art (before Rubens) the

renewal of the arts during the Renaissance took the

form of the new study of nature and the elaboration

of the most convincing means of representing the ma-

terial world in an illusionistic way traditional medieval

symbolism was transformed in a specific way produc-

ing what E Panofsky called in 1953 ldquodisguised sym-

bolismrdquo The symbolic meaning connected with objects

and qualities persisted but a new mastery reproduced

these symbolical objects with such a degree of realism

that they did not differ any longer from other objects

not charged with any metaphorical meaning Some-

times the symbolical meaning of represented objects

results from the traditional iconography in an unmistak-

able way sometimes the meaning is hinted at by the

inscriptions placed in the picture or on its frame But

in many cases the modern viewer remains perplexed

without any sufficient clue to decide whether in the

picture he observes he has to do with the beginnings

of the representation of reality for its own sake or

whether the search for specific metaphorical meaning

is justified It is still always a matter of discussion to

decide at which moment the representation of some

objects or some scene in life without any symbolical

(or ldquohistoricalrdquo) implications became possible (Gilbert

1952) Observers of the eighteenth and nineteenth

centuries to whom the meaning of old symbols was

wholly forgotten took many images of the fifteenth and

sixteenth centuries for simple representations of life

Bruegel for example was considered as simply a

painter of joking or working peasants Recent studies

in iconography have shown that these pictures are

saturated with disguised meaning and that it is ex-

tremely rare before about 1550 to meet simple repre-

sentations of nature in painting In graphic arts the

direct depiction of life and landscape began earlier

as in the works of Lombard draughtsmen or in the

incredibly fresh convincing drawings and prints by the

Master of the Housebook There are also early excep-

tions in painting like Albrecht Altdorfers landscape

without any human figures But in general it was only

532

during the second half of the sixteenth century that

landscape genre and still-life painting began to ac-

quire equal rights with religious and humanistic history

and allegory predominantly in Venice and in Antwerp

Even then however the representations of people

working in fields (Jacopo or Francesco Bassano) fol-

lowed the old traditions of Calendar-pictures and in

the background of genre scenes as in Pieter Aertsens

pictures a biblical motif may be found which trans-

forms the whole composition into a storia however

unorthodox

With the development of realistic painting in the

seventeenth century there appeared specific iconogra-

phic problems New subjects slowly found convenient

form They entered the scene patterned after the ven-

erable stories of sacred or of profane iconography

H van de Waal described (1952) the process of the for-

mation of national historical iconography in Holland

Scenes depicting recent happenings from a long strug-

gle for national independence appeared first in forms

assimilated to well-known religious or mythical scenes

This was not only an expedient facilitating their com-

position for by this means the new subjects gained the

decorum inherent in the adopted patterns formed to

express traditional stories Similar procedures may be

seen in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries when

more and more sections of reality became interesting

enough to be represented in art

The transfer of decorum from the sacred or allegori-

cal figures to the humans represented is a means used

in what modern iconographers call ldquoallegorical por-

traiturerdquo Renaissance painters had represented real

people under mythological or even sacred disguise

they gave actual faces of living people to the figures

represented with all the attributes and characteristics

of their mythical sacred or even allegorical qualities

Later it was only the pattern which remained still in

the eighteenth century English portraitists patterned

the effigies of contemporary aristocrats after Michel-

angelos Sybils or after allegories like the Caritas

(Wind 1937) J B Oudry represented the Polish King

in exile Stanisław Leszczyński with all the attributes

of the allegory of exile taken from Ripa identifying

him in this way with personification of his most promi-

nent quality (Białostocki 1969)

Dutch realistic painting of the seventeenth century

is a document of an important iconographic conquest

Landscapes seascapes moonlit night scenes snapshots

of people skating in winter landscapes views of market

places church interiors backyards fishermen old

women preparing food fashionable dishes ready for

lunch merchants and artisans elegant gentlemen pay-

ing visits and folk-surgeons performing sensational

street-operations all this became subject matter for

representation and continued to be considered worthy

of depiction until the end of the nineteenth century

It was first considered as such in Holland only then

slowly everyday subject matter was recognized also by

art-theorists in other countries although it was re-

garded as much less dignified than religious mytholog-

ical or allegorical subjects Only in the nineteenth

century did the vogue of realistic representation of

everyday subjects become widespread In Dutch pic-

tures of the seventeenth century we are often con-

fronted with nothing else than representations of pic-

turesque reality Sometimes however these genre

pictures appear to be illustrations of proverbs expres-

sing moralistic folk-wisdom sometimes they recall

scenes from the popular threater of the rederijkers or

rhetoricians especially pictures by Jan Steen (Gud-

laugsson 1945) they contain allusions to emblems

Sometimes the elegant scenes from bourgeois life in-

clude quite indecent erotic allusions (de Jongh 1967

1969) The ambiguity of these pictures was certainly

a source of specific pleasure for those who knew the

key to their true meaning

7 In Catholic countries allegorical art sacred as

well as profane flourished The twofold character of

symbolic representations mentioned above persisted

in the seventeenth century Aristotelian rational sym-

bolism which used images as words was widespread

in the orthodox Catholic iconography of the Counter-

Reformation as well as in the humanistic visual lan-

guage codified by Ripa and others A mystical Neo-

Platonic symbolism transcending reason reappeared

too Its outspoken document is the treatise by Chris-

toforo Giarda Bibliothecae alexandrinae icones sym-

bolicae of 1626 (Gombrich 1948) For Giarda symbolic

images give the beholder a direct insight into the

mysteries of religion which are not accessible to rea-

son

Thanks to symbolic images the mind which is banished from

heaven into this dark cave of the body its actions held in

bondage by the senses can behold the beauty and form

of the Virtues and Sciences divorced from all matter and

yet adumbrated if not perfectly expressed in colours and

is thus roused to an even more fervent love and desire for

them Who then can sufficiently estimate the magni-

tude of the debt we owe to those who expressed the Arts

and Sciences themselves in images and so brought it about

that we could not only know them but look at them as

it were with our eyes that we can meet them and almost

converse with them

(Gombrich [1948] pp 188f)

Great allegorical compositions covering the ceilings of

baroque churches are often realizations of this princi-

ple For those however who conceived allegory as a

rational operation as a language used for didactic aims

the main problem remained the clarity of the allegori-

533

cal message The larger the audience to whom allegory

was addressed the simpler more obvious its symbolism

should have been The banality of allegorical language

provoked criticism in the eighteenth century Fran-

cesco Algarotti (1762) prefers without any doubt his-

torical representations to the ldquoempty allegories and

complicated mythological allusionsrdquo (Garas [1967] p

280) Especially criticized was the obscurity of these

allegories in which completely original unknown sym-

bols were used Roger de Piles praises his favorite

master Rubens who ldquointroduced only such allegories

elements of which were already known from ancient

artrdquo and opposes him to Charles Lebrun who ldquoinstead

of taking symbols from some known source as the

ancient fable and medals has invented almost all of

them and thus the pictures of this kind became riddles

which the beholder does not want to take the task to

solverdquo To keep the balance between platitudinous

redundancy and utter incomprehensibility was the

crucial problem of late baroque allegorism What is

interesting however is that the idea of the picture

as a riddle was not foreign to the seventeenth century

It appears in France as well as in Sweden where David

Kloumlcker Ehrenstrahl (1694) proposed that pictures

present riddles that could not be solved by everyone

In France however the ldquopainted enigmardquo fostered

by the Jesuits in their schools flourished especially well

in the seventeenth century (Montagu 1968) These

ldquopainted enigmasrdquo lent themselves to various inter-

pretations and gave interpreters an opportunity to

show their ingenuity These pictures and their inter-

pretations seem to prove that a considerable flexibility

of meaning was intended

We might rather accept that a work of art was regarded

in the seventeenth century as in a certain sense an open

symbol raw material like the myth or sacred story which

it illustrates on which the interpreter might exercise the

power of his ingenuity turning it into an allegory of Chris-

tian doctrine or a panegyric in honour of his patron

(Montagu [1968] p 334)

Such a situation probably existed only in some specific

circles It was a limiting case The other extreme was

to use in an uninteresting routine way Ripas symbolic

images or those of other popular symbolic handbooks

Such practice continued well into the eighteenth cen-

tury The general trend fed by ideas of the Enlighten-

ment was to make allegories more and more obvious

It is understandable that some theorists like the Count

de Caylus looked for new subject matter presenting

as he did Tableaux tireacutes de lIliade (1755) or that

J J Winckelmann tried to revive allegory and to give

it a new force It was however too late In the eight-

eenth century together with the whole system of

humanistic tradition the systems of iconography began

to disintegrate The great break in the tradition con-

cerned not only style but also iconography Emblem-

atic roots may be discovered in Goyas symbolism as

well as in the reasonable allegories of the Enlighten-

ment but generally speaking there was a search for

new not known or not used sourcesmdashas in William

Blakes biblical individualistic imagerymdashor the new

staging of the old ones as in Jacques Louis Davids

classical subjects

The art of romanticism was a definite break with

the past much more in the field of ideas and iconogra-

phy than in a stylistic respect where romanticists

retrospectively looked back either to medieval and

pre-Raphaelite or to baroque sources Symbols and

allegories yielded to an all-pervading mood and the

traditional repertory of religious allegorical mytho-

logical and historical iconography gave way to a new

iconography Although several encompassing images

of Christian and humanistic art survived they received

new content and essentially changed their character

New attitudes of the individual to the world of nature

and history to society and destiny to time and death

and new problems resulting from the striving after

freedom (which was a new perhaps most important

principle of human behavior in all fields of human

activity) found expression in new thematic fields and

in new particular themes such as ldquoStorm-tossed Boatrdquo

ldquoLonely Wanderer in the Mountainsrdquo ldquoA Death of the

Herordquo (Eitner 1955 Hofmann 1960 Białostocki

1966)

Romanticism has not formed and could not have

formed an iconographic system for since they strived

first of all for originality of individual conception the

romantics interpreted images in a subjective way as

expressions of mood Romanticism has on the other

hand introduced new heroes and martyrs into art

instead of religious ones the national social and artis-

tic ones It created a new image of history seen now

as a set of political and moral examplesmdashas in

baroquemdashbut often put together now according to a

very individualistic principle of choice A correlative

to pathetic and heroic romanticism was a bourgeois

and intimate romanticism its expression was for ex-

ample the new imagery of the open window which

shows to the viewer wide perspectives but shelters him

at the same time from the dangers of the unknown

(Eitner 1955)

When the world of ideas and images created at the

moment of the flowering of romanticism began to be

popularized for the use of the large bourgeois masses

the contentmdashideological and iconographicalmdashof ro-

manticism lost its original authenticity and left be-

hind not a new system of original images but a dispo-

534

sition to melodramatic experiences and an inflation of

a theatrical gesture (Hofmann 1960 Białostocki 1966)

The nineteenth century developed a realistic por-

traiture of man and nature and took over worn out

clicheacutes of the Renaissance and baroque allegories It

introduced new subject matter taken partly from tra-

dition partly from observation of reality tinted with

vague symbolism such as ldquoForgerdquo or the ldquoFuneral of

the Peasantrdquo but it did not create a new system of

iconography in spite of short-lived revivals of symbol-

istic attitudes in such movementsmdashincidentally not

limited to and not initiated in the visual artsmdashas

ldquosymbolismrdquo

New ephemeral artistic movements which consti-

tuted the history of European art in the last hundred

years show an interesting bracketing of style and icon-

ography in spite of a preponderant lack of iconogra-

phic interest Their representatives chose subjects suit-

able to specific artistic aims and means which they

developed and were interested in Impressionists

painted seaside scenes landscapes and genre pictures

showing the life of artistic and intellectual milieus

Cubists introduced a specific repertory of still-life

motifs symbols of the artists atelier and of the life

of the bohegraveme bottles musical instruments books

fruits flowers newspapers How much these motifs

were connected with specific cubist style appears when

one looks at works of artists foreign to the original

cubist group but imitating its style as for instance

several Czech artists like Emil Filla They adopted

cubist iconography together with cubist style Abstract

movements in general lacked iconography although

they were not foreign to symbolic tendencies espe-

cially in sculpture (Brancusi Moore) Only in the dec-

ades of 1950-70 can a revival of more articulated and

programmatic symbolism be observed One may sup-

pose that this revival is at least in part brought about

by the development of research in iconography and

symbolism which took place in the second and third

quarters of our century

II

1 The origins of ldquointerpretative iconographyrdquo may

be seen in the descriptions (ekphrasis) of works of art

known in classical literature But these descriptions

like those by Philostratus the Elder or Lucian are

limited simply to description and lack in general any

interpretation Moreover it is not certain whether they

are descriptions of actual or fictitious works of art at

least opinions in this respect vary Brief medieval tituli

which formulated in words the content of religious

images were to be sure interpretative sometimes but

they were short and cannot be connected with the

tradition of artistic erudition We have to look to

modern times to indicate the beginnings of iconogra-

phic interpretation and research From Vasaris Rag-

ionamenti in which interpretations of the paintings

decorating the Palazzo Vecchio in Florence are given

we learn how complicated and how undecipherable

iconographic concepts might have been even to peo-

ple living in buildings decorated by paintings expres-

sing these concepts But perhaps the first really to be

considered as interested in iconographic research was

the seventeenth-century archaeologist and art theorist

Giovanni Pietro Bellori In the introduction to his Lives

of Artists (1672) Bellori stressed that he paid special

attention to the content of the works of art he was

talking about and he even credited the painter Nicolas

Poussin with having directed his attention to iconogra-

phy In his Lives Bellori presented short interpretative

descriptions of pictures and he sometimes developed

these interpretations further in small iconographic

essays the influence of classical ekphrasis on him is

a possibility Sometimes his errors took deep roots in

the subsequent history of art as when he explained

Poussins Triumph of Flora (Dresden) by designating

Ovids Metamorphoses as its source The true source

Marinos Adona was finally found by R E Spear in

1965

What is interesting in Belloris procedure is that he

first identifies the motifs tries to connect them with

classical or modern literary sources and then proceeds

to find out the deep meaning the general symbolic

idea of the work Therefore he may be considered as

one of the pioneers not only of iconography as a disci-

pline of research but also of iconology as formulated

by its recent partisans That even in the second half

of the sixteenth century some observers were inclined

to look for hidden meaning in each element of the work

of art we learn from Joannes Molanus (1570) who in

De picturis et imaginibus sacris states reasonably that

ldquoit is not necessary to ask for meaning of everything

that can be observed in a picture in such cases a lot

of absurd things may resultrdquo But the consciousness of

the importance of iconography increased and at the

end of the seventeenth century Andreacute Feacutelibien stressed

that in order to attribute a picture to a painter it is

not enough to know the way he uses his brush one

needs also to know his esprit to learn his geacutenie and

to be able to foresee in which way he is able to form

his conceptions Thus iconographic analysis was con-

sidered necessary even for the purpose of attribution

Descriptive interpretations of the works of ancient

art appeared in the big archaeological publications of

the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries such as

Jacques Spons Miscellanea eruditae antiquitatis (1679)

G P Belloris Admiranda romanarum antiquitatum ac

veteris sculpturae vestigia (1693) P de Caylus Recueil

535

dantiquiteacutes eacutegyptiennes eacutetrusques grecques et

romaines (1752-67) and in an interesting endeavor

(although very much criticized by Lessing) of Joseph

Spence to explain classical poets through works of art

and vice versa (Polymetis 1747) Classical archaeology

however has not been especially interested in iconog-

raphy and the use of the term itself by archaeolo-

gists was limited to portraiture The first great devel-

opment of iconographic studies was connected with

the romantic movement although an important pre-

lude for it was hagiographical collections of sources

such as Acta sanctorum published by the Bollandists

(1643-1794 resumed later) Among the pre-romantic

scholars in iconography the eminent German poet

G E Lessing is to be noted His study of the repre-

sentation of death in classical times can be considered

as one of the first essays in interpretative iconography

which is now called iconology In Wie die Alten den

Tod gebildet (1769) Lessing tries to interpret the classi-

cal iconographic type of Amor with the inverted torch

and to find its ldquointrinsic meaningrdquo by taking into ac-

count the religion customs and philosophy of the

classical world The work of art is interpreted by Less-

ing as ldquoa symptom of something elserdquo While Lessings

predecessors (like B de Montfaucon) ldquoexplained the

classical past by monumentsrdquo he for the first time did

the opposite ldquohe explained the monuments by Antiq-

uityrdquo (Maurin Białostocka [1969] pp 92-100)

Pre-romantic and romantic interests in myth and

symbol found their expression in publications and dis-

cussions by German philosophers and scholars like F

Schlegel J Herder J J von Goumlrres and F Creuzer

Creuzers work Symbolik und Mythologie der alten

Voumllker (1810) which shows the influence of mystical

Neo-Platonic ideas on symbols (Gombrich 1965) was

the most influential in the romantic period in Ger-

many Under the impact of Chateaubriands le Geacutenie

du christianisme (1802) research in medieval iconog-

raphy developed mainly in France Works by French

scholars mostly clergymen which were indeed con-

cerned with Christian medieval art dominated icon-

ographical study in the nineteenth century Since most

of these writers were not professional scholars their

work was often amateurish in character but it is unde-

niable that books by A N Didron Histoire de Dieu

(Paris 1843) the first part of a comprehensive pro-

jected but not completed iconography of Christian art

A Crosnier Iconographie chreacutetienne (Caen 1848) C

Cahier Caracteacuteristiques des saints (Paris 1867) C

Rohault de Fleury Archeacuteologie chreacutetienne les saints

de la messe et leurs monuments 12 vols (Paris

1893-1900) L Breacutehier Lart chreacutetien son deacuteveloppe-

ment iconographique des origines agrave nos jours (Paris

1918) P Perdrizet V Leroquais and G de Jerphanion

have built up a solid body of iconographical knowl-

edge on which scholars of the twentieth century were

able to erect a modern comprehensive structure In

the field of Byzantine iconography it was Gabriel

Millets Recherches sur liconographie de leacutevangile aux

XIVe XVe et XVIe siegravecles (Paris 1916 reprint

1960) that was basic for any further study For Western

chiefly French art a well-written and learned work

appealing to the general reader as well as to the

scholar was produced by Eacutemile Macircle who in his four

volumes of the history of religious art (1898-1932) has

presented a well-composed synthetic image of icono-

graphical development A lexicographic summary of

these studies of generations of French scholars is pre-

sented in the Dictionnaire darcheacuteologie chreacutetienne et

de liturgie published from 1907 to 1953 and edited

by F Cabrol and H Leclerq A recent reference work

is that by L Reacuteau Iconographie de lart chreacutetien (Paris

1955-59) Russian scholars have done important work

in the field of Byzantine and Orthodox iconography

of religious art The most prominent are N P Kon-

dakov Ikonografia Bogomatieri (St Petersburg 1911

2nd ed 1914-15) D V Ainalov Mosaiki IV i V vekov

(St Petersburg 1895) and N Pokrovski Otcherki

pamyatnikov christianskogo isskusstva i ikonografii (St

Petersburg 1894 3rd ed 1910) V Lasarev and M

Alpatov belonging to the mid-twentieth-century gen-

eration of Russian scholars discuss iconography in

several works on religious art German scholarship

produced in the nineteenth century works by F Piper

A Springer and H Detzel Useful compendia were

produced in the early twentieth century by J Sauer

W Molsdorf K Kuumlnstle and J Braun Dutch scholars

C Smits J B Knipping and J J M Timmers contrib-

uted to iconographic studies in recent times Knip-

pings book (1939-40) being the most important work

on the iconography of the Counter-Reformation and

supplementing Macircles volume of 1932 In the twentieth

century on C R Moreys initiative iconographic

studies were inaugurated in North America Focused

on earlier medieval art these studies developed at

Princeton University

A new direction characteristic of iconographic

studies in the twentieth century has been given to

them by the international school of art historical re-

search inaugurated by the Hamburg scholar Aby

Warburg At the International Congress for the History

of Art at Rome in 1912 he presented a sensational

astrological interpretation of the frescoes painted by

Francesco Cossa and his collaborators in Palazzo

Schifanoja at Ferrara Warburg solved the secret of

those representations which had puzzled the ingenuity

of several former students interpreting them as images

of zodiacal signs and their decans But he did not limit

536

his contribution to the presentation of his results He

wanted to stress the importance of his approach and

of the method of study which later became connected

with his name He said

I hope that through the method used by me for explication

of the frescoes at the Palazzo Schifanoja of Ferrara I have

proved that an iconological analysis which does not allow

itself to be diverted by the rules of frontier police from

considering antiquity Middle Ages and modern times as

interconnected periods nor from analyzing the most liberal

and the most applied works of art as equally important

documents of expression that this method endeavoring as

it does to throw light upon one dark spot clears up at

the same time great interconnected developments

(Warburg 1912 Heckscher 1967)

Warburgs influence on the history of art was very

great although he himself did not write much It was

mainly the posthumous impact of his ideas promul-

gated as they were by Fritz Saxl which contributed

to the specific direction of studies concentrated in the

library Warburg founded in Hamburg and which Saxl

succeeded in transplanting during the Nazi era to

London where it became the Warburg Institute of the

University of London While the object of study of the

nineteenth-century iconographers was mainly religious

art in its relation to religious literary sources and lit-

urgy for Warburg the study of images was a study

of their relations to religion to poetry to myth to

science and to social and political life Art was for

him closely connected with the polyphonic structure

of historical life

Warburgs ideas had a great importance for the most

influential theory of iconographic interpretation in our

century that elaborated by Erwin Panofsky In Ham-

burg where Warburg Saxl and Panofsky were active

in the twenties Ernst Cassirer built up his philosophy

of symbolic forms which constituted an additional

background for Panofskys system being derived as

his own methodology was from the traditions of

Kantian philosophy Around 1930 Panofskys ideas

ripened into a system which found formulation in his

book herkules am Scheidewege (1930) and later in a

theoretical article of 1932 G J Hoogewerff was how-

ever the first to propose the word ldquoiconologyrdquo as a

name for the method of an analysis of content in a

work of art (Warburg spoke of iconological analysis)

In 1931 he proposed distinguishing between iconogra-

phy as a descriptive science aiming at the identifica-

tion of themes and ldquoiconologyrdquo aiming at the under-

standing ldquoof symbolic dogmatic or mystical meaning

which is expressed (or hidden) in figurative formsrdquo He

stressed that ldquoiconologyrdquo deals with works of art with-

out classifying them according to the technique used

or to the achieved perfection taking into account only

their meaning Hoogewerff saw the last aim of iconol-

ogy in finding out the cultural and ideological back-

ground expressed by works of art and the cultural and

social significance which can be attributed to certain

forms and to means of expression in the same time

Hoogewerffs part in the expansion of iconology was

limited because he did not endorse his methodical

proposals with examples of historical interpretations

Erwin Panofsky with whose name iconology has

been connected ever since not only developed its

theoretical foundations but contributed by his practi-

cal work in art history to the main triumph of iconol-

ogy after the Second World War The most influential

book by Panofsky has been Studies in Iconology (1939)

in which his masterly presentation of the method was

connected with its equally excellent exemplification

2 Panofsky considers the interpretation of a work

of art as falling on three levels On the first level the

object of interpretation is the primary or natural sub-

ject matter The function of interpretation is called

ldquopre-iconographical descriptionrdquo In order to be able

to arrive at a correct interpretation on that level the

interpreter must have a practical experience (ldquofamili-

arity with objects and eventsrdquo) common to everybody

at least in one cultural sphere However he has to

control his observations by a ldquocorrective knowledge

of the history of stylerdquo (ldquoinsight into the manner in

which under varying historical conditions objects and

events were expressed by formsrdquo) On the second level

the function of interpretation is called ldquoiconographical

analysisrdquo its object is the ldquosecondary or conventional

subject matterrdquo constituting the world of images his-

tories and allegories The interpreters equipment in

this case is obviously the knowledge of literary sources

giving him a ldquofamiliarity with specific themes and

conceptsrdquo The interpreter has to control his observa-

tions by ldquothe insight into the manner in which under

varying historical conditions specific themes or con-

cepts were expressed by objects and eventsrdquo On the

third level the function of interpreting is called ldquoicon-

ographical analysis in a deeper senserdquo (1939) or ldquoicon-

ological analysisrdquo (1955) Its object is the ldquointrinsic

meaning or contentrdquo of a work of art The interpreters

equipment on that level should be a ldquofamiliarity with

the essential tendencies of the human mindrdquo and he

has to control his interpretation by the ldquoinsight into

the manner in which under varying historical condi-

tions essential tendencies of the human mind were

expressed by specific themes and conceptsrdquo Thus

taking all the time into account what Panofsky calls

the history of tradition the interpreter has to aim at

understanding the work of art its ldquoprimaryrdquo as well

as ldquosecondary subject matterrdquo as symptoms of some

fundamental tendency of the human mind typical of

537

a place a time a civilization and of an individual

responsible for the creation of the work ldquoIconologyrdquomdash

for Panofskymdashldquois a method of interpretation which

arises from synthesis rather than analysisrdquo Trying to

find the intrinsic meaning of a work of art

The art historian will have to check what he thinks is the

intrinsic meaning of the work or group of works against

what he thinks is the intrinsic meaning of as many other

documents of civilization historically related to that work

or group of works as he can master It is in the search

for intrinsic meaning or content that the various humanistic

disciplines meet on a common plane instead of serving as

handmaidens to each other

(Panofsky [1955] p 39)

The concept of intrinsic meaning of a work of art

was elaborated by Panofsky much earlier (1925) when

he interpreted in his own way the concept of Kunst-

wollen introduced by A Riegl to research in art

Panofsky understood this ldquoartistic volitionrdquo as an im-

manent ultimate meaning of a work of art which is

manifested in the way basic artistic problems are solved

in that work He used the same concept further to bring

art closer to the other fields of human activity Since

the ldquoimmanent ultimate senserdquo of the work of art is

nothing else than uniformity in the way of solving basic

artistic problems it is possible to compare that imma-

nent sense with immanent senses of the other human

works in various fields Panofsky did it for instance

when in one of his later works he compared the struc-

tural principles of Gothic architecture with those of

scholastic thinking (1951)

The system elaborated by Panofsky and exemplified

by his own work in art history was the first consistent

system of an integral interpretation of a work of visual

arts based on the analysis of content In principle

Panofskys system takes into account all the elements

of the work of art since it takes as the point of depar-

ture the sensual exterior shape of the work It is

however clear that its main scope is not the inter-

pretation of form as a bearer of meaning but the

understanding and interpretation of conventional alle-

gories literary themes and symbols as symptoms of

the history of the human mind It was that method

in the history of art which programmatically fostered

a collaboration with all the other disciplines of histori-

cal studies It was therefore one of the most influential

methods not only among art historians but also among

representatives of the other branches of humanistic

studies Although there were art historians who ex-

pressed a critical attitude toward ldquoiconologyrdquo as the

new method was soon baptized its influence was over-

whelming

3 It is not only but mainly due to Panofsky that

one can venture to call ldquoiconographicalrdquo that period

of art history as a historical discipline which followed

the Second World War and to oppose it to the ldquostylis-

ticrdquo one which preceded it It does not mean of course

that no iconographic research took place in the

twenties or thirties the works of Macircle Knipping van

Marle Wilpert Saxl and of Panofsky himself would

contradict such a statement Neither is it true that

purely formal research aiming at stylistic classification

and analysis discontinued after World War II It is

evident that in the last decades (from 1940 on) icono-

graphic interests came to the fore and became domi-

nant in many countries Iconographical studies grew

so much in number and importance that they made

it possible to undertake and to publish new reference

works of iconographic character like dictionaries

written by one scholar (Guy de Tervarent Aurenham-

mer) as well as larger works based on a collaboration

of several scholars (Encyclopedias of German art of

Antiquity and Christian civilization of Byzantine art)

Interest in meaning and iconography has appeared

also among historians of political social and religious

institutions The symbolism of signs ceremonies cos-

tumes and arms was studied by such scholars as A

Alfoumlldi ldquoInsignien und Tracht der roumlmischen Kaiserrdquo

Mitteilungen des deutschen Archaumlologischen Instituts

Roumlmische Abteilung (1935) 1ff ldquoDie Geburt der

kaiserlichen Bildsymbolikrdquo museum Helveticum 9

(1952) 204ff also by A Grabar Martyrium (Paris

1943-46) by E H Kantorowicz laudes Regiae

(Berkeley and Los Angeles 1946) The Kings Two

Bodies (Princeton 1957) by H P L Orange Studies

in the Iconography of Cosmic Kingship in the Ancient

World (Oslo 1953) Art Forms and Civic Life in the

Late Roman Empire (Princeton 1965) and by P E

Schramm herrschaftszeichen und Staatssymbolik

(Stuttgart 1954-56) In their studies iconography far

transcends the borders of art and it helps to build up

a history of ideas by following their various visual

expressions

Pioneering studies by K Giehlow F Saxl and E

Panofsky enlarged iconographical interests above all

to encompass the large field of secular art whereas

they had been mainly limited to religious iconography

in the work of preceding generations of scholars The

whole complicated and hardly known large body of

meanings disguised by the cryptic language of hiero-

glyphs emblems and iconologies became one of the

main topics of study

This established a collaboration between historians

of art and literature Mario Prazs admirable study of

emblems and his bibliography of emblem books

(1939-47) belongs now to the foundations of studies

in that field Publications by W S Heckscher and

A K Wirth by R S Clements E F von Monroy and

538

H M von Erffa E de Jongh and H Miedema and

several other scholars have elucidated the structure

and meaning of emblems and have shown their tre-

mendous influence on art even in its most monumental

and dignified forms An uninterrupted flow of reprints

of emblem books which brought within the reach of

modern students inaccessible volumes of sixteenth- and

seventeenth-century emblem writers were crowned by

the monumental undertaking of Arthur Henkel and

Albrecht Schoumlne who compiled an excellent volume

including almost all the texts and images needed for

the study of emblemsmdashEmblemata Handbuch zur

Sinnbildkunst des XVI und XVII Jahrhunderts

(Stuttgart 1967) Research was under way on hiero-

glyphs (Erik Iversen) and on the imprese (the late

Robert Klein) as well as on iconologies and allegories

These studies have disclosed meanings of the art of

the Renaissance of mannerism and of the baroque not

understood by nineteenth-century scholars

E Panofsky deciphered extremely farfetched and

individualistic programs of decoration of such famous

ensembles as the Camera di San Paolo by Correggio

in Parma the Gallery of Franccedilois I at Fontainebleau

Edgar Wind Andreacute Chastel and other scholars inter-

preted Raphaels decorations in the Popes apartments

Michelangelos art furnished material to detailed com-

prehensive studies by Panofsky Ch de Tolnay H von

Einem and Pope-Hennessy in which the share of

Neo-Platonic thinking in the ideological background

of the celebrated works of Michelangelo was discussed

Innumerable studies have been devoted to Titians

mythological paintings J R Martin presented expla-

nations of the Carracci frescoes in the Camerino Far-

nese and in the great gallery of the Palazzo Farnese

Bruegel considered in the nineteenth century as a drocircle

painter of peasant life has been shown by de Tolnay

Stridbeck and others to be an allegorist expressing a

skeptical humanistic outlook J S Held and W

Stechow contributed several articles to the under-

standing of mythological and allegorical contents in

Flemish and Dutch art of the sixteenth and seventeenth

centuries Rembrandts iconography was put into new

light by the two above-mentioned scholars as well as

by H M Rotermund H van de Waal J G van Gelder

H von Einem and Ch Tuumlmpel The intricate symbol-

ism and subject matter of historical and mythological

pictures by Nicolas Poussin were elucidated by such

masters of iconographic research as E H Gombrich

W Friedlaumlnder E Panofsky and above all by A Blunt

who in his monograph on Poussin presented a new

deep synthetic view of the ideas expressed by that

artists works Goyas individualistic secret symbolism

was also studied with the help of emblems and the

allegorical tradition Berninis works received iconolo

gical treatment by R Wittkower and H Kauffmann

All of this research does not mean that there was a

lack of interest in religious iconography M Schapiro

A Katzenellenbogen H Bober F Wormald and V

Elbern among others have contributed considerably

to deepen our understanding of the not completely

explained motifs and prominent works of medieval art

Panofsky has also shed a new light on several problems

of sepulchral iconography studies by such scholars as

R Berliner G von der Osten L Kalinowski S

Ringbom and T Dobrzeniecki contributed to late

medieval iconography in a new way Berliner stressed

the autonomous invention of visual artists or their

patrons while according to the traditional view popu-

larized by Macircle late medieval art should have followed

strictly literary sources

The religious content of modern art especially its

allegorical form in the late baroque period has been

examined and thanks to studies by such scholars as

W Mrazek and H Bauer has become better known

and understandable A great change was introduced

by ldquoiconologyrdquo into architectural history Buildings

which were formerly interpreted from aesthetic and

functional points of view only have been shown to

present allegorical symbolical or even emblematic

ideas Publications by leading art historians (R Witt-

kower B Smith G Bandmann O von Simson and

G C Argan) have presented medieval and modern

architecture as a bearer of meaning and have essen-

tially changed the character of architectural history

The iconography of classicism and romanticism

received a thorough treatment in books by W Hof-

mann and R Rosenblum as well as in several studies

devoted to individual themes and pictures G Hersey

has for example shown how much Delacroixs decora-

tion of the library in the Palais Bourbon owed to

Giambattista Vicos ideas about history More recently

studies on ldquoSymbolismrdquo have been undertaken Vincent

van Goghs symbolic language and iconography were

the object of studies by J Seznec C Nordenfalk and

other scholars On Ceacutezannes iconography interesting

remarks have been published by M Schapiro

Along with the development of iconographic studies

the establishment of centers of documentation has

advanced The ldquoFrenchrdquo stage in the development of

iconography has not left any marked trace in this

respect It was in America thanks to C R Morey that

the famous Index of Christian Art at the Department

of Art and Archaeology of Princeton University was

founded at first limited to the early Middle Ages then

enlarged so as to include art up to the end of the

medieval period Copies of the Princeton Index are

to be found also at the Istituto Pontificio dArcheolo-

gia in Rome and in the Dumbarton Oaks Library and

539

Collection in Washington DC But that Index ends

ldquowhere art beginsrdquomdashas Panofsky used to say jokingly

The need for systematic iconographic files for modern

art was strongly felt In 1956 A Pigler published a

very useful book Barockthemen in which he listed

thousands of works of art of the baroque period ac-

cording to their subjects It was however far from

being a systematic work The first essay in establishing

a systematic iconographic index for art of any time

was done by The Netherlands Institute for Art History

at the Hague then directed by H Gerson which took

the initiative around 1950 of publishing a postcard-size

photographic index of its rich collection of photographs

of Netherlandish art ordered according to an icono-

graphic principle Once such an idea was formulated

the need for a comprehensive consistent and clear

iconographic classification was urgent H van de Waal

of Leiden University devised such a system of classifi-

cation based on decimal divisions consistent and easy

to read He based his system on experiences of ethnol-

ogy and on such elaborated systems of classification

as that devised by Stith Thompson in his Motif-Index

of Folk Literature Vols I-VI (Bloomington Ind

1932-36 rev ed 1955-58) Van de Waal has elabor-

ated a system in which the first five main sections

classify five fundamental groups of portrayable things

namely (1) The Supernatural (2) Nature (3) Man (4)

Society (5) Abstracts The last four classify specific

subjects such as (6) History (7) The Bible (8) Myths

Legends and Tales (with the exception of classical

antiquity) (9) Myths and Legends of Classical Antiq-

uity Van de Waal combines the classification in the

first and in the second group in order to classify general

as well as specific subjects Christ in his system is

described with the sign ldquo11 Drdquo (ldquo1rdquo standing for Su-

pernatural ldquo11rdquo for Christianity ldquoDrdquo for Christ) the

adult Christ = 11 D 3 since ldquoshepherdrdquo on the other

hand bears the signature 47 I 221 the adult Christ

as a shepherd can be described in this system by the

following formula 11 D 3 = 47 I 221 Van de Waal

has also provided means to describe more complex

images which he expresses by adding elements between

brackets The Annunciation with God the Father and

a winged Angel is expressed by the following formula

73 A 5 (+1 +41) ldquo1rdquo standing for God the Father

and ldquo41rdquo for a winged Angel (van de Waal 1952) This

system elaborated for many years by its inventor and

prepared for publication in many volumes has proved

most useful in the practical arrangement of the Icono-

graphical Index of the Netherlandish Art and as the

only one until now in existence it became used more

and more in spite of some ambiguities and difficulties

As an endeavor to classify ldquoall portrayablerdquo things

persons events and ideas and to create a consistent

method to describe every possible image van de Waals

system may be considered as one of the important

achievements of the ldquoiconographical stagerdquo in the

development of art history Iconographic files exist of

course in many institutions as for example in the Ikon-

ologisch Instituut of Utrecht University one of the

main centers of study in emblematics and of course

in the most venerable institution of iconographic re-

search the Warburg Institute of the London University

and in other places

4 What was the result of this ldquoiconographicrdquo turn

in the development of the history of art One thing

is certain that this discipline by necessity has come

closer to other humanistic disciplines Since the

ldquointrinsicrdquo meaningmdashin Panofskys terminologymdashof a

work of art cannot be described in terms used by the

history of art but only in terms borrowed from the

history of philosophy of religion of social structures

of science and so on the ldquoiconological methodrdquo took

for granted and provoked such a collaboration Art

history was perhaps the first or one of the first to show

new interest in investigation of meaning It was fol-

lowed by similar developments in ethnology and in

linguistics

We have mentioned above a parallel development

in Byzantine and classical studies Panofskys influence

has been considerable in the other fields of humanistic

research Since ldquoiconologyrdquo aimed at discovering ideas

expressed by a work of art it awoke in art historians

an interest in the history of ideas This general shift

of emphasis and of the direction of studies from mainly

formal ones to studies aiming at ideas underlying art

was perhaps responsible among others for the fact that

several contributions to the Journal of the History of

Ideas have been written by historians of art

It is not difficult to see that such a development

should have provoked criticism on the side of those

who care about the purity and autonomy of methods

Iconology was criticized as far as its internal coherence

and also as far as its claim to be the integral method

of the study of art are concerned (Białostocki 1962)

Studies by R Klein E Forssman G Previtali G

Kubler B Teyssegravedre C Ginzburg and G Hermeren

expressed critical opinions in one or the other respect

Iconology linked art with the rest of history but it

disrupted the links between the work of art and other

things (Kubler 1962) Concentrating on meaning

iconology neglected art as form as individual expres-

sion Iconology implied a rational relationship between

intellectual content and artistic form On the one hand

one spoke of ldquoiconological diminutionsrdquo (Kubler

1962)mdashlimitations of research to meaning only But

on the other hand the overstatements of iconology

were criticized its representatives sometimes seemed

540

to assume everything symbolized something And some

iconologists seemed to consider important in art not

that which makes art a different field of human activity

but that which connects art with other fieldsmdashwith

the history of ideas

There were of course critics who had the opposite

opinion Since the end of the eighteenth century a

direct experience of art was more and more valued

and its symbolical function considered as a burden

J G von Herder said ein Kunstwerk ist der Kunst

wegen da aber bei einem Symbole ist die Kunst

dienend (ldquoA work of art is there because of art but

with a symbol art is a servicerdquo) Similar opinions were

expressed by nineteenth-century art writers and in this

century they have been voiced by Benedetto Croce and

by other Italian opponents of contenutismo by which

they meant interest in content For such critics to put

stress on iconography was to miss the essential in art

and to focus attention on a subordinate function of art

Also among scholars who considered the function

of representation and of communication as a legitimate

and important function of art criticism was expressed

not against the principle of an iconographical or icon-

ological investigation but against overstatements in

their application The introduction of the idea of ldquodis-

guised symbolismrdquo has created a danger of course of

opening the way to fanciful interpretations The alle-

gorical and symbolical function of mythological imag-

ery in classical art is also difficult to interpret precisely

Since no literary sources give a key to an interpretation

of the iconography of the sarcophagi very divergent

theories have been expressed concerning their meaning

Some archaeologists like F Cumont (1942) believe

that mythological and allegorical imagery (Anadyo-

mene Sea-Thiasos Personifications of the Seasons) is

to be read symbolically The Sea-Thiasos for instance

is to be interpreted as a symbol of the journey of the

souls of the deceased to the islands of the blessed

Others like A D Nock (1946) do not find enough

evidence to accept other than a decorative function

in such imagery

The intrusion of some representatives of psychology

eg C G Jung into iconographic studies giving them

an unhistorical turn in their search for ldquoarchetypal

imagesrdquo has complicated the situation although art

historians in general understandably have not accepted

that kind of approach to symbolism (Frankfort 1958

Gombrich 1965)

The fact that iconographic interpretations sometimes

lack satisfactory proofs does not detract from the im-

portance of such investigations so long as they are

conducted according to the requirements of historical

methods and take into account the corrective princi-

ples established by Panofsky A correct acquaintance

with the way of thinking of the artist the patron or the

viewer based on a satisfactory knowledge of documen-

tary visual and literary sources an awareness of the

choice situations produced by historical developments

may enable art historians to discover the secondary

meaning of a work of art as well as its intrinsic mean-

ing It is of course possible that the art historian will

meet some works for which it will not be possible to re-

construct in a satisfactory way the world of ideas that

would account for the meaning of those works In such

cases a reliable interpretation is simply not possible

R Berliner (1945 1966) criticized the widespread

opinion according to which content of the works of

visual arts in the Middle Ages had to be checked

against the literary sources considered as the only

medium in which ideological innovations were per-

mitted Berliner pleaded for assuming a considerable

ldquofreedomrdquo in the medieval artist and he considered

iconographic innovation possible even when no writ-

ten evidence could be found Meyer Schapiro (1947)

presented proofs that sometimes purely aesthetic rea-

sons decided the character of the work of art even as

early as the Romanesque period

We can only touch on some specific discussions going

on in the field of iconographic research But iconogra-

phic research is far from being a closed system and

the relative share of iconographic and stylistic criticism

in the work of art historians is always a matter of

discussion It is certain that the ldquoiconographicrdquo period

in the study of art has enlarged in a considerable way

the understanding of the art of the past and that it

has connected art history in a way unknown before

with the other historical disciplines and above all others

with the history of ideas

BIBLIOGRAPHY

L B Alberti On Painting ed J Spencer (New Haven

1956 revised ed 1966) E Auerbach ldquoFigurardquo (1944) trans

and published in Scenes From the Drama of European Liter-

ature (New York 1959) pp 11-76 K Bauch ldquoImagordquo

(1960) Studien zur Kunstgeschichte (Berlin 1967) pp 1-20

G P Bellori Descrizione delle imagini dipinte da Raffaello

(Rome 1695 ed used is 1751) R Berliner ldquoThe Free-

dom of Medieval Artrdquo Gazette des Beaux-Arts 628 (1945)

263-88 idem ldquoBemerkungen zu einigen Darstellungen des

Erloumlsers als Schmerzensmannrdquo Das Muumlnster 9 (1956)

97-117x J Białostocki ldquoIconografia e Iconologiardquo Enciclo-

pedia Universale dellArte (1962) Vol VII cols 163-75

trans as Encyclopedia of World Art (1966) Vol VII cols

769-85 lists almost all important older contributions to this

field idem ldquoRomantische Ikonographierdquo Stil und Ikonog-

raphie (Dresden 1966) pp 156-81 idem ldquoKompozycja

emblematyczna epitafioacutew ślaskich XVI wiekurdquo (ldquoEmblem-

atic Composition of Silesian Epitaphs of the Sixteenth Cen-

turyrdquo) Ze studioacutew nad Sztuka XVI wieku na Řlasku

(Wrocław 1968) pp 77-93 idem ldquoEsilio Privatordquo Bulletin

du Museacutee National de Varsovie 10 (1969) 95-101 J

541

Chydenius The Theory of Medieval Symbolism (Helsingfors

1960) Series of the Societas Scientiarum Fennica Com-

mentationes Humanarum Litterarum 27 2 R J Clements

Picta Poesis (Rome 1960) F Creuzer Symbolik und

Mythologie der Alten Voumllker (Leipzig and Darmstadt 1810

revised ed 1819) F Cumont Recherches sur le symbolisme

funeacuteraire des Romains (Paris 1942) L Eitner ldquoThe Open

Window and the Storm-Tossed Boatrdquo Art Bulletin 37

(1955) 281-90 H Frankfort ldquoThe Archetype in Analytical

Psychology and the History of Religionrdquo Journal of the

Warburg and Courtauld Institutes 21 (1958) 166-78

K Garas ldquoAllegorie und Geschichte in der Venezianischen

Malerei des 18 Jahrhundertsrdquo in proceedings of the XXI

International Congress of the History of Art Bonn Stil und

Uumlberlieferung in der Kunst des Abendlandes (Berlin 1967)

3 280-83 K Giehlow ldquoDie Hieroglyphenkunde des

Humanismus in der Allegorie der Renaissancerdquo Jahrbuch

der Kunsthistorischen Sammlungen des Allerhochsten

Kaiserhauses 32 (1915) 1-232 C Gilbert ldquoOn Subject and

Not-Subject in Italian Renaissance Picturesrdquo Art Bulletin

34 (1952) 202-16 C Ginzburg ldquoDa A Warburg a E H

Gombrich Note su un problema di metodordquo Studi medi-

evali series 3 7 (1966) 1015-65 E H Gombrich ldquoIcones

Symbolicae The Visual Image in Neo-Platonic Thoughtrdquo

Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes 11 (1948)

163-92 idem ldquoThe Use of Art for the Study of Symbolsrdquo

American Psychologist 20 (1965) A Grabar Liconoclasme

byzantin Dossier archeacuteologique (Paris 1957) idem Chris-

tian Iconography A Study of Its Origins (Princeton 1969)

S J Gudlaugsson De Comedianten bij Jan Steen en zijn

tijdgenooten (s-Gravenhage 1945) W S Heckscher ldquoThe

Genesis of Iconologyrdquo Stl und Uumlberlieferung in der Kunst

des Abendlandes Akten des XXI Internationalen Kon-

gresses fuumlr Kunstgeschichte (Berlin 1967) 3 239-62 G

Hermereacuten Representation and Meaning in the Visual Arts

A Study in the Methodology of Iconography and Iconology

Lund Studies in Philosophy Vol I (Lund 1969) R Hinks

Myth and Allegory in Ancient Art (London 1939) W

Hofmann Das Irdische Paradies (Munich 1960) G J

Hoogewerff ldquoLIconologie et son importance pour leacutetude

systeacutematique de lart chreacutetienrdquo Rivista dArcheologia Cris-

tiana 8 (1931) 53-82 E de Jongh Zinne- en minnebeelden

in de schilderkunst van de zeventiende eeuw (mdash1967) idem

ldquoErotica in Vogelperspectief De dubbelzinnigheid van een

reeks 17de eeuwse genrevoorstellingenrdquo Simiolus 3

(1968-69) 22-72 L Kalinowski ldquoTreści ideowe i estetyczne

Drzwi Gnieźnieńskichrdquo (ldquoIdeological and Aesthetic Content

of the Gniezno Bronze Doorsrdquo) in Drzwi Gnieźnieńskie ed

M Walicki (Wroclaw 1959) 2 7-160 H Keller Tizians

Poesie fuumlr Koumlnig Philip II von Spanien (Wiesbaden 1969)

R Klein ldquoLa theacuteorie de lexpression figureacutee dans les traiteacutes

italiens sur les imprese 1555-1612rdquo Bibliothegraveque dHu-

manisme et Renaissance 19 (1957) 320-41 republished with

the other relevant studies in la forme et lintelligible (Paris

1969) R Klibansky E Panofsky F Saxl Saturn and Melan-

choly (London 1964) J B Knipping Ikonografie van de

Contra-Reformatie in de Nederlanden (Hilversum 1939-40)

G Kubler The Shape of Time (New Haven and London

1962) R W Lee ldquoUt pictura poesisrdquo Art Bulletin 22

(1940) 197-269 E Macircle Lart religieux du XIIIe siegravecle en

France (Paris 1898) English ed used (New York 1958)

idem Lart religieux de la fin du Moyen-Age en France

(Paris 1908) idem Lart religieux du XIIe siegravecle en France

(Paris 1922) idem Lart religieux apregraves le Concile de Trente

(Paris 1932) J Maurin Białostocka Lessing i sztuki plas-

tyczne (ldquoLessing and the visual artsrdquo) (Wroclaw Warszawa

Krakoacutew 1969) E F von Monroy Embleme und Emblem-

buumlcher in den Niederlanden 1560-1630 ed H M von Erffa

(Utrecht 1964) J Montagu ldquoThe Painted Enigma and

French Seventeenth Century Artrdquo Journal of the Warburg

and Courtauld Institutes 31 (1968) 307-35 W Mrazek

Ikonologie der barocken Deckenmalerei (Vienna 1953)

Uumlsterreichische Akademie der Wissenschaften Philo-

sophisch-historische Klasse Sitzungsberichte 2283 A D

Nock ldquoSarcophagi and Symbolismrdquo American Journal of

Archaeology 50 (1946) 166ff D Panofsky and E Panofsky

ldquoThe Iconography of the Galeacuterie Franccedilois Ier at Fontaine-

bleaurdquo Gazette des Beaux-Arts 652 (1958) 113-90

E Panofsky ldquoUumlber das Verhaumlltnis der Kunstgeschichte zur

Kunsttheorierdquo Zeitschrift fuumlr Aesthetik und allgemeine

Kunstwissenschaft 18 (1925) 129-61 idem Studies in

Iconology (New York 1939) idem ed Abbot Suger (Prince-

ton 1946) idem Gothic Architecture and Scholasticism

(Latrobe Pa 1951) idem Early Netherlandish Painting

(Cambridge Mass 1953) idem Meaning in the Visual Arts

(Garden City N Y 1955) idem Renaissance and Renas-

cences in Western Art (Stockholm 1960) idem Tomb Sculp-

ture (New York 1964) E Panofsky and F Saxl ldquoClassical

Mythology in Medieval Artrdquo Metropolitan Museum Studies

4 (1932-33) 228-80 M Praz Studies in Seventeenth Cen-

tury Imagery (London 1939-47 2nd ed Rome 1964) S

Ringbom ldquoDevotional Images and Imaginative Devotions

Notes on the Place of Art in Late Medieval Private Pietyrdquo

Gazette des Beaux-Arts 6 73 (1969) 159-70 Joseph Sauer

Symbolik des Kirchengebaumludes und seiner Ausstattung in

der Auffassung des Mittelalters 2nd ed (Freiburg i B

1924) F Saxl ldquoFruumlhes Christentum und spaumltes Heidentum

in ihren kuumlnstlerischen Ausdrucksformenrdquo Wiener Jahrbuch

fuumlr Kunstgeschichte 2 (1923) 63-121 M Schapiro ldquoThe

Ruthwell Crossrdquo Art Bulletin 26 (1944) 232-45 idem ldquoOn

the Aesthetic Attitude in Romanesque Artrdquo in Art and

Thought issued in Honour of Ananda Coomaraswamy

(London 1947) 139-50 J Seznec The Survival of the Pagan

Gods (New York 1953) O G von Simson The Gothic

Cathedral (New York 1956) R E Spear ldquoThe Literary

Source of Poussins Realm of Florardquo The Burlington Maga-

zine 107 (1965) 563-69 L Volkmann Bilderschriften der

Renaissance (Leipzig 1923) Hans van de Waal Drie

eeuwen vaderlandsche geschieduitbeelding 1500-1800 (s-

Gravenhage 1952) idem ldquoSome Principles of a General

Iconographical Classificationrdquo in Actes du XVIIe Congregraves

International dHistoire de lArt Amsterdam 1952 (La Haye

1955) 601-06 E Wind ldquoCharity the Case History of a

Patternrdquo Journal of the Warburg Institute 1 (1937) 322ff

JAN BIAŁOSTOCKI

[See also Allegory Baroque Classicism Criticism Enlight-

enment Motif Myth Naturalism in Art Neo-Platonism

Renaissance Humanism Romanticism Symbolism Tem-

perance Ut pictura poesis]

ography (D and E Panofsky 1958) Few works of

medieval art have provoked such a number of inter-

pretations as the well-known and at first glance seem-

ingly easy to understand pictures like Botticellis

mythologies (Birth of Venus Spring The Uffizi Flor-

ence) like Titians Sacred and Profane Love or like

sculptures such as Michelangelos Medici tombs The

same is true of works by Duumlrer Holbein and Bruegel

in the North A deep symbolism a complicated

iconographymdashespecially current in the circles influ-

530

enced by Neo-Platonismmdashbelonged to the perfection

of the work

This idea had a long life it recurs in 1604 in Carel

van Manders Book of the Painter as well as in Berninis

utterances on the beauty of the concept which adorns

the work The more refined the concept the more

difficult the symbolism the narrower the circle of those

who can really understand the work

Art was considered especially in the exclusive court

social groups or among the humanists as a secret

language accessible to the initiated The visual sign

was connected with words into a specific union of

literature and art which flourished at the time of the

Renaissance of mannerism and of the baroque in the

form of impresa of hieroglyph and of emblem The

roots of the impresamdashthe personal sign and mottomdashare

to be found in chivalrous devices and signs popular

in the late Middle Ages it was brought to Italy from

France and connected with Neo-Platonic speculation

(Klein 1957) Hieroglyphs became popular thanks to

the discovery in 1419 of the Hieroglyphica by Hora-

pollo Niliacus (of the second or fourth century AD)

published in 1505 The humanists believed that this

enigmatic image-script disguised a profound wisdom

of the Egyptians ldquothey supposed that the great minds

of Greece had been initiated into these Egyptian

mysteriesmdashwhich in their turn were of course one

more prefiguration of the teachings of Christrdquo (Seznec

[1953] p 100) Emblems originated from an erudite

intellectual play among the humanists aiming however

at a moral lesson and sometimes considered in a Neo-

Platonic way as symbols revealing to those who con-

template them a higher knowledge of divine mysteries

Emblem included a motto called lemma an image

and an epigram Only the whole of the emblem can

be understood each element of it giving only one part

of the meaning All those cryptic codes of expression

connecting words and images originated as secret and

elitarian The problem of the degree of obscurity was

one of the main points discussed by the theorists of

the emblematics (Clements [1964] pp 191-95) Eras-

mus of Rotterdam stressed that one of the virtues of

the impresa is that its meaning can be grasped only

with an intellectual effort Cesare Ripa (Iconologia

1593) demands that symbolic images be composed ldquoin

the form of enigmardquo Sambucus (1564) required ldquoob-

scuritasrdquo and ldquonovitasrdquo from the emblems Paolo

Giovio represented a reasonable middle ldquoThe device

should not be so obscure as to require the Sybil to

interpret it nor yet so obvious that any literal-minded

person can understand itrdquo Later however the crypto-

grams of hieroglyphics and emblem books began to

be popularized and explained Collections of emblems

became widely known New systematization of icon

ography now of a humanistic one was inaugurated

In 1556 Vincenzo Cartari published the first modern

handbook of mythological imagery le imagini colla

sposizione degli dei degli antichi (Venice 1556) In the

same year Pierio Valeriano produced a rich collection

of Hieroglyphica (Basel 1556) Earlier in 1531 Andrea

Alciati had compiled the first emblem book (Emblema-

tum liber Augsburg 1531) The influence of such

books which went through many translations and edi-

tions and which were imitated and continued all over

Europe grew at the close of the sixteenth and in the

seventeenth century In exclusive groups it happened

much earlier that hieroglyphic astrological and em-

blematic imagery influenced the iconography of im-

portant works of art as for example at the court of

Maximilian I (M Giehlow 1915) sometimes this con-

cerned works done by the most distinguished artists

like Duumlrers Melencolia I (Klibansky et al 1964)

Emblematic principle of composition uniting as it did

the image with the verbal formulations found great

popularity in northern Europe perhaps because the

importance of the word so prominent in Protestantism

was stressed (Luther required ldquofragments from the

Holy Writrdquo to be included in the Epitaph-pictures)

Epitaphs and other religious pictures of the Protestant

North connect words and images in the harmonious

indivisible whole (Białostocki 1968)

In the Netherlands emblems played an important

part in the development of realistic painting in the

seventeenth century since they furnished a rich reper-

tory of imagery charged with allegorical meaning (de

Jongh von Monroy) However the meaning of those

images obvious to the viewer who remembered the

original emblematic context eluded for a long time

later interpreters who were no longer conversant with

the emblems

After Cartari and his followers furnished artists and

patrons with images of classical gods there was a need

felt for another handbook which would enable the

artist to represent and the patron to understand the

abstract moral philosophical scientific and other

ideas symbolized Only then was art able to express

complex thoughts This task was fulfilled by Cesare

Ripa of Perugia who in 1593 published his Iconologia

a handbook explaining how to represent all the incor-

poreal concepts In 1603 Iconologia was republished

with illustrations and became one of the most popular

and influential art books With Ripa in hand art

historiansmdashinitially Eacutemile Macircle (1932)mdashwere able to

decipher hundreds of allegorical statements in paint

and stone guided by this alphabet of personifications

Ripas basic entity was a human figure female more

often than male whose costumes attributes gestures

and other particulars express specific qualities of the

531

idea represented With the publication of Ripas workmdash

translated soon into many languages and frequently

republished and revisedmdashthe humanistic system of

allegorical iconography was established classical gods

and personifications hieroglyphic signs and emblems

connecting words and images this was the material

used by the artists of mannerism and the baroque when

they did not choose to keep to the ldquohistoricalrdquo world

ie to borrow their subjects directly from literature

When they did so when they painted stories they used

to select them not only from Ovid and Vergil but also

from the more recent poems by Ariosto and Tasso and

also from the works of less known writers ancient and

modern Valerius Maximus furnished them with exam-

ples of virtuous behavior These historical examples

were in general either connected with allegorical gen-

eralizations (in the big decorations of the late baroque

the central fresco was often an allegory and the ac-

companying canvas-pictures presented historical ex-

amples of virtues Garas pp 280-83) or conceived in

an allegorical way Ovide moraliseacute was popular already

in the late Middle Ages Its influence persisted also

in the time of the baroque Myths and stories under-

went allegorical interpretations along the lines of that

moralizing commentary

What was considered necessary for an artist around

1600 can be seen from Carel van Manders Book of

the Painter (1604) It included a long theoretical poem

a history of classical and modern Italian and Nether-

landish artists a translation and a moral interpretation

of Ovids Metamorphoses and finally a description of

personifications There is no specific section on reli-

gious iconography since artists were well furnished

with books giving them rules in this respect

Against the humanistic conception of art the Council

of Trent proclaimed rules constituting a new system

of religious iconography which put an end to the live

tradition of medieval art These rules were published

officially by the Church and they have been com-

mented upon and elaborated in books by Joannes

Molanus (1570) Saint Carlo Borromeo (1577) Gabriele

Paleotti (1581) Federico Borromeo (1624) and several

others The rules of the Council governed the decora-

tion of churches and other sacred buildings and the

character of pictures representing sacred subjects A

break between the religious and the secular iconogra-

phy became obvious in theoretical literature although

there existed many emblem books of a very distinct

religious character (G de Montenay 1571 B Arias

Montanus 1571 H Hugo 1624) A new strictly for-

mulated system of religious iconography coexisted in

the seventeenth century with humanistic subject mat-

ter symbolism and allegory The classical nude intro-

duced by the Renaissance into art was strictly forbid

den now in religious art but found a free field of

development in secular mythological and allegorical

works Many artists exercised their imagination in both

fields in some specific fields such as sepulchral iconog-

raphy cooperation between religious and humanistic

symbolism was common In the work of P P Rubens

the various aspects of the new iconography found

perhaps their best expression In his art allegorical

concepts classical gods and heroes triumphs of mythi-

cal beings as well as of secular rulers accompany mar-

tyrdoms of Catholic saints and the triumphs of the

Eucharist What began to be separated in theory could

yet coexist in harmony in the work of a great artist

6 In northern European art (before Rubens) the

renewal of the arts during the Renaissance took the

form of the new study of nature and the elaboration

of the most convincing means of representing the ma-

terial world in an illusionistic way traditional medieval

symbolism was transformed in a specific way produc-

ing what E Panofsky called in 1953 ldquodisguised sym-

bolismrdquo The symbolic meaning connected with objects

and qualities persisted but a new mastery reproduced

these symbolical objects with such a degree of realism

that they did not differ any longer from other objects

not charged with any metaphorical meaning Some-

times the symbolical meaning of represented objects

results from the traditional iconography in an unmistak-

able way sometimes the meaning is hinted at by the

inscriptions placed in the picture or on its frame But

in many cases the modern viewer remains perplexed

without any sufficient clue to decide whether in the

picture he observes he has to do with the beginnings

of the representation of reality for its own sake or

whether the search for specific metaphorical meaning

is justified It is still always a matter of discussion to

decide at which moment the representation of some

objects or some scene in life without any symbolical

(or ldquohistoricalrdquo) implications became possible (Gilbert

1952) Observers of the eighteenth and nineteenth

centuries to whom the meaning of old symbols was

wholly forgotten took many images of the fifteenth and

sixteenth centuries for simple representations of life

Bruegel for example was considered as simply a

painter of joking or working peasants Recent studies

in iconography have shown that these pictures are

saturated with disguised meaning and that it is ex-

tremely rare before about 1550 to meet simple repre-

sentations of nature in painting In graphic arts the

direct depiction of life and landscape began earlier

as in the works of Lombard draughtsmen or in the

incredibly fresh convincing drawings and prints by the

Master of the Housebook There are also early excep-

tions in painting like Albrecht Altdorfers landscape

without any human figures But in general it was only

532

during the second half of the sixteenth century that

landscape genre and still-life painting began to ac-

quire equal rights with religious and humanistic history

and allegory predominantly in Venice and in Antwerp

Even then however the representations of people

working in fields (Jacopo or Francesco Bassano) fol-

lowed the old traditions of Calendar-pictures and in

the background of genre scenes as in Pieter Aertsens

pictures a biblical motif may be found which trans-

forms the whole composition into a storia however

unorthodox

With the development of realistic painting in the

seventeenth century there appeared specific iconogra-

phic problems New subjects slowly found convenient

form They entered the scene patterned after the ven-

erable stories of sacred or of profane iconography

H van de Waal described (1952) the process of the for-

mation of national historical iconography in Holland

Scenes depicting recent happenings from a long strug-

gle for national independence appeared first in forms

assimilated to well-known religious or mythical scenes

This was not only an expedient facilitating their com-

position for by this means the new subjects gained the

decorum inherent in the adopted patterns formed to

express traditional stories Similar procedures may be

seen in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries when

more and more sections of reality became interesting

enough to be represented in art

The transfer of decorum from the sacred or allegori-

cal figures to the humans represented is a means used

in what modern iconographers call ldquoallegorical por-

traiturerdquo Renaissance painters had represented real

people under mythological or even sacred disguise

they gave actual faces of living people to the figures

represented with all the attributes and characteristics

of their mythical sacred or even allegorical qualities

Later it was only the pattern which remained still in

the eighteenth century English portraitists patterned

the effigies of contemporary aristocrats after Michel-

angelos Sybils or after allegories like the Caritas

(Wind 1937) J B Oudry represented the Polish King

in exile Stanisław Leszczyński with all the attributes

of the allegory of exile taken from Ripa identifying

him in this way with personification of his most promi-

nent quality (Białostocki 1969)

Dutch realistic painting of the seventeenth century

is a document of an important iconographic conquest

Landscapes seascapes moonlit night scenes snapshots

of people skating in winter landscapes views of market

places church interiors backyards fishermen old

women preparing food fashionable dishes ready for

lunch merchants and artisans elegant gentlemen pay-

ing visits and folk-surgeons performing sensational

street-operations all this became subject matter for

representation and continued to be considered worthy

of depiction until the end of the nineteenth century

It was first considered as such in Holland only then

slowly everyday subject matter was recognized also by

art-theorists in other countries although it was re-

garded as much less dignified than religious mytholog-

ical or allegorical subjects Only in the nineteenth

century did the vogue of realistic representation of

everyday subjects become widespread In Dutch pic-

tures of the seventeenth century we are often con-

fronted with nothing else than representations of pic-

turesque reality Sometimes however these genre

pictures appear to be illustrations of proverbs expres-

sing moralistic folk-wisdom sometimes they recall

scenes from the popular threater of the rederijkers or

rhetoricians especially pictures by Jan Steen (Gud-

laugsson 1945) they contain allusions to emblems

Sometimes the elegant scenes from bourgeois life in-

clude quite indecent erotic allusions (de Jongh 1967

1969) The ambiguity of these pictures was certainly

a source of specific pleasure for those who knew the

key to their true meaning

7 In Catholic countries allegorical art sacred as

well as profane flourished The twofold character of

symbolic representations mentioned above persisted

in the seventeenth century Aristotelian rational sym-

bolism which used images as words was widespread

in the orthodox Catholic iconography of the Counter-

Reformation as well as in the humanistic visual lan-

guage codified by Ripa and others A mystical Neo-

Platonic symbolism transcending reason reappeared

too Its outspoken document is the treatise by Chris-

toforo Giarda Bibliothecae alexandrinae icones sym-

bolicae of 1626 (Gombrich 1948) For Giarda symbolic

images give the beholder a direct insight into the

mysteries of religion which are not accessible to rea-

son

Thanks to symbolic images the mind which is banished from

heaven into this dark cave of the body its actions held in

bondage by the senses can behold the beauty and form

of the Virtues and Sciences divorced from all matter and

yet adumbrated if not perfectly expressed in colours and

is thus roused to an even more fervent love and desire for

them Who then can sufficiently estimate the magni-

tude of the debt we owe to those who expressed the Arts

and Sciences themselves in images and so brought it about

that we could not only know them but look at them as

it were with our eyes that we can meet them and almost

converse with them

(Gombrich [1948] pp 188f)

Great allegorical compositions covering the ceilings of

baroque churches are often realizations of this princi-

ple For those however who conceived allegory as a

rational operation as a language used for didactic aims

the main problem remained the clarity of the allegori-

533

cal message The larger the audience to whom allegory

was addressed the simpler more obvious its symbolism

should have been The banality of allegorical language

provoked criticism in the eighteenth century Fran-

cesco Algarotti (1762) prefers without any doubt his-

torical representations to the ldquoempty allegories and

complicated mythological allusionsrdquo (Garas [1967] p

280) Especially criticized was the obscurity of these

allegories in which completely original unknown sym-

bols were used Roger de Piles praises his favorite

master Rubens who ldquointroduced only such allegories

elements of which were already known from ancient

artrdquo and opposes him to Charles Lebrun who ldquoinstead

of taking symbols from some known source as the

ancient fable and medals has invented almost all of

them and thus the pictures of this kind became riddles

which the beholder does not want to take the task to

solverdquo To keep the balance between platitudinous

redundancy and utter incomprehensibility was the

crucial problem of late baroque allegorism What is

interesting however is that the idea of the picture

as a riddle was not foreign to the seventeenth century

It appears in France as well as in Sweden where David

Kloumlcker Ehrenstrahl (1694) proposed that pictures

present riddles that could not be solved by everyone

In France however the ldquopainted enigmardquo fostered

by the Jesuits in their schools flourished especially well

in the seventeenth century (Montagu 1968) These

ldquopainted enigmasrdquo lent themselves to various inter-

pretations and gave interpreters an opportunity to

show their ingenuity These pictures and their inter-

pretations seem to prove that a considerable flexibility

of meaning was intended

We might rather accept that a work of art was regarded

in the seventeenth century as in a certain sense an open

symbol raw material like the myth or sacred story which

it illustrates on which the interpreter might exercise the

power of his ingenuity turning it into an allegory of Chris-

tian doctrine or a panegyric in honour of his patron

(Montagu [1968] p 334)

Such a situation probably existed only in some specific

circles It was a limiting case The other extreme was

to use in an uninteresting routine way Ripas symbolic

images or those of other popular symbolic handbooks

Such practice continued well into the eighteenth cen-

tury The general trend fed by ideas of the Enlighten-

ment was to make allegories more and more obvious

It is understandable that some theorists like the Count

de Caylus looked for new subject matter presenting

as he did Tableaux tireacutes de lIliade (1755) or that

J J Winckelmann tried to revive allegory and to give

it a new force It was however too late In the eight-

eenth century together with the whole system of

humanistic tradition the systems of iconography began

to disintegrate The great break in the tradition con-

cerned not only style but also iconography Emblem-

atic roots may be discovered in Goyas symbolism as

well as in the reasonable allegories of the Enlighten-

ment but generally speaking there was a search for

new not known or not used sourcesmdashas in William

Blakes biblical individualistic imagerymdashor the new

staging of the old ones as in Jacques Louis Davids

classical subjects

The art of romanticism was a definite break with

the past much more in the field of ideas and iconogra-

phy than in a stylistic respect where romanticists

retrospectively looked back either to medieval and

pre-Raphaelite or to baroque sources Symbols and

allegories yielded to an all-pervading mood and the

traditional repertory of religious allegorical mytho-

logical and historical iconography gave way to a new

iconography Although several encompassing images

of Christian and humanistic art survived they received

new content and essentially changed their character

New attitudes of the individual to the world of nature

and history to society and destiny to time and death

and new problems resulting from the striving after

freedom (which was a new perhaps most important

principle of human behavior in all fields of human

activity) found expression in new thematic fields and

in new particular themes such as ldquoStorm-tossed Boatrdquo

ldquoLonely Wanderer in the Mountainsrdquo ldquoA Death of the

Herordquo (Eitner 1955 Hofmann 1960 Białostocki

1966)

Romanticism has not formed and could not have

formed an iconographic system for since they strived

first of all for originality of individual conception the

romantics interpreted images in a subjective way as

expressions of mood Romanticism has on the other

hand introduced new heroes and martyrs into art

instead of religious ones the national social and artis-

tic ones It created a new image of history seen now

as a set of political and moral examplesmdashas in

baroquemdashbut often put together now according to a

very individualistic principle of choice A correlative

to pathetic and heroic romanticism was a bourgeois

and intimate romanticism its expression was for ex-

ample the new imagery of the open window which

shows to the viewer wide perspectives but shelters him

at the same time from the dangers of the unknown

(Eitner 1955)

When the world of ideas and images created at the

moment of the flowering of romanticism began to be

popularized for the use of the large bourgeois masses

the contentmdashideological and iconographicalmdashof ro-

manticism lost its original authenticity and left be-

hind not a new system of original images but a dispo-

534

sition to melodramatic experiences and an inflation of

a theatrical gesture (Hofmann 1960 Białostocki 1966)

The nineteenth century developed a realistic por-

traiture of man and nature and took over worn out

clicheacutes of the Renaissance and baroque allegories It

introduced new subject matter taken partly from tra-

dition partly from observation of reality tinted with

vague symbolism such as ldquoForgerdquo or the ldquoFuneral of

the Peasantrdquo but it did not create a new system of

iconography in spite of short-lived revivals of symbol-

istic attitudes in such movementsmdashincidentally not

limited to and not initiated in the visual artsmdashas

ldquosymbolismrdquo

New ephemeral artistic movements which consti-

tuted the history of European art in the last hundred

years show an interesting bracketing of style and icon-

ography in spite of a preponderant lack of iconogra-

phic interest Their representatives chose subjects suit-

able to specific artistic aims and means which they

developed and were interested in Impressionists

painted seaside scenes landscapes and genre pictures

showing the life of artistic and intellectual milieus

Cubists introduced a specific repertory of still-life

motifs symbols of the artists atelier and of the life

of the bohegraveme bottles musical instruments books

fruits flowers newspapers How much these motifs

were connected with specific cubist style appears when

one looks at works of artists foreign to the original

cubist group but imitating its style as for instance

several Czech artists like Emil Filla They adopted

cubist iconography together with cubist style Abstract

movements in general lacked iconography although

they were not foreign to symbolic tendencies espe-

cially in sculpture (Brancusi Moore) Only in the dec-

ades of 1950-70 can a revival of more articulated and

programmatic symbolism be observed One may sup-

pose that this revival is at least in part brought about

by the development of research in iconography and

symbolism which took place in the second and third

quarters of our century

II

1 The origins of ldquointerpretative iconographyrdquo may

be seen in the descriptions (ekphrasis) of works of art

known in classical literature But these descriptions

like those by Philostratus the Elder or Lucian are

limited simply to description and lack in general any

interpretation Moreover it is not certain whether they

are descriptions of actual or fictitious works of art at

least opinions in this respect vary Brief medieval tituli

which formulated in words the content of religious

images were to be sure interpretative sometimes but

they were short and cannot be connected with the

tradition of artistic erudition We have to look to

modern times to indicate the beginnings of iconogra-

phic interpretation and research From Vasaris Rag-

ionamenti in which interpretations of the paintings

decorating the Palazzo Vecchio in Florence are given

we learn how complicated and how undecipherable

iconographic concepts might have been even to peo-

ple living in buildings decorated by paintings expres-

sing these concepts But perhaps the first really to be

considered as interested in iconographic research was

the seventeenth-century archaeologist and art theorist

Giovanni Pietro Bellori In the introduction to his Lives

of Artists (1672) Bellori stressed that he paid special

attention to the content of the works of art he was

talking about and he even credited the painter Nicolas

Poussin with having directed his attention to iconogra-

phy In his Lives Bellori presented short interpretative

descriptions of pictures and he sometimes developed

these interpretations further in small iconographic

essays the influence of classical ekphrasis on him is

a possibility Sometimes his errors took deep roots in

the subsequent history of art as when he explained

Poussins Triumph of Flora (Dresden) by designating

Ovids Metamorphoses as its source The true source

Marinos Adona was finally found by R E Spear in

1965

What is interesting in Belloris procedure is that he

first identifies the motifs tries to connect them with

classical or modern literary sources and then proceeds

to find out the deep meaning the general symbolic

idea of the work Therefore he may be considered as

one of the pioneers not only of iconography as a disci-

pline of research but also of iconology as formulated

by its recent partisans That even in the second half

of the sixteenth century some observers were inclined

to look for hidden meaning in each element of the work

of art we learn from Joannes Molanus (1570) who in

De picturis et imaginibus sacris states reasonably that

ldquoit is not necessary to ask for meaning of everything

that can be observed in a picture in such cases a lot

of absurd things may resultrdquo But the consciousness of

the importance of iconography increased and at the

end of the seventeenth century Andreacute Feacutelibien stressed

that in order to attribute a picture to a painter it is

not enough to know the way he uses his brush one

needs also to know his esprit to learn his geacutenie and

to be able to foresee in which way he is able to form

his conceptions Thus iconographic analysis was con-

sidered necessary even for the purpose of attribution

Descriptive interpretations of the works of ancient

art appeared in the big archaeological publications of

the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries such as

Jacques Spons Miscellanea eruditae antiquitatis (1679)

G P Belloris Admiranda romanarum antiquitatum ac

veteris sculpturae vestigia (1693) P de Caylus Recueil

535

dantiquiteacutes eacutegyptiennes eacutetrusques grecques et

romaines (1752-67) and in an interesting endeavor

(although very much criticized by Lessing) of Joseph

Spence to explain classical poets through works of art

and vice versa (Polymetis 1747) Classical archaeology

however has not been especially interested in iconog-

raphy and the use of the term itself by archaeolo-

gists was limited to portraiture The first great devel-

opment of iconographic studies was connected with

the romantic movement although an important pre-

lude for it was hagiographical collections of sources

such as Acta sanctorum published by the Bollandists

(1643-1794 resumed later) Among the pre-romantic

scholars in iconography the eminent German poet

G E Lessing is to be noted His study of the repre-

sentation of death in classical times can be considered

as one of the first essays in interpretative iconography

which is now called iconology In Wie die Alten den

Tod gebildet (1769) Lessing tries to interpret the classi-

cal iconographic type of Amor with the inverted torch

and to find its ldquointrinsic meaningrdquo by taking into ac-

count the religion customs and philosophy of the

classical world The work of art is interpreted by Less-

ing as ldquoa symptom of something elserdquo While Lessings

predecessors (like B de Montfaucon) ldquoexplained the

classical past by monumentsrdquo he for the first time did

the opposite ldquohe explained the monuments by Antiq-

uityrdquo (Maurin Białostocka [1969] pp 92-100)

Pre-romantic and romantic interests in myth and

symbol found their expression in publications and dis-

cussions by German philosophers and scholars like F

Schlegel J Herder J J von Goumlrres and F Creuzer

Creuzers work Symbolik und Mythologie der alten

Voumllker (1810) which shows the influence of mystical

Neo-Platonic ideas on symbols (Gombrich 1965) was

the most influential in the romantic period in Ger-

many Under the impact of Chateaubriands le Geacutenie

du christianisme (1802) research in medieval iconog-

raphy developed mainly in France Works by French

scholars mostly clergymen which were indeed con-

cerned with Christian medieval art dominated icon-

ographical study in the nineteenth century Since most

of these writers were not professional scholars their

work was often amateurish in character but it is unde-

niable that books by A N Didron Histoire de Dieu

(Paris 1843) the first part of a comprehensive pro-

jected but not completed iconography of Christian art

A Crosnier Iconographie chreacutetienne (Caen 1848) C

Cahier Caracteacuteristiques des saints (Paris 1867) C

Rohault de Fleury Archeacuteologie chreacutetienne les saints

de la messe et leurs monuments 12 vols (Paris

1893-1900) L Breacutehier Lart chreacutetien son deacuteveloppe-

ment iconographique des origines agrave nos jours (Paris

1918) P Perdrizet V Leroquais and G de Jerphanion

have built up a solid body of iconographical knowl-

edge on which scholars of the twentieth century were

able to erect a modern comprehensive structure In

the field of Byzantine iconography it was Gabriel

Millets Recherches sur liconographie de leacutevangile aux

XIVe XVe et XVIe siegravecles (Paris 1916 reprint

1960) that was basic for any further study For Western

chiefly French art a well-written and learned work

appealing to the general reader as well as to the

scholar was produced by Eacutemile Macircle who in his four

volumes of the history of religious art (1898-1932) has

presented a well-composed synthetic image of icono-

graphical development A lexicographic summary of

these studies of generations of French scholars is pre-

sented in the Dictionnaire darcheacuteologie chreacutetienne et

de liturgie published from 1907 to 1953 and edited

by F Cabrol and H Leclerq A recent reference work

is that by L Reacuteau Iconographie de lart chreacutetien (Paris

1955-59) Russian scholars have done important work

in the field of Byzantine and Orthodox iconography

of religious art The most prominent are N P Kon-

dakov Ikonografia Bogomatieri (St Petersburg 1911

2nd ed 1914-15) D V Ainalov Mosaiki IV i V vekov

(St Petersburg 1895) and N Pokrovski Otcherki

pamyatnikov christianskogo isskusstva i ikonografii (St

Petersburg 1894 3rd ed 1910) V Lasarev and M

Alpatov belonging to the mid-twentieth-century gen-

eration of Russian scholars discuss iconography in

several works on religious art German scholarship

produced in the nineteenth century works by F Piper

A Springer and H Detzel Useful compendia were

produced in the early twentieth century by J Sauer

W Molsdorf K Kuumlnstle and J Braun Dutch scholars

C Smits J B Knipping and J J M Timmers contrib-

uted to iconographic studies in recent times Knip-

pings book (1939-40) being the most important work

on the iconography of the Counter-Reformation and

supplementing Macircles volume of 1932 In the twentieth

century on C R Moreys initiative iconographic

studies were inaugurated in North America Focused

on earlier medieval art these studies developed at

Princeton University

A new direction characteristic of iconographic

studies in the twentieth century has been given to

them by the international school of art historical re-

search inaugurated by the Hamburg scholar Aby

Warburg At the International Congress for the History

of Art at Rome in 1912 he presented a sensational

astrological interpretation of the frescoes painted by

Francesco Cossa and his collaborators in Palazzo

Schifanoja at Ferrara Warburg solved the secret of

those representations which had puzzled the ingenuity

of several former students interpreting them as images

of zodiacal signs and their decans But he did not limit

536

his contribution to the presentation of his results He

wanted to stress the importance of his approach and

of the method of study which later became connected

with his name He said

I hope that through the method used by me for explication

of the frescoes at the Palazzo Schifanoja of Ferrara I have

proved that an iconological analysis which does not allow

itself to be diverted by the rules of frontier police from

considering antiquity Middle Ages and modern times as

interconnected periods nor from analyzing the most liberal

and the most applied works of art as equally important

documents of expression that this method endeavoring as

it does to throw light upon one dark spot clears up at

the same time great interconnected developments

(Warburg 1912 Heckscher 1967)

Warburgs influence on the history of art was very

great although he himself did not write much It was

mainly the posthumous impact of his ideas promul-

gated as they were by Fritz Saxl which contributed

to the specific direction of studies concentrated in the

library Warburg founded in Hamburg and which Saxl

succeeded in transplanting during the Nazi era to

London where it became the Warburg Institute of the

University of London While the object of study of the

nineteenth-century iconographers was mainly religious

art in its relation to religious literary sources and lit-

urgy for Warburg the study of images was a study

of their relations to religion to poetry to myth to

science and to social and political life Art was for

him closely connected with the polyphonic structure

of historical life

Warburgs ideas had a great importance for the most

influential theory of iconographic interpretation in our

century that elaborated by Erwin Panofsky In Ham-

burg where Warburg Saxl and Panofsky were active

in the twenties Ernst Cassirer built up his philosophy

of symbolic forms which constituted an additional

background for Panofskys system being derived as

his own methodology was from the traditions of

Kantian philosophy Around 1930 Panofskys ideas

ripened into a system which found formulation in his

book herkules am Scheidewege (1930) and later in a

theoretical article of 1932 G J Hoogewerff was how-

ever the first to propose the word ldquoiconologyrdquo as a

name for the method of an analysis of content in a

work of art (Warburg spoke of iconological analysis)

In 1931 he proposed distinguishing between iconogra-

phy as a descriptive science aiming at the identifica-

tion of themes and ldquoiconologyrdquo aiming at the under-

standing ldquoof symbolic dogmatic or mystical meaning

which is expressed (or hidden) in figurative formsrdquo He

stressed that ldquoiconologyrdquo deals with works of art with-

out classifying them according to the technique used

or to the achieved perfection taking into account only

their meaning Hoogewerff saw the last aim of iconol-

ogy in finding out the cultural and ideological back-

ground expressed by works of art and the cultural and

social significance which can be attributed to certain

forms and to means of expression in the same time

Hoogewerffs part in the expansion of iconology was

limited because he did not endorse his methodical

proposals with examples of historical interpretations

Erwin Panofsky with whose name iconology has

been connected ever since not only developed its

theoretical foundations but contributed by his practi-

cal work in art history to the main triumph of iconol-

ogy after the Second World War The most influential

book by Panofsky has been Studies in Iconology (1939)

in which his masterly presentation of the method was

connected with its equally excellent exemplification

2 Panofsky considers the interpretation of a work

of art as falling on three levels On the first level the

object of interpretation is the primary or natural sub-

ject matter The function of interpretation is called

ldquopre-iconographical descriptionrdquo In order to be able

to arrive at a correct interpretation on that level the

interpreter must have a practical experience (ldquofamili-

arity with objects and eventsrdquo) common to everybody

at least in one cultural sphere However he has to

control his observations by a ldquocorrective knowledge

of the history of stylerdquo (ldquoinsight into the manner in

which under varying historical conditions objects and

events were expressed by formsrdquo) On the second level

the function of interpretation is called ldquoiconographical

analysisrdquo its object is the ldquosecondary or conventional

subject matterrdquo constituting the world of images his-

tories and allegories The interpreters equipment in

this case is obviously the knowledge of literary sources

giving him a ldquofamiliarity with specific themes and

conceptsrdquo The interpreter has to control his observa-

tions by ldquothe insight into the manner in which under

varying historical conditions specific themes or con-

cepts were expressed by objects and eventsrdquo On the

third level the function of interpreting is called ldquoicon-

ographical analysis in a deeper senserdquo (1939) or ldquoicon-

ological analysisrdquo (1955) Its object is the ldquointrinsic

meaning or contentrdquo of a work of art The interpreters

equipment on that level should be a ldquofamiliarity with

the essential tendencies of the human mindrdquo and he

has to control his interpretation by the ldquoinsight into

the manner in which under varying historical condi-

tions essential tendencies of the human mind were

expressed by specific themes and conceptsrdquo Thus

taking all the time into account what Panofsky calls

the history of tradition the interpreter has to aim at

understanding the work of art its ldquoprimaryrdquo as well

as ldquosecondary subject matterrdquo as symptoms of some

fundamental tendency of the human mind typical of

537

a place a time a civilization and of an individual

responsible for the creation of the work ldquoIconologyrdquomdash

for Panofskymdashldquois a method of interpretation which

arises from synthesis rather than analysisrdquo Trying to

find the intrinsic meaning of a work of art

The art historian will have to check what he thinks is the

intrinsic meaning of the work or group of works against

what he thinks is the intrinsic meaning of as many other

documents of civilization historically related to that work

or group of works as he can master It is in the search

for intrinsic meaning or content that the various humanistic

disciplines meet on a common plane instead of serving as

handmaidens to each other

(Panofsky [1955] p 39)

The concept of intrinsic meaning of a work of art

was elaborated by Panofsky much earlier (1925) when

he interpreted in his own way the concept of Kunst-

wollen introduced by A Riegl to research in art

Panofsky understood this ldquoartistic volitionrdquo as an im-

manent ultimate meaning of a work of art which is

manifested in the way basic artistic problems are solved

in that work He used the same concept further to bring

art closer to the other fields of human activity Since

the ldquoimmanent ultimate senserdquo of the work of art is

nothing else than uniformity in the way of solving basic

artistic problems it is possible to compare that imma-

nent sense with immanent senses of the other human

works in various fields Panofsky did it for instance

when in one of his later works he compared the struc-

tural principles of Gothic architecture with those of

scholastic thinking (1951)

The system elaborated by Panofsky and exemplified

by his own work in art history was the first consistent

system of an integral interpretation of a work of visual

arts based on the analysis of content In principle

Panofskys system takes into account all the elements

of the work of art since it takes as the point of depar-

ture the sensual exterior shape of the work It is

however clear that its main scope is not the inter-

pretation of form as a bearer of meaning but the

understanding and interpretation of conventional alle-

gories literary themes and symbols as symptoms of

the history of the human mind It was that method

in the history of art which programmatically fostered

a collaboration with all the other disciplines of histori-

cal studies It was therefore one of the most influential

methods not only among art historians but also among

representatives of the other branches of humanistic

studies Although there were art historians who ex-

pressed a critical attitude toward ldquoiconologyrdquo as the

new method was soon baptized its influence was over-

whelming

3 It is not only but mainly due to Panofsky that

one can venture to call ldquoiconographicalrdquo that period

of art history as a historical discipline which followed

the Second World War and to oppose it to the ldquostylis-

ticrdquo one which preceded it It does not mean of course

that no iconographic research took place in the

twenties or thirties the works of Macircle Knipping van

Marle Wilpert Saxl and of Panofsky himself would

contradict such a statement Neither is it true that

purely formal research aiming at stylistic classification

and analysis discontinued after World War II It is

evident that in the last decades (from 1940 on) icono-

graphic interests came to the fore and became domi-

nant in many countries Iconographical studies grew

so much in number and importance that they made

it possible to undertake and to publish new reference

works of iconographic character like dictionaries

written by one scholar (Guy de Tervarent Aurenham-

mer) as well as larger works based on a collaboration

of several scholars (Encyclopedias of German art of

Antiquity and Christian civilization of Byzantine art)

Interest in meaning and iconography has appeared

also among historians of political social and religious

institutions The symbolism of signs ceremonies cos-

tumes and arms was studied by such scholars as A

Alfoumlldi ldquoInsignien und Tracht der roumlmischen Kaiserrdquo

Mitteilungen des deutschen Archaumlologischen Instituts

Roumlmische Abteilung (1935) 1ff ldquoDie Geburt der

kaiserlichen Bildsymbolikrdquo museum Helveticum 9

(1952) 204ff also by A Grabar Martyrium (Paris

1943-46) by E H Kantorowicz laudes Regiae

(Berkeley and Los Angeles 1946) The Kings Two

Bodies (Princeton 1957) by H P L Orange Studies

in the Iconography of Cosmic Kingship in the Ancient

World (Oslo 1953) Art Forms and Civic Life in the

Late Roman Empire (Princeton 1965) and by P E

Schramm herrschaftszeichen und Staatssymbolik

(Stuttgart 1954-56) In their studies iconography far

transcends the borders of art and it helps to build up

a history of ideas by following their various visual

expressions

Pioneering studies by K Giehlow F Saxl and E

Panofsky enlarged iconographical interests above all

to encompass the large field of secular art whereas

they had been mainly limited to religious iconography

in the work of preceding generations of scholars The

whole complicated and hardly known large body of

meanings disguised by the cryptic language of hiero-

glyphs emblems and iconologies became one of the

main topics of study

This established a collaboration between historians

of art and literature Mario Prazs admirable study of

emblems and his bibliography of emblem books

(1939-47) belongs now to the foundations of studies

in that field Publications by W S Heckscher and

A K Wirth by R S Clements E F von Monroy and

538

H M von Erffa E de Jongh and H Miedema and

several other scholars have elucidated the structure

and meaning of emblems and have shown their tre-

mendous influence on art even in its most monumental

and dignified forms An uninterrupted flow of reprints

of emblem books which brought within the reach of

modern students inaccessible volumes of sixteenth- and

seventeenth-century emblem writers were crowned by

the monumental undertaking of Arthur Henkel and

Albrecht Schoumlne who compiled an excellent volume

including almost all the texts and images needed for

the study of emblemsmdashEmblemata Handbuch zur

Sinnbildkunst des XVI und XVII Jahrhunderts

(Stuttgart 1967) Research was under way on hiero-

glyphs (Erik Iversen) and on the imprese (the late

Robert Klein) as well as on iconologies and allegories

These studies have disclosed meanings of the art of

the Renaissance of mannerism and of the baroque not

understood by nineteenth-century scholars

E Panofsky deciphered extremely farfetched and

individualistic programs of decoration of such famous

ensembles as the Camera di San Paolo by Correggio

in Parma the Gallery of Franccedilois I at Fontainebleau

Edgar Wind Andreacute Chastel and other scholars inter-

preted Raphaels decorations in the Popes apartments

Michelangelos art furnished material to detailed com-

prehensive studies by Panofsky Ch de Tolnay H von

Einem and Pope-Hennessy in which the share of

Neo-Platonic thinking in the ideological background

of the celebrated works of Michelangelo was discussed

Innumerable studies have been devoted to Titians

mythological paintings J R Martin presented expla-

nations of the Carracci frescoes in the Camerino Far-

nese and in the great gallery of the Palazzo Farnese

Bruegel considered in the nineteenth century as a drocircle

painter of peasant life has been shown by de Tolnay

Stridbeck and others to be an allegorist expressing a

skeptical humanistic outlook J S Held and W

Stechow contributed several articles to the under-

standing of mythological and allegorical contents in

Flemish and Dutch art of the sixteenth and seventeenth

centuries Rembrandts iconography was put into new

light by the two above-mentioned scholars as well as

by H M Rotermund H van de Waal J G van Gelder

H von Einem and Ch Tuumlmpel The intricate symbol-

ism and subject matter of historical and mythological

pictures by Nicolas Poussin were elucidated by such

masters of iconographic research as E H Gombrich

W Friedlaumlnder E Panofsky and above all by A Blunt

who in his monograph on Poussin presented a new

deep synthetic view of the ideas expressed by that

artists works Goyas individualistic secret symbolism

was also studied with the help of emblems and the

allegorical tradition Berninis works received iconolo

gical treatment by R Wittkower and H Kauffmann

All of this research does not mean that there was a

lack of interest in religious iconography M Schapiro

A Katzenellenbogen H Bober F Wormald and V

Elbern among others have contributed considerably

to deepen our understanding of the not completely

explained motifs and prominent works of medieval art

Panofsky has also shed a new light on several problems

of sepulchral iconography studies by such scholars as

R Berliner G von der Osten L Kalinowski S

Ringbom and T Dobrzeniecki contributed to late

medieval iconography in a new way Berliner stressed

the autonomous invention of visual artists or their

patrons while according to the traditional view popu-

larized by Macircle late medieval art should have followed

strictly literary sources

The religious content of modern art especially its

allegorical form in the late baroque period has been

examined and thanks to studies by such scholars as

W Mrazek and H Bauer has become better known

and understandable A great change was introduced

by ldquoiconologyrdquo into architectural history Buildings

which were formerly interpreted from aesthetic and

functional points of view only have been shown to

present allegorical symbolical or even emblematic

ideas Publications by leading art historians (R Witt-

kower B Smith G Bandmann O von Simson and

G C Argan) have presented medieval and modern

architecture as a bearer of meaning and have essen-

tially changed the character of architectural history

The iconography of classicism and romanticism

received a thorough treatment in books by W Hof-

mann and R Rosenblum as well as in several studies

devoted to individual themes and pictures G Hersey

has for example shown how much Delacroixs decora-

tion of the library in the Palais Bourbon owed to

Giambattista Vicos ideas about history More recently

studies on ldquoSymbolismrdquo have been undertaken Vincent

van Goghs symbolic language and iconography were

the object of studies by J Seznec C Nordenfalk and

other scholars On Ceacutezannes iconography interesting

remarks have been published by M Schapiro

Along with the development of iconographic studies

the establishment of centers of documentation has

advanced The ldquoFrenchrdquo stage in the development of

iconography has not left any marked trace in this

respect It was in America thanks to C R Morey that

the famous Index of Christian Art at the Department

of Art and Archaeology of Princeton University was

founded at first limited to the early Middle Ages then

enlarged so as to include art up to the end of the

medieval period Copies of the Princeton Index are

to be found also at the Istituto Pontificio dArcheolo-

gia in Rome and in the Dumbarton Oaks Library and

539

Collection in Washington DC But that Index ends

ldquowhere art beginsrdquomdashas Panofsky used to say jokingly

The need for systematic iconographic files for modern

art was strongly felt In 1956 A Pigler published a

very useful book Barockthemen in which he listed

thousands of works of art of the baroque period ac-

cording to their subjects It was however far from

being a systematic work The first essay in establishing

a systematic iconographic index for art of any time

was done by The Netherlands Institute for Art History

at the Hague then directed by H Gerson which took

the initiative around 1950 of publishing a postcard-size

photographic index of its rich collection of photographs

of Netherlandish art ordered according to an icono-

graphic principle Once such an idea was formulated

the need for a comprehensive consistent and clear

iconographic classification was urgent H van de Waal

of Leiden University devised such a system of classifi-

cation based on decimal divisions consistent and easy

to read He based his system on experiences of ethnol-

ogy and on such elaborated systems of classification

as that devised by Stith Thompson in his Motif-Index

of Folk Literature Vols I-VI (Bloomington Ind

1932-36 rev ed 1955-58) Van de Waal has elabor-

ated a system in which the first five main sections

classify five fundamental groups of portrayable things

namely (1) The Supernatural (2) Nature (3) Man (4)

Society (5) Abstracts The last four classify specific

subjects such as (6) History (7) The Bible (8) Myths

Legends and Tales (with the exception of classical

antiquity) (9) Myths and Legends of Classical Antiq-

uity Van de Waal combines the classification in the

first and in the second group in order to classify general

as well as specific subjects Christ in his system is

described with the sign ldquo11 Drdquo (ldquo1rdquo standing for Su-

pernatural ldquo11rdquo for Christianity ldquoDrdquo for Christ) the

adult Christ = 11 D 3 since ldquoshepherdrdquo on the other

hand bears the signature 47 I 221 the adult Christ

as a shepherd can be described in this system by the

following formula 11 D 3 = 47 I 221 Van de Waal

has also provided means to describe more complex

images which he expresses by adding elements between

brackets The Annunciation with God the Father and

a winged Angel is expressed by the following formula

73 A 5 (+1 +41) ldquo1rdquo standing for God the Father

and ldquo41rdquo for a winged Angel (van de Waal 1952) This

system elaborated for many years by its inventor and

prepared for publication in many volumes has proved

most useful in the practical arrangement of the Icono-

graphical Index of the Netherlandish Art and as the

only one until now in existence it became used more

and more in spite of some ambiguities and difficulties

As an endeavor to classify ldquoall portrayablerdquo things

persons events and ideas and to create a consistent

method to describe every possible image van de Waals

system may be considered as one of the important

achievements of the ldquoiconographical stagerdquo in the

development of art history Iconographic files exist of

course in many institutions as for example in the Ikon-

ologisch Instituut of Utrecht University one of the

main centers of study in emblematics and of course

in the most venerable institution of iconographic re-

search the Warburg Institute of the London University

and in other places

4 What was the result of this ldquoiconographicrdquo turn

in the development of the history of art One thing

is certain that this discipline by necessity has come

closer to other humanistic disciplines Since the

ldquointrinsicrdquo meaningmdashin Panofskys terminologymdashof a

work of art cannot be described in terms used by the

history of art but only in terms borrowed from the

history of philosophy of religion of social structures

of science and so on the ldquoiconological methodrdquo took

for granted and provoked such a collaboration Art

history was perhaps the first or one of the first to show

new interest in investigation of meaning It was fol-

lowed by similar developments in ethnology and in

linguistics

We have mentioned above a parallel development

in Byzantine and classical studies Panofskys influence

has been considerable in the other fields of humanistic

research Since ldquoiconologyrdquo aimed at discovering ideas

expressed by a work of art it awoke in art historians

an interest in the history of ideas This general shift

of emphasis and of the direction of studies from mainly

formal ones to studies aiming at ideas underlying art

was perhaps responsible among others for the fact that

several contributions to the Journal of the History of

Ideas have been written by historians of art

It is not difficult to see that such a development

should have provoked criticism on the side of those

who care about the purity and autonomy of methods

Iconology was criticized as far as its internal coherence

and also as far as its claim to be the integral method

of the study of art are concerned (Białostocki 1962)

Studies by R Klein E Forssman G Previtali G

Kubler B Teyssegravedre C Ginzburg and G Hermeren

expressed critical opinions in one or the other respect

Iconology linked art with the rest of history but it

disrupted the links between the work of art and other

things (Kubler 1962) Concentrating on meaning

iconology neglected art as form as individual expres-

sion Iconology implied a rational relationship between

intellectual content and artistic form On the one hand

one spoke of ldquoiconological diminutionsrdquo (Kubler

1962)mdashlimitations of research to meaning only But

on the other hand the overstatements of iconology

were criticized its representatives sometimes seemed

540

to assume everything symbolized something And some

iconologists seemed to consider important in art not

that which makes art a different field of human activity

but that which connects art with other fieldsmdashwith

the history of ideas

There were of course critics who had the opposite

opinion Since the end of the eighteenth century a

direct experience of art was more and more valued

and its symbolical function considered as a burden

J G von Herder said ein Kunstwerk ist der Kunst

wegen da aber bei einem Symbole ist die Kunst

dienend (ldquoA work of art is there because of art but

with a symbol art is a servicerdquo) Similar opinions were

expressed by nineteenth-century art writers and in this

century they have been voiced by Benedetto Croce and

by other Italian opponents of contenutismo by which

they meant interest in content For such critics to put

stress on iconography was to miss the essential in art

and to focus attention on a subordinate function of art

Also among scholars who considered the function

of representation and of communication as a legitimate

and important function of art criticism was expressed

not against the principle of an iconographical or icon-

ological investigation but against overstatements in

their application The introduction of the idea of ldquodis-

guised symbolismrdquo has created a danger of course of

opening the way to fanciful interpretations The alle-

gorical and symbolical function of mythological imag-

ery in classical art is also difficult to interpret precisely

Since no literary sources give a key to an interpretation

of the iconography of the sarcophagi very divergent

theories have been expressed concerning their meaning

Some archaeologists like F Cumont (1942) believe

that mythological and allegorical imagery (Anadyo-

mene Sea-Thiasos Personifications of the Seasons) is

to be read symbolically The Sea-Thiasos for instance

is to be interpreted as a symbol of the journey of the

souls of the deceased to the islands of the blessed

Others like A D Nock (1946) do not find enough

evidence to accept other than a decorative function

in such imagery

The intrusion of some representatives of psychology

eg C G Jung into iconographic studies giving them

an unhistorical turn in their search for ldquoarchetypal

imagesrdquo has complicated the situation although art

historians in general understandably have not accepted

that kind of approach to symbolism (Frankfort 1958

Gombrich 1965)

The fact that iconographic interpretations sometimes

lack satisfactory proofs does not detract from the im-

portance of such investigations so long as they are

conducted according to the requirements of historical

methods and take into account the corrective princi-

ples established by Panofsky A correct acquaintance

with the way of thinking of the artist the patron or the

viewer based on a satisfactory knowledge of documen-

tary visual and literary sources an awareness of the

choice situations produced by historical developments

may enable art historians to discover the secondary

meaning of a work of art as well as its intrinsic mean-

ing It is of course possible that the art historian will

meet some works for which it will not be possible to re-

construct in a satisfactory way the world of ideas that

would account for the meaning of those works In such

cases a reliable interpretation is simply not possible

R Berliner (1945 1966) criticized the widespread

opinion according to which content of the works of

visual arts in the Middle Ages had to be checked

against the literary sources considered as the only

medium in which ideological innovations were per-

mitted Berliner pleaded for assuming a considerable

ldquofreedomrdquo in the medieval artist and he considered

iconographic innovation possible even when no writ-

ten evidence could be found Meyer Schapiro (1947)

presented proofs that sometimes purely aesthetic rea-

sons decided the character of the work of art even as

early as the Romanesque period

We can only touch on some specific discussions going

on in the field of iconographic research But iconogra-

phic research is far from being a closed system and

the relative share of iconographic and stylistic criticism

in the work of art historians is always a matter of

discussion It is certain that the ldquoiconographicrdquo period

in the study of art has enlarged in a considerable way

the understanding of the art of the past and that it

has connected art history in a way unknown before

with the other historical disciplines and above all others

with the history of ideas

BIBLIOGRAPHY

L B Alberti On Painting ed J Spencer (New Haven

1956 revised ed 1966) E Auerbach ldquoFigurardquo (1944) trans

and published in Scenes From the Drama of European Liter-

ature (New York 1959) pp 11-76 K Bauch ldquoImagordquo

(1960) Studien zur Kunstgeschichte (Berlin 1967) pp 1-20

G P Bellori Descrizione delle imagini dipinte da Raffaello

(Rome 1695 ed used is 1751) R Berliner ldquoThe Free-

dom of Medieval Artrdquo Gazette des Beaux-Arts 628 (1945)

263-88 idem ldquoBemerkungen zu einigen Darstellungen des

Erloumlsers als Schmerzensmannrdquo Das Muumlnster 9 (1956)

97-117x J Białostocki ldquoIconografia e Iconologiardquo Enciclo-

pedia Universale dellArte (1962) Vol VII cols 163-75

trans as Encyclopedia of World Art (1966) Vol VII cols

769-85 lists almost all important older contributions to this

field idem ldquoRomantische Ikonographierdquo Stil und Ikonog-

raphie (Dresden 1966) pp 156-81 idem ldquoKompozycja

emblematyczna epitafioacutew ślaskich XVI wiekurdquo (ldquoEmblem-

atic Composition of Silesian Epitaphs of the Sixteenth Cen-

turyrdquo) Ze studioacutew nad Sztuka XVI wieku na Řlasku

(Wrocław 1968) pp 77-93 idem ldquoEsilio Privatordquo Bulletin

du Museacutee National de Varsovie 10 (1969) 95-101 J

541

Chydenius The Theory of Medieval Symbolism (Helsingfors

1960) Series of the Societas Scientiarum Fennica Com-

mentationes Humanarum Litterarum 27 2 R J Clements

Picta Poesis (Rome 1960) F Creuzer Symbolik und

Mythologie der Alten Voumllker (Leipzig and Darmstadt 1810

revised ed 1819) F Cumont Recherches sur le symbolisme

funeacuteraire des Romains (Paris 1942) L Eitner ldquoThe Open

Window and the Storm-Tossed Boatrdquo Art Bulletin 37

(1955) 281-90 H Frankfort ldquoThe Archetype in Analytical

Psychology and the History of Religionrdquo Journal of the

Warburg and Courtauld Institutes 21 (1958) 166-78

K Garas ldquoAllegorie und Geschichte in der Venezianischen

Malerei des 18 Jahrhundertsrdquo in proceedings of the XXI

International Congress of the History of Art Bonn Stil und

Uumlberlieferung in der Kunst des Abendlandes (Berlin 1967)

3 280-83 K Giehlow ldquoDie Hieroglyphenkunde des

Humanismus in der Allegorie der Renaissancerdquo Jahrbuch

der Kunsthistorischen Sammlungen des Allerhochsten

Kaiserhauses 32 (1915) 1-232 C Gilbert ldquoOn Subject and

Not-Subject in Italian Renaissance Picturesrdquo Art Bulletin

34 (1952) 202-16 C Ginzburg ldquoDa A Warburg a E H

Gombrich Note su un problema di metodordquo Studi medi-

evali series 3 7 (1966) 1015-65 E H Gombrich ldquoIcones

Symbolicae The Visual Image in Neo-Platonic Thoughtrdquo

Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes 11 (1948)

163-92 idem ldquoThe Use of Art for the Study of Symbolsrdquo

American Psychologist 20 (1965) A Grabar Liconoclasme

byzantin Dossier archeacuteologique (Paris 1957) idem Chris-

tian Iconography A Study of Its Origins (Princeton 1969)

S J Gudlaugsson De Comedianten bij Jan Steen en zijn

tijdgenooten (s-Gravenhage 1945) W S Heckscher ldquoThe

Genesis of Iconologyrdquo Stl und Uumlberlieferung in der Kunst

des Abendlandes Akten des XXI Internationalen Kon-

gresses fuumlr Kunstgeschichte (Berlin 1967) 3 239-62 G

Hermereacuten Representation and Meaning in the Visual Arts

A Study in the Methodology of Iconography and Iconology

Lund Studies in Philosophy Vol I (Lund 1969) R Hinks

Myth and Allegory in Ancient Art (London 1939) W

Hofmann Das Irdische Paradies (Munich 1960) G J

Hoogewerff ldquoLIconologie et son importance pour leacutetude

systeacutematique de lart chreacutetienrdquo Rivista dArcheologia Cris-

tiana 8 (1931) 53-82 E de Jongh Zinne- en minnebeelden

in de schilderkunst van de zeventiende eeuw (mdash1967) idem

ldquoErotica in Vogelperspectief De dubbelzinnigheid van een

reeks 17de eeuwse genrevoorstellingenrdquo Simiolus 3

(1968-69) 22-72 L Kalinowski ldquoTreści ideowe i estetyczne

Drzwi Gnieźnieńskichrdquo (ldquoIdeological and Aesthetic Content

of the Gniezno Bronze Doorsrdquo) in Drzwi Gnieźnieńskie ed

M Walicki (Wroclaw 1959) 2 7-160 H Keller Tizians

Poesie fuumlr Koumlnig Philip II von Spanien (Wiesbaden 1969)

R Klein ldquoLa theacuteorie de lexpression figureacutee dans les traiteacutes

italiens sur les imprese 1555-1612rdquo Bibliothegraveque dHu-

manisme et Renaissance 19 (1957) 320-41 republished with

the other relevant studies in la forme et lintelligible (Paris

1969) R Klibansky E Panofsky F Saxl Saturn and Melan-

choly (London 1964) J B Knipping Ikonografie van de

Contra-Reformatie in de Nederlanden (Hilversum 1939-40)

G Kubler The Shape of Time (New Haven and London

1962) R W Lee ldquoUt pictura poesisrdquo Art Bulletin 22

(1940) 197-269 E Macircle Lart religieux du XIIIe siegravecle en

France (Paris 1898) English ed used (New York 1958)

idem Lart religieux de la fin du Moyen-Age en France

(Paris 1908) idem Lart religieux du XIIe siegravecle en France

(Paris 1922) idem Lart religieux apregraves le Concile de Trente

(Paris 1932) J Maurin Białostocka Lessing i sztuki plas-

tyczne (ldquoLessing and the visual artsrdquo) (Wroclaw Warszawa

Krakoacutew 1969) E F von Monroy Embleme und Emblem-

buumlcher in den Niederlanden 1560-1630 ed H M von Erffa

(Utrecht 1964) J Montagu ldquoThe Painted Enigma and

French Seventeenth Century Artrdquo Journal of the Warburg

and Courtauld Institutes 31 (1968) 307-35 W Mrazek

Ikonologie der barocken Deckenmalerei (Vienna 1953)

Uumlsterreichische Akademie der Wissenschaften Philo-

sophisch-historische Klasse Sitzungsberichte 2283 A D

Nock ldquoSarcophagi and Symbolismrdquo American Journal of

Archaeology 50 (1946) 166ff D Panofsky and E Panofsky

ldquoThe Iconography of the Galeacuterie Franccedilois Ier at Fontaine-

bleaurdquo Gazette des Beaux-Arts 652 (1958) 113-90

E Panofsky ldquoUumlber das Verhaumlltnis der Kunstgeschichte zur

Kunsttheorierdquo Zeitschrift fuumlr Aesthetik und allgemeine

Kunstwissenschaft 18 (1925) 129-61 idem Studies in

Iconology (New York 1939) idem ed Abbot Suger (Prince-

ton 1946) idem Gothic Architecture and Scholasticism

(Latrobe Pa 1951) idem Early Netherlandish Painting

(Cambridge Mass 1953) idem Meaning in the Visual Arts

(Garden City N Y 1955) idem Renaissance and Renas-

cences in Western Art (Stockholm 1960) idem Tomb Sculp-

ture (New York 1964) E Panofsky and F Saxl ldquoClassical

Mythology in Medieval Artrdquo Metropolitan Museum Studies

4 (1932-33) 228-80 M Praz Studies in Seventeenth Cen-

tury Imagery (London 1939-47 2nd ed Rome 1964) S

Ringbom ldquoDevotional Images and Imaginative Devotions

Notes on the Place of Art in Late Medieval Private Pietyrdquo

Gazette des Beaux-Arts 6 73 (1969) 159-70 Joseph Sauer

Symbolik des Kirchengebaumludes und seiner Ausstattung in

der Auffassung des Mittelalters 2nd ed (Freiburg i B

1924) F Saxl ldquoFruumlhes Christentum und spaumltes Heidentum

in ihren kuumlnstlerischen Ausdrucksformenrdquo Wiener Jahrbuch

fuumlr Kunstgeschichte 2 (1923) 63-121 M Schapiro ldquoThe

Ruthwell Crossrdquo Art Bulletin 26 (1944) 232-45 idem ldquoOn

the Aesthetic Attitude in Romanesque Artrdquo in Art and

Thought issued in Honour of Ananda Coomaraswamy

(London 1947) 139-50 J Seznec The Survival of the Pagan

Gods (New York 1953) O G von Simson The Gothic

Cathedral (New York 1956) R E Spear ldquoThe Literary

Source of Poussins Realm of Florardquo The Burlington Maga-

zine 107 (1965) 563-69 L Volkmann Bilderschriften der

Renaissance (Leipzig 1923) Hans van de Waal Drie

eeuwen vaderlandsche geschieduitbeelding 1500-1800 (s-

Gravenhage 1952) idem ldquoSome Principles of a General

Iconographical Classificationrdquo in Actes du XVIIe Congregraves

International dHistoire de lArt Amsterdam 1952 (La Haye

1955) 601-06 E Wind ldquoCharity the Case History of a

Patternrdquo Journal of the Warburg Institute 1 (1937) 322ff

JAN BIAŁOSTOCKI

[See also Allegory Baroque Classicism Criticism Enlight-

enment Motif Myth Naturalism in Art Neo-Platonism

Renaissance Humanism Romanticism Symbolism Tem-

perance Ut pictura poesis]

and an epigram Only the whole of the emblem can

be understood each element of it giving only one part

of the meaning All those cryptic codes of expression

connecting words and images originated as secret and

elitarian The problem of the degree of obscurity was

one of the main points discussed by the theorists of

the emblematics (Clements [1964] pp 191-95) Eras-

mus of Rotterdam stressed that one of the virtues of

the impresa is that its meaning can be grasped only

with an intellectual effort Cesare Ripa (Iconologia

1593) demands that symbolic images be composed ldquoin

the form of enigmardquo Sambucus (1564) required ldquoob-

scuritasrdquo and ldquonovitasrdquo from the emblems Paolo

Giovio represented a reasonable middle ldquoThe device

should not be so obscure as to require the Sybil to

interpret it nor yet so obvious that any literal-minded

person can understand itrdquo Later however the crypto-

grams of hieroglyphics and emblem books began to

be popularized and explained Collections of emblems

became widely known New systematization of icon

ography now of a humanistic one was inaugurated

In 1556 Vincenzo Cartari published the first modern

handbook of mythological imagery le imagini colla

sposizione degli dei degli antichi (Venice 1556) In the

same year Pierio Valeriano produced a rich collection

of Hieroglyphica (Basel 1556) Earlier in 1531 Andrea

Alciati had compiled the first emblem book (Emblema-

tum liber Augsburg 1531) The influence of such

books which went through many translations and edi-

tions and which were imitated and continued all over

Europe grew at the close of the sixteenth and in the

seventeenth century In exclusive groups it happened

much earlier that hieroglyphic astrological and em-

blematic imagery influenced the iconography of im-

portant works of art as for example at the court of

Maximilian I (M Giehlow 1915) sometimes this con-

cerned works done by the most distinguished artists

like Duumlrers Melencolia I (Klibansky et al 1964)

Emblematic principle of composition uniting as it did

the image with the verbal formulations found great

popularity in northern Europe perhaps because the

importance of the word so prominent in Protestantism

was stressed (Luther required ldquofragments from the

Holy Writrdquo to be included in the Epitaph-pictures)

Epitaphs and other religious pictures of the Protestant

North connect words and images in the harmonious

indivisible whole (Białostocki 1968)

In the Netherlands emblems played an important

part in the development of realistic painting in the

seventeenth century since they furnished a rich reper-

tory of imagery charged with allegorical meaning (de

Jongh von Monroy) However the meaning of those

images obvious to the viewer who remembered the

original emblematic context eluded for a long time

later interpreters who were no longer conversant with

the emblems

After Cartari and his followers furnished artists and

patrons with images of classical gods there was a need

felt for another handbook which would enable the

artist to represent and the patron to understand the

abstract moral philosophical scientific and other

ideas symbolized Only then was art able to express

complex thoughts This task was fulfilled by Cesare

Ripa of Perugia who in 1593 published his Iconologia

a handbook explaining how to represent all the incor-

poreal concepts In 1603 Iconologia was republished

with illustrations and became one of the most popular

and influential art books With Ripa in hand art

historiansmdashinitially Eacutemile Macircle (1932)mdashwere able to

decipher hundreds of allegorical statements in paint

and stone guided by this alphabet of personifications

Ripas basic entity was a human figure female more

often than male whose costumes attributes gestures

and other particulars express specific qualities of the

531

idea represented With the publication of Ripas workmdash

translated soon into many languages and frequently

republished and revisedmdashthe humanistic system of

allegorical iconography was established classical gods

and personifications hieroglyphic signs and emblems

connecting words and images this was the material

used by the artists of mannerism and the baroque when

they did not choose to keep to the ldquohistoricalrdquo world

ie to borrow their subjects directly from literature

When they did so when they painted stories they used

to select them not only from Ovid and Vergil but also

from the more recent poems by Ariosto and Tasso and

also from the works of less known writers ancient and

modern Valerius Maximus furnished them with exam-

ples of virtuous behavior These historical examples

were in general either connected with allegorical gen-

eralizations (in the big decorations of the late baroque

the central fresco was often an allegory and the ac-

companying canvas-pictures presented historical ex-

amples of virtues Garas pp 280-83) or conceived in

an allegorical way Ovide moraliseacute was popular already

in the late Middle Ages Its influence persisted also

in the time of the baroque Myths and stories under-

went allegorical interpretations along the lines of that

moralizing commentary

What was considered necessary for an artist around

1600 can be seen from Carel van Manders Book of

the Painter (1604) It included a long theoretical poem

a history of classical and modern Italian and Nether-

landish artists a translation and a moral interpretation

of Ovids Metamorphoses and finally a description of

personifications There is no specific section on reli-

gious iconography since artists were well furnished

with books giving them rules in this respect

Against the humanistic conception of art the Council

of Trent proclaimed rules constituting a new system

of religious iconography which put an end to the live

tradition of medieval art These rules were published

officially by the Church and they have been com-

mented upon and elaborated in books by Joannes

Molanus (1570) Saint Carlo Borromeo (1577) Gabriele

Paleotti (1581) Federico Borromeo (1624) and several

others The rules of the Council governed the decora-

tion of churches and other sacred buildings and the

character of pictures representing sacred subjects A

break between the religious and the secular iconogra-

phy became obvious in theoretical literature although

there existed many emblem books of a very distinct

religious character (G de Montenay 1571 B Arias

Montanus 1571 H Hugo 1624) A new strictly for-

mulated system of religious iconography coexisted in

the seventeenth century with humanistic subject mat-

ter symbolism and allegory The classical nude intro-

duced by the Renaissance into art was strictly forbid

den now in religious art but found a free field of

development in secular mythological and allegorical

works Many artists exercised their imagination in both

fields in some specific fields such as sepulchral iconog-

raphy cooperation between religious and humanistic

symbolism was common In the work of P P Rubens

the various aspects of the new iconography found

perhaps their best expression In his art allegorical

concepts classical gods and heroes triumphs of mythi-

cal beings as well as of secular rulers accompany mar-

tyrdoms of Catholic saints and the triumphs of the

Eucharist What began to be separated in theory could

yet coexist in harmony in the work of a great artist

6 In northern European art (before Rubens) the

renewal of the arts during the Renaissance took the

form of the new study of nature and the elaboration

of the most convincing means of representing the ma-

terial world in an illusionistic way traditional medieval

symbolism was transformed in a specific way produc-

ing what E Panofsky called in 1953 ldquodisguised sym-

bolismrdquo The symbolic meaning connected with objects

and qualities persisted but a new mastery reproduced

these symbolical objects with such a degree of realism

that they did not differ any longer from other objects

not charged with any metaphorical meaning Some-

times the symbolical meaning of represented objects

results from the traditional iconography in an unmistak-

able way sometimes the meaning is hinted at by the

inscriptions placed in the picture or on its frame But

in many cases the modern viewer remains perplexed

without any sufficient clue to decide whether in the

picture he observes he has to do with the beginnings

of the representation of reality for its own sake or

whether the search for specific metaphorical meaning

is justified It is still always a matter of discussion to

decide at which moment the representation of some

objects or some scene in life without any symbolical

(or ldquohistoricalrdquo) implications became possible (Gilbert

1952) Observers of the eighteenth and nineteenth

centuries to whom the meaning of old symbols was

wholly forgotten took many images of the fifteenth and

sixteenth centuries for simple representations of life

Bruegel for example was considered as simply a

painter of joking or working peasants Recent studies

in iconography have shown that these pictures are

saturated with disguised meaning and that it is ex-

tremely rare before about 1550 to meet simple repre-

sentations of nature in painting In graphic arts the

direct depiction of life and landscape began earlier

as in the works of Lombard draughtsmen or in the

incredibly fresh convincing drawings and prints by the

Master of the Housebook There are also early excep-

tions in painting like Albrecht Altdorfers landscape

without any human figures But in general it was only

532

during the second half of the sixteenth century that

landscape genre and still-life painting began to ac-

quire equal rights with religious and humanistic history

and allegory predominantly in Venice and in Antwerp

Even then however the representations of people

working in fields (Jacopo or Francesco Bassano) fol-

lowed the old traditions of Calendar-pictures and in

the background of genre scenes as in Pieter Aertsens

pictures a biblical motif may be found which trans-

forms the whole composition into a storia however

unorthodox

With the development of realistic painting in the

seventeenth century there appeared specific iconogra-

phic problems New subjects slowly found convenient

form They entered the scene patterned after the ven-

erable stories of sacred or of profane iconography

H van de Waal described (1952) the process of the for-

mation of national historical iconography in Holland

Scenes depicting recent happenings from a long strug-

gle for national independence appeared first in forms

assimilated to well-known religious or mythical scenes

This was not only an expedient facilitating their com-

position for by this means the new subjects gained the

decorum inherent in the adopted patterns formed to

express traditional stories Similar procedures may be

seen in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries when

more and more sections of reality became interesting

enough to be represented in art

The transfer of decorum from the sacred or allegori-

cal figures to the humans represented is a means used

in what modern iconographers call ldquoallegorical por-

traiturerdquo Renaissance painters had represented real

people under mythological or even sacred disguise

they gave actual faces of living people to the figures

represented with all the attributes and characteristics

of their mythical sacred or even allegorical qualities

Later it was only the pattern which remained still in

the eighteenth century English portraitists patterned

the effigies of contemporary aristocrats after Michel-

angelos Sybils or after allegories like the Caritas

(Wind 1937) J B Oudry represented the Polish King

in exile Stanisław Leszczyński with all the attributes

of the allegory of exile taken from Ripa identifying

him in this way with personification of his most promi-

nent quality (Białostocki 1969)

Dutch realistic painting of the seventeenth century

is a document of an important iconographic conquest

Landscapes seascapes moonlit night scenes snapshots

of people skating in winter landscapes views of market

places church interiors backyards fishermen old

women preparing food fashionable dishes ready for

lunch merchants and artisans elegant gentlemen pay-

ing visits and folk-surgeons performing sensational

street-operations all this became subject matter for

representation and continued to be considered worthy

of depiction until the end of the nineteenth century

It was first considered as such in Holland only then

slowly everyday subject matter was recognized also by

art-theorists in other countries although it was re-

garded as much less dignified than religious mytholog-

ical or allegorical subjects Only in the nineteenth

century did the vogue of realistic representation of

everyday subjects become widespread In Dutch pic-

tures of the seventeenth century we are often con-

fronted with nothing else than representations of pic-

turesque reality Sometimes however these genre

pictures appear to be illustrations of proverbs expres-

sing moralistic folk-wisdom sometimes they recall

scenes from the popular threater of the rederijkers or

rhetoricians especially pictures by Jan Steen (Gud-

laugsson 1945) they contain allusions to emblems

Sometimes the elegant scenes from bourgeois life in-

clude quite indecent erotic allusions (de Jongh 1967

1969) The ambiguity of these pictures was certainly

a source of specific pleasure for those who knew the

key to their true meaning

7 In Catholic countries allegorical art sacred as

well as profane flourished The twofold character of

symbolic representations mentioned above persisted

in the seventeenth century Aristotelian rational sym-

bolism which used images as words was widespread

in the orthodox Catholic iconography of the Counter-

Reformation as well as in the humanistic visual lan-

guage codified by Ripa and others A mystical Neo-

Platonic symbolism transcending reason reappeared

too Its outspoken document is the treatise by Chris-

toforo Giarda Bibliothecae alexandrinae icones sym-

bolicae of 1626 (Gombrich 1948) For Giarda symbolic

images give the beholder a direct insight into the

mysteries of religion which are not accessible to rea-

son

Thanks to symbolic images the mind which is banished from

heaven into this dark cave of the body its actions held in

bondage by the senses can behold the beauty and form

of the Virtues and Sciences divorced from all matter and

yet adumbrated if not perfectly expressed in colours and

is thus roused to an even more fervent love and desire for

them Who then can sufficiently estimate the magni-

tude of the debt we owe to those who expressed the Arts

and Sciences themselves in images and so brought it about

that we could not only know them but look at them as

it were with our eyes that we can meet them and almost

converse with them

(Gombrich [1948] pp 188f)

Great allegorical compositions covering the ceilings of

baroque churches are often realizations of this princi-

ple For those however who conceived allegory as a

rational operation as a language used for didactic aims

the main problem remained the clarity of the allegori-

533

cal message The larger the audience to whom allegory

was addressed the simpler more obvious its symbolism

should have been The banality of allegorical language

provoked criticism in the eighteenth century Fran-

cesco Algarotti (1762) prefers without any doubt his-

torical representations to the ldquoempty allegories and

complicated mythological allusionsrdquo (Garas [1967] p

280) Especially criticized was the obscurity of these

allegories in which completely original unknown sym-

bols were used Roger de Piles praises his favorite

master Rubens who ldquointroduced only such allegories

elements of which were already known from ancient

artrdquo and opposes him to Charles Lebrun who ldquoinstead

of taking symbols from some known source as the

ancient fable and medals has invented almost all of

them and thus the pictures of this kind became riddles

which the beholder does not want to take the task to

solverdquo To keep the balance between platitudinous

redundancy and utter incomprehensibility was the

crucial problem of late baroque allegorism What is

interesting however is that the idea of the picture

as a riddle was not foreign to the seventeenth century

It appears in France as well as in Sweden where David

Kloumlcker Ehrenstrahl (1694) proposed that pictures

present riddles that could not be solved by everyone

In France however the ldquopainted enigmardquo fostered

by the Jesuits in their schools flourished especially well

in the seventeenth century (Montagu 1968) These

ldquopainted enigmasrdquo lent themselves to various inter-

pretations and gave interpreters an opportunity to

show their ingenuity These pictures and their inter-

pretations seem to prove that a considerable flexibility

of meaning was intended

We might rather accept that a work of art was regarded

in the seventeenth century as in a certain sense an open

symbol raw material like the myth or sacred story which

it illustrates on which the interpreter might exercise the

power of his ingenuity turning it into an allegory of Chris-

tian doctrine or a panegyric in honour of his patron

(Montagu [1968] p 334)

Such a situation probably existed only in some specific

circles It was a limiting case The other extreme was

to use in an uninteresting routine way Ripas symbolic

images or those of other popular symbolic handbooks

Such practice continued well into the eighteenth cen-

tury The general trend fed by ideas of the Enlighten-

ment was to make allegories more and more obvious

It is understandable that some theorists like the Count

de Caylus looked for new subject matter presenting

as he did Tableaux tireacutes de lIliade (1755) or that

J J Winckelmann tried to revive allegory and to give

it a new force It was however too late In the eight-

eenth century together with the whole system of

humanistic tradition the systems of iconography began

to disintegrate The great break in the tradition con-

cerned not only style but also iconography Emblem-

atic roots may be discovered in Goyas symbolism as

well as in the reasonable allegories of the Enlighten-

ment but generally speaking there was a search for

new not known or not used sourcesmdashas in William

Blakes biblical individualistic imagerymdashor the new

staging of the old ones as in Jacques Louis Davids

classical subjects

The art of romanticism was a definite break with

the past much more in the field of ideas and iconogra-

phy than in a stylistic respect where romanticists

retrospectively looked back either to medieval and

pre-Raphaelite or to baroque sources Symbols and

allegories yielded to an all-pervading mood and the

traditional repertory of religious allegorical mytho-

logical and historical iconography gave way to a new

iconography Although several encompassing images

of Christian and humanistic art survived they received

new content and essentially changed their character

New attitudes of the individual to the world of nature

and history to society and destiny to time and death

and new problems resulting from the striving after

freedom (which was a new perhaps most important

principle of human behavior in all fields of human

activity) found expression in new thematic fields and

in new particular themes such as ldquoStorm-tossed Boatrdquo

ldquoLonely Wanderer in the Mountainsrdquo ldquoA Death of the

Herordquo (Eitner 1955 Hofmann 1960 Białostocki

1966)

Romanticism has not formed and could not have

formed an iconographic system for since they strived

first of all for originality of individual conception the

romantics interpreted images in a subjective way as

expressions of mood Romanticism has on the other

hand introduced new heroes and martyrs into art

instead of religious ones the national social and artis-

tic ones It created a new image of history seen now

as a set of political and moral examplesmdashas in

baroquemdashbut often put together now according to a

very individualistic principle of choice A correlative

to pathetic and heroic romanticism was a bourgeois

and intimate romanticism its expression was for ex-

ample the new imagery of the open window which

shows to the viewer wide perspectives but shelters him

at the same time from the dangers of the unknown

(Eitner 1955)

When the world of ideas and images created at the

moment of the flowering of romanticism began to be

popularized for the use of the large bourgeois masses

the contentmdashideological and iconographicalmdashof ro-

manticism lost its original authenticity and left be-

hind not a new system of original images but a dispo-

534

sition to melodramatic experiences and an inflation of

a theatrical gesture (Hofmann 1960 Białostocki 1966)

The nineteenth century developed a realistic por-

traiture of man and nature and took over worn out

clicheacutes of the Renaissance and baroque allegories It

introduced new subject matter taken partly from tra-

dition partly from observation of reality tinted with

vague symbolism such as ldquoForgerdquo or the ldquoFuneral of

the Peasantrdquo but it did not create a new system of

iconography in spite of short-lived revivals of symbol-

istic attitudes in such movementsmdashincidentally not

limited to and not initiated in the visual artsmdashas

ldquosymbolismrdquo

New ephemeral artistic movements which consti-

tuted the history of European art in the last hundred

years show an interesting bracketing of style and icon-

ography in spite of a preponderant lack of iconogra-

phic interest Their representatives chose subjects suit-

able to specific artistic aims and means which they

developed and were interested in Impressionists

painted seaside scenes landscapes and genre pictures

showing the life of artistic and intellectual milieus

Cubists introduced a specific repertory of still-life

motifs symbols of the artists atelier and of the life

of the bohegraveme bottles musical instruments books

fruits flowers newspapers How much these motifs

were connected with specific cubist style appears when

one looks at works of artists foreign to the original

cubist group but imitating its style as for instance

several Czech artists like Emil Filla They adopted

cubist iconography together with cubist style Abstract

movements in general lacked iconography although

they were not foreign to symbolic tendencies espe-

cially in sculpture (Brancusi Moore) Only in the dec-

ades of 1950-70 can a revival of more articulated and

programmatic symbolism be observed One may sup-

pose that this revival is at least in part brought about

by the development of research in iconography and

symbolism which took place in the second and third

quarters of our century

II

1 The origins of ldquointerpretative iconographyrdquo may

be seen in the descriptions (ekphrasis) of works of art

known in classical literature But these descriptions

like those by Philostratus the Elder or Lucian are

limited simply to description and lack in general any

interpretation Moreover it is not certain whether they

are descriptions of actual or fictitious works of art at

least opinions in this respect vary Brief medieval tituli

which formulated in words the content of religious

images were to be sure interpretative sometimes but

they were short and cannot be connected with the

tradition of artistic erudition We have to look to

modern times to indicate the beginnings of iconogra-

phic interpretation and research From Vasaris Rag-

ionamenti in which interpretations of the paintings

decorating the Palazzo Vecchio in Florence are given

we learn how complicated and how undecipherable

iconographic concepts might have been even to peo-

ple living in buildings decorated by paintings expres-

sing these concepts But perhaps the first really to be

considered as interested in iconographic research was

the seventeenth-century archaeologist and art theorist

Giovanni Pietro Bellori In the introduction to his Lives

of Artists (1672) Bellori stressed that he paid special

attention to the content of the works of art he was

talking about and he even credited the painter Nicolas

Poussin with having directed his attention to iconogra-

phy In his Lives Bellori presented short interpretative

descriptions of pictures and he sometimes developed

these interpretations further in small iconographic

essays the influence of classical ekphrasis on him is

a possibility Sometimes his errors took deep roots in

the subsequent history of art as when he explained

Poussins Triumph of Flora (Dresden) by designating

Ovids Metamorphoses as its source The true source

Marinos Adona was finally found by R E Spear in

1965

What is interesting in Belloris procedure is that he

first identifies the motifs tries to connect them with

classical or modern literary sources and then proceeds

to find out the deep meaning the general symbolic

idea of the work Therefore he may be considered as

one of the pioneers not only of iconography as a disci-

pline of research but also of iconology as formulated

by its recent partisans That even in the second half

of the sixteenth century some observers were inclined

to look for hidden meaning in each element of the work

of art we learn from Joannes Molanus (1570) who in

De picturis et imaginibus sacris states reasonably that

ldquoit is not necessary to ask for meaning of everything

that can be observed in a picture in such cases a lot

of absurd things may resultrdquo But the consciousness of

the importance of iconography increased and at the

end of the seventeenth century Andreacute Feacutelibien stressed

that in order to attribute a picture to a painter it is

not enough to know the way he uses his brush one

needs also to know his esprit to learn his geacutenie and

to be able to foresee in which way he is able to form

his conceptions Thus iconographic analysis was con-

sidered necessary even for the purpose of attribution

Descriptive interpretations of the works of ancient

art appeared in the big archaeological publications of

the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries such as

Jacques Spons Miscellanea eruditae antiquitatis (1679)

G P Belloris Admiranda romanarum antiquitatum ac

veteris sculpturae vestigia (1693) P de Caylus Recueil

535

dantiquiteacutes eacutegyptiennes eacutetrusques grecques et

romaines (1752-67) and in an interesting endeavor

(although very much criticized by Lessing) of Joseph

Spence to explain classical poets through works of art

and vice versa (Polymetis 1747) Classical archaeology

however has not been especially interested in iconog-

raphy and the use of the term itself by archaeolo-

gists was limited to portraiture The first great devel-

opment of iconographic studies was connected with

the romantic movement although an important pre-

lude for it was hagiographical collections of sources

such as Acta sanctorum published by the Bollandists

(1643-1794 resumed later) Among the pre-romantic

scholars in iconography the eminent German poet

G E Lessing is to be noted His study of the repre-

sentation of death in classical times can be considered

as one of the first essays in interpretative iconography

which is now called iconology In Wie die Alten den

Tod gebildet (1769) Lessing tries to interpret the classi-

cal iconographic type of Amor with the inverted torch

and to find its ldquointrinsic meaningrdquo by taking into ac-

count the religion customs and philosophy of the

classical world The work of art is interpreted by Less-

ing as ldquoa symptom of something elserdquo While Lessings

predecessors (like B de Montfaucon) ldquoexplained the

classical past by monumentsrdquo he for the first time did

the opposite ldquohe explained the monuments by Antiq-

uityrdquo (Maurin Białostocka [1969] pp 92-100)

Pre-romantic and romantic interests in myth and

symbol found their expression in publications and dis-

cussions by German philosophers and scholars like F

Schlegel J Herder J J von Goumlrres and F Creuzer

Creuzers work Symbolik und Mythologie der alten

Voumllker (1810) which shows the influence of mystical

Neo-Platonic ideas on symbols (Gombrich 1965) was

the most influential in the romantic period in Ger-

many Under the impact of Chateaubriands le Geacutenie

du christianisme (1802) research in medieval iconog-

raphy developed mainly in France Works by French

scholars mostly clergymen which were indeed con-

cerned with Christian medieval art dominated icon-

ographical study in the nineteenth century Since most

of these writers were not professional scholars their

work was often amateurish in character but it is unde-

niable that books by A N Didron Histoire de Dieu

(Paris 1843) the first part of a comprehensive pro-

jected but not completed iconography of Christian art

A Crosnier Iconographie chreacutetienne (Caen 1848) C

Cahier Caracteacuteristiques des saints (Paris 1867) C

Rohault de Fleury Archeacuteologie chreacutetienne les saints

de la messe et leurs monuments 12 vols (Paris

1893-1900) L Breacutehier Lart chreacutetien son deacuteveloppe-

ment iconographique des origines agrave nos jours (Paris

1918) P Perdrizet V Leroquais and G de Jerphanion

have built up a solid body of iconographical knowl-

edge on which scholars of the twentieth century were

able to erect a modern comprehensive structure In

the field of Byzantine iconography it was Gabriel

Millets Recherches sur liconographie de leacutevangile aux

XIVe XVe et XVIe siegravecles (Paris 1916 reprint

1960) that was basic for any further study For Western

chiefly French art a well-written and learned work

appealing to the general reader as well as to the

scholar was produced by Eacutemile Macircle who in his four

volumes of the history of religious art (1898-1932) has

presented a well-composed synthetic image of icono-

graphical development A lexicographic summary of

these studies of generations of French scholars is pre-

sented in the Dictionnaire darcheacuteologie chreacutetienne et

de liturgie published from 1907 to 1953 and edited

by F Cabrol and H Leclerq A recent reference work

is that by L Reacuteau Iconographie de lart chreacutetien (Paris

1955-59) Russian scholars have done important work

in the field of Byzantine and Orthodox iconography

of religious art The most prominent are N P Kon-

dakov Ikonografia Bogomatieri (St Petersburg 1911

2nd ed 1914-15) D V Ainalov Mosaiki IV i V vekov

(St Petersburg 1895) and N Pokrovski Otcherki

pamyatnikov christianskogo isskusstva i ikonografii (St

Petersburg 1894 3rd ed 1910) V Lasarev and M

Alpatov belonging to the mid-twentieth-century gen-

eration of Russian scholars discuss iconography in

several works on religious art German scholarship

produced in the nineteenth century works by F Piper

A Springer and H Detzel Useful compendia were

produced in the early twentieth century by J Sauer

W Molsdorf K Kuumlnstle and J Braun Dutch scholars

C Smits J B Knipping and J J M Timmers contrib-

uted to iconographic studies in recent times Knip-

pings book (1939-40) being the most important work

on the iconography of the Counter-Reformation and

supplementing Macircles volume of 1932 In the twentieth

century on C R Moreys initiative iconographic

studies were inaugurated in North America Focused

on earlier medieval art these studies developed at

Princeton University

A new direction characteristic of iconographic

studies in the twentieth century has been given to

them by the international school of art historical re-

search inaugurated by the Hamburg scholar Aby

Warburg At the International Congress for the History

of Art at Rome in 1912 he presented a sensational

astrological interpretation of the frescoes painted by

Francesco Cossa and his collaborators in Palazzo

Schifanoja at Ferrara Warburg solved the secret of

those representations which had puzzled the ingenuity

of several former students interpreting them as images

of zodiacal signs and their decans But he did not limit

536

his contribution to the presentation of his results He

wanted to stress the importance of his approach and

of the method of study which later became connected

with his name He said

I hope that through the method used by me for explication

of the frescoes at the Palazzo Schifanoja of Ferrara I have

proved that an iconological analysis which does not allow

itself to be diverted by the rules of frontier police from

considering antiquity Middle Ages and modern times as

interconnected periods nor from analyzing the most liberal

and the most applied works of art as equally important

documents of expression that this method endeavoring as

it does to throw light upon one dark spot clears up at

the same time great interconnected developments

(Warburg 1912 Heckscher 1967)

Warburgs influence on the history of art was very

great although he himself did not write much It was

mainly the posthumous impact of his ideas promul-

gated as they were by Fritz Saxl which contributed

to the specific direction of studies concentrated in the

library Warburg founded in Hamburg and which Saxl

succeeded in transplanting during the Nazi era to

London where it became the Warburg Institute of the

University of London While the object of study of the

nineteenth-century iconographers was mainly religious

art in its relation to religious literary sources and lit-

urgy for Warburg the study of images was a study

of their relations to religion to poetry to myth to

science and to social and political life Art was for

him closely connected with the polyphonic structure

of historical life

Warburgs ideas had a great importance for the most

influential theory of iconographic interpretation in our

century that elaborated by Erwin Panofsky In Ham-

burg where Warburg Saxl and Panofsky were active

in the twenties Ernst Cassirer built up his philosophy

of symbolic forms which constituted an additional

background for Panofskys system being derived as

his own methodology was from the traditions of

Kantian philosophy Around 1930 Panofskys ideas

ripened into a system which found formulation in his

book herkules am Scheidewege (1930) and later in a

theoretical article of 1932 G J Hoogewerff was how-

ever the first to propose the word ldquoiconologyrdquo as a

name for the method of an analysis of content in a

work of art (Warburg spoke of iconological analysis)

In 1931 he proposed distinguishing between iconogra-

phy as a descriptive science aiming at the identifica-

tion of themes and ldquoiconologyrdquo aiming at the under-

standing ldquoof symbolic dogmatic or mystical meaning

which is expressed (or hidden) in figurative formsrdquo He

stressed that ldquoiconologyrdquo deals with works of art with-

out classifying them according to the technique used

or to the achieved perfection taking into account only

their meaning Hoogewerff saw the last aim of iconol-

ogy in finding out the cultural and ideological back-

ground expressed by works of art and the cultural and

social significance which can be attributed to certain

forms and to means of expression in the same time

Hoogewerffs part in the expansion of iconology was

limited because he did not endorse his methodical

proposals with examples of historical interpretations

Erwin Panofsky with whose name iconology has

been connected ever since not only developed its

theoretical foundations but contributed by his practi-

cal work in art history to the main triumph of iconol-

ogy after the Second World War The most influential

book by Panofsky has been Studies in Iconology (1939)

in which his masterly presentation of the method was

connected with its equally excellent exemplification

2 Panofsky considers the interpretation of a work

of art as falling on three levels On the first level the

object of interpretation is the primary or natural sub-

ject matter The function of interpretation is called

ldquopre-iconographical descriptionrdquo In order to be able

to arrive at a correct interpretation on that level the

interpreter must have a practical experience (ldquofamili-

arity with objects and eventsrdquo) common to everybody

at least in one cultural sphere However he has to

control his observations by a ldquocorrective knowledge

of the history of stylerdquo (ldquoinsight into the manner in

which under varying historical conditions objects and

events were expressed by formsrdquo) On the second level

the function of interpretation is called ldquoiconographical

analysisrdquo its object is the ldquosecondary or conventional

subject matterrdquo constituting the world of images his-

tories and allegories The interpreters equipment in

this case is obviously the knowledge of literary sources

giving him a ldquofamiliarity with specific themes and

conceptsrdquo The interpreter has to control his observa-

tions by ldquothe insight into the manner in which under

varying historical conditions specific themes or con-

cepts were expressed by objects and eventsrdquo On the

third level the function of interpreting is called ldquoicon-

ographical analysis in a deeper senserdquo (1939) or ldquoicon-

ological analysisrdquo (1955) Its object is the ldquointrinsic

meaning or contentrdquo of a work of art The interpreters

equipment on that level should be a ldquofamiliarity with

the essential tendencies of the human mindrdquo and he

has to control his interpretation by the ldquoinsight into

the manner in which under varying historical condi-

tions essential tendencies of the human mind were

expressed by specific themes and conceptsrdquo Thus

taking all the time into account what Panofsky calls

the history of tradition the interpreter has to aim at

understanding the work of art its ldquoprimaryrdquo as well

as ldquosecondary subject matterrdquo as symptoms of some

fundamental tendency of the human mind typical of

537

a place a time a civilization and of an individual

responsible for the creation of the work ldquoIconologyrdquomdash

for Panofskymdashldquois a method of interpretation which

arises from synthesis rather than analysisrdquo Trying to

find the intrinsic meaning of a work of art

The art historian will have to check what he thinks is the

intrinsic meaning of the work or group of works against

what he thinks is the intrinsic meaning of as many other

documents of civilization historically related to that work

or group of works as he can master It is in the search

for intrinsic meaning or content that the various humanistic

disciplines meet on a common plane instead of serving as

handmaidens to each other

(Panofsky [1955] p 39)

The concept of intrinsic meaning of a work of art

was elaborated by Panofsky much earlier (1925) when

he interpreted in his own way the concept of Kunst-

wollen introduced by A Riegl to research in art

Panofsky understood this ldquoartistic volitionrdquo as an im-

manent ultimate meaning of a work of art which is

manifested in the way basic artistic problems are solved

in that work He used the same concept further to bring

art closer to the other fields of human activity Since

the ldquoimmanent ultimate senserdquo of the work of art is

nothing else than uniformity in the way of solving basic

artistic problems it is possible to compare that imma-

nent sense with immanent senses of the other human

works in various fields Panofsky did it for instance

when in one of his later works he compared the struc-

tural principles of Gothic architecture with those of

scholastic thinking (1951)

The system elaborated by Panofsky and exemplified

by his own work in art history was the first consistent

system of an integral interpretation of a work of visual

arts based on the analysis of content In principle

Panofskys system takes into account all the elements

of the work of art since it takes as the point of depar-

ture the sensual exterior shape of the work It is

however clear that its main scope is not the inter-

pretation of form as a bearer of meaning but the

understanding and interpretation of conventional alle-

gories literary themes and symbols as symptoms of

the history of the human mind It was that method

in the history of art which programmatically fostered

a collaboration with all the other disciplines of histori-

cal studies It was therefore one of the most influential

methods not only among art historians but also among

representatives of the other branches of humanistic

studies Although there were art historians who ex-

pressed a critical attitude toward ldquoiconologyrdquo as the

new method was soon baptized its influence was over-

whelming

3 It is not only but mainly due to Panofsky that

one can venture to call ldquoiconographicalrdquo that period

of art history as a historical discipline which followed

the Second World War and to oppose it to the ldquostylis-

ticrdquo one which preceded it It does not mean of course

that no iconographic research took place in the

twenties or thirties the works of Macircle Knipping van

Marle Wilpert Saxl and of Panofsky himself would

contradict such a statement Neither is it true that

purely formal research aiming at stylistic classification

and analysis discontinued after World War II It is

evident that in the last decades (from 1940 on) icono-

graphic interests came to the fore and became domi-

nant in many countries Iconographical studies grew

so much in number and importance that they made

it possible to undertake and to publish new reference

works of iconographic character like dictionaries

written by one scholar (Guy de Tervarent Aurenham-

mer) as well as larger works based on a collaboration

of several scholars (Encyclopedias of German art of

Antiquity and Christian civilization of Byzantine art)

Interest in meaning and iconography has appeared

also among historians of political social and religious

institutions The symbolism of signs ceremonies cos-

tumes and arms was studied by such scholars as A

Alfoumlldi ldquoInsignien und Tracht der roumlmischen Kaiserrdquo

Mitteilungen des deutschen Archaumlologischen Instituts

Roumlmische Abteilung (1935) 1ff ldquoDie Geburt der

kaiserlichen Bildsymbolikrdquo museum Helveticum 9

(1952) 204ff also by A Grabar Martyrium (Paris

1943-46) by E H Kantorowicz laudes Regiae

(Berkeley and Los Angeles 1946) The Kings Two

Bodies (Princeton 1957) by H P L Orange Studies

in the Iconography of Cosmic Kingship in the Ancient

World (Oslo 1953) Art Forms and Civic Life in the

Late Roman Empire (Princeton 1965) and by P E

Schramm herrschaftszeichen und Staatssymbolik

(Stuttgart 1954-56) In their studies iconography far

transcends the borders of art and it helps to build up

a history of ideas by following their various visual

expressions

Pioneering studies by K Giehlow F Saxl and E

Panofsky enlarged iconographical interests above all

to encompass the large field of secular art whereas

they had been mainly limited to religious iconography

in the work of preceding generations of scholars The

whole complicated and hardly known large body of

meanings disguised by the cryptic language of hiero-

glyphs emblems and iconologies became one of the

main topics of study

This established a collaboration between historians

of art and literature Mario Prazs admirable study of

emblems and his bibliography of emblem books

(1939-47) belongs now to the foundations of studies

in that field Publications by W S Heckscher and

A K Wirth by R S Clements E F von Monroy and

538

H M von Erffa E de Jongh and H Miedema and

several other scholars have elucidated the structure

and meaning of emblems and have shown their tre-

mendous influence on art even in its most monumental

and dignified forms An uninterrupted flow of reprints

of emblem books which brought within the reach of

modern students inaccessible volumes of sixteenth- and

seventeenth-century emblem writers were crowned by

the monumental undertaking of Arthur Henkel and

Albrecht Schoumlne who compiled an excellent volume

including almost all the texts and images needed for

the study of emblemsmdashEmblemata Handbuch zur

Sinnbildkunst des XVI und XVII Jahrhunderts

(Stuttgart 1967) Research was under way on hiero-

glyphs (Erik Iversen) and on the imprese (the late

Robert Klein) as well as on iconologies and allegories

These studies have disclosed meanings of the art of

the Renaissance of mannerism and of the baroque not

understood by nineteenth-century scholars

E Panofsky deciphered extremely farfetched and

individualistic programs of decoration of such famous

ensembles as the Camera di San Paolo by Correggio

in Parma the Gallery of Franccedilois I at Fontainebleau

Edgar Wind Andreacute Chastel and other scholars inter-

preted Raphaels decorations in the Popes apartments

Michelangelos art furnished material to detailed com-

prehensive studies by Panofsky Ch de Tolnay H von

Einem and Pope-Hennessy in which the share of

Neo-Platonic thinking in the ideological background

of the celebrated works of Michelangelo was discussed

Innumerable studies have been devoted to Titians

mythological paintings J R Martin presented expla-

nations of the Carracci frescoes in the Camerino Far-

nese and in the great gallery of the Palazzo Farnese

Bruegel considered in the nineteenth century as a drocircle

painter of peasant life has been shown by de Tolnay

Stridbeck and others to be an allegorist expressing a

skeptical humanistic outlook J S Held and W

Stechow contributed several articles to the under-

standing of mythological and allegorical contents in

Flemish and Dutch art of the sixteenth and seventeenth

centuries Rembrandts iconography was put into new

light by the two above-mentioned scholars as well as

by H M Rotermund H van de Waal J G van Gelder

H von Einem and Ch Tuumlmpel The intricate symbol-

ism and subject matter of historical and mythological

pictures by Nicolas Poussin were elucidated by such

masters of iconographic research as E H Gombrich

W Friedlaumlnder E Panofsky and above all by A Blunt

who in his monograph on Poussin presented a new

deep synthetic view of the ideas expressed by that

artists works Goyas individualistic secret symbolism

was also studied with the help of emblems and the

allegorical tradition Berninis works received iconolo

gical treatment by R Wittkower and H Kauffmann

All of this research does not mean that there was a

lack of interest in religious iconography M Schapiro

A Katzenellenbogen H Bober F Wormald and V

Elbern among others have contributed considerably

to deepen our understanding of the not completely

explained motifs and prominent works of medieval art

Panofsky has also shed a new light on several problems

of sepulchral iconography studies by such scholars as

R Berliner G von der Osten L Kalinowski S

Ringbom and T Dobrzeniecki contributed to late

medieval iconography in a new way Berliner stressed

the autonomous invention of visual artists or their

patrons while according to the traditional view popu-

larized by Macircle late medieval art should have followed

strictly literary sources

The religious content of modern art especially its

allegorical form in the late baroque period has been

examined and thanks to studies by such scholars as

W Mrazek and H Bauer has become better known

and understandable A great change was introduced

by ldquoiconologyrdquo into architectural history Buildings

which were formerly interpreted from aesthetic and

functional points of view only have been shown to

present allegorical symbolical or even emblematic

ideas Publications by leading art historians (R Witt-

kower B Smith G Bandmann O von Simson and

G C Argan) have presented medieval and modern

architecture as a bearer of meaning and have essen-

tially changed the character of architectural history

The iconography of classicism and romanticism

received a thorough treatment in books by W Hof-

mann and R Rosenblum as well as in several studies

devoted to individual themes and pictures G Hersey

has for example shown how much Delacroixs decora-

tion of the library in the Palais Bourbon owed to

Giambattista Vicos ideas about history More recently

studies on ldquoSymbolismrdquo have been undertaken Vincent

van Goghs symbolic language and iconography were

the object of studies by J Seznec C Nordenfalk and

other scholars On Ceacutezannes iconography interesting

remarks have been published by M Schapiro

Along with the development of iconographic studies

the establishment of centers of documentation has

advanced The ldquoFrenchrdquo stage in the development of

iconography has not left any marked trace in this

respect It was in America thanks to C R Morey that

the famous Index of Christian Art at the Department

of Art and Archaeology of Princeton University was

founded at first limited to the early Middle Ages then

enlarged so as to include art up to the end of the

medieval period Copies of the Princeton Index are

to be found also at the Istituto Pontificio dArcheolo-

gia in Rome and in the Dumbarton Oaks Library and

539

Collection in Washington DC But that Index ends

ldquowhere art beginsrdquomdashas Panofsky used to say jokingly

The need for systematic iconographic files for modern

art was strongly felt In 1956 A Pigler published a

very useful book Barockthemen in which he listed

thousands of works of art of the baroque period ac-

cording to their subjects It was however far from

being a systematic work The first essay in establishing

a systematic iconographic index for art of any time

was done by The Netherlands Institute for Art History

at the Hague then directed by H Gerson which took

the initiative around 1950 of publishing a postcard-size

photographic index of its rich collection of photographs

of Netherlandish art ordered according to an icono-

graphic principle Once such an idea was formulated

the need for a comprehensive consistent and clear

iconographic classification was urgent H van de Waal

of Leiden University devised such a system of classifi-

cation based on decimal divisions consistent and easy

to read He based his system on experiences of ethnol-

ogy and on such elaborated systems of classification

as that devised by Stith Thompson in his Motif-Index

of Folk Literature Vols I-VI (Bloomington Ind

1932-36 rev ed 1955-58) Van de Waal has elabor-

ated a system in which the first five main sections

classify five fundamental groups of portrayable things

namely (1) The Supernatural (2) Nature (3) Man (4)

Society (5) Abstracts The last four classify specific

subjects such as (6) History (7) The Bible (8) Myths

Legends and Tales (with the exception of classical

antiquity) (9) Myths and Legends of Classical Antiq-

uity Van de Waal combines the classification in the

first and in the second group in order to classify general

as well as specific subjects Christ in his system is

described with the sign ldquo11 Drdquo (ldquo1rdquo standing for Su-

pernatural ldquo11rdquo for Christianity ldquoDrdquo for Christ) the

adult Christ = 11 D 3 since ldquoshepherdrdquo on the other

hand bears the signature 47 I 221 the adult Christ

as a shepherd can be described in this system by the

following formula 11 D 3 = 47 I 221 Van de Waal

has also provided means to describe more complex

images which he expresses by adding elements between

brackets The Annunciation with God the Father and

a winged Angel is expressed by the following formula

73 A 5 (+1 +41) ldquo1rdquo standing for God the Father

and ldquo41rdquo for a winged Angel (van de Waal 1952) This

system elaborated for many years by its inventor and

prepared for publication in many volumes has proved

most useful in the practical arrangement of the Icono-

graphical Index of the Netherlandish Art and as the

only one until now in existence it became used more

and more in spite of some ambiguities and difficulties

As an endeavor to classify ldquoall portrayablerdquo things

persons events and ideas and to create a consistent

method to describe every possible image van de Waals

system may be considered as one of the important

achievements of the ldquoiconographical stagerdquo in the

development of art history Iconographic files exist of

course in many institutions as for example in the Ikon-

ologisch Instituut of Utrecht University one of the

main centers of study in emblematics and of course

in the most venerable institution of iconographic re-

search the Warburg Institute of the London University

and in other places

4 What was the result of this ldquoiconographicrdquo turn

in the development of the history of art One thing

is certain that this discipline by necessity has come

closer to other humanistic disciplines Since the

ldquointrinsicrdquo meaningmdashin Panofskys terminologymdashof a

work of art cannot be described in terms used by the

history of art but only in terms borrowed from the

history of philosophy of religion of social structures

of science and so on the ldquoiconological methodrdquo took

for granted and provoked such a collaboration Art

history was perhaps the first or one of the first to show

new interest in investigation of meaning It was fol-

lowed by similar developments in ethnology and in

linguistics

We have mentioned above a parallel development

in Byzantine and classical studies Panofskys influence

has been considerable in the other fields of humanistic

research Since ldquoiconologyrdquo aimed at discovering ideas

expressed by a work of art it awoke in art historians

an interest in the history of ideas This general shift

of emphasis and of the direction of studies from mainly

formal ones to studies aiming at ideas underlying art

was perhaps responsible among others for the fact that

several contributions to the Journal of the History of

Ideas have been written by historians of art

It is not difficult to see that such a development

should have provoked criticism on the side of those

who care about the purity and autonomy of methods

Iconology was criticized as far as its internal coherence

and also as far as its claim to be the integral method

of the study of art are concerned (Białostocki 1962)

Studies by R Klein E Forssman G Previtali G

Kubler B Teyssegravedre C Ginzburg and G Hermeren

expressed critical opinions in one or the other respect

Iconology linked art with the rest of history but it

disrupted the links between the work of art and other

things (Kubler 1962) Concentrating on meaning

iconology neglected art as form as individual expres-

sion Iconology implied a rational relationship between

intellectual content and artistic form On the one hand

one spoke of ldquoiconological diminutionsrdquo (Kubler

1962)mdashlimitations of research to meaning only But

on the other hand the overstatements of iconology

were criticized its representatives sometimes seemed

540

to assume everything symbolized something And some

iconologists seemed to consider important in art not

that which makes art a different field of human activity

but that which connects art with other fieldsmdashwith

the history of ideas

There were of course critics who had the opposite

opinion Since the end of the eighteenth century a

direct experience of art was more and more valued

and its symbolical function considered as a burden

J G von Herder said ein Kunstwerk ist der Kunst

wegen da aber bei einem Symbole ist die Kunst

dienend (ldquoA work of art is there because of art but

with a symbol art is a servicerdquo) Similar opinions were

expressed by nineteenth-century art writers and in this

century they have been voiced by Benedetto Croce and

by other Italian opponents of contenutismo by which

they meant interest in content For such critics to put

stress on iconography was to miss the essential in art

and to focus attention on a subordinate function of art

Also among scholars who considered the function

of representation and of communication as a legitimate

and important function of art criticism was expressed

not against the principle of an iconographical or icon-

ological investigation but against overstatements in

their application The introduction of the idea of ldquodis-

guised symbolismrdquo has created a danger of course of

opening the way to fanciful interpretations The alle-

gorical and symbolical function of mythological imag-

ery in classical art is also difficult to interpret precisely

Since no literary sources give a key to an interpretation

of the iconography of the sarcophagi very divergent

theories have been expressed concerning their meaning

Some archaeologists like F Cumont (1942) believe

that mythological and allegorical imagery (Anadyo-

mene Sea-Thiasos Personifications of the Seasons) is

to be read symbolically The Sea-Thiasos for instance

is to be interpreted as a symbol of the journey of the

souls of the deceased to the islands of the blessed

Others like A D Nock (1946) do not find enough

evidence to accept other than a decorative function

in such imagery

The intrusion of some representatives of psychology

eg C G Jung into iconographic studies giving them

an unhistorical turn in their search for ldquoarchetypal

imagesrdquo has complicated the situation although art

historians in general understandably have not accepted

that kind of approach to symbolism (Frankfort 1958

Gombrich 1965)

The fact that iconographic interpretations sometimes

lack satisfactory proofs does not detract from the im-

portance of such investigations so long as they are

conducted according to the requirements of historical

methods and take into account the corrective princi-

ples established by Panofsky A correct acquaintance

with the way of thinking of the artist the patron or the

viewer based on a satisfactory knowledge of documen-

tary visual and literary sources an awareness of the

choice situations produced by historical developments

may enable art historians to discover the secondary

meaning of a work of art as well as its intrinsic mean-

ing It is of course possible that the art historian will

meet some works for which it will not be possible to re-

construct in a satisfactory way the world of ideas that

would account for the meaning of those works In such

cases a reliable interpretation is simply not possible

R Berliner (1945 1966) criticized the widespread

opinion according to which content of the works of

visual arts in the Middle Ages had to be checked

against the literary sources considered as the only

medium in which ideological innovations were per-

mitted Berliner pleaded for assuming a considerable

ldquofreedomrdquo in the medieval artist and he considered

iconographic innovation possible even when no writ-

ten evidence could be found Meyer Schapiro (1947)

presented proofs that sometimes purely aesthetic rea-

sons decided the character of the work of art even as

early as the Romanesque period

We can only touch on some specific discussions going

on in the field of iconographic research But iconogra-

phic research is far from being a closed system and

the relative share of iconographic and stylistic criticism

in the work of art historians is always a matter of

discussion It is certain that the ldquoiconographicrdquo period

in the study of art has enlarged in a considerable way

the understanding of the art of the past and that it

has connected art history in a way unknown before

with the other historical disciplines and above all others

with the history of ideas

BIBLIOGRAPHY

L B Alberti On Painting ed J Spencer (New Haven

1956 revised ed 1966) E Auerbach ldquoFigurardquo (1944) trans

and published in Scenes From the Drama of European Liter-

ature (New York 1959) pp 11-76 K Bauch ldquoImagordquo

(1960) Studien zur Kunstgeschichte (Berlin 1967) pp 1-20

G P Bellori Descrizione delle imagini dipinte da Raffaello

(Rome 1695 ed used is 1751) R Berliner ldquoThe Free-

dom of Medieval Artrdquo Gazette des Beaux-Arts 628 (1945)

263-88 idem ldquoBemerkungen zu einigen Darstellungen des

Erloumlsers als Schmerzensmannrdquo Das Muumlnster 9 (1956)

97-117x J Białostocki ldquoIconografia e Iconologiardquo Enciclo-

pedia Universale dellArte (1962) Vol VII cols 163-75

trans as Encyclopedia of World Art (1966) Vol VII cols

769-85 lists almost all important older contributions to this

field idem ldquoRomantische Ikonographierdquo Stil und Ikonog-

raphie (Dresden 1966) pp 156-81 idem ldquoKompozycja

emblematyczna epitafioacutew ślaskich XVI wiekurdquo (ldquoEmblem-

atic Composition of Silesian Epitaphs of the Sixteenth Cen-

turyrdquo) Ze studioacutew nad Sztuka XVI wieku na Řlasku

(Wrocław 1968) pp 77-93 idem ldquoEsilio Privatordquo Bulletin

du Museacutee National de Varsovie 10 (1969) 95-101 J

541

Chydenius The Theory of Medieval Symbolism (Helsingfors

1960) Series of the Societas Scientiarum Fennica Com-

mentationes Humanarum Litterarum 27 2 R J Clements

Picta Poesis (Rome 1960) F Creuzer Symbolik und

Mythologie der Alten Voumllker (Leipzig and Darmstadt 1810

revised ed 1819) F Cumont Recherches sur le symbolisme

funeacuteraire des Romains (Paris 1942) L Eitner ldquoThe Open

Window and the Storm-Tossed Boatrdquo Art Bulletin 37

(1955) 281-90 H Frankfort ldquoThe Archetype in Analytical

Psychology and the History of Religionrdquo Journal of the

Warburg and Courtauld Institutes 21 (1958) 166-78

K Garas ldquoAllegorie und Geschichte in der Venezianischen

Malerei des 18 Jahrhundertsrdquo in proceedings of the XXI

International Congress of the History of Art Bonn Stil und

Uumlberlieferung in der Kunst des Abendlandes (Berlin 1967)

3 280-83 K Giehlow ldquoDie Hieroglyphenkunde des

Humanismus in der Allegorie der Renaissancerdquo Jahrbuch

der Kunsthistorischen Sammlungen des Allerhochsten

Kaiserhauses 32 (1915) 1-232 C Gilbert ldquoOn Subject and

Not-Subject in Italian Renaissance Picturesrdquo Art Bulletin

34 (1952) 202-16 C Ginzburg ldquoDa A Warburg a E H

Gombrich Note su un problema di metodordquo Studi medi-

evali series 3 7 (1966) 1015-65 E H Gombrich ldquoIcones

Symbolicae The Visual Image in Neo-Platonic Thoughtrdquo

Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes 11 (1948)

163-92 idem ldquoThe Use of Art for the Study of Symbolsrdquo

American Psychologist 20 (1965) A Grabar Liconoclasme

byzantin Dossier archeacuteologique (Paris 1957) idem Chris-

tian Iconography A Study of Its Origins (Princeton 1969)

S J Gudlaugsson De Comedianten bij Jan Steen en zijn

tijdgenooten (s-Gravenhage 1945) W S Heckscher ldquoThe

Genesis of Iconologyrdquo Stl und Uumlberlieferung in der Kunst

des Abendlandes Akten des XXI Internationalen Kon-

gresses fuumlr Kunstgeschichte (Berlin 1967) 3 239-62 G

Hermereacuten Representation and Meaning in the Visual Arts

A Study in the Methodology of Iconography and Iconology

Lund Studies in Philosophy Vol I (Lund 1969) R Hinks

Myth and Allegory in Ancient Art (London 1939) W

Hofmann Das Irdische Paradies (Munich 1960) G J

Hoogewerff ldquoLIconologie et son importance pour leacutetude

systeacutematique de lart chreacutetienrdquo Rivista dArcheologia Cris-

tiana 8 (1931) 53-82 E de Jongh Zinne- en minnebeelden

in de schilderkunst van de zeventiende eeuw (mdash1967) idem

ldquoErotica in Vogelperspectief De dubbelzinnigheid van een

reeks 17de eeuwse genrevoorstellingenrdquo Simiolus 3

(1968-69) 22-72 L Kalinowski ldquoTreści ideowe i estetyczne

Drzwi Gnieźnieńskichrdquo (ldquoIdeological and Aesthetic Content

of the Gniezno Bronze Doorsrdquo) in Drzwi Gnieźnieńskie ed

M Walicki (Wroclaw 1959) 2 7-160 H Keller Tizians

Poesie fuumlr Koumlnig Philip II von Spanien (Wiesbaden 1969)

R Klein ldquoLa theacuteorie de lexpression figureacutee dans les traiteacutes

italiens sur les imprese 1555-1612rdquo Bibliothegraveque dHu-

manisme et Renaissance 19 (1957) 320-41 republished with

the other relevant studies in la forme et lintelligible (Paris

1969) R Klibansky E Panofsky F Saxl Saturn and Melan-

choly (London 1964) J B Knipping Ikonografie van de

Contra-Reformatie in de Nederlanden (Hilversum 1939-40)

G Kubler The Shape of Time (New Haven and London

1962) R W Lee ldquoUt pictura poesisrdquo Art Bulletin 22

(1940) 197-269 E Macircle Lart religieux du XIIIe siegravecle en

France (Paris 1898) English ed used (New York 1958)

idem Lart religieux de la fin du Moyen-Age en France

(Paris 1908) idem Lart religieux du XIIe siegravecle en France

(Paris 1922) idem Lart religieux apregraves le Concile de Trente

(Paris 1932) J Maurin Białostocka Lessing i sztuki plas-

tyczne (ldquoLessing and the visual artsrdquo) (Wroclaw Warszawa

Krakoacutew 1969) E F von Monroy Embleme und Emblem-

buumlcher in den Niederlanden 1560-1630 ed H M von Erffa

(Utrecht 1964) J Montagu ldquoThe Painted Enigma and

French Seventeenth Century Artrdquo Journal of the Warburg

and Courtauld Institutes 31 (1968) 307-35 W Mrazek

Ikonologie der barocken Deckenmalerei (Vienna 1953)

Uumlsterreichische Akademie der Wissenschaften Philo-

sophisch-historische Klasse Sitzungsberichte 2283 A D

Nock ldquoSarcophagi and Symbolismrdquo American Journal of

Archaeology 50 (1946) 166ff D Panofsky and E Panofsky

ldquoThe Iconography of the Galeacuterie Franccedilois Ier at Fontaine-

bleaurdquo Gazette des Beaux-Arts 652 (1958) 113-90

E Panofsky ldquoUumlber das Verhaumlltnis der Kunstgeschichte zur

Kunsttheorierdquo Zeitschrift fuumlr Aesthetik und allgemeine

Kunstwissenschaft 18 (1925) 129-61 idem Studies in

Iconology (New York 1939) idem ed Abbot Suger (Prince-

ton 1946) idem Gothic Architecture and Scholasticism

(Latrobe Pa 1951) idem Early Netherlandish Painting

(Cambridge Mass 1953) idem Meaning in the Visual Arts

(Garden City N Y 1955) idem Renaissance and Renas-

cences in Western Art (Stockholm 1960) idem Tomb Sculp-

ture (New York 1964) E Panofsky and F Saxl ldquoClassical

Mythology in Medieval Artrdquo Metropolitan Museum Studies

4 (1932-33) 228-80 M Praz Studies in Seventeenth Cen-

tury Imagery (London 1939-47 2nd ed Rome 1964) S

Ringbom ldquoDevotional Images and Imaginative Devotions

Notes on the Place of Art in Late Medieval Private Pietyrdquo

Gazette des Beaux-Arts 6 73 (1969) 159-70 Joseph Sauer

Symbolik des Kirchengebaumludes und seiner Ausstattung in

der Auffassung des Mittelalters 2nd ed (Freiburg i B

1924) F Saxl ldquoFruumlhes Christentum und spaumltes Heidentum

in ihren kuumlnstlerischen Ausdrucksformenrdquo Wiener Jahrbuch

fuumlr Kunstgeschichte 2 (1923) 63-121 M Schapiro ldquoThe

Ruthwell Crossrdquo Art Bulletin 26 (1944) 232-45 idem ldquoOn

the Aesthetic Attitude in Romanesque Artrdquo in Art and

Thought issued in Honour of Ananda Coomaraswamy

(London 1947) 139-50 J Seznec The Survival of the Pagan

Gods (New York 1953) O G von Simson The Gothic

Cathedral (New York 1956) R E Spear ldquoThe Literary

Source of Poussins Realm of Florardquo The Burlington Maga-

zine 107 (1965) 563-69 L Volkmann Bilderschriften der

Renaissance (Leipzig 1923) Hans van de Waal Drie

eeuwen vaderlandsche geschieduitbeelding 1500-1800 (s-

Gravenhage 1952) idem ldquoSome Principles of a General

Iconographical Classificationrdquo in Actes du XVIIe Congregraves

International dHistoire de lArt Amsterdam 1952 (La Haye

1955) 601-06 E Wind ldquoCharity the Case History of a

Patternrdquo Journal of the Warburg Institute 1 (1937) 322ff

JAN BIAŁOSTOCKI

[See also Allegory Baroque Classicism Criticism Enlight-

enment Motif Myth Naturalism in Art Neo-Platonism

Renaissance Humanism Romanticism Symbolism Tem-

perance Ut pictura poesis]

In the Netherlands emblems played an important

part in the development of realistic painting in the

seventeenth century since they furnished a rich reper-

tory of imagery charged with allegorical meaning (de

Jongh von Monroy) However the meaning of those

images obvious to the viewer who remembered the

original emblematic context eluded for a long time

later interpreters who were no longer conversant with

the emblems

After Cartari and his followers furnished artists and

patrons with images of classical gods there was a need

felt for another handbook which would enable the

artist to represent and the patron to understand the

abstract moral philosophical scientific and other

ideas symbolized Only then was art able to express

complex thoughts This task was fulfilled by Cesare

Ripa of Perugia who in 1593 published his Iconologia

a handbook explaining how to represent all the incor-

poreal concepts In 1603 Iconologia was republished

with illustrations and became one of the most popular

and influential art books With Ripa in hand art

historiansmdashinitially Eacutemile Macircle (1932)mdashwere able to

decipher hundreds of allegorical statements in paint

and stone guided by this alphabet of personifications

Ripas basic entity was a human figure female more

often than male whose costumes attributes gestures

and other particulars express specific qualities of the

531

idea represented With the publication of Ripas workmdash

translated soon into many languages and frequently

republished and revisedmdashthe humanistic system of

allegorical iconography was established classical gods

and personifications hieroglyphic signs and emblems

connecting words and images this was the material

used by the artists of mannerism and the baroque when

they did not choose to keep to the ldquohistoricalrdquo world

ie to borrow their subjects directly from literature

When they did so when they painted stories they used

to select them not only from Ovid and Vergil but also

from the more recent poems by Ariosto and Tasso and

also from the works of less known writers ancient and

modern Valerius Maximus furnished them with exam-

ples of virtuous behavior These historical examples

were in general either connected with allegorical gen-

eralizations (in the big decorations of the late baroque

the central fresco was often an allegory and the ac-

companying canvas-pictures presented historical ex-

amples of virtues Garas pp 280-83) or conceived in

an allegorical way Ovide moraliseacute was popular already

in the late Middle Ages Its influence persisted also

in the time of the baroque Myths and stories under-

went allegorical interpretations along the lines of that

moralizing commentary

What was considered necessary for an artist around

1600 can be seen from Carel van Manders Book of

the Painter (1604) It included a long theoretical poem

a history of classical and modern Italian and Nether-

landish artists a translation and a moral interpretation

of Ovids Metamorphoses and finally a description of

personifications There is no specific section on reli-

gious iconography since artists were well furnished

with books giving them rules in this respect

Against the humanistic conception of art the Council

of Trent proclaimed rules constituting a new system

of religious iconography which put an end to the live

tradition of medieval art These rules were published

officially by the Church and they have been com-

mented upon and elaborated in books by Joannes

Molanus (1570) Saint Carlo Borromeo (1577) Gabriele

Paleotti (1581) Federico Borromeo (1624) and several

others The rules of the Council governed the decora-

tion of churches and other sacred buildings and the

character of pictures representing sacred subjects A

break between the religious and the secular iconogra-

phy became obvious in theoretical literature although

there existed many emblem books of a very distinct

religious character (G de Montenay 1571 B Arias

Montanus 1571 H Hugo 1624) A new strictly for-

mulated system of religious iconography coexisted in

the seventeenth century with humanistic subject mat-

ter symbolism and allegory The classical nude intro-

duced by the Renaissance into art was strictly forbid

den now in religious art but found a free field of

development in secular mythological and allegorical

works Many artists exercised their imagination in both

fields in some specific fields such as sepulchral iconog-

raphy cooperation between religious and humanistic

symbolism was common In the work of P P Rubens

the various aspects of the new iconography found

perhaps their best expression In his art allegorical

concepts classical gods and heroes triumphs of mythi-

cal beings as well as of secular rulers accompany mar-

tyrdoms of Catholic saints and the triumphs of the

Eucharist What began to be separated in theory could

yet coexist in harmony in the work of a great artist

6 In northern European art (before Rubens) the

renewal of the arts during the Renaissance took the

form of the new study of nature and the elaboration

of the most convincing means of representing the ma-

terial world in an illusionistic way traditional medieval

symbolism was transformed in a specific way produc-

ing what E Panofsky called in 1953 ldquodisguised sym-

bolismrdquo The symbolic meaning connected with objects

and qualities persisted but a new mastery reproduced

these symbolical objects with such a degree of realism

that they did not differ any longer from other objects

not charged with any metaphorical meaning Some-

times the symbolical meaning of represented objects

results from the traditional iconography in an unmistak-

able way sometimes the meaning is hinted at by the

inscriptions placed in the picture or on its frame But

in many cases the modern viewer remains perplexed

without any sufficient clue to decide whether in the

picture he observes he has to do with the beginnings

of the representation of reality for its own sake or

whether the search for specific metaphorical meaning

is justified It is still always a matter of discussion to

decide at which moment the representation of some

objects or some scene in life without any symbolical

(or ldquohistoricalrdquo) implications became possible (Gilbert

1952) Observers of the eighteenth and nineteenth

centuries to whom the meaning of old symbols was

wholly forgotten took many images of the fifteenth and

sixteenth centuries for simple representations of life

Bruegel for example was considered as simply a

painter of joking or working peasants Recent studies

in iconography have shown that these pictures are

saturated with disguised meaning and that it is ex-

tremely rare before about 1550 to meet simple repre-

sentations of nature in painting In graphic arts the

direct depiction of life and landscape began earlier

as in the works of Lombard draughtsmen or in the

incredibly fresh convincing drawings and prints by the

Master of the Housebook There are also early excep-

tions in painting like Albrecht Altdorfers landscape

without any human figures But in general it was only

532

during the second half of the sixteenth century that

landscape genre and still-life painting began to ac-

quire equal rights with religious and humanistic history

and allegory predominantly in Venice and in Antwerp

Even then however the representations of people

working in fields (Jacopo or Francesco Bassano) fol-

lowed the old traditions of Calendar-pictures and in

the background of genre scenes as in Pieter Aertsens

pictures a biblical motif may be found which trans-

forms the whole composition into a storia however

unorthodox

With the development of realistic painting in the

seventeenth century there appeared specific iconogra-

phic problems New subjects slowly found convenient

form They entered the scene patterned after the ven-

erable stories of sacred or of profane iconography

H van de Waal described (1952) the process of the for-

mation of national historical iconography in Holland

Scenes depicting recent happenings from a long strug-

gle for national independence appeared first in forms

assimilated to well-known religious or mythical scenes

This was not only an expedient facilitating their com-

position for by this means the new subjects gained the

decorum inherent in the adopted patterns formed to

express traditional stories Similar procedures may be

seen in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries when

more and more sections of reality became interesting

enough to be represented in art

The transfer of decorum from the sacred or allegori-

cal figures to the humans represented is a means used

in what modern iconographers call ldquoallegorical por-

traiturerdquo Renaissance painters had represented real

people under mythological or even sacred disguise

they gave actual faces of living people to the figures

represented with all the attributes and characteristics

of their mythical sacred or even allegorical qualities

Later it was only the pattern which remained still in

the eighteenth century English portraitists patterned

the effigies of contemporary aristocrats after Michel-

angelos Sybils or after allegories like the Caritas

(Wind 1937) J B Oudry represented the Polish King

in exile Stanisław Leszczyński with all the attributes

of the allegory of exile taken from Ripa identifying

him in this way with personification of his most promi-

nent quality (Białostocki 1969)

Dutch realistic painting of the seventeenth century

is a document of an important iconographic conquest

Landscapes seascapes moonlit night scenes snapshots

of people skating in winter landscapes views of market

places church interiors backyards fishermen old

women preparing food fashionable dishes ready for

lunch merchants and artisans elegant gentlemen pay-

ing visits and folk-surgeons performing sensational

street-operations all this became subject matter for

representation and continued to be considered worthy

of depiction until the end of the nineteenth century

It was first considered as such in Holland only then

slowly everyday subject matter was recognized also by

art-theorists in other countries although it was re-

garded as much less dignified than religious mytholog-

ical or allegorical subjects Only in the nineteenth

century did the vogue of realistic representation of

everyday subjects become widespread In Dutch pic-

tures of the seventeenth century we are often con-

fronted with nothing else than representations of pic-

turesque reality Sometimes however these genre

pictures appear to be illustrations of proverbs expres-

sing moralistic folk-wisdom sometimes they recall

scenes from the popular threater of the rederijkers or

rhetoricians especially pictures by Jan Steen (Gud-

laugsson 1945) they contain allusions to emblems

Sometimes the elegant scenes from bourgeois life in-

clude quite indecent erotic allusions (de Jongh 1967

1969) The ambiguity of these pictures was certainly

a source of specific pleasure for those who knew the

key to their true meaning

7 In Catholic countries allegorical art sacred as

well as profane flourished The twofold character of

symbolic representations mentioned above persisted

in the seventeenth century Aristotelian rational sym-

bolism which used images as words was widespread

in the orthodox Catholic iconography of the Counter-

Reformation as well as in the humanistic visual lan-

guage codified by Ripa and others A mystical Neo-

Platonic symbolism transcending reason reappeared

too Its outspoken document is the treatise by Chris-

toforo Giarda Bibliothecae alexandrinae icones sym-

bolicae of 1626 (Gombrich 1948) For Giarda symbolic

images give the beholder a direct insight into the

mysteries of religion which are not accessible to rea-

son

Thanks to symbolic images the mind which is banished from

heaven into this dark cave of the body its actions held in

bondage by the senses can behold the beauty and form

of the Virtues and Sciences divorced from all matter and

yet adumbrated if not perfectly expressed in colours and

is thus roused to an even more fervent love and desire for

them Who then can sufficiently estimate the magni-

tude of the debt we owe to those who expressed the Arts

and Sciences themselves in images and so brought it about

that we could not only know them but look at them as

it were with our eyes that we can meet them and almost

converse with them

(Gombrich [1948] pp 188f)

Great allegorical compositions covering the ceilings of

baroque churches are often realizations of this princi-

ple For those however who conceived allegory as a

rational operation as a language used for didactic aims

the main problem remained the clarity of the allegori-

533

cal message The larger the audience to whom allegory

was addressed the simpler more obvious its symbolism

should have been The banality of allegorical language

provoked criticism in the eighteenth century Fran-

cesco Algarotti (1762) prefers without any doubt his-

torical representations to the ldquoempty allegories and

complicated mythological allusionsrdquo (Garas [1967] p

280) Especially criticized was the obscurity of these

allegories in which completely original unknown sym-

bols were used Roger de Piles praises his favorite

master Rubens who ldquointroduced only such allegories

elements of which were already known from ancient

artrdquo and opposes him to Charles Lebrun who ldquoinstead

of taking symbols from some known source as the

ancient fable and medals has invented almost all of

them and thus the pictures of this kind became riddles

which the beholder does not want to take the task to

solverdquo To keep the balance between platitudinous

redundancy and utter incomprehensibility was the

crucial problem of late baroque allegorism What is

interesting however is that the idea of the picture

as a riddle was not foreign to the seventeenth century

It appears in France as well as in Sweden where David

Kloumlcker Ehrenstrahl (1694) proposed that pictures

present riddles that could not be solved by everyone

In France however the ldquopainted enigmardquo fostered

by the Jesuits in their schools flourished especially well

in the seventeenth century (Montagu 1968) These

ldquopainted enigmasrdquo lent themselves to various inter-

pretations and gave interpreters an opportunity to

show their ingenuity These pictures and their inter-

pretations seem to prove that a considerable flexibility

of meaning was intended

We might rather accept that a work of art was regarded

in the seventeenth century as in a certain sense an open

symbol raw material like the myth or sacred story which

it illustrates on which the interpreter might exercise the

power of his ingenuity turning it into an allegory of Chris-

tian doctrine or a panegyric in honour of his patron

(Montagu [1968] p 334)

Such a situation probably existed only in some specific

circles It was a limiting case The other extreme was

to use in an uninteresting routine way Ripas symbolic

images or those of other popular symbolic handbooks

Such practice continued well into the eighteenth cen-

tury The general trend fed by ideas of the Enlighten-

ment was to make allegories more and more obvious

It is understandable that some theorists like the Count

de Caylus looked for new subject matter presenting

as he did Tableaux tireacutes de lIliade (1755) or that

J J Winckelmann tried to revive allegory and to give

it a new force It was however too late In the eight-

eenth century together with the whole system of

humanistic tradition the systems of iconography began

to disintegrate The great break in the tradition con-

cerned not only style but also iconography Emblem-

atic roots may be discovered in Goyas symbolism as

well as in the reasonable allegories of the Enlighten-

ment but generally speaking there was a search for

new not known or not used sourcesmdashas in William

Blakes biblical individualistic imagerymdashor the new

staging of the old ones as in Jacques Louis Davids

classical subjects

The art of romanticism was a definite break with

the past much more in the field of ideas and iconogra-

phy than in a stylistic respect where romanticists

retrospectively looked back either to medieval and

pre-Raphaelite or to baroque sources Symbols and

allegories yielded to an all-pervading mood and the

traditional repertory of religious allegorical mytho-

logical and historical iconography gave way to a new

iconography Although several encompassing images

of Christian and humanistic art survived they received

new content and essentially changed their character

New attitudes of the individual to the world of nature

and history to society and destiny to time and death

and new problems resulting from the striving after

freedom (which was a new perhaps most important

principle of human behavior in all fields of human

activity) found expression in new thematic fields and

in new particular themes such as ldquoStorm-tossed Boatrdquo

ldquoLonely Wanderer in the Mountainsrdquo ldquoA Death of the

Herordquo (Eitner 1955 Hofmann 1960 Białostocki

1966)

Romanticism has not formed and could not have

formed an iconographic system for since they strived

first of all for originality of individual conception the

romantics interpreted images in a subjective way as

expressions of mood Romanticism has on the other

hand introduced new heroes and martyrs into art

instead of religious ones the national social and artis-

tic ones It created a new image of history seen now

as a set of political and moral examplesmdashas in

baroquemdashbut often put together now according to a

very individualistic principle of choice A correlative

to pathetic and heroic romanticism was a bourgeois

and intimate romanticism its expression was for ex-

ample the new imagery of the open window which

shows to the viewer wide perspectives but shelters him

at the same time from the dangers of the unknown

(Eitner 1955)

When the world of ideas and images created at the

moment of the flowering of romanticism began to be

popularized for the use of the large bourgeois masses

the contentmdashideological and iconographicalmdashof ro-

manticism lost its original authenticity and left be-

hind not a new system of original images but a dispo-

534

sition to melodramatic experiences and an inflation of

a theatrical gesture (Hofmann 1960 Białostocki 1966)

The nineteenth century developed a realistic por-

traiture of man and nature and took over worn out

clicheacutes of the Renaissance and baroque allegories It

introduced new subject matter taken partly from tra-

dition partly from observation of reality tinted with

vague symbolism such as ldquoForgerdquo or the ldquoFuneral of

the Peasantrdquo but it did not create a new system of

iconography in spite of short-lived revivals of symbol-

istic attitudes in such movementsmdashincidentally not

limited to and not initiated in the visual artsmdashas

ldquosymbolismrdquo

New ephemeral artistic movements which consti-

tuted the history of European art in the last hundred

years show an interesting bracketing of style and icon-

ography in spite of a preponderant lack of iconogra-

phic interest Their representatives chose subjects suit-

able to specific artistic aims and means which they

developed and were interested in Impressionists

painted seaside scenes landscapes and genre pictures

showing the life of artistic and intellectual milieus

Cubists introduced a specific repertory of still-life

motifs symbols of the artists atelier and of the life

of the bohegraveme bottles musical instruments books

fruits flowers newspapers How much these motifs

were connected with specific cubist style appears when

one looks at works of artists foreign to the original

cubist group but imitating its style as for instance

several Czech artists like Emil Filla They adopted

cubist iconography together with cubist style Abstract

movements in general lacked iconography although

they were not foreign to symbolic tendencies espe-

cially in sculpture (Brancusi Moore) Only in the dec-

ades of 1950-70 can a revival of more articulated and

programmatic symbolism be observed One may sup-

pose that this revival is at least in part brought about

by the development of research in iconography and

symbolism which took place in the second and third

quarters of our century

II

1 The origins of ldquointerpretative iconographyrdquo may

be seen in the descriptions (ekphrasis) of works of art

known in classical literature But these descriptions

like those by Philostratus the Elder or Lucian are

limited simply to description and lack in general any

interpretation Moreover it is not certain whether they

are descriptions of actual or fictitious works of art at

least opinions in this respect vary Brief medieval tituli

which formulated in words the content of religious

images were to be sure interpretative sometimes but

they were short and cannot be connected with the

tradition of artistic erudition We have to look to

modern times to indicate the beginnings of iconogra-

phic interpretation and research From Vasaris Rag-

ionamenti in which interpretations of the paintings

decorating the Palazzo Vecchio in Florence are given

we learn how complicated and how undecipherable

iconographic concepts might have been even to peo-

ple living in buildings decorated by paintings expres-

sing these concepts But perhaps the first really to be

considered as interested in iconographic research was

the seventeenth-century archaeologist and art theorist

Giovanni Pietro Bellori In the introduction to his Lives

of Artists (1672) Bellori stressed that he paid special

attention to the content of the works of art he was

talking about and he even credited the painter Nicolas

Poussin with having directed his attention to iconogra-

phy In his Lives Bellori presented short interpretative

descriptions of pictures and he sometimes developed

these interpretations further in small iconographic

essays the influence of classical ekphrasis on him is

a possibility Sometimes his errors took deep roots in

the subsequent history of art as when he explained

Poussins Triumph of Flora (Dresden) by designating

Ovids Metamorphoses as its source The true source

Marinos Adona was finally found by R E Spear in

1965

What is interesting in Belloris procedure is that he

first identifies the motifs tries to connect them with

classical or modern literary sources and then proceeds

to find out the deep meaning the general symbolic

idea of the work Therefore he may be considered as

one of the pioneers not only of iconography as a disci-

pline of research but also of iconology as formulated

by its recent partisans That even in the second half

of the sixteenth century some observers were inclined

to look for hidden meaning in each element of the work

of art we learn from Joannes Molanus (1570) who in

De picturis et imaginibus sacris states reasonably that

ldquoit is not necessary to ask for meaning of everything

that can be observed in a picture in such cases a lot

of absurd things may resultrdquo But the consciousness of

the importance of iconography increased and at the

end of the seventeenth century Andreacute Feacutelibien stressed

that in order to attribute a picture to a painter it is

not enough to know the way he uses his brush one

needs also to know his esprit to learn his geacutenie and

to be able to foresee in which way he is able to form

his conceptions Thus iconographic analysis was con-

sidered necessary even for the purpose of attribution

Descriptive interpretations of the works of ancient

art appeared in the big archaeological publications of

the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries such as

Jacques Spons Miscellanea eruditae antiquitatis (1679)

G P Belloris Admiranda romanarum antiquitatum ac

veteris sculpturae vestigia (1693) P de Caylus Recueil

535

dantiquiteacutes eacutegyptiennes eacutetrusques grecques et

romaines (1752-67) and in an interesting endeavor

(although very much criticized by Lessing) of Joseph

Spence to explain classical poets through works of art

and vice versa (Polymetis 1747) Classical archaeology

however has not been especially interested in iconog-

raphy and the use of the term itself by archaeolo-

gists was limited to portraiture The first great devel-

opment of iconographic studies was connected with

the romantic movement although an important pre-

lude for it was hagiographical collections of sources

such as Acta sanctorum published by the Bollandists

(1643-1794 resumed later) Among the pre-romantic

scholars in iconography the eminent German poet

G E Lessing is to be noted His study of the repre-

sentation of death in classical times can be considered

as one of the first essays in interpretative iconography

which is now called iconology In Wie die Alten den

Tod gebildet (1769) Lessing tries to interpret the classi-

cal iconographic type of Amor with the inverted torch

and to find its ldquointrinsic meaningrdquo by taking into ac-

count the religion customs and philosophy of the

classical world The work of art is interpreted by Less-

ing as ldquoa symptom of something elserdquo While Lessings

predecessors (like B de Montfaucon) ldquoexplained the

classical past by monumentsrdquo he for the first time did

the opposite ldquohe explained the monuments by Antiq-

uityrdquo (Maurin Białostocka [1969] pp 92-100)

Pre-romantic and romantic interests in myth and

symbol found their expression in publications and dis-

cussions by German philosophers and scholars like F

Schlegel J Herder J J von Goumlrres and F Creuzer

Creuzers work Symbolik und Mythologie der alten

Voumllker (1810) which shows the influence of mystical

Neo-Platonic ideas on symbols (Gombrich 1965) was

the most influential in the romantic period in Ger-

many Under the impact of Chateaubriands le Geacutenie

du christianisme (1802) research in medieval iconog-

raphy developed mainly in France Works by French

scholars mostly clergymen which were indeed con-

cerned with Christian medieval art dominated icon-

ographical study in the nineteenth century Since most

of these writers were not professional scholars their

work was often amateurish in character but it is unde-

niable that books by A N Didron Histoire de Dieu

(Paris 1843) the first part of a comprehensive pro-

jected but not completed iconography of Christian art

A Crosnier Iconographie chreacutetienne (Caen 1848) C

Cahier Caracteacuteristiques des saints (Paris 1867) C

Rohault de Fleury Archeacuteologie chreacutetienne les saints

de la messe et leurs monuments 12 vols (Paris

1893-1900) L Breacutehier Lart chreacutetien son deacuteveloppe-

ment iconographique des origines agrave nos jours (Paris

1918) P Perdrizet V Leroquais and G de Jerphanion

have built up a solid body of iconographical knowl-

edge on which scholars of the twentieth century were

able to erect a modern comprehensive structure In

the field of Byzantine iconography it was Gabriel

Millets Recherches sur liconographie de leacutevangile aux

XIVe XVe et XVIe siegravecles (Paris 1916 reprint

1960) that was basic for any further study For Western

chiefly French art a well-written and learned work

appealing to the general reader as well as to the

scholar was produced by Eacutemile Macircle who in his four

volumes of the history of religious art (1898-1932) has

presented a well-composed synthetic image of icono-

graphical development A lexicographic summary of

these studies of generations of French scholars is pre-

sented in the Dictionnaire darcheacuteologie chreacutetienne et

de liturgie published from 1907 to 1953 and edited

by F Cabrol and H Leclerq A recent reference work

is that by L Reacuteau Iconographie de lart chreacutetien (Paris

1955-59) Russian scholars have done important work

in the field of Byzantine and Orthodox iconography

of religious art The most prominent are N P Kon-

dakov Ikonografia Bogomatieri (St Petersburg 1911

2nd ed 1914-15) D V Ainalov Mosaiki IV i V vekov

(St Petersburg 1895) and N Pokrovski Otcherki

pamyatnikov christianskogo isskusstva i ikonografii (St

Petersburg 1894 3rd ed 1910) V Lasarev and M

Alpatov belonging to the mid-twentieth-century gen-

eration of Russian scholars discuss iconography in

several works on religious art German scholarship

produced in the nineteenth century works by F Piper

A Springer and H Detzel Useful compendia were

produced in the early twentieth century by J Sauer

W Molsdorf K Kuumlnstle and J Braun Dutch scholars

C Smits J B Knipping and J J M Timmers contrib-

uted to iconographic studies in recent times Knip-

pings book (1939-40) being the most important work

on the iconography of the Counter-Reformation and

supplementing Macircles volume of 1932 In the twentieth

century on C R Moreys initiative iconographic

studies were inaugurated in North America Focused

on earlier medieval art these studies developed at

Princeton University

A new direction characteristic of iconographic

studies in the twentieth century has been given to

them by the international school of art historical re-

search inaugurated by the Hamburg scholar Aby

Warburg At the International Congress for the History

of Art at Rome in 1912 he presented a sensational

astrological interpretation of the frescoes painted by

Francesco Cossa and his collaborators in Palazzo

Schifanoja at Ferrara Warburg solved the secret of

those representations which had puzzled the ingenuity

of several former students interpreting them as images

of zodiacal signs and their decans But he did not limit

536

his contribution to the presentation of his results He

wanted to stress the importance of his approach and

of the method of study which later became connected

with his name He said

I hope that through the method used by me for explication

of the frescoes at the Palazzo Schifanoja of Ferrara I have

proved that an iconological analysis which does not allow

itself to be diverted by the rules of frontier police from

considering antiquity Middle Ages and modern times as

interconnected periods nor from analyzing the most liberal

and the most applied works of art as equally important

documents of expression that this method endeavoring as

it does to throw light upon one dark spot clears up at

the same time great interconnected developments

(Warburg 1912 Heckscher 1967)

Warburgs influence on the history of art was very

great although he himself did not write much It was

mainly the posthumous impact of his ideas promul-

gated as they were by Fritz Saxl which contributed

to the specific direction of studies concentrated in the

library Warburg founded in Hamburg and which Saxl

succeeded in transplanting during the Nazi era to

London where it became the Warburg Institute of the

University of London While the object of study of the

nineteenth-century iconographers was mainly religious

art in its relation to religious literary sources and lit-

urgy for Warburg the study of images was a study

of their relations to religion to poetry to myth to

science and to social and political life Art was for

him closely connected with the polyphonic structure

of historical life

Warburgs ideas had a great importance for the most

influential theory of iconographic interpretation in our

century that elaborated by Erwin Panofsky In Ham-

burg where Warburg Saxl and Panofsky were active

in the twenties Ernst Cassirer built up his philosophy

of symbolic forms which constituted an additional

background for Panofskys system being derived as

his own methodology was from the traditions of

Kantian philosophy Around 1930 Panofskys ideas

ripened into a system which found formulation in his

book herkules am Scheidewege (1930) and later in a

theoretical article of 1932 G J Hoogewerff was how-

ever the first to propose the word ldquoiconologyrdquo as a

name for the method of an analysis of content in a

work of art (Warburg spoke of iconological analysis)

In 1931 he proposed distinguishing between iconogra-

phy as a descriptive science aiming at the identifica-

tion of themes and ldquoiconologyrdquo aiming at the under-

standing ldquoof symbolic dogmatic or mystical meaning

which is expressed (or hidden) in figurative formsrdquo He

stressed that ldquoiconologyrdquo deals with works of art with-

out classifying them according to the technique used

or to the achieved perfection taking into account only

their meaning Hoogewerff saw the last aim of iconol-

ogy in finding out the cultural and ideological back-

ground expressed by works of art and the cultural and

social significance which can be attributed to certain

forms and to means of expression in the same time

Hoogewerffs part in the expansion of iconology was

limited because he did not endorse his methodical

proposals with examples of historical interpretations

Erwin Panofsky with whose name iconology has

been connected ever since not only developed its

theoretical foundations but contributed by his practi-

cal work in art history to the main triumph of iconol-

ogy after the Second World War The most influential

book by Panofsky has been Studies in Iconology (1939)

in which his masterly presentation of the method was

connected with its equally excellent exemplification

2 Panofsky considers the interpretation of a work

of art as falling on three levels On the first level the

object of interpretation is the primary or natural sub-

ject matter The function of interpretation is called

ldquopre-iconographical descriptionrdquo In order to be able

to arrive at a correct interpretation on that level the

interpreter must have a practical experience (ldquofamili-

arity with objects and eventsrdquo) common to everybody

at least in one cultural sphere However he has to

control his observations by a ldquocorrective knowledge

of the history of stylerdquo (ldquoinsight into the manner in

which under varying historical conditions objects and

events were expressed by formsrdquo) On the second level

the function of interpretation is called ldquoiconographical

analysisrdquo its object is the ldquosecondary or conventional

subject matterrdquo constituting the world of images his-

tories and allegories The interpreters equipment in

this case is obviously the knowledge of literary sources

giving him a ldquofamiliarity with specific themes and

conceptsrdquo The interpreter has to control his observa-

tions by ldquothe insight into the manner in which under

varying historical conditions specific themes or con-

cepts were expressed by objects and eventsrdquo On the

third level the function of interpreting is called ldquoicon-

ographical analysis in a deeper senserdquo (1939) or ldquoicon-

ological analysisrdquo (1955) Its object is the ldquointrinsic

meaning or contentrdquo of a work of art The interpreters

equipment on that level should be a ldquofamiliarity with

the essential tendencies of the human mindrdquo and he

has to control his interpretation by the ldquoinsight into

the manner in which under varying historical condi-

tions essential tendencies of the human mind were

expressed by specific themes and conceptsrdquo Thus

taking all the time into account what Panofsky calls

the history of tradition the interpreter has to aim at

understanding the work of art its ldquoprimaryrdquo as well

as ldquosecondary subject matterrdquo as symptoms of some

fundamental tendency of the human mind typical of

537

a place a time a civilization and of an individual

responsible for the creation of the work ldquoIconologyrdquomdash

for Panofskymdashldquois a method of interpretation which

arises from synthesis rather than analysisrdquo Trying to

find the intrinsic meaning of a work of art

The art historian will have to check what he thinks is the

intrinsic meaning of the work or group of works against

what he thinks is the intrinsic meaning of as many other

documents of civilization historically related to that work

or group of works as he can master It is in the search

for intrinsic meaning or content that the various humanistic

disciplines meet on a common plane instead of serving as

handmaidens to each other

(Panofsky [1955] p 39)

The concept of intrinsic meaning of a work of art

was elaborated by Panofsky much earlier (1925) when

he interpreted in his own way the concept of Kunst-

wollen introduced by A Riegl to research in art

Panofsky understood this ldquoartistic volitionrdquo as an im-

manent ultimate meaning of a work of art which is

manifested in the way basic artistic problems are solved

in that work He used the same concept further to bring

art closer to the other fields of human activity Since

the ldquoimmanent ultimate senserdquo of the work of art is

nothing else than uniformity in the way of solving basic

artistic problems it is possible to compare that imma-

nent sense with immanent senses of the other human

works in various fields Panofsky did it for instance

when in one of his later works he compared the struc-

tural principles of Gothic architecture with those of

scholastic thinking (1951)

The system elaborated by Panofsky and exemplified

by his own work in art history was the first consistent

system of an integral interpretation of a work of visual

arts based on the analysis of content In principle

Panofskys system takes into account all the elements

of the work of art since it takes as the point of depar-

ture the sensual exterior shape of the work It is

however clear that its main scope is not the inter-

pretation of form as a bearer of meaning but the

understanding and interpretation of conventional alle-

gories literary themes and symbols as symptoms of

the history of the human mind It was that method

in the history of art which programmatically fostered

a collaboration with all the other disciplines of histori-

cal studies It was therefore one of the most influential

methods not only among art historians but also among

representatives of the other branches of humanistic

studies Although there were art historians who ex-

pressed a critical attitude toward ldquoiconologyrdquo as the

new method was soon baptized its influence was over-

whelming

3 It is not only but mainly due to Panofsky that

one can venture to call ldquoiconographicalrdquo that period

of art history as a historical discipline which followed

the Second World War and to oppose it to the ldquostylis-

ticrdquo one which preceded it It does not mean of course

that no iconographic research took place in the

twenties or thirties the works of Macircle Knipping van

Marle Wilpert Saxl and of Panofsky himself would

contradict such a statement Neither is it true that

purely formal research aiming at stylistic classification

and analysis discontinued after World War II It is

evident that in the last decades (from 1940 on) icono-

graphic interests came to the fore and became domi-

nant in many countries Iconographical studies grew

so much in number and importance that they made

it possible to undertake and to publish new reference

works of iconographic character like dictionaries

written by one scholar (Guy de Tervarent Aurenham-

mer) as well as larger works based on a collaboration

of several scholars (Encyclopedias of German art of

Antiquity and Christian civilization of Byzantine art)

Interest in meaning and iconography has appeared

also among historians of political social and religious

institutions The symbolism of signs ceremonies cos-

tumes and arms was studied by such scholars as A

Alfoumlldi ldquoInsignien und Tracht der roumlmischen Kaiserrdquo

Mitteilungen des deutschen Archaumlologischen Instituts

Roumlmische Abteilung (1935) 1ff ldquoDie Geburt der

kaiserlichen Bildsymbolikrdquo museum Helveticum 9

(1952) 204ff also by A Grabar Martyrium (Paris

1943-46) by E H Kantorowicz laudes Regiae

(Berkeley and Los Angeles 1946) The Kings Two

Bodies (Princeton 1957) by H P L Orange Studies

in the Iconography of Cosmic Kingship in the Ancient

World (Oslo 1953) Art Forms and Civic Life in the

Late Roman Empire (Princeton 1965) and by P E

Schramm herrschaftszeichen und Staatssymbolik

(Stuttgart 1954-56) In their studies iconography far

transcends the borders of art and it helps to build up

a history of ideas by following their various visual

expressions

Pioneering studies by K Giehlow F Saxl and E

Panofsky enlarged iconographical interests above all

to encompass the large field of secular art whereas

they had been mainly limited to religious iconography

in the work of preceding generations of scholars The

whole complicated and hardly known large body of

meanings disguised by the cryptic language of hiero-

glyphs emblems and iconologies became one of the

main topics of study

This established a collaboration between historians

of art and literature Mario Prazs admirable study of

emblems and his bibliography of emblem books

(1939-47) belongs now to the foundations of studies

in that field Publications by W S Heckscher and

A K Wirth by R S Clements E F von Monroy and

538

H M von Erffa E de Jongh and H Miedema and

several other scholars have elucidated the structure

and meaning of emblems and have shown their tre-

mendous influence on art even in its most monumental

and dignified forms An uninterrupted flow of reprints

of emblem books which brought within the reach of

modern students inaccessible volumes of sixteenth- and

seventeenth-century emblem writers were crowned by

the monumental undertaking of Arthur Henkel and

Albrecht Schoumlne who compiled an excellent volume

including almost all the texts and images needed for

the study of emblemsmdashEmblemata Handbuch zur

Sinnbildkunst des XVI und XVII Jahrhunderts

(Stuttgart 1967) Research was under way on hiero-

glyphs (Erik Iversen) and on the imprese (the late

Robert Klein) as well as on iconologies and allegories

These studies have disclosed meanings of the art of

the Renaissance of mannerism and of the baroque not

understood by nineteenth-century scholars

E Panofsky deciphered extremely farfetched and

individualistic programs of decoration of such famous

ensembles as the Camera di San Paolo by Correggio

in Parma the Gallery of Franccedilois I at Fontainebleau

Edgar Wind Andreacute Chastel and other scholars inter-

preted Raphaels decorations in the Popes apartments

Michelangelos art furnished material to detailed com-

prehensive studies by Panofsky Ch de Tolnay H von

Einem and Pope-Hennessy in which the share of

Neo-Platonic thinking in the ideological background

of the celebrated works of Michelangelo was discussed

Innumerable studies have been devoted to Titians

mythological paintings J R Martin presented expla-

nations of the Carracci frescoes in the Camerino Far-

nese and in the great gallery of the Palazzo Farnese

Bruegel considered in the nineteenth century as a drocircle

painter of peasant life has been shown by de Tolnay

Stridbeck and others to be an allegorist expressing a

skeptical humanistic outlook J S Held and W

Stechow contributed several articles to the under-

standing of mythological and allegorical contents in

Flemish and Dutch art of the sixteenth and seventeenth

centuries Rembrandts iconography was put into new

light by the two above-mentioned scholars as well as

by H M Rotermund H van de Waal J G van Gelder

H von Einem and Ch Tuumlmpel The intricate symbol-

ism and subject matter of historical and mythological

pictures by Nicolas Poussin were elucidated by such

masters of iconographic research as E H Gombrich

W Friedlaumlnder E Panofsky and above all by A Blunt

who in his monograph on Poussin presented a new

deep synthetic view of the ideas expressed by that

artists works Goyas individualistic secret symbolism

was also studied with the help of emblems and the

allegorical tradition Berninis works received iconolo

gical treatment by R Wittkower and H Kauffmann

All of this research does not mean that there was a

lack of interest in religious iconography M Schapiro

A Katzenellenbogen H Bober F Wormald and V

Elbern among others have contributed considerably

to deepen our understanding of the not completely

explained motifs and prominent works of medieval art

Panofsky has also shed a new light on several problems

of sepulchral iconography studies by such scholars as

R Berliner G von der Osten L Kalinowski S

Ringbom and T Dobrzeniecki contributed to late

medieval iconography in a new way Berliner stressed

the autonomous invention of visual artists or their

patrons while according to the traditional view popu-

larized by Macircle late medieval art should have followed

strictly literary sources

The religious content of modern art especially its

allegorical form in the late baroque period has been

examined and thanks to studies by such scholars as

W Mrazek and H Bauer has become better known

and understandable A great change was introduced

by ldquoiconologyrdquo into architectural history Buildings

which were formerly interpreted from aesthetic and

functional points of view only have been shown to

present allegorical symbolical or even emblematic

ideas Publications by leading art historians (R Witt-

kower B Smith G Bandmann O von Simson and

G C Argan) have presented medieval and modern

architecture as a bearer of meaning and have essen-

tially changed the character of architectural history

The iconography of classicism and romanticism

received a thorough treatment in books by W Hof-

mann and R Rosenblum as well as in several studies

devoted to individual themes and pictures G Hersey

has for example shown how much Delacroixs decora-

tion of the library in the Palais Bourbon owed to

Giambattista Vicos ideas about history More recently

studies on ldquoSymbolismrdquo have been undertaken Vincent

van Goghs symbolic language and iconography were

the object of studies by J Seznec C Nordenfalk and

other scholars On Ceacutezannes iconography interesting

remarks have been published by M Schapiro

Along with the development of iconographic studies

the establishment of centers of documentation has

advanced The ldquoFrenchrdquo stage in the development of

iconography has not left any marked trace in this

respect It was in America thanks to C R Morey that

the famous Index of Christian Art at the Department

of Art and Archaeology of Princeton University was

founded at first limited to the early Middle Ages then

enlarged so as to include art up to the end of the

medieval period Copies of the Princeton Index are

to be found also at the Istituto Pontificio dArcheolo-

gia in Rome and in the Dumbarton Oaks Library and

539

Collection in Washington DC But that Index ends

ldquowhere art beginsrdquomdashas Panofsky used to say jokingly

The need for systematic iconographic files for modern

art was strongly felt In 1956 A Pigler published a

very useful book Barockthemen in which he listed

thousands of works of art of the baroque period ac-

cording to their subjects It was however far from

being a systematic work The first essay in establishing

a systematic iconographic index for art of any time

was done by The Netherlands Institute for Art History

at the Hague then directed by H Gerson which took

the initiative around 1950 of publishing a postcard-size

photographic index of its rich collection of photographs

of Netherlandish art ordered according to an icono-

graphic principle Once such an idea was formulated

the need for a comprehensive consistent and clear

iconographic classification was urgent H van de Waal

of Leiden University devised such a system of classifi-

cation based on decimal divisions consistent and easy

to read He based his system on experiences of ethnol-

ogy and on such elaborated systems of classification

as that devised by Stith Thompson in his Motif-Index

of Folk Literature Vols I-VI (Bloomington Ind

1932-36 rev ed 1955-58) Van de Waal has elabor-

ated a system in which the first five main sections

classify five fundamental groups of portrayable things

namely (1) The Supernatural (2) Nature (3) Man (4)

Society (5) Abstracts The last four classify specific

subjects such as (6) History (7) The Bible (8) Myths

Legends and Tales (with the exception of classical

antiquity) (9) Myths and Legends of Classical Antiq-

uity Van de Waal combines the classification in the

first and in the second group in order to classify general

as well as specific subjects Christ in his system is

described with the sign ldquo11 Drdquo (ldquo1rdquo standing for Su-

pernatural ldquo11rdquo for Christianity ldquoDrdquo for Christ) the

adult Christ = 11 D 3 since ldquoshepherdrdquo on the other

hand bears the signature 47 I 221 the adult Christ

as a shepherd can be described in this system by the

following formula 11 D 3 = 47 I 221 Van de Waal

has also provided means to describe more complex

images which he expresses by adding elements between

brackets The Annunciation with God the Father and

a winged Angel is expressed by the following formula

73 A 5 (+1 +41) ldquo1rdquo standing for God the Father

and ldquo41rdquo for a winged Angel (van de Waal 1952) This

system elaborated for many years by its inventor and

prepared for publication in many volumes has proved

most useful in the practical arrangement of the Icono-

graphical Index of the Netherlandish Art and as the

only one until now in existence it became used more

and more in spite of some ambiguities and difficulties

As an endeavor to classify ldquoall portrayablerdquo things

persons events and ideas and to create a consistent

method to describe every possible image van de Waals

system may be considered as one of the important

achievements of the ldquoiconographical stagerdquo in the

development of art history Iconographic files exist of

course in many institutions as for example in the Ikon-

ologisch Instituut of Utrecht University one of the

main centers of study in emblematics and of course

in the most venerable institution of iconographic re-

search the Warburg Institute of the London University

and in other places

4 What was the result of this ldquoiconographicrdquo turn

in the development of the history of art One thing

is certain that this discipline by necessity has come

closer to other humanistic disciplines Since the

ldquointrinsicrdquo meaningmdashin Panofskys terminologymdashof a

work of art cannot be described in terms used by the

history of art but only in terms borrowed from the

history of philosophy of religion of social structures

of science and so on the ldquoiconological methodrdquo took

for granted and provoked such a collaboration Art

history was perhaps the first or one of the first to show

new interest in investigation of meaning It was fol-

lowed by similar developments in ethnology and in

linguistics

We have mentioned above a parallel development

in Byzantine and classical studies Panofskys influence

has been considerable in the other fields of humanistic

research Since ldquoiconologyrdquo aimed at discovering ideas

expressed by a work of art it awoke in art historians

an interest in the history of ideas This general shift

of emphasis and of the direction of studies from mainly

formal ones to studies aiming at ideas underlying art

was perhaps responsible among others for the fact that

several contributions to the Journal of the History of

Ideas have been written by historians of art

It is not difficult to see that such a development

should have provoked criticism on the side of those

who care about the purity and autonomy of methods

Iconology was criticized as far as its internal coherence

and also as far as its claim to be the integral method

of the study of art are concerned (Białostocki 1962)

Studies by R Klein E Forssman G Previtali G

Kubler B Teyssegravedre C Ginzburg and G Hermeren

expressed critical opinions in one or the other respect

Iconology linked art with the rest of history but it

disrupted the links between the work of art and other

things (Kubler 1962) Concentrating on meaning

iconology neglected art as form as individual expres-

sion Iconology implied a rational relationship between

intellectual content and artistic form On the one hand

one spoke of ldquoiconological diminutionsrdquo (Kubler

1962)mdashlimitations of research to meaning only But

on the other hand the overstatements of iconology

were criticized its representatives sometimes seemed

540

to assume everything symbolized something And some

iconologists seemed to consider important in art not

that which makes art a different field of human activity

but that which connects art with other fieldsmdashwith

the history of ideas

There were of course critics who had the opposite

opinion Since the end of the eighteenth century a

direct experience of art was more and more valued

and its symbolical function considered as a burden

J G von Herder said ein Kunstwerk ist der Kunst

wegen da aber bei einem Symbole ist die Kunst

dienend (ldquoA work of art is there because of art but

with a symbol art is a servicerdquo) Similar opinions were

expressed by nineteenth-century art writers and in this

century they have been voiced by Benedetto Croce and

by other Italian opponents of contenutismo by which

they meant interest in content For such critics to put

stress on iconography was to miss the essential in art

and to focus attention on a subordinate function of art

Also among scholars who considered the function

of representation and of communication as a legitimate

and important function of art criticism was expressed

not against the principle of an iconographical or icon-

ological investigation but against overstatements in

their application The introduction of the idea of ldquodis-

guised symbolismrdquo has created a danger of course of

opening the way to fanciful interpretations The alle-

gorical and symbolical function of mythological imag-

ery in classical art is also difficult to interpret precisely

Since no literary sources give a key to an interpretation

of the iconography of the sarcophagi very divergent

theories have been expressed concerning their meaning

Some archaeologists like F Cumont (1942) believe

that mythological and allegorical imagery (Anadyo-

mene Sea-Thiasos Personifications of the Seasons) is

to be read symbolically The Sea-Thiasos for instance

is to be interpreted as a symbol of the journey of the

souls of the deceased to the islands of the blessed

Others like A D Nock (1946) do not find enough

evidence to accept other than a decorative function

in such imagery

The intrusion of some representatives of psychology

eg C G Jung into iconographic studies giving them

an unhistorical turn in their search for ldquoarchetypal

imagesrdquo has complicated the situation although art

historians in general understandably have not accepted

that kind of approach to symbolism (Frankfort 1958

Gombrich 1965)

The fact that iconographic interpretations sometimes

lack satisfactory proofs does not detract from the im-

portance of such investigations so long as they are

conducted according to the requirements of historical

methods and take into account the corrective princi-

ples established by Panofsky A correct acquaintance

with the way of thinking of the artist the patron or the

viewer based on a satisfactory knowledge of documen-

tary visual and literary sources an awareness of the

choice situations produced by historical developments

may enable art historians to discover the secondary

meaning of a work of art as well as its intrinsic mean-

ing It is of course possible that the art historian will

meet some works for which it will not be possible to re-

construct in a satisfactory way the world of ideas that

would account for the meaning of those works In such

cases a reliable interpretation is simply not possible

R Berliner (1945 1966) criticized the widespread

opinion according to which content of the works of

visual arts in the Middle Ages had to be checked

against the literary sources considered as the only

medium in which ideological innovations were per-

mitted Berliner pleaded for assuming a considerable

ldquofreedomrdquo in the medieval artist and he considered

iconographic innovation possible even when no writ-

ten evidence could be found Meyer Schapiro (1947)

presented proofs that sometimes purely aesthetic rea-

sons decided the character of the work of art even as

early as the Romanesque period

We can only touch on some specific discussions going

on in the field of iconographic research But iconogra-

phic research is far from being a closed system and

the relative share of iconographic and stylistic criticism

in the work of art historians is always a matter of

discussion It is certain that the ldquoiconographicrdquo period

in the study of art has enlarged in a considerable way

the understanding of the art of the past and that it

has connected art history in a way unknown before

with the other historical disciplines and above all others

with the history of ideas

BIBLIOGRAPHY

L B Alberti On Painting ed J Spencer (New Haven

1956 revised ed 1966) E Auerbach ldquoFigurardquo (1944) trans

and published in Scenes From the Drama of European Liter-

ature (New York 1959) pp 11-76 K Bauch ldquoImagordquo

(1960) Studien zur Kunstgeschichte (Berlin 1967) pp 1-20

G P Bellori Descrizione delle imagini dipinte da Raffaello

(Rome 1695 ed used is 1751) R Berliner ldquoThe Free-

dom of Medieval Artrdquo Gazette des Beaux-Arts 628 (1945)

263-88 idem ldquoBemerkungen zu einigen Darstellungen des

Erloumlsers als Schmerzensmannrdquo Das Muumlnster 9 (1956)

97-117x J Białostocki ldquoIconografia e Iconologiardquo Enciclo-

pedia Universale dellArte (1962) Vol VII cols 163-75

trans as Encyclopedia of World Art (1966) Vol VII cols

769-85 lists almost all important older contributions to this

field idem ldquoRomantische Ikonographierdquo Stil und Ikonog-

raphie (Dresden 1966) pp 156-81 idem ldquoKompozycja

emblematyczna epitafioacutew ślaskich XVI wiekurdquo (ldquoEmblem-

atic Composition of Silesian Epitaphs of the Sixteenth Cen-

turyrdquo) Ze studioacutew nad Sztuka XVI wieku na Řlasku

(Wrocław 1968) pp 77-93 idem ldquoEsilio Privatordquo Bulletin

du Museacutee National de Varsovie 10 (1969) 95-101 J

541

Chydenius The Theory of Medieval Symbolism (Helsingfors

1960) Series of the Societas Scientiarum Fennica Com-

mentationes Humanarum Litterarum 27 2 R J Clements

Picta Poesis (Rome 1960) F Creuzer Symbolik und

Mythologie der Alten Voumllker (Leipzig and Darmstadt 1810

revised ed 1819) F Cumont Recherches sur le symbolisme

funeacuteraire des Romains (Paris 1942) L Eitner ldquoThe Open

Window and the Storm-Tossed Boatrdquo Art Bulletin 37

(1955) 281-90 H Frankfort ldquoThe Archetype in Analytical

Psychology and the History of Religionrdquo Journal of the

Warburg and Courtauld Institutes 21 (1958) 166-78

K Garas ldquoAllegorie und Geschichte in der Venezianischen

Malerei des 18 Jahrhundertsrdquo in proceedings of the XXI

International Congress of the History of Art Bonn Stil und

Uumlberlieferung in der Kunst des Abendlandes (Berlin 1967)

3 280-83 K Giehlow ldquoDie Hieroglyphenkunde des

Humanismus in der Allegorie der Renaissancerdquo Jahrbuch

der Kunsthistorischen Sammlungen des Allerhochsten

Kaiserhauses 32 (1915) 1-232 C Gilbert ldquoOn Subject and

Not-Subject in Italian Renaissance Picturesrdquo Art Bulletin

34 (1952) 202-16 C Ginzburg ldquoDa A Warburg a E H

Gombrich Note su un problema di metodordquo Studi medi-

evali series 3 7 (1966) 1015-65 E H Gombrich ldquoIcones

Symbolicae The Visual Image in Neo-Platonic Thoughtrdquo

Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes 11 (1948)

163-92 idem ldquoThe Use of Art for the Study of Symbolsrdquo

American Psychologist 20 (1965) A Grabar Liconoclasme

byzantin Dossier archeacuteologique (Paris 1957) idem Chris-

tian Iconography A Study of Its Origins (Princeton 1969)

S J Gudlaugsson De Comedianten bij Jan Steen en zijn

tijdgenooten (s-Gravenhage 1945) W S Heckscher ldquoThe

Genesis of Iconologyrdquo Stl und Uumlberlieferung in der Kunst

des Abendlandes Akten des XXI Internationalen Kon-

gresses fuumlr Kunstgeschichte (Berlin 1967) 3 239-62 G

Hermereacuten Representation and Meaning in the Visual Arts

A Study in the Methodology of Iconography and Iconology

Lund Studies in Philosophy Vol I (Lund 1969) R Hinks

Myth and Allegory in Ancient Art (London 1939) W

Hofmann Das Irdische Paradies (Munich 1960) G J

Hoogewerff ldquoLIconologie et son importance pour leacutetude

systeacutematique de lart chreacutetienrdquo Rivista dArcheologia Cris-

tiana 8 (1931) 53-82 E de Jongh Zinne- en minnebeelden

in de schilderkunst van de zeventiende eeuw (mdash1967) idem

ldquoErotica in Vogelperspectief De dubbelzinnigheid van een

reeks 17de eeuwse genrevoorstellingenrdquo Simiolus 3

(1968-69) 22-72 L Kalinowski ldquoTreści ideowe i estetyczne

Drzwi Gnieźnieńskichrdquo (ldquoIdeological and Aesthetic Content

of the Gniezno Bronze Doorsrdquo) in Drzwi Gnieźnieńskie ed

M Walicki (Wroclaw 1959) 2 7-160 H Keller Tizians

Poesie fuumlr Koumlnig Philip II von Spanien (Wiesbaden 1969)

R Klein ldquoLa theacuteorie de lexpression figureacutee dans les traiteacutes

italiens sur les imprese 1555-1612rdquo Bibliothegraveque dHu-

manisme et Renaissance 19 (1957) 320-41 republished with

the other relevant studies in la forme et lintelligible (Paris

1969) R Klibansky E Panofsky F Saxl Saturn and Melan-

choly (London 1964) J B Knipping Ikonografie van de

Contra-Reformatie in de Nederlanden (Hilversum 1939-40)

G Kubler The Shape of Time (New Haven and London

1962) R W Lee ldquoUt pictura poesisrdquo Art Bulletin 22

(1940) 197-269 E Macircle Lart religieux du XIIIe siegravecle en

France (Paris 1898) English ed used (New York 1958)

idem Lart religieux de la fin du Moyen-Age en France

(Paris 1908) idem Lart religieux du XIIe siegravecle en France

(Paris 1922) idem Lart religieux apregraves le Concile de Trente

(Paris 1932) J Maurin Białostocka Lessing i sztuki plas-

tyczne (ldquoLessing and the visual artsrdquo) (Wroclaw Warszawa

Krakoacutew 1969) E F von Monroy Embleme und Emblem-

buumlcher in den Niederlanden 1560-1630 ed H M von Erffa

(Utrecht 1964) J Montagu ldquoThe Painted Enigma and

French Seventeenth Century Artrdquo Journal of the Warburg

and Courtauld Institutes 31 (1968) 307-35 W Mrazek

Ikonologie der barocken Deckenmalerei (Vienna 1953)

Uumlsterreichische Akademie der Wissenschaften Philo-

sophisch-historische Klasse Sitzungsberichte 2283 A D

Nock ldquoSarcophagi and Symbolismrdquo American Journal of

Archaeology 50 (1946) 166ff D Panofsky and E Panofsky

ldquoThe Iconography of the Galeacuterie Franccedilois Ier at Fontaine-

bleaurdquo Gazette des Beaux-Arts 652 (1958) 113-90

E Panofsky ldquoUumlber das Verhaumlltnis der Kunstgeschichte zur

Kunsttheorierdquo Zeitschrift fuumlr Aesthetik und allgemeine

Kunstwissenschaft 18 (1925) 129-61 idem Studies in

Iconology (New York 1939) idem ed Abbot Suger (Prince-

ton 1946) idem Gothic Architecture and Scholasticism

(Latrobe Pa 1951) idem Early Netherlandish Painting

(Cambridge Mass 1953) idem Meaning in the Visual Arts

(Garden City N Y 1955) idem Renaissance and Renas-

cences in Western Art (Stockholm 1960) idem Tomb Sculp-

ture (New York 1964) E Panofsky and F Saxl ldquoClassical

Mythology in Medieval Artrdquo Metropolitan Museum Studies

4 (1932-33) 228-80 M Praz Studies in Seventeenth Cen-

tury Imagery (London 1939-47 2nd ed Rome 1964) S

Ringbom ldquoDevotional Images and Imaginative Devotions

Notes on the Place of Art in Late Medieval Private Pietyrdquo

Gazette des Beaux-Arts 6 73 (1969) 159-70 Joseph Sauer

Symbolik des Kirchengebaumludes und seiner Ausstattung in

der Auffassung des Mittelalters 2nd ed (Freiburg i B

1924) F Saxl ldquoFruumlhes Christentum und spaumltes Heidentum

in ihren kuumlnstlerischen Ausdrucksformenrdquo Wiener Jahrbuch

fuumlr Kunstgeschichte 2 (1923) 63-121 M Schapiro ldquoThe

Ruthwell Crossrdquo Art Bulletin 26 (1944) 232-45 idem ldquoOn

the Aesthetic Attitude in Romanesque Artrdquo in Art and

Thought issued in Honour of Ananda Coomaraswamy

(London 1947) 139-50 J Seznec The Survival of the Pagan

Gods (New York 1953) O G von Simson The Gothic

Cathedral (New York 1956) R E Spear ldquoThe Literary

Source of Poussins Realm of Florardquo The Burlington Maga-

zine 107 (1965) 563-69 L Volkmann Bilderschriften der

Renaissance (Leipzig 1923) Hans van de Waal Drie

eeuwen vaderlandsche geschieduitbeelding 1500-1800 (s-

Gravenhage 1952) idem ldquoSome Principles of a General

Iconographical Classificationrdquo in Actes du XVIIe Congregraves

International dHistoire de lArt Amsterdam 1952 (La Haye

1955) 601-06 E Wind ldquoCharity the Case History of a

Patternrdquo Journal of the Warburg Institute 1 (1937) 322ff

JAN BIAŁOSTOCKI

[See also Allegory Baroque Classicism Criticism Enlight-

enment Motif Myth Naturalism in Art Neo-Platonism

Renaissance Humanism Romanticism Symbolism Tem-

perance Ut pictura poesis]

companying canvas-pictures presented historical ex-

amples of virtues Garas pp 280-83) or conceived in

an allegorical way Ovide moraliseacute was popular already

in the late Middle Ages Its influence persisted also

in the time of the baroque Myths and stories under-

went allegorical interpretations along the lines of that

moralizing commentary

What was considered necessary for an artist around

1600 can be seen from Carel van Manders Book of

the Painter (1604) It included a long theoretical poem

a history of classical and modern Italian and Nether-

landish artists a translation and a moral interpretation

of Ovids Metamorphoses and finally a description of

personifications There is no specific section on reli-

gious iconography since artists were well furnished

with books giving them rules in this respect

Against the humanistic conception of art the Council

of Trent proclaimed rules constituting a new system

of religious iconography which put an end to the live

tradition of medieval art These rules were published

officially by the Church and they have been com-

mented upon and elaborated in books by Joannes

Molanus (1570) Saint Carlo Borromeo (1577) Gabriele

Paleotti (1581) Federico Borromeo (1624) and several

others The rules of the Council governed the decora-

tion of churches and other sacred buildings and the

character of pictures representing sacred subjects A

break between the religious and the secular iconogra-

phy became obvious in theoretical literature although

there existed many emblem books of a very distinct

religious character (G de Montenay 1571 B Arias

Montanus 1571 H Hugo 1624) A new strictly for-

mulated system of religious iconography coexisted in

the seventeenth century with humanistic subject mat-

ter symbolism and allegory The classical nude intro-

duced by the Renaissance into art was strictly forbid

den now in religious art but found a free field of

development in secular mythological and allegorical

works Many artists exercised their imagination in both

fields in some specific fields such as sepulchral iconog-

raphy cooperation between religious and humanistic

symbolism was common In the work of P P Rubens

the various aspects of the new iconography found

perhaps their best expression In his art allegorical

concepts classical gods and heroes triumphs of mythi-

cal beings as well as of secular rulers accompany mar-

tyrdoms of Catholic saints and the triumphs of the

Eucharist What began to be separated in theory could

yet coexist in harmony in the work of a great artist

6 In northern European art (before Rubens) the

renewal of the arts during the Renaissance took the

form of the new study of nature and the elaboration

of the most convincing means of representing the ma-

terial world in an illusionistic way traditional medieval

symbolism was transformed in a specific way produc-

ing what E Panofsky called in 1953 ldquodisguised sym-

bolismrdquo The symbolic meaning connected with objects

and qualities persisted but a new mastery reproduced

these symbolical objects with such a degree of realism

that they did not differ any longer from other objects

not charged with any metaphorical meaning Some-

times the symbolical meaning of represented objects

results from the traditional iconography in an unmistak-

able way sometimes the meaning is hinted at by the

inscriptions placed in the picture or on its frame But

in many cases the modern viewer remains perplexed

without any sufficient clue to decide whether in the

picture he observes he has to do with the beginnings

of the representation of reality for its own sake or

whether the search for specific metaphorical meaning

is justified It is still always a matter of discussion to

decide at which moment the representation of some

objects or some scene in life without any symbolical

(or ldquohistoricalrdquo) implications became possible (Gilbert

1952) Observers of the eighteenth and nineteenth

centuries to whom the meaning of old symbols was

wholly forgotten took many images of the fifteenth and

sixteenth centuries for simple representations of life

Bruegel for example was considered as simply a

painter of joking or working peasants Recent studies

in iconography have shown that these pictures are

saturated with disguised meaning and that it is ex-

tremely rare before about 1550 to meet simple repre-

sentations of nature in painting In graphic arts the

direct depiction of life and landscape began earlier

as in the works of Lombard draughtsmen or in the

incredibly fresh convincing drawings and prints by the

Master of the Housebook There are also early excep-

tions in painting like Albrecht Altdorfers landscape

without any human figures But in general it was only

532

during the second half of the sixteenth century that

landscape genre and still-life painting began to ac-

quire equal rights with religious and humanistic history

and allegory predominantly in Venice and in Antwerp

Even then however the representations of people

working in fields (Jacopo or Francesco Bassano) fol-

lowed the old traditions of Calendar-pictures and in

the background of genre scenes as in Pieter Aertsens

pictures a biblical motif may be found which trans-

forms the whole composition into a storia however

unorthodox

With the development of realistic painting in the

seventeenth century there appeared specific iconogra-

phic problems New subjects slowly found convenient

form They entered the scene patterned after the ven-

erable stories of sacred or of profane iconography

H van de Waal described (1952) the process of the for-

mation of national historical iconography in Holland

Scenes depicting recent happenings from a long strug-

gle for national independence appeared first in forms

assimilated to well-known religious or mythical scenes

This was not only an expedient facilitating their com-

position for by this means the new subjects gained the

decorum inherent in the adopted patterns formed to

express traditional stories Similar procedures may be

seen in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries when

more and more sections of reality became interesting

enough to be represented in art

The transfer of decorum from the sacred or allegori-

cal figures to the humans represented is a means used

in what modern iconographers call ldquoallegorical por-

traiturerdquo Renaissance painters had represented real

people under mythological or even sacred disguise

they gave actual faces of living people to the figures

represented with all the attributes and characteristics

of their mythical sacred or even allegorical qualities

Later it was only the pattern which remained still in

the eighteenth century English portraitists patterned

the effigies of contemporary aristocrats after Michel-

angelos Sybils or after allegories like the Caritas

(Wind 1937) J B Oudry represented the Polish King

in exile Stanisław Leszczyński with all the attributes

of the allegory of exile taken from Ripa identifying

him in this way with personification of his most promi-

nent quality (Białostocki 1969)

Dutch realistic painting of the seventeenth century

is a document of an important iconographic conquest

Landscapes seascapes moonlit night scenes snapshots

of people skating in winter landscapes views of market

places church interiors backyards fishermen old

women preparing food fashionable dishes ready for

lunch merchants and artisans elegant gentlemen pay-

ing visits and folk-surgeons performing sensational

street-operations all this became subject matter for

representation and continued to be considered worthy

of depiction until the end of the nineteenth century

It was first considered as such in Holland only then

slowly everyday subject matter was recognized also by

art-theorists in other countries although it was re-

garded as much less dignified than religious mytholog-

ical or allegorical subjects Only in the nineteenth

century did the vogue of realistic representation of

everyday subjects become widespread In Dutch pic-

tures of the seventeenth century we are often con-

fronted with nothing else than representations of pic-

turesque reality Sometimes however these genre

pictures appear to be illustrations of proverbs expres-

sing moralistic folk-wisdom sometimes they recall

scenes from the popular threater of the rederijkers or

rhetoricians especially pictures by Jan Steen (Gud-

laugsson 1945) they contain allusions to emblems

Sometimes the elegant scenes from bourgeois life in-

clude quite indecent erotic allusions (de Jongh 1967

1969) The ambiguity of these pictures was certainly

a source of specific pleasure for those who knew the

key to their true meaning

7 In Catholic countries allegorical art sacred as

well as profane flourished The twofold character of

symbolic representations mentioned above persisted

in the seventeenth century Aristotelian rational sym-

bolism which used images as words was widespread

in the orthodox Catholic iconography of the Counter-

Reformation as well as in the humanistic visual lan-

guage codified by Ripa and others A mystical Neo-

Platonic symbolism transcending reason reappeared

too Its outspoken document is the treatise by Chris-

toforo Giarda Bibliothecae alexandrinae icones sym-

bolicae of 1626 (Gombrich 1948) For Giarda symbolic

images give the beholder a direct insight into the

mysteries of religion which are not accessible to rea-

son

Thanks to symbolic images the mind which is banished from

heaven into this dark cave of the body its actions held in

bondage by the senses can behold the beauty and form

of the Virtues and Sciences divorced from all matter and

yet adumbrated if not perfectly expressed in colours and

is thus roused to an even more fervent love and desire for

them Who then can sufficiently estimate the magni-

tude of the debt we owe to those who expressed the Arts

and Sciences themselves in images and so brought it about

that we could not only know them but look at them as

it were with our eyes that we can meet them and almost

converse with them

(Gombrich [1948] pp 188f)

Great allegorical compositions covering the ceilings of

baroque churches are often realizations of this princi-

ple For those however who conceived allegory as a

rational operation as a language used for didactic aims

the main problem remained the clarity of the allegori-

533

cal message The larger the audience to whom allegory

was addressed the simpler more obvious its symbolism

should have been The banality of allegorical language

provoked criticism in the eighteenth century Fran-

cesco Algarotti (1762) prefers without any doubt his-

torical representations to the ldquoempty allegories and

complicated mythological allusionsrdquo (Garas [1967] p

280) Especially criticized was the obscurity of these

allegories in which completely original unknown sym-

bols were used Roger de Piles praises his favorite

master Rubens who ldquointroduced only such allegories

elements of which were already known from ancient

artrdquo and opposes him to Charles Lebrun who ldquoinstead

of taking symbols from some known source as the

ancient fable and medals has invented almost all of

them and thus the pictures of this kind became riddles

which the beholder does not want to take the task to

solverdquo To keep the balance between platitudinous

redundancy and utter incomprehensibility was the

crucial problem of late baroque allegorism What is

interesting however is that the idea of the picture

as a riddle was not foreign to the seventeenth century

It appears in France as well as in Sweden where David

Kloumlcker Ehrenstrahl (1694) proposed that pictures

present riddles that could not be solved by everyone

In France however the ldquopainted enigmardquo fostered

by the Jesuits in their schools flourished especially well

in the seventeenth century (Montagu 1968) These

ldquopainted enigmasrdquo lent themselves to various inter-

pretations and gave interpreters an opportunity to

show their ingenuity These pictures and their inter-

pretations seem to prove that a considerable flexibility

of meaning was intended

We might rather accept that a work of art was regarded

in the seventeenth century as in a certain sense an open

symbol raw material like the myth or sacred story which

it illustrates on which the interpreter might exercise the

power of his ingenuity turning it into an allegory of Chris-

tian doctrine or a panegyric in honour of his patron

(Montagu [1968] p 334)

Such a situation probably existed only in some specific

circles It was a limiting case The other extreme was

to use in an uninteresting routine way Ripas symbolic

images or those of other popular symbolic handbooks

Such practice continued well into the eighteenth cen-

tury The general trend fed by ideas of the Enlighten-

ment was to make allegories more and more obvious

It is understandable that some theorists like the Count

de Caylus looked for new subject matter presenting

as he did Tableaux tireacutes de lIliade (1755) or that

J J Winckelmann tried to revive allegory and to give

it a new force It was however too late In the eight-

eenth century together with the whole system of

humanistic tradition the systems of iconography began

to disintegrate The great break in the tradition con-

cerned not only style but also iconography Emblem-

atic roots may be discovered in Goyas symbolism as

well as in the reasonable allegories of the Enlighten-

ment but generally speaking there was a search for

new not known or not used sourcesmdashas in William

Blakes biblical individualistic imagerymdashor the new

staging of the old ones as in Jacques Louis Davids

classical subjects

The art of romanticism was a definite break with

the past much more in the field of ideas and iconogra-

phy than in a stylistic respect where romanticists

retrospectively looked back either to medieval and

pre-Raphaelite or to baroque sources Symbols and

allegories yielded to an all-pervading mood and the

traditional repertory of religious allegorical mytho-

logical and historical iconography gave way to a new

iconography Although several encompassing images

of Christian and humanistic art survived they received

new content and essentially changed their character

New attitudes of the individual to the world of nature

and history to society and destiny to time and death

and new problems resulting from the striving after

freedom (which was a new perhaps most important

principle of human behavior in all fields of human

activity) found expression in new thematic fields and

in new particular themes such as ldquoStorm-tossed Boatrdquo

ldquoLonely Wanderer in the Mountainsrdquo ldquoA Death of the

Herordquo (Eitner 1955 Hofmann 1960 Białostocki

1966)

Romanticism has not formed and could not have

formed an iconographic system for since they strived

first of all for originality of individual conception the

romantics interpreted images in a subjective way as

expressions of mood Romanticism has on the other

hand introduced new heroes and martyrs into art

instead of religious ones the national social and artis-

tic ones It created a new image of history seen now

as a set of political and moral examplesmdashas in

baroquemdashbut often put together now according to a

very individualistic principle of choice A correlative

to pathetic and heroic romanticism was a bourgeois

and intimate romanticism its expression was for ex-

ample the new imagery of the open window which

shows to the viewer wide perspectives but shelters him

at the same time from the dangers of the unknown

(Eitner 1955)

When the world of ideas and images created at the

moment of the flowering of romanticism began to be

popularized for the use of the large bourgeois masses

the contentmdashideological and iconographicalmdashof ro-

manticism lost its original authenticity and left be-

hind not a new system of original images but a dispo-

534

sition to melodramatic experiences and an inflation of

a theatrical gesture (Hofmann 1960 Białostocki 1966)

The nineteenth century developed a realistic por-

traiture of man and nature and took over worn out

clicheacutes of the Renaissance and baroque allegories It

introduced new subject matter taken partly from tra-

dition partly from observation of reality tinted with

vague symbolism such as ldquoForgerdquo or the ldquoFuneral of

the Peasantrdquo but it did not create a new system of

iconography in spite of short-lived revivals of symbol-

istic attitudes in such movementsmdashincidentally not

limited to and not initiated in the visual artsmdashas

ldquosymbolismrdquo

New ephemeral artistic movements which consti-

tuted the history of European art in the last hundred

years show an interesting bracketing of style and icon-

ography in spite of a preponderant lack of iconogra-

phic interest Their representatives chose subjects suit-

able to specific artistic aims and means which they

developed and were interested in Impressionists

painted seaside scenes landscapes and genre pictures

showing the life of artistic and intellectual milieus

Cubists introduced a specific repertory of still-life

motifs symbols of the artists atelier and of the life

of the bohegraveme bottles musical instruments books

fruits flowers newspapers How much these motifs

were connected with specific cubist style appears when

one looks at works of artists foreign to the original

cubist group but imitating its style as for instance

several Czech artists like Emil Filla They adopted

cubist iconography together with cubist style Abstract

movements in general lacked iconography although

they were not foreign to symbolic tendencies espe-

cially in sculpture (Brancusi Moore) Only in the dec-

ades of 1950-70 can a revival of more articulated and

programmatic symbolism be observed One may sup-

pose that this revival is at least in part brought about

by the development of research in iconography and

symbolism which took place in the second and third

quarters of our century

II

1 The origins of ldquointerpretative iconographyrdquo may

be seen in the descriptions (ekphrasis) of works of art

known in classical literature But these descriptions

like those by Philostratus the Elder or Lucian are

limited simply to description and lack in general any

interpretation Moreover it is not certain whether they

are descriptions of actual or fictitious works of art at

least opinions in this respect vary Brief medieval tituli

which formulated in words the content of religious

images were to be sure interpretative sometimes but

they were short and cannot be connected with the

tradition of artistic erudition We have to look to

modern times to indicate the beginnings of iconogra-

phic interpretation and research From Vasaris Rag-

ionamenti in which interpretations of the paintings

decorating the Palazzo Vecchio in Florence are given

we learn how complicated and how undecipherable

iconographic concepts might have been even to peo-

ple living in buildings decorated by paintings expres-

sing these concepts But perhaps the first really to be

considered as interested in iconographic research was

the seventeenth-century archaeologist and art theorist

Giovanni Pietro Bellori In the introduction to his Lives

of Artists (1672) Bellori stressed that he paid special

attention to the content of the works of art he was

talking about and he even credited the painter Nicolas

Poussin with having directed his attention to iconogra-

phy In his Lives Bellori presented short interpretative

descriptions of pictures and he sometimes developed

these interpretations further in small iconographic

essays the influence of classical ekphrasis on him is

a possibility Sometimes his errors took deep roots in

the subsequent history of art as when he explained

Poussins Triumph of Flora (Dresden) by designating

Ovids Metamorphoses as its source The true source

Marinos Adona was finally found by R E Spear in

1965

What is interesting in Belloris procedure is that he

first identifies the motifs tries to connect them with

classical or modern literary sources and then proceeds

to find out the deep meaning the general symbolic

idea of the work Therefore he may be considered as

one of the pioneers not only of iconography as a disci-

pline of research but also of iconology as formulated

by its recent partisans That even in the second half

of the sixteenth century some observers were inclined

to look for hidden meaning in each element of the work

of art we learn from Joannes Molanus (1570) who in

De picturis et imaginibus sacris states reasonably that

ldquoit is not necessary to ask for meaning of everything

that can be observed in a picture in such cases a lot

of absurd things may resultrdquo But the consciousness of

the importance of iconography increased and at the

end of the seventeenth century Andreacute Feacutelibien stressed

that in order to attribute a picture to a painter it is

not enough to know the way he uses his brush one

needs also to know his esprit to learn his geacutenie and

to be able to foresee in which way he is able to form

his conceptions Thus iconographic analysis was con-

sidered necessary even for the purpose of attribution

Descriptive interpretations of the works of ancient

art appeared in the big archaeological publications of

the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries such as

Jacques Spons Miscellanea eruditae antiquitatis (1679)

G P Belloris Admiranda romanarum antiquitatum ac

veteris sculpturae vestigia (1693) P de Caylus Recueil

535

dantiquiteacutes eacutegyptiennes eacutetrusques grecques et

romaines (1752-67) and in an interesting endeavor

(although very much criticized by Lessing) of Joseph

Spence to explain classical poets through works of art

and vice versa (Polymetis 1747) Classical archaeology

however has not been especially interested in iconog-

raphy and the use of the term itself by archaeolo-

gists was limited to portraiture The first great devel-

opment of iconographic studies was connected with

the romantic movement although an important pre-

lude for it was hagiographical collections of sources

such as Acta sanctorum published by the Bollandists

(1643-1794 resumed later) Among the pre-romantic

scholars in iconography the eminent German poet

G E Lessing is to be noted His study of the repre-

sentation of death in classical times can be considered

as one of the first essays in interpretative iconography

which is now called iconology In Wie die Alten den

Tod gebildet (1769) Lessing tries to interpret the classi-

cal iconographic type of Amor with the inverted torch

and to find its ldquointrinsic meaningrdquo by taking into ac-

count the religion customs and philosophy of the

classical world The work of art is interpreted by Less-

ing as ldquoa symptom of something elserdquo While Lessings

predecessors (like B de Montfaucon) ldquoexplained the

classical past by monumentsrdquo he for the first time did

the opposite ldquohe explained the monuments by Antiq-

uityrdquo (Maurin Białostocka [1969] pp 92-100)

Pre-romantic and romantic interests in myth and

symbol found their expression in publications and dis-

cussions by German philosophers and scholars like F

Schlegel J Herder J J von Goumlrres and F Creuzer

Creuzers work Symbolik und Mythologie der alten

Voumllker (1810) which shows the influence of mystical

Neo-Platonic ideas on symbols (Gombrich 1965) was

the most influential in the romantic period in Ger-

many Under the impact of Chateaubriands le Geacutenie

du christianisme (1802) research in medieval iconog-

raphy developed mainly in France Works by French

scholars mostly clergymen which were indeed con-

cerned with Christian medieval art dominated icon-

ographical study in the nineteenth century Since most

of these writers were not professional scholars their

work was often amateurish in character but it is unde-

niable that books by A N Didron Histoire de Dieu

(Paris 1843) the first part of a comprehensive pro-

jected but not completed iconography of Christian art

A Crosnier Iconographie chreacutetienne (Caen 1848) C

Cahier Caracteacuteristiques des saints (Paris 1867) C

Rohault de Fleury Archeacuteologie chreacutetienne les saints

de la messe et leurs monuments 12 vols (Paris

1893-1900) L Breacutehier Lart chreacutetien son deacuteveloppe-

ment iconographique des origines agrave nos jours (Paris

1918) P Perdrizet V Leroquais and G de Jerphanion

have built up a solid body of iconographical knowl-

edge on which scholars of the twentieth century were

able to erect a modern comprehensive structure In

the field of Byzantine iconography it was Gabriel

Millets Recherches sur liconographie de leacutevangile aux

XIVe XVe et XVIe siegravecles (Paris 1916 reprint

1960) that was basic for any further study For Western

chiefly French art a well-written and learned work

appealing to the general reader as well as to the

scholar was produced by Eacutemile Macircle who in his four

volumes of the history of religious art (1898-1932) has

presented a well-composed synthetic image of icono-

graphical development A lexicographic summary of

these studies of generations of French scholars is pre-

sented in the Dictionnaire darcheacuteologie chreacutetienne et

de liturgie published from 1907 to 1953 and edited

by F Cabrol and H Leclerq A recent reference work

is that by L Reacuteau Iconographie de lart chreacutetien (Paris

1955-59) Russian scholars have done important work

in the field of Byzantine and Orthodox iconography

of religious art The most prominent are N P Kon-

dakov Ikonografia Bogomatieri (St Petersburg 1911

2nd ed 1914-15) D V Ainalov Mosaiki IV i V vekov

(St Petersburg 1895) and N Pokrovski Otcherki

pamyatnikov christianskogo isskusstva i ikonografii (St

Petersburg 1894 3rd ed 1910) V Lasarev and M

Alpatov belonging to the mid-twentieth-century gen-

eration of Russian scholars discuss iconography in

several works on religious art German scholarship

produced in the nineteenth century works by F Piper

A Springer and H Detzel Useful compendia were

produced in the early twentieth century by J Sauer

W Molsdorf K Kuumlnstle and J Braun Dutch scholars

C Smits J B Knipping and J J M Timmers contrib-

uted to iconographic studies in recent times Knip-

pings book (1939-40) being the most important work

on the iconography of the Counter-Reformation and

supplementing Macircles volume of 1932 In the twentieth

century on C R Moreys initiative iconographic

studies were inaugurated in North America Focused

on earlier medieval art these studies developed at

Princeton University

A new direction characteristic of iconographic

studies in the twentieth century has been given to

them by the international school of art historical re-

search inaugurated by the Hamburg scholar Aby

Warburg At the International Congress for the History

of Art at Rome in 1912 he presented a sensational

astrological interpretation of the frescoes painted by

Francesco Cossa and his collaborators in Palazzo

Schifanoja at Ferrara Warburg solved the secret of

those representations which had puzzled the ingenuity

of several former students interpreting them as images

of zodiacal signs and their decans But he did not limit

536

his contribution to the presentation of his results He

wanted to stress the importance of his approach and

of the method of study which later became connected

with his name He said

I hope that through the method used by me for explication

of the frescoes at the Palazzo Schifanoja of Ferrara I have

proved that an iconological analysis which does not allow

itself to be diverted by the rules of frontier police from

considering antiquity Middle Ages and modern times as

interconnected periods nor from analyzing the most liberal

and the most applied works of art as equally important

documents of expression that this method endeavoring as

it does to throw light upon one dark spot clears up at

the same time great interconnected developments

(Warburg 1912 Heckscher 1967)

Warburgs influence on the history of art was very

great although he himself did not write much It was

mainly the posthumous impact of his ideas promul-

gated as they were by Fritz Saxl which contributed

to the specific direction of studies concentrated in the

library Warburg founded in Hamburg and which Saxl

succeeded in transplanting during the Nazi era to

London where it became the Warburg Institute of the

University of London While the object of study of the

nineteenth-century iconographers was mainly religious

art in its relation to religious literary sources and lit-

urgy for Warburg the study of images was a study

of their relations to religion to poetry to myth to

science and to social and political life Art was for

him closely connected with the polyphonic structure

of historical life

Warburgs ideas had a great importance for the most

influential theory of iconographic interpretation in our

century that elaborated by Erwin Panofsky In Ham-

burg where Warburg Saxl and Panofsky were active

in the twenties Ernst Cassirer built up his philosophy

of symbolic forms which constituted an additional

background for Panofskys system being derived as

his own methodology was from the traditions of

Kantian philosophy Around 1930 Panofskys ideas

ripened into a system which found formulation in his

book herkules am Scheidewege (1930) and later in a

theoretical article of 1932 G J Hoogewerff was how-

ever the first to propose the word ldquoiconologyrdquo as a

name for the method of an analysis of content in a

work of art (Warburg spoke of iconological analysis)

In 1931 he proposed distinguishing between iconogra-

phy as a descriptive science aiming at the identifica-

tion of themes and ldquoiconologyrdquo aiming at the under-

standing ldquoof symbolic dogmatic or mystical meaning

which is expressed (or hidden) in figurative formsrdquo He

stressed that ldquoiconologyrdquo deals with works of art with-

out classifying them according to the technique used

or to the achieved perfection taking into account only

their meaning Hoogewerff saw the last aim of iconol-

ogy in finding out the cultural and ideological back-

ground expressed by works of art and the cultural and

social significance which can be attributed to certain

forms and to means of expression in the same time

Hoogewerffs part in the expansion of iconology was

limited because he did not endorse his methodical

proposals with examples of historical interpretations

Erwin Panofsky with whose name iconology has

been connected ever since not only developed its

theoretical foundations but contributed by his practi-

cal work in art history to the main triumph of iconol-

ogy after the Second World War The most influential

book by Panofsky has been Studies in Iconology (1939)

in which his masterly presentation of the method was

connected with its equally excellent exemplification

2 Panofsky considers the interpretation of a work

of art as falling on three levels On the first level the

object of interpretation is the primary or natural sub-

ject matter The function of interpretation is called

ldquopre-iconographical descriptionrdquo In order to be able

to arrive at a correct interpretation on that level the

interpreter must have a practical experience (ldquofamili-

arity with objects and eventsrdquo) common to everybody

at least in one cultural sphere However he has to

control his observations by a ldquocorrective knowledge

of the history of stylerdquo (ldquoinsight into the manner in

which under varying historical conditions objects and

events were expressed by formsrdquo) On the second level

the function of interpretation is called ldquoiconographical

analysisrdquo its object is the ldquosecondary or conventional

subject matterrdquo constituting the world of images his-

tories and allegories The interpreters equipment in

this case is obviously the knowledge of literary sources

giving him a ldquofamiliarity with specific themes and

conceptsrdquo The interpreter has to control his observa-

tions by ldquothe insight into the manner in which under

varying historical conditions specific themes or con-

cepts were expressed by objects and eventsrdquo On the

third level the function of interpreting is called ldquoicon-

ographical analysis in a deeper senserdquo (1939) or ldquoicon-

ological analysisrdquo (1955) Its object is the ldquointrinsic

meaning or contentrdquo of a work of art The interpreters

equipment on that level should be a ldquofamiliarity with

the essential tendencies of the human mindrdquo and he

has to control his interpretation by the ldquoinsight into

the manner in which under varying historical condi-

tions essential tendencies of the human mind were

expressed by specific themes and conceptsrdquo Thus

taking all the time into account what Panofsky calls

the history of tradition the interpreter has to aim at

understanding the work of art its ldquoprimaryrdquo as well

as ldquosecondary subject matterrdquo as symptoms of some

fundamental tendency of the human mind typical of

537

a place a time a civilization and of an individual

responsible for the creation of the work ldquoIconologyrdquomdash

for Panofskymdashldquois a method of interpretation which

arises from synthesis rather than analysisrdquo Trying to

find the intrinsic meaning of a work of art

The art historian will have to check what he thinks is the

intrinsic meaning of the work or group of works against

what he thinks is the intrinsic meaning of as many other

documents of civilization historically related to that work

or group of works as he can master It is in the search

for intrinsic meaning or content that the various humanistic

disciplines meet on a common plane instead of serving as

handmaidens to each other

(Panofsky [1955] p 39)

The concept of intrinsic meaning of a work of art

was elaborated by Panofsky much earlier (1925) when

he interpreted in his own way the concept of Kunst-

wollen introduced by A Riegl to research in art

Panofsky understood this ldquoartistic volitionrdquo as an im-

manent ultimate meaning of a work of art which is

manifested in the way basic artistic problems are solved

in that work He used the same concept further to bring

art closer to the other fields of human activity Since

the ldquoimmanent ultimate senserdquo of the work of art is

nothing else than uniformity in the way of solving basic

artistic problems it is possible to compare that imma-

nent sense with immanent senses of the other human

works in various fields Panofsky did it for instance

when in one of his later works he compared the struc-

tural principles of Gothic architecture with those of

scholastic thinking (1951)

The system elaborated by Panofsky and exemplified

by his own work in art history was the first consistent

system of an integral interpretation of a work of visual

arts based on the analysis of content In principle

Panofskys system takes into account all the elements

of the work of art since it takes as the point of depar-

ture the sensual exterior shape of the work It is

however clear that its main scope is not the inter-

pretation of form as a bearer of meaning but the

understanding and interpretation of conventional alle-

gories literary themes and symbols as symptoms of

the history of the human mind It was that method

in the history of art which programmatically fostered

a collaboration with all the other disciplines of histori-

cal studies It was therefore one of the most influential

methods not only among art historians but also among

representatives of the other branches of humanistic

studies Although there were art historians who ex-

pressed a critical attitude toward ldquoiconologyrdquo as the

new method was soon baptized its influence was over-

whelming

3 It is not only but mainly due to Panofsky that

one can venture to call ldquoiconographicalrdquo that period

of art history as a historical discipline which followed

the Second World War and to oppose it to the ldquostylis-

ticrdquo one which preceded it It does not mean of course

that no iconographic research took place in the

twenties or thirties the works of Macircle Knipping van

Marle Wilpert Saxl and of Panofsky himself would

contradict such a statement Neither is it true that

purely formal research aiming at stylistic classification

and analysis discontinued after World War II It is

evident that in the last decades (from 1940 on) icono-

graphic interests came to the fore and became domi-

nant in many countries Iconographical studies grew

so much in number and importance that they made

it possible to undertake and to publish new reference

works of iconographic character like dictionaries

written by one scholar (Guy de Tervarent Aurenham-

mer) as well as larger works based on a collaboration

of several scholars (Encyclopedias of German art of

Antiquity and Christian civilization of Byzantine art)

Interest in meaning and iconography has appeared

also among historians of political social and religious

institutions The symbolism of signs ceremonies cos-

tumes and arms was studied by such scholars as A

Alfoumlldi ldquoInsignien und Tracht der roumlmischen Kaiserrdquo

Mitteilungen des deutschen Archaumlologischen Instituts

Roumlmische Abteilung (1935) 1ff ldquoDie Geburt der

kaiserlichen Bildsymbolikrdquo museum Helveticum 9

(1952) 204ff also by A Grabar Martyrium (Paris

1943-46) by E H Kantorowicz laudes Regiae

(Berkeley and Los Angeles 1946) The Kings Two

Bodies (Princeton 1957) by H P L Orange Studies

in the Iconography of Cosmic Kingship in the Ancient

World (Oslo 1953) Art Forms and Civic Life in the

Late Roman Empire (Princeton 1965) and by P E

Schramm herrschaftszeichen und Staatssymbolik

(Stuttgart 1954-56) In their studies iconography far

transcends the borders of art and it helps to build up

a history of ideas by following their various visual

expressions

Pioneering studies by K Giehlow F Saxl and E

Panofsky enlarged iconographical interests above all

to encompass the large field of secular art whereas

they had been mainly limited to religious iconography

in the work of preceding generations of scholars The

whole complicated and hardly known large body of

meanings disguised by the cryptic language of hiero-

glyphs emblems and iconologies became one of the

main topics of study

This established a collaboration between historians

of art and literature Mario Prazs admirable study of

emblems and his bibliography of emblem books

(1939-47) belongs now to the foundations of studies

in that field Publications by W S Heckscher and

A K Wirth by R S Clements E F von Monroy and

538

H M von Erffa E de Jongh and H Miedema and

several other scholars have elucidated the structure

and meaning of emblems and have shown their tre-

mendous influence on art even in its most monumental

and dignified forms An uninterrupted flow of reprints

of emblem books which brought within the reach of

modern students inaccessible volumes of sixteenth- and

seventeenth-century emblem writers were crowned by

the monumental undertaking of Arthur Henkel and

Albrecht Schoumlne who compiled an excellent volume

including almost all the texts and images needed for

the study of emblemsmdashEmblemata Handbuch zur

Sinnbildkunst des XVI und XVII Jahrhunderts

(Stuttgart 1967) Research was under way on hiero-

glyphs (Erik Iversen) and on the imprese (the late

Robert Klein) as well as on iconologies and allegories

These studies have disclosed meanings of the art of

the Renaissance of mannerism and of the baroque not

understood by nineteenth-century scholars

E Panofsky deciphered extremely farfetched and

individualistic programs of decoration of such famous

ensembles as the Camera di San Paolo by Correggio

in Parma the Gallery of Franccedilois I at Fontainebleau

Edgar Wind Andreacute Chastel and other scholars inter-

preted Raphaels decorations in the Popes apartments

Michelangelos art furnished material to detailed com-

prehensive studies by Panofsky Ch de Tolnay H von

Einem and Pope-Hennessy in which the share of

Neo-Platonic thinking in the ideological background

of the celebrated works of Michelangelo was discussed

Innumerable studies have been devoted to Titians

mythological paintings J R Martin presented expla-

nations of the Carracci frescoes in the Camerino Far-

nese and in the great gallery of the Palazzo Farnese

Bruegel considered in the nineteenth century as a drocircle

painter of peasant life has been shown by de Tolnay

Stridbeck and others to be an allegorist expressing a

skeptical humanistic outlook J S Held and W

Stechow contributed several articles to the under-

standing of mythological and allegorical contents in

Flemish and Dutch art of the sixteenth and seventeenth

centuries Rembrandts iconography was put into new

light by the two above-mentioned scholars as well as

by H M Rotermund H van de Waal J G van Gelder

H von Einem and Ch Tuumlmpel The intricate symbol-

ism and subject matter of historical and mythological

pictures by Nicolas Poussin were elucidated by such

masters of iconographic research as E H Gombrich

W Friedlaumlnder E Panofsky and above all by A Blunt

who in his monograph on Poussin presented a new

deep synthetic view of the ideas expressed by that

artists works Goyas individualistic secret symbolism

was also studied with the help of emblems and the

allegorical tradition Berninis works received iconolo

gical treatment by R Wittkower and H Kauffmann

All of this research does not mean that there was a

lack of interest in religious iconography M Schapiro

A Katzenellenbogen H Bober F Wormald and V

Elbern among others have contributed considerably

to deepen our understanding of the not completely

explained motifs and prominent works of medieval art

Panofsky has also shed a new light on several problems

of sepulchral iconography studies by such scholars as

R Berliner G von der Osten L Kalinowski S

Ringbom and T Dobrzeniecki contributed to late

medieval iconography in a new way Berliner stressed

the autonomous invention of visual artists or their

patrons while according to the traditional view popu-

larized by Macircle late medieval art should have followed

strictly literary sources

The religious content of modern art especially its

allegorical form in the late baroque period has been

examined and thanks to studies by such scholars as

W Mrazek and H Bauer has become better known

and understandable A great change was introduced

by ldquoiconologyrdquo into architectural history Buildings

which were formerly interpreted from aesthetic and

functional points of view only have been shown to

present allegorical symbolical or even emblematic

ideas Publications by leading art historians (R Witt-

kower B Smith G Bandmann O von Simson and

G C Argan) have presented medieval and modern

architecture as a bearer of meaning and have essen-

tially changed the character of architectural history

The iconography of classicism and romanticism

received a thorough treatment in books by W Hof-

mann and R Rosenblum as well as in several studies

devoted to individual themes and pictures G Hersey

has for example shown how much Delacroixs decora-

tion of the library in the Palais Bourbon owed to

Giambattista Vicos ideas about history More recently

studies on ldquoSymbolismrdquo have been undertaken Vincent

van Goghs symbolic language and iconography were

the object of studies by J Seznec C Nordenfalk and

other scholars On Ceacutezannes iconography interesting

remarks have been published by M Schapiro

Along with the development of iconographic studies

the establishment of centers of documentation has

advanced The ldquoFrenchrdquo stage in the development of

iconography has not left any marked trace in this

respect It was in America thanks to C R Morey that

the famous Index of Christian Art at the Department

of Art and Archaeology of Princeton University was

founded at first limited to the early Middle Ages then

enlarged so as to include art up to the end of the

medieval period Copies of the Princeton Index are

to be found also at the Istituto Pontificio dArcheolo-

gia in Rome and in the Dumbarton Oaks Library and

539

Collection in Washington DC But that Index ends

ldquowhere art beginsrdquomdashas Panofsky used to say jokingly

The need for systematic iconographic files for modern

art was strongly felt In 1956 A Pigler published a

very useful book Barockthemen in which he listed

thousands of works of art of the baroque period ac-

cording to their subjects It was however far from

being a systematic work The first essay in establishing

a systematic iconographic index for art of any time

was done by The Netherlands Institute for Art History

at the Hague then directed by H Gerson which took

the initiative around 1950 of publishing a postcard-size

photographic index of its rich collection of photographs

of Netherlandish art ordered according to an icono-

graphic principle Once such an idea was formulated

the need for a comprehensive consistent and clear

iconographic classification was urgent H van de Waal

of Leiden University devised such a system of classifi-

cation based on decimal divisions consistent and easy

to read He based his system on experiences of ethnol-

ogy and on such elaborated systems of classification

as that devised by Stith Thompson in his Motif-Index

of Folk Literature Vols I-VI (Bloomington Ind

1932-36 rev ed 1955-58) Van de Waal has elabor-

ated a system in which the first five main sections

classify five fundamental groups of portrayable things

namely (1) The Supernatural (2) Nature (3) Man (4)

Society (5) Abstracts The last four classify specific

subjects such as (6) History (7) The Bible (8) Myths

Legends and Tales (with the exception of classical

antiquity) (9) Myths and Legends of Classical Antiq-

uity Van de Waal combines the classification in the

first and in the second group in order to classify general

as well as specific subjects Christ in his system is

described with the sign ldquo11 Drdquo (ldquo1rdquo standing for Su-

pernatural ldquo11rdquo for Christianity ldquoDrdquo for Christ) the

adult Christ = 11 D 3 since ldquoshepherdrdquo on the other

hand bears the signature 47 I 221 the adult Christ

as a shepherd can be described in this system by the

following formula 11 D 3 = 47 I 221 Van de Waal

has also provided means to describe more complex

images which he expresses by adding elements between

brackets The Annunciation with God the Father and

a winged Angel is expressed by the following formula

73 A 5 (+1 +41) ldquo1rdquo standing for God the Father

and ldquo41rdquo for a winged Angel (van de Waal 1952) This

system elaborated for many years by its inventor and

prepared for publication in many volumes has proved

most useful in the practical arrangement of the Icono-

graphical Index of the Netherlandish Art and as the

only one until now in existence it became used more

and more in spite of some ambiguities and difficulties

As an endeavor to classify ldquoall portrayablerdquo things

persons events and ideas and to create a consistent

method to describe every possible image van de Waals

system may be considered as one of the important

achievements of the ldquoiconographical stagerdquo in the

development of art history Iconographic files exist of

course in many institutions as for example in the Ikon-

ologisch Instituut of Utrecht University one of the

main centers of study in emblematics and of course

in the most venerable institution of iconographic re-

search the Warburg Institute of the London University

and in other places

4 What was the result of this ldquoiconographicrdquo turn

in the development of the history of art One thing

is certain that this discipline by necessity has come

closer to other humanistic disciplines Since the

ldquointrinsicrdquo meaningmdashin Panofskys terminologymdashof a

work of art cannot be described in terms used by the

history of art but only in terms borrowed from the

history of philosophy of religion of social structures

of science and so on the ldquoiconological methodrdquo took

for granted and provoked such a collaboration Art

history was perhaps the first or one of the first to show

new interest in investigation of meaning It was fol-

lowed by similar developments in ethnology and in

linguistics

We have mentioned above a parallel development

in Byzantine and classical studies Panofskys influence

has been considerable in the other fields of humanistic

research Since ldquoiconologyrdquo aimed at discovering ideas

expressed by a work of art it awoke in art historians

an interest in the history of ideas This general shift

of emphasis and of the direction of studies from mainly

formal ones to studies aiming at ideas underlying art

was perhaps responsible among others for the fact that

several contributions to the Journal of the History of

Ideas have been written by historians of art

It is not difficult to see that such a development

should have provoked criticism on the side of those

who care about the purity and autonomy of methods

Iconology was criticized as far as its internal coherence

and also as far as its claim to be the integral method

of the study of art are concerned (Białostocki 1962)

Studies by R Klein E Forssman G Previtali G

Kubler B Teyssegravedre C Ginzburg and G Hermeren

expressed critical opinions in one or the other respect

Iconology linked art with the rest of history but it

disrupted the links between the work of art and other

things (Kubler 1962) Concentrating on meaning

iconology neglected art as form as individual expres-

sion Iconology implied a rational relationship between

intellectual content and artistic form On the one hand

one spoke of ldquoiconological diminutionsrdquo (Kubler

1962)mdashlimitations of research to meaning only But

on the other hand the overstatements of iconology

were criticized its representatives sometimes seemed

540

to assume everything symbolized something And some

iconologists seemed to consider important in art not

that which makes art a different field of human activity

but that which connects art with other fieldsmdashwith

the history of ideas

There were of course critics who had the opposite

opinion Since the end of the eighteenth century a

direct experience of art was more and more valued

and its symbolical function considered as a burden

J G von Herder said ein Kunstwerk ist der Kunst

wegen da aber bei einem Symbole ist die Kunst

dienend (ldquoA work of art is there because of art but

with a symbol art is a servicerdquo) Similar opinions were

expressed by nineteenth-century art writers and in this

century they have been voiced by Benedetto Croce and

by other Italian opponents of contenutismo by which

they meant interest in content For such critics to put

stress on iconography was to miss the essential in art

and to focus attention on a subordinate function of art

Also among scholars who considered the function

of representation and of communication as a legitimate

and important function of art criticism was expressed

not against the principle of an iconographical or icon-

ological investigation but against overstatements in

their application The introduction of the idea of ldquodis-

guised symbolismrdquo has created a danger of course of

opening the way to fanciful interpretations The alle-

gorical and symbolical function of mythological imag-

ery in classical art is also difficult to interpret precisely

Since no literary sources give a key to an interpretation

of the iconography of the sarcophagi very divergent

theories have been expressed concerning their meaning

Some archaeologists like F Cumont (1942) believe

that mythological and allegorical imagery (Anadyo-

mene Sea-Thiasos Personifications of the Seasons) is

to be read symbolically The Sea-Thiasos for instance

is to be interpreted as a symbol of the journey of the

souls of the deceased to the islands of the blessed

Others like A D Nock (1946) do not find enough

evidence to accept other than a decorative function

in such imagery

The intrusion of some representatives of psychology

eg C G Jung into iconographic studies giving them

an unhistorical turn in their search for ldquoarchetypal

imagesrdquo has complicated the situation although art

historians in general understandably have not accepted

that kind of approach to symbolism (Frankfort 1958

Gombrich 1965)

The fact that iconographic interpretations sometimes

lack satisfactory proofs does not detract from the im-

portance of such investigations so long as they are

conducted according to the requirements of historical

methods and take into account the corrective princi-

ples established by Panofsky A correct acquaintance

with the way of thinking of the artist the patron or the

viewer based on a satisfactory knowledge of documen-

tary visual and literary sources an awareness of the

choice situations produced by historical developments

may enable art historians to discover the secondary

meaning of a work of art as well as its intrinsic mean-

ing It is of course possible that the art historian will

meet some works for which it will not be possible to re-

construct in a satisfactory way the world of ideas that

would account for the meaning of those works In such

cases a reliable interpretation is simply not possible

R Berliner (1945 1966) criticized the widespread

opinion according to which content of the works of

visual arts in the Middle Ages had to be checked

against the literary sources considered as the only

medium in which ideological innovations were per-

mitted Berliner pleaded for assuming a considerable

ldquofreedomrdquo in the medieval artist and he considered

iconographic innovation possible even when no writ-

ten evidence could be found Meyer Schapiro (1947)

presented proofs that sometimes purely aesthetic rea-

sons decided the character of the work of art even as

early as the Romanesque period

We can only touch on some specific discussions going

on in the field of iconographic research But iconogra-

phic research is far from being a closed system and

the relative share of iconographic and stylistic criticism

in the work of art historians is always a matter of

discussion It is certain that the ldquoiconographicrdquo period

in the study of art has enlarged in a considerable way

the understanding of the art of the past and that it

has connected art history in a way unknown before

with the other historical disciplines and above all others

with the history of ideas

BIBLIOGRAPHY

L B Alberti On Painting ed J Spencer (New Haven

1956 revised ed 1966) E Auerbach ldquoFigurardquo (1944) trans

and published in Scenes From the Drama of European Liter-

ature (New York 1959) pp 11-76 K Bauch ldquoImagordquo

(1960) Studien zur Kunstgeschichte (Berlin 1967) pp 1-20

G P Bellori Descrizione delle imagini dipinte da Raffaello

(Rome 1695 ed used is 1751) R Berliner ldquoThe Free-

dom of Medieval Artrdquo Gazette des Beaux-Arts 628 (1945)

263-88 idem ldquoBemerkungen zu einigen Darstellungen des

Erloumlsers als Schmerzensmannrdquo Das Muumlnster 9 (1956)

97-117x J Białostocki ldquoIconografia e Iconologiardquo Enciclo-

pedia Universale dellArte (1962) Vol VII cols 163-75

trans as Encyclopedia of World Art (1966) Vol VII cols

769-85 lists almost all important older contributions to this

field idem ldquoRomantische Ikonographierdquo Stil und Ikonog-

raphie (Dresden 1966) pp 156-81 idem ldquoKompozycja

emblematyczna epitafioacutew ślaskich XVI wiekurdquo (ldquoEmblem-

atic Composition of Silesian Epitaphs of the Sixteenth Cen-

turyrdquo) Ze studioacutew nad Sztuka XVI wieku na Řlasku

(Wrocław 1968) pp 77-93 idem ldquoEsilio Privatordquo Bulletin

du Museacutee National de Varsovie 10 (1969) 95-101 J

541

Chydenius The Theory of Medieval Symbolism (Helsingfors

1960) Series of the Societas Scientiarum Fennica Com-

mentationes Humanarum Litterarum 27 2 R J Clements

Picta Poesis (Rome 1960) F Creuzer Symbolik und

Mythologie der Alten Voumllker (Leipzig and Darmstadt 1810

revised ed 1819) F Cumont Recherches sur le symbolisme

funeacuteraire des Romains (Paris 1942) L Eitner ldquoThe Open

Window and the Storm-Tossed Boatrdquo Art Bulletin 37

(1955) 281-90 H Frankfort ldquoThe Archetype in Analytical

Psychology and the History of Religionrdquo Journal of the

Warburg and Courtauld Institutes 21 (1958) 166-78

K Garas ldquoAllegorie und Geschichte in der Venezianischen

Malerei des 18 Jahrhundertsrdquo in proceedings of the XXI

International Congress of the History of Art Bonn Stil und

Uumlberlieferung in der Kunst des Abendlandes (Berlin 1967)

3 280-83 K Giehlow ldquoDie Hieroglyphenkunde des

Humanismus in der Allegorie der Renaissancerdquo Jahrbuch

der Kunsthistorischen Sammlungen des Allerhochsten

Kaiserhauses 32 (1915) 1-232 C Gilbert ldquoOn Subject and

Not-Subject in Italian Renaissance Picturesrdquo Art Bulletin

34 (1952) 202-16 C Ginzburg ldquoDa A Warburg a E H

Gombrich Note su un problema di metodordquo Studi medi-

evali series 3 7 (1966) 1015-65 E H Gombrich ldquoIcones

Symbolicae The Visual Image in Neo-Platonic Thoughtrdquo

Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes 11 (1948)

163-92 idem ldquoThe Use of Art for the Study of Symbolsrdquo

American Psychologist 20 (1965) A Grabar Liconoclasme

byzantin Dossier archeacuteologique (Paris 1957) idem Chris-

tian Iconography A Study of Its Origins (Princeton 1969)

S J Gudlaugsson De Comedianten bij Jan Steen en zijn

tijdgenooten (s-Gravenhage 1945) W S Heckscher ldquoThe

Genesis of Iconologyrdquo Stl und Uumlberlieferung in der Kunst

des Abendlandes Akten des XXI Internationalen Kon-

gresses fuumlr Kunstgeschichte (Berlin 1967) 3 239-62 G

Hermereacuten Representation and Meaning in the Visual Arts

A Study in the Methodology of Iconography and Iconology

Lund Studies in Philosophy Vol I (Lund 1969) R Hinks

Myth and Allegory in Ancient Art (London 1939) W

Hofmann Das Irdische Paradies (Munich 1960) G J

Hoogewerff ldquoLIconologie et son importance pour leacutetude

systeacutematique de lart chreacutetienrdquo Rivista dArcheologia Cris-

tiana 8 (1931) 53-82 E de Jongh Zinne- en minnebeelden

in de schilderkunst van de zeventiende eeuw (mdash1967) idem

ldquoErotica in Vogelperspectief De dubbelzinnigheid van een

reeks 17de eeuwse genrevoorstellingenrdquo Simiolus 3

(1968-69) 22-72 L Kalinowski ldquoTreści ideowe i estetyczne

Drzwi Gnieźnieńskichrdquo (ldquoIdeological and Aesthetic Content

of the Gniezno Bronze Doorsrdquo) in Drzwi Gnieźnieńskie ed

M Walicki (Wroclaw 1959) 2 7-160 H Keller Tizians

Poesie fuumlr Koumlnig Philip II von Spanien (Wiesbaden 1969)

R Klein ldquoLa theacuteorie de lexpression figureacutee dans les traiteacutes

italiens sur les imprese 1555-1612rdquo Bibliothegraveque dHu-

manisme et Renaissance 19 (1957) 320-41 republished with

the other relevant studies in la forme et lintelligible (Paris

1969) R Klibansky E Panofsky F Saxl Saturn and Melan-

choly (London 1964) J B Knipping Ikonografie van de

Contra-Reformatie in de Nederlanden (Hilversum 1939-40)

G Kubler The Shape of Time (New Haven and London

1962) R W Lee ldquoUt pictura poesisrdquo Art Bulletin 22

(1940) 197-269 E Macircle Lart religieux du XIIIe siegravecle en

France (Paris 1898) English ed used (New York 1958)

idem Lart religieux de la fin du Moyen-Age en France

(Paris 1908) idem Lart religieux du XIIe siegravecle en France

(Paris 1922) idem Lart religieux apregraves le Concile de Trente

(Paris 1932) J Maurin Białostocka Lessing i sztuki plas-

tyczne (ldquoLessing and the visual artsrdquo) (Wroclaw Warszawa

Krakoacutew 1969) E F von Monroy Embleme und Emblem-

buumlcher in den Niederlanden 1560-1630 ed H M von Erffa

(Utrecht 1964) J Montagu ldquoThe Painted Enigma and

French Seventeenth Century Artrdquo Journal of the Warburg

and Courtauld Institutes 31 (1968) 307-35 W Mrazek

Ikonologie der barocken Deckenmalerei (Vienna 1953)

Uumlsterreichische Akademie der Wissenschaften Philo-

sophisch-historische Klasse Sitzungsberichte 2283 A D

Nock ldquoSarcophagi and Symbolismrdquo American Journal of

Archaeology 50 (1946) 166ff D Panofsky and E Panofsky

ldquoThe Iconography of the Galeacuterie Franccedilois Ier at Fontaine-

bleaurdquo Gazette des Beaux-Arts 652 (1958) 113-90

E Panofsky ldquoUumlber das Verhaumlltnis der Kunstgeschichte zur

Kunsttheorierdquo Zeitschrift fuumlr Aesthetik und allgemeine

Kunstwissenschaft 18 (1925) 129-61 idem Studies in

Iconology (New York 1939) idem ed Abbot Suger (Prince-

ton 1946) idem Gothic Architecture and Scholasticism

(Latrobe Pa 1951) idem Early Netherlandish Painting

(Cambridge Mass 1953) idem Meaning in the Visual Arts

(Garden City N Y 1955) idem Renaissance and Renas-

cences in Western Art (Stockholm 1960) idem Tomb Sculp-

ture (New York 1964) E Panofsky and F Saxl ldquoClassical

Mythology in Medieval Artrdquo Metropolitan Museum Studies

4 (1932-33) 228-80 M Praz Studies in Seventeenth Cen-

tury Imagery (London 1939-47 2nd ed Rome 1964) S

Ringbom ldquoDevotional Images and Imaginative Devotions

Notes on the Place of Art in Late Medieval Private Pietyrdquo

Gazette des Beaux-Arts 6 73 (1969) 159-70 Joseph Sauer

Symbolik des Kirchengebaumludes und seiner Ausstattung in

der Auffassung des Mittelalters 2nd ed (Freiburg i B

1924) F Saxl ldquoFruumlhes Christentum und spaumltes Heidentum

in ihren kuumlnstlerischen Ausdrucksformenrdquo Wiener Jahrbuch

fuumlr Kunstgeschichte 2 (1923) 63-121 M Schapiro ldquoThe

Ruthwell Crossrdquo Art Bulletin 26 (1944) 232-45 idem ldquoOn

the Aesthetic Attitude in Romanesque Artrdquo in Art and

Thought issued in Honour of Ananda Coomaraswamy

(London 1947) 139-50 J Seznec The Survival of the Pagan

Gods (New York 1953) O G von Simson The Gothic

Cathedral (New York 1956) R E Spear ldquoThe Literary

Source of Poussins Realm of Florardquo The Burlington Maga-

zine 107 (1965) 563-69 L Volkmann Bilderschriften der

Renaissance (Leipzig 1923) Hans van de Waal Drie

eeuwen vaderlandsche geschieduitbeelding 1500-1800 (s-

Gravenhage 1952) idem ldquoSome Principles of a General

Iconographical Classificationrdquo in Actes du XVIIe Congregraves

International dHistoire de lArt Amsterdam 1952 (La Haye

1955) 601-06 E Wind ldquoCharity the Case History of a

Patternrdquo Journal of the Warburg Institute 1 (1937) 322ff

JAN BIAŁOSTOCKI

[See also Allegory Baroque Classicism Criticism Enlight-

enment Motif Myth Naturalism in Art Neo-Platonism

Renaissance Humanism Romanticism Symbolism Tem-

perance Ut pictura poesis]

Eucharist What began to be separated in theory could

yet coexist in harmony in the work of a great artist

6 In northern European art (before Rubens) the

renewal of the arts during the Renaissance took the

form of the new study of nature and the elaboration

of the most convincing means of representing the ma-

terial world in an illusionistic way traditional medieval

symbolism was transformed in a specific way produc-

ing what E Panofsky called in 1953 ldquodisguised sym-

bolismrdquo The symbolic meaning connected with objects

and qualities persisted but a new mastery reproduced

these symbolical objects with such a degree of realism

that they did not differ any longer from other objects

not charged with any metaphorical meaning Some-

times the symbolical meaning of represented objects

results from the traditional iconography in an unmistak-

able way sometimes the meaning is hinted at by the

inscriptions placed in the picture or on its frame But

in many cases the modern viewer remains perplexed

without any sufficient clue to decide whether in the

picture he observes he has to do with the beginnings

of the representation of reality for its own sake or

whether the search for specific metaphorical meaning

is justified It is still always a matter of discussion to

decide at which moment the representation of some

objects or some scene in life without any symbolical

(or ldquohistoricalrdquo) implications became possible (Gilbert

1952) Observers of the eighteenth and nineteenth

centuries to whom the meaning of old symbols was

wholly forgotten took many images of the fifteenth and

sixteenth centuries for simple representations of life

Bruegel for example was considered as simply a

painter of joking or working peasants Recent studies

in iconography have shown that these pictures are

saturated with disguised meaning and that it is ex-

tremely rare before about 1550 to meet simple repre-

sentations of nature in painting In graphic arts the

direct depiction of life and landscape began earlier

as in the works of Lombard draughtsmen or in the

incredibly fresh convincing drawings and prints by the

Master of the Housebook There are also early excep-

tions in painting like Albrecht Altdorfers landscape

without any human figures But in general it was only

532

during the second half of the sixteenth century that

landscape genre and still-life painting began to ac-

quire equal rights with religious and humanistic history

and allegory predominantly in Venice and in Antwerp

Even then however the representations of people

working in fields (Jacopo or Francesco Bassano) fol-

lowed the old traditions of Calendar-pictures and in

the background of genre scenes as in Pieter Aertsens

pictures a biblical motif may be found which trans-

forms the whole composition into a storia however

unorthodox

With the development of realistic painting in the

seventeenth century there appeared specific iconogra-

phic problems New subjects slowly found convenient

form They entered the scene patterned after the ven-

erable stories of sacred or of profane iconography

H van de Waal described (1952) the process of the for-

mation of national historical iconography in Holland

Scenes depicting recent happenings from a long strug-

gle for national independence appeared first in forms

assimilated to well-known religious or mythical scenes

This was not only an expedient facilitating their com-

position for by this means the new subjects gained the

decorum inherent in the adopted patterns formed to

express traditional stories Similar procedures may be

seen in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries when

more and more sections of reality became interesting

enough to be represented in art

The transfer of decorum from the sacred or allegori-

cal figures to the humans represented is a means used

in what modern iconographers call ldquoallegorical por-

traiturerdquo Renaissance painters had represented real

people under mythological or even sacred disguise

they gave actual faces of living people to the figures

represented with all the attributes and characteristics

of their mythical sacred or even allegorical qualities

Later it was only the pattern which remained still in

the eighteenth century English portraitists patterned

the effigies of contemporary aristocrats after Michel-

angelos Sybils or after allegories like the Caritas

(Wind 1937) J B Oudry represented the Polish King

in exile Stanisław Leszczyński with all the attributes

of the allegory of exile taken from Ripa identifying

him in this way with personification of his most promi-

nent quality (Białostocki 1969)

Dutch realistic painting of the seventeenth century

is a document of an important iconographic conquest

Landscapes seascapes moonlit night scenes snapshots

of people skating in winter landscapes views of market

places church interiors backyards fishermen old

women preparing food fashionable dishes ready for

lunch merchants and artisans elegant gentlemen pay-

ing visits and folk-surgeons performing sensational

street-operations all this became subject matter for

representation and continued to be considered worthy

of depiction until the end of the nineteenth century

It was first considered as such in Holland only then

slowly everyday subject matter was recognized also by

art-theorists in other countries although it was re-

garded as much less dignified than religious mytholog-

ical or allegorical subjects Only in the nineteenth

century did the vogue of realistic representation of

everyday subjects become widespread In Dutch pic-

tures of the seventeenth century we are often con-

fronted with nothing else than representations of pic-

turesque reality Sometimes however these genre

pictures appear to be illustrations of proverbs expres-

sing moralistic folk-wisdom sometimes they recall

scenes from the popular threater of the rederijkers or

rhetoricians especially pictures by Jan Steen (Gud-

laugsson 1945) they contain allusions to emblems

Sometimes the elegant scenes from bourgeois life in-

clude quite indecent erotic allusions (de Jongh 1967

1969) The ambiguity of these pictures was certainly

a source of specific pleasure for those who knew the

key to their true meaning

7 In Catholic countries allegorical art sacred as

well as profane flourished The twofold character of

symbolic representations mentioned above persisted

in the seventeenth century Aristotelian rational sym-

bolism which used images as words was widespread

in the orthodox Catholic iconography of the Counter-

Reformation as well as in the humanistic visual lan-

guage codified by Ripa and others A mystical Neo-

Platonic symbolism transcending reason reappeared

too Its outspoken document is the treatise by Chris-

toforo Giarda Bibliothecae alexandrinae icones sym-

bolicae of 1626 (Gombrich 1948) For Giarda symbolic

images give the beholder a direct insight into the

mysteries of religion which are not accessible to rea-

son

Thanks to symbolic images the mind which is banished from

heaven into this dark cave of the body its actions held in

bondage by the senses can behold the beauty and form

of the Virtues and Sciences divorced from all matter and

yet adumbrated if not perfectly expressed in colours and

is thus roused to an even more fervent love and desire for

them Who then can sufficiently estimate the magni-

tude of the debt we owe to those who expressed the Arts

and Sciences themselves in images and so brought it about

that we could not only know them but look at them as

it were with our eyes that we can meet them and almost

converse with them

(Gombrich [1948] pp 188f)

Great allegorical compositions covering the ceilings of

baroque churches are often realizations of this princi-

ple For those however who conceived allegory as a

rational operation as a language used for didactic aims

the main problem remained the clarity of the allegori-

533

cal message The larger the audience to whom allegory

was addressed the simpler more obvious its symbolism

should have been The banality of allegorical language

provoked criticism in the eighteenth century Fran-

cesco Algarotti (1762) prefers without any doubt his-

torical representations to the ldquoempty allegories and

complicated mythological allusionsrdquo (Garas [1967] p

280) Especially criticized was the obscurity of these

allegories in which completely original unknown sym-

bols were used Roger de Piles praises his favorite

master Rubens who ldquointroduced only such allegories

elements of which were already known from ancient

artrdquo and opposes him to Charles Lebrun who ldquoinstead

of taking symbols from some known source as the

ancient fable and medals has invented almost all of

them and thus the pictures of this kind became riddles

which the beholder does not want to take the task to

solverdquo To keep the balance between platitudinous

redundancy and utter incomprehensibility was the

crucial problem of late baroque allegorism What is

interesting however is that the idea of the picture

as a riddle was not foreign to the seventeenth century

It appears in France as well as in Sweden where David

Kloumlcker Ehrenstrahl (1694) proposed that pictures

present riddles that could not be solved by everyone

In France however the ldquopainted enigmardquo fostered

by the Jesuits in their schools flourished especially well

in the seventeenth century (Montagu 1968) These

ldquopainted enigmasrdquo lent themselves to various inter-

pretations and gave interpreters an opportunity to

show their ingenuity These pictures and their inter-

pretations seem to prove that a considerable flexibility

of meaning was intended

We might rather accept that a work of art was regarded

in the seventeenth century as in a certain sense an open

symbol raw material like the myth or sacred story which

it illustrates on which the interpreter might exercise the

power of his ingenuity turning it into an allegory of Chris-

tian doctrine or a panegyric in honour of his patron

(Montagu [1968] p 334)

Such a situation probably existed only in some specific

circles It was a limiting case The other extreme was

to use in an uninteresting routine way Ripas symbolic

images or those of other popular symbolic handbooks

Such practice continued well into the eighteenth cen-

tury The general trend fed by ideas of the Enlighten-

ment was to make allegories more and more obvious

It is understandable that some theorists like the Count

de Caylus looked for new subject matter presenting

as he did Tableaux tireacutes de lIliade (1755) or that

J J Winckelmann tried to revive allegory and to give

it a new force It was however too late In the eight-

eenth century together with the whole system of

humanistic tradition the systems of iconography began

to disintegrate The great break in the tradition con-

cerned not only style but also iconography Emblem-

atic roots may be discovered in Goyas symbolism as

well as in the reasonable allegories of the Enlighten-

ment but generally speaking there was a search for

new not known or not used sourcesmdashas in William

Blakes biblical individualistic imagerymdashor the new

staging of the old ones as in Jacques Louis Davids

classical subjects

The art of romanticism was a definite break with

the past much more in the field of ideas and iconogra-

phy than in a stylistic respect where romanticists

retrospectively looked back either to medieval and

pre-Raphaelite or to baroque sources Symbols and

allegories yielded to an all-pervading mood and the

traditional repertory of religious allegorical mytho-

logical and historical iconography gave way to a new

iconography Although several encompassing images

of Christian and humanistic art survived they received

new content and essentially changed their character

New attitudes of the individual to the world of nature

and history to society and destiny to time and death

and new problems resulting from the striving after

freedom (which was a new perhaps most important

principle of human behavior in all fields of human

activity) found expression in new thematic fields and

in new particular themes such as ldquoStorm-tossed Boatrdquo

ldquoLonely Wanderer in the Mountainsrdquo ldquoA Death of the

Herordquo (Eitner 1955 Hofmann 1960 Białostocki

1966)

Romanticism has not formed and could not have

formed an iconographic system for since they strived

first of all for originality of individual conception the

romantics interpreted images in a subjective way as

expressions of mood Romanticism has on the other

hand introduced new heroes and martyrs into art

instead of religious ones the national social and artis-

tic ones It created a new image of history seen now

as a set of political and moral examplesmdashas in

baroquemdashbut often put together now according to a

very individualistic principle of choice A correlative

to pathetic and heroic romanticism was a bourgeois

and intimate romanticism its expression was for ex-

ample the new imagery of the open window which

shows to the viewer wide perspectives but shelters him

at the same time from the dangers of the unknown

(Eitner 1955)

When the world of ideas and images created at the

moment of the flowering of romanticism began to be

popularized for the use of the large bourgeois masses

the contentmdashideological and iconographicalmdashof ro-

manticism lost its original authenticity and left be-

hind not a new system of original images but a dispo-

534

sition to melodramatic experiences and an inflation of

a theatrical gesture (Hofmann 1960 Białostocki 1966)

The nineteenth century developed a realistic por-

traiture of man and nature and took over worn out

clicheacutes of the Renaissance and baroque allegories It

introduced new subject matter taken partly from tra-

dition partly from observation of reality tinted with

vague symbolism such as ldquoForgerdquo or the ldquoFuneral of

the Peasantrdquo but it did not create a new system of

iconography in spite of short-lived revivals of symbol-

istic attitudes in such movementsmdashincidentally not

limited to and not initiated in the visual artsmdashas

ldquosymbolismrdquo

New ephemeral artistic movements which consti-

tuted the history of European art in the last hundred

years show an interesting bracketing of style and icon-

ography in spite of a preponderant lack of iconogra-

phic interest Their representatives chose subjects suit-

able to specific artistic aims and means which they

developed and were interested in Impressionists

painted seaside scenes landscapes and genre pictures

showing the life of artistic and intellectual milieus

Cubists introduced a specific repertory of still-life

motifs symbols of the artists atelier and of the life

of the bohegraveme bottles musical instruments books

fruits flowers newspapers How much these motifs

were connected with specific cubist style appears when

one looks at works of artists foreign to the original

cubist group but imitating its style as for instance

several Czech artists like Emil Filla They adopted

cubist iconography together with cubist style Abstract

movements in general lacked iconography although

they were not foreign to symbolic tendencies espe-

cially in sculpture (Brancusi Moore) Only in the dec-

ades of 1950-70 can a revival of more articulated and

programmatic symbolism be observed One may sup-

pose that this revival is at least in part brought about

by the development of research in iconography and

symbolism which took place in the second and third

quarters of our century

II

1 The origins of ldquointerpretative iconographyrdquo may

be seen in the descriptions (ekphrasis) of works of art

known in classical literature But these descriptions

like those by Philostratus the Elder or Lucian are

limited simply to description and lack in general any

interpretation Moreover it is not certain whether they

are descriptions of actual or fictitious works of art at

least opinions in this respect vary Brief medieval tituli

which formulated in words the content of religious

images were to be sure interpretative sometimes but

they were short and cannot be connected with the

tradition of artistic erudition We have to look to

modern times to indicate the beginnings of iconogra-

phic interpretation and research From Vasaris Rag-

ionamenti in which interpretations of the paintings

decorating the Palazzo Vecchio in Florence are given

we learn how complicated and how undecipherable

iconographic concepts might have been even to peo-

ple living in buildings decorated by paintings expres-

sing these concepts But perhaps the first really to be

considered as interested in iconographic research was

the seventeenth-century archaeologist and art theorist

Giovanni Pietro Bellori In the introduction to his Lives

of Artists (1672) Bellori stressed that he paid special

attention to the content of the works of art he was

talking about and he even credited the painter Nicolas

Poussin with having directed his attention to iconogra-

phy In his Lives Bellori presented short interpretative

descriptions of pictures and he sometimes developed

these interpretations further in small iconographic

essays the influence of classical ekphrasis on him is

a possibility Sometimes his errors took deep roots in

the subsequent history of art as when he explained

Poussins Triumph of Flora (Dresden) by designating

Ovids Metamorphoses as its source The true source

Marinos Adona was finally found by R E Spear in

1965

What is interesting in Belloris procedure is that he

first identifies the motifs tries to connect them with

classical or modern literary sources and then proceeds

to find out the deep meaning the general symbolic

idea of the work Therefore he may be considered as

one of the pioneers not only of iconography as a disci-

pline of research but also of iconology as formulated

by its recent partisans That even in the second half

of the sixteenth century some observers were inclined

to look for hidden meaning in each element of the work

of art we learn from Joannes Molanus (1570) who in

De picturis et imaginibus sacris states reasonably that

ldquoit is not necessary to ask for meaning of everything

that can be observed in a picture in such cases a lot

of absurd things may resultrdquo But the consciousness of

the importance of iconography increased and at the

end of the seventeenth century Andreacute Feacutelibien stressed

that in order to attribute a picture to a painter it is

not enough to know the way he uses his brush one

needs also to know his esprit to learn his geacutenie and

to be able to foresee in which way he is able to form

his conceptions Thus iconographic analysis was con-

sidered necessary even for the purpose of attribution

Descriptive interpretations of the works of ancient

art appeared in the big archaeological publications of

the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries such as

Jacques Spons Miscellanea eruditae antiquitatis (1679)

G P Belloris Admiranda romanarum antiquitatum ac

veteris sculpturae vestigia (1693) P de Caylus Recueil

535

dantiquiteacutes eacutegyptiennes eacutetrusques grecques et

romaines (1752-67) and in an interesting endeavor

(although very much criticized by Lessing) of Joseph

Spence to explain classical poets through works of art

and vice versa (Polymetis 1747) Classical archaeology

however has not been especially interested in iconog-

raphy and the use of the term itself by archaeolo-

gists was limited to portraiture The first great devel-

opment of iconographic studies was connected with

the romantic movement although an important pre-

lude for it was hagiographical collections of sources

such as Acta sanctorum published by the Bollandists

(1643-1794 resumed later) Among the pre-romantic

scholars in iconography the eminent German poet

G E Lessing is to be noted His study of the repre-

sentation of death in classical times can be considered

as one of the first essays in interpretative iconography

which is now called iconology In Wie die Alten den

Tod gebildet (1769) Lessing tries to interpret the classi-

cal iconographic type of Amor with the inverted torch

and to find its ldquointrinsic meaningrdquo by taking into ac-

count the religion customs and philosophy of the

classical world The work of art is interpreted by Less-

ing as ldquoa symptom of something elserdquo While Lessings

predecessors (like B de Montfaucon) ldquoexplained the

classical past by monumentsrdquo he for the first time did

the opposite ldquohe explained the monuments by Antiq-

uityrdquo (Maurin Białostocka [1969] pp 92-100)

Pre-romantic and romantic interests in myth and

symbol found their expression in publications and dis-

cussions by German philosophers and scholars like F

Schlegel J Herder J J von Goumlrres and F Creuzer

Creuzers work Symbolik und Mythologie der alten

Voumllker (1810) which shows the influence of mystical

Neo-Platonic ideas on symbols (Gombrich 1965) was

the most influential in the romantic period in Ger-

many Under the impact of Chateaubriands le Geacutenie

du christianisme (1802) research in medieval iconog-

raphy developed mainly in France Works by French

scholars mostly clergymen which were indeed con-

cerned with Christian medieval art dominated icon-

ographical study in the nineteenth century Since most

of these writers were not professional scholars their

work was often amateurish in character but it is unde-

niable that books by A N Didron Histoire de Dieu

(Paris 1843) the first part of a comprehensive pro-

jected but not completed iconography of Christian art

A Crosnier Iconographie chreacutetienne (Caen 1848) C

Cahier Caracteacuteristiques des saints (Paris 1867) C

Rohault de Fleury Archeacuteologie chreacutetienne les saints

de la messe et leurs monuments 12 vols (Paris

1893-1900) L Breacutehier Lart chreacutetien son deacuteveloppe-

ment iconographique des origines agrave nos jours (Paris

1918) P Perdrizet V Leroquais and G de Jerphanion

have built up a solid body of iconographical knowl-

edge on which scholars of the twentieth century were

able to erect a modern comprehensive structure In

the field of Byzantine iconography it was Gabriel

Millets Recherches sur liconographie de leacutevangile aux

XIVe XVe et XVIe siegravecles (Paris 1916 reprint

1960) that was basic for any further study For Western

chiefly French art a well-written and learned work

appealing to the general reader as well as to the

scholar was produced by Eacutemile Macircle who in his four

volumes of the history of religious art (1898-1932) has

presented a well-composed synthetic image of icono-

graphical development A lexicographic summary of

these studies of generations of French scholars is pre-

sented in the Dictionnaire darcheacuteologie chreacutetienne et

de liturgie published from 1907 to 1953 and edited

by F Cabrol and H Leclerq A recent reference work

is that by L Reacuteau Iconographie de lart chreacutetien (Paris

1955-59) Russian scholars have done important work

in the field of Byzantine and Orthodox iconography

of religious art The most prominent are N P Kon-

dakov Ikonografia Bogomatieri (St Petersburg 1911

2nd ed 1914-15) D V Ainalov Mosaiki IV i V vekov

(St Petersburg 1895) and N Pokrovski Otcherki

pamyatnikov christianskogo isskusstva i ikonografii (St

Petersburg 1894 3rd ed 1910) V Lasarev and M

Alpatov belonging to the mid-twentieth-century gen-

eration of Russian scholars discuss iconography in

several works on religious art German scholarship

produced in the nineteenth century works by F Piper

A Springer and H Detzel Useful compendia were

produced in the early twentieth century by J Sauer

W Molsdorf K Kuumlnstle and J Braun Dutch scholars

C Smits J B Knipping and J J M Timmers contrib-

uted to iconographic studies in recent times Knip-

pings book (1939-40) being the most important work

on the iconography of the Counter-Reformation and

supplementing Macircles volume of 1932 In the twentieth

century on C R Moreys initiative iconographic

studies were inaugurated in North America Focused

on earlier medieval art these studies developed at

Princeton University

A new direction characteristic of iconographic

studies in the twentieth century has been given to

them by the international school of art historical re-

search inaugurated by the Hamburg scholar Aby

Warburg At the International Congress for the History

of Art at Rome in 1912 he presented a sensational

astrological interpretation of the frescoes painted by

Francesco Cossa and his collaborators in Palazzo

Schifanoja at Ferrara Warburg solved the secret of

those representations which had puzzled the ingenuity

of several former students interpreting them as images

of zodiacal signs and their decans But he did not limit

536

his contribution to the presentation of his results He

wanted to stress the importance of his approach and

of the method of study which later became connected

with his name He said

I hope that through the method used by me for explication

of the frescoes at the Palazzo Schifanoja of Ferrara I have

proved that an iconological analysis which does not allow

itself to be diverted by the rules of frontier police from

considering antiquity Middle Ages and modern times as

interconnected periods nor from analyzing the most liberal

and the most applied works of art as equally important

documents of expression that this method endeavoring as

it does to throw light upon one dark spot clears up at

the same time great interconnected developments

(Warburg 1912 Heckscher 1967)

Warburgs influence on the history of art was very

great although he himself did not write much It was

mainly the posthumous impact of his ideas promul-

gated as they were by Fritz Saxl which contributed

to the specific direction of studies concentrated in the

library Warburg founded in Hamburg and which Saxl

succeeded in transplanting during the Nazi era to

London where it became the Warburg Institute of the

University of London While the object of study of the

nineteenth-century iconographers was mainly religious

art in its relation to religious literary sources and lit-

urgy for Warburg the study of images was a study

of their relations to religion to poetry to myth to

science and to social and political life Art was for

him closely connected with the polyphonic structure

of historical life

Warburgs ideas had a great importance for the most

influential theory of iconographic interpretation in our

century that elaborated by Erwin Panofsky In Ham-

burg where Warburg Saxl and Panofsky were active

in the twenties Ernst Cassirer built up his philosophy

of symbolic forms which constituted an additional

background for Panofskys system being derived as

his own methodology was from the traditions of

Kantian philosophy Around 1930 Panofskys ideas

ripened into a system which found formulation in his

book herkules am Scheidewege (1930) and later in a

theoretical article of 1932 G J Hoogewerff was how-

ever the first to propose the word ldquoiconologyrdquo as a

name for the method of an analysis of content in a

work of art (Warburg spoke of iconological analysis)

In 1931 he proposed distinguishing between iconogra-

phy as a descriptive science aiming at the identifica-

tion of themes and ldquoiconologyrdquo aiming at the under-

standing ldquoof symbolic dogmatic or mystical meaning

which is expressed (or hidden) in figurative formsrdquo He

stressed that ldquoiconologyrdquo deals with works of art with-

out classifying them according to the technique used

or to the achieved perfection taking into account only

their meaning Hoogewerff saw the last aim of iconol-

ogy in finding out the cultural and ideological back-

ground expressed by works of art and the cultural and

social significance which can be attributed to certain

forms and to means of expression in the same time

Hoogewerffs part in the expansion of iconology was

limited because he did not endorse his methodical

proposals with examples of historical interpretations

Erwin Panofsky with whose name iconology has

been connected ever since not only developed its

theoretical foundations but contributed by his practi-

cal work in art history to the main triumph of iconol-

ogy after the Second World War The most influential

book by Panofsky has been Studies in Iconology (1939)

in which his masterly presentation of the method was

connected with its equally excellent exemplification

2 Panofsky considers the interpretation of a work

of art as falling on three levels On the first level the

object of interpretation is the primary or natural sub-

ject matter The function of interpretation is called

ldquopre-iconographical descriptionrdquo In order to be able

to arrive at a correct interpretation on that level the

interpreter must have a practical experience (ldquofamili-

arity with objects and eventsrdquo) common to everybody

at least in one cultural sphere However he has to

control his observations by a ldquocorrective knowledge

of the history of stylerdquo (ldquoinsight into the manner in

which under varying historical conditions objects and

events were expressed by formsrdquo) On the second level

the function of interpretation is called ldquoiconographical

analysisrdquo its object is the ldquosecondary or conventional

subject matterrdquo constituting the world of images his-

tories and allegories The interpreters equipment in

this case is obviously the knowledge of literary sources

giving him a ldquofamiliarity with specific themes and

conceptsrdquo The interpreter has to control his observa-

tions by ldquothe insight into the manner in which under

varying historical conditions specific themes or con-

cepts were expressed by objects and eventsrdquo On the

third level the function of interpreting is called ldquoicon-

ographical analysis in a deeper senserdquo (1939) or ldquoicon-

ological analysisrdquo (1955) Its object is the ldquointrinsic

meaning or contentrdquo of a work of art The interpreters

equipment on that level should be a ldquofamiliarity with

the essential tendencies of the human mindrdquo and he

has to control his interpretation by the ldquoinsight into

the manner in which under varying historical condi-

tions essential tendencies of the human mind were

expressed by specific themes and conceptsrdquo Thus

taking all the time into account what Panofsky calls

the history of tradition the interpreter has to aim at

understanding the work of art its ldquoprimaryrdquo as well

as ldquosecondary subject matterrdquo as symptoms of some

fundamental tendency of the human mind typical of

537

a place a time a civilization and of an individual

responsible for the creation of the work ldquoIconologyrdquomdash

for Panofskymdashldquois a method of interpretation which

arises from synthesis rather than analysisrdquo Trying to

find the intrinsic meaning of a work of art

The art historian will have to check what he thinks is the

intrinsic meaning of the work or group of works against

what he thinks is the intrinsic meaning of as many other

documents of civilization historically related to that work

or group of works as he can master It is in the search

for intrinsic meaning or content that the various humanistic

disciplines meet on a common plane instead of serving as

handmaidens to each other

(Panofsky [1955] p 39)

The concept of intrinsic meaning of a work of art

was elaborated by Panofsky much earlier (1925) when

he interpreted in his own way the concept of Kunst-

wollen introduced by A Riegl to research in art

Panofsky understood this ldquoartistic volitionrdquo as an im-

manent ultimate meaning of a work of art which is

manifested in the way basic artistic problems are solved

in that work He used the same concept further to bring

art closer to the other fields of human activity Since

the ldquoimmanent ultimate senserdquo of the work of art is

nothing else than uniformity in the way of solving basic

artistic problems it is possible to compare that imma-

nent sense with immanent senses of the other human

works in various fields Panofsky did it for instance

when in one of his later works he compared the struc-

tural principles of Gothic architecture with those of

scholastic thinking (1951)

The system elaborated by Panofsky and exemplified

by his own work in art history was the first consistent

system of an integral interpretation of a work of visual

arts based on the analysis of content In principle

Panofskys system takes into account all the elements

of the work of art since it takes as the point of depar-

ture the sensual exterior shape of the work It is

however clear that its main scope is not the inter-

pretation of form as a bearer of meaning but the

understanding and interpretation of conventional alle-

gories literary themes and symbols as symptoms of

the history of the human mind It was that method

in the history of art which programmatically fostered

a collaboration with all the other disciplines of histori-

cal studies It was therefore one of the most influential

methods not only among art historians but also among

representatives of the other branches of humanistic

studies Although there were art historians who ex-

pressed a critical attitude toward ldquoiconologyrdquo as the

new method was soon baptized its influence was over-

whelming

3 It is not only but mainly due to Panofsky that

one can venture to call ldquoiconographicalrdquo that period

of art history as a historical discipline which followed

the Second World War and to oppose it to the ldquostylis-

ticrdquo one which preceded it It does not mean of course

that no iconographic research took place in the

twenties or thirties the works of Macircle Knipping van

Marle Wilpert Saxl and of Panofsky himself would

contradict such a statement Neither is it true that

purely formal research aiming at stylistic classification

and analysis discontinued after World War II It is

evident that in the last decades (from 1940 on) icono-

graphic interests came to the fore and became domi-

nant in many countries Iconographical studies grew

so much in number and importance that they made

it possible to undertake and to publish new reference

works of iconographic character like dictionaries

written by one scholar (Guy de Tervarent Aurenham-

mer) as well as larger works based on a collaboration

of several scholars (Encyclopedias of German art of

Antiquity and Christian civilization of Byzantine art)

Interest in meaning and iconography has appeared

also among historians of political social and religious

institutions The symbolism of signs ceremonies cos-

tumes and arms was studied by such scholars as A

Alfoumlldi ldquoInsignien und Tracht der roumlmischen Kaiserrdquo

Mitteilungen des deutschen Archaumlologischen Instituts

Roumlmische Abteilung (1935) 1ff ldquoDie Geburt der

kaiserlichen Bildsymbolikrdquo museum Helveticum 9

(1952) 204ff also by A Grabar Martyrium (Paris

1943-46) by E H Kantorowicz laudes Regiae

(Berkeley and Los Angeles 1946) The Kings Two

Bodies (Princeton 1957) by H P L Orange Studies

in the Iconography of Cosmic Kingship in the Ancient

World (Oslo 1953) Art Forms and Civic Life in the

Late Roman Empire (Princeton 1965) and by P E

Schramm herrschaftszeichen und Staatssymbolik

(Stuttgart 1954-56) In their studies iconography far

transcends the borders of art and it helps to build up

a history of ideas by following their various visual

expressions

Pioneering studies by K Giehlow F Saxl and E

Panofsky enlarged iconographical interests above all

to encompass the large field of secular art whereas

they had been mainly limited to religious iconography

in the work of preceding generations of scholars The

whole complicated and hardly known large body of

meanings disguised by the cryptic language of hiero-

glyphs emblems and iconologies became one of the

main topics of study

This established a collaboration between historians

of art and literature Mario Prazs admirable study of

emblems and his bibliography of emblem books

(1939-47) belongs now to the foundations of studies

in that field Publications by W S Heckscher and

A K Wirth by R S Clements E F von Monroy and

538

H M von Erffa E de Jongh and H Miedema and

several other scholars have elucidated the structure

and meaning of emblems and have shown their tre-

mendous influence on art even in its most monumental

and dignified forms An uninterrupted flow of reprints

of emblem books which brought within the reach of

modern students inaccessible volumes of sixteenth- and

seventeenth-century emblem writers were crowned by

the monumental undertaking of Arthur Henkel and

Albrecht Schoumlne who compiled an excellent volume

including almost all the texts and images needed for

the study of emblemsmdashEmblemata Handbuch zur

Sinnbildkunst des XVI und XVII Jahrhunderts

(Stuttgart 1967) Research was under way on hiero-

glyphs (Erik Iversen) and on the imprese (the late

Robert Klein) as well as on iconologies and allegories

These studies have disclosed meanings of the art of

the Renaissance of mannerism and of the baroque not

understood by nineteenth-century scholars

E Panofsky deciphered extremely farfetched and

individualistic programs of decoration of such famous

ensembles as the Camera di San Paolo by Correggio

in Parma the Gallery of Franccedilois I at Fontainebleau

Edgar Wind Andreacute Chastel and other scholars inter-

preted Raphaels decorations in the Popes apartments

Michelangelos art furnished material to detailed com-

prehensive studies by Panofsky Ch de Tolnay H von

Einem and Pope-Hennessy in which the share of

Neo-Platonic thinking in the ideological background

of the celebrated works of Michelangelo was discussed

Innumerable studies have been devoted to Titians

mythological paintings J R Martin presented expla-

nations of the Carracci frescoes in the Camerino Far-

nese and in the great gallery of the Palazzo Farnese

Bruegel considered in the nineteenth century as a drocircle

painter of peasant life has been shown by de Tolnay

Stridbeck and others to be an allegorist expressing a

skeptical humanistic outlook J S Held and W

Stechow contributed several articles to the under-

standing of mythological and allegorical contents in

Flemish and Dutch art of the sixteenth and seventeenth

centuries Rembrandts iconography was put into new

light by the two above-mentioned scholars as well as

by H M Rotermund H van de Waal J G van Gelder

H von Einem and Ch Tuumlmpel The intricate symbol-

ism and subject matter of historical and mythological

pictures by Nicolas Poussin were elucidated by such

masters of iconographic research as E H Gombrich

W Friedlaumlnder E Panofsky and above all by A Blunt

who in his monograph on Poussin presented a new

deep synthetic view of the ideas expressed by that

artists works Goyas individualistic secret symbolism

was also studied with the help of emblems and the

allegorical tradition Berninis works received iconolo

gical treatment by R Wittkower and H Kauffmann

All of this research does not mean that there was a

lack of interest in religious iconography M Schapiro

A Katzenellenbogen H Bober F Wormald and V

Elbern among others have contributed considerably

to deepen our understanding of the not completely

explained motifs and prominent works of medieval art

Panofsky has also shed a new light on several problems

of sepulchral iconography studies by such scholars as

R Berliner G von der Osten L Kalinowski S

Ringbom and T Dobrzeniecki contributed to late

medieval iconography in a new way Berliner stressed

the autonomous invention of visual artists or their

patrons while according to the traditional view popu-

larized by Macircle late medieval art should have followed

strictly literary sources

The religious content of modern art especially its

allegorical form in the late baroque period has been

examined and thanks to studies by such scholars as

W Mrazek and H Bauer has become better known

and understandable A great change was introduced

by ldquoiconologyrdquo into architectural history Buildings

which were formerly interpreted from aesthetic and

functional points of view only have been shown to

present allegorical symbolical or even emblematic

ideas Publications by leading art historians (R Witt-

kower B Smith G Bandmann O von Simson and

G C Argan) have presented medieval and modern

architecture as a bearer of meaning and have essen-

tially changed the character of architectural history

The iconography of classicism and romanticism

received a thorough treatment in books by W Hof-

mann and R Rosenblum as well as in several studies

devoted to individual themes and pictures G Hersey

has for example shown how much Delacroixs decora-

tion of the library in the Palais Bourbon owed to

Giambattista Vicos ideas about history More recently

studies on ldquoSymbolismrdquo have been undertaken Vincent

van Goghs symbolic language and iconography were

the object of studies by J Seznec C Nordenfalk and

other scholars On Ceacutezannes iconography interesting

remarks have been published by M Schapiro

Along with the development of iconographic studies

the establishment of centers of documentation has

advanced The ldquoFrenchrdquo stage in the development of

iconography has not left any marked trace in this

respect It was in America thanks to C R Morey that

the famous Index of Christian Art at the Department

of Art and Archaeology of Princeton University was

founded at first limited to the early Middle Ages then

enlarged so as to include art up to the end of the

medieval period Copies of the Princeton Index are

to be found also at the Istituto Pontificio dArcheolo-

gia in Rome and in the Dumbarton Oaks Library and

539

Collection in Washington DC But that Index ends

ldquowhere art beginsrdquomdashas Panofsky used to say jokingly

The need for systematic iconographic files for modern

art was strongly felt In 1956 A Pigler published a

very useful book Barockthemen in which he listed

thousands of works of art of the baroque period ac-

cording to their subjects It was however far from

being a systematic work The first essay in establishing

a systematic iconographic index for art of any time

was done by The Netherlands Institute for Art History

at the Hague then directed by H Gerson which took

the initiative around 1950 of publishing a postcard-size

photographic index of its rich collection of photographs

of Netherlandish art ordered according to an icono-

graphic principle Once such an idea was formulated

the need for a comprehensive consistent and clear

iconographic classification was urgent H van de Waal

of Leiden University devised such a system of classifi-

cation based on decimal divisions consistent and easy

to read He based his system on experiences of ethnol-

ogy and on such elaborated systems of classification

as that devised by Stith Thompson in his Motif-Index

of Folk Literature Vols I-VI (Bloomington Ind

1932-36 rev ed 1955-58) Van de Waal has elabor-

ated a system in which the first five main sections

classify five fundamental groups of portrayable things

namely (1) The Supernatural (2) Nature (3) Man (4)

Society (5) Abstracts The last four classify specific

subjects such as (6) History (7) The Bible (8) Myths

Legends and Tales (with the exception of classical

antiquity) (9) Myths and Legends of Classical Antiq-

uity Van de Waal combines the classification in the

first and in the second group in order to classify general

as well as specific subjects Christ in his system is

described with the sign ldquo11 Drdquo (ldquo1rdquo standing for Su-

pernatural ldquo11rdquo for Christianity ldquoDrdquo for Christ) the

adult Christ = 11 D 3 since ldquoshepherdrdquo on the other

hand bears the signature 47 I 221 the adult Christ

as a shepherd can be described in this system by the

following formula 11 D 3 = 47 I 221 Van de Waal

has also provided means to describe more complex

images which he expresses by adding elements between

brackets The Annunciation with God the Father and

a winged Angel is expressed by the following formula

73 A 5 (+1 +41) ldquo1rdquo standing for God the Father

and ldquo41rdquo for a winged Angel (van de Waal 1952) This

system elaborated for many years by its inventor and

prepared for publication in many volumes has proved

most useful in the practical arrangement of the Icono-

graphical Index of the Netherlandish Art and as the

only one until now in existence it became used more

and more in spite of some ambiguities and difficulties

As an endeavor to classify ldquoall portrayablerdquo things

persons events and ideas and to create a consistent

method to describe every possible image van de Waals

system may be considered as one of the important

achievements of the ldquoiconographical stagerdquo in the

development of art history Iconographic files exist of

course in many institutions as for example in the Ikon-

ologisch Instituut of Utrecht University one of the

main centers of study in emblematics and of course

in the most venerable institution of iconographic re-

search the Warburg Institute of the London University

and in other places

4 What was the result of this ldquoiconographicrdquo turn

in the development of the history of art One thing

is certain that this discipline by necessity has come

closer to other humanistic disciplines Since the

ldquointrinsicrdquo meaningmdashin Panofskys terminologymdashof a

work of art cannot be described in terms used by the

history of art but only in terms borrowed from the

history of philosophy of religion of social structures

of science and so on the ldquoiconological methodrdquo took

for granted and provoked such a collaboration Art

history was perhaps the first or one of the first to show

new interest in investigation of meaning It was fol-

lowed by similar developments in ethnology and in

linguistics

We have mentioned above a parallel development

in Byzantine and classical studies Panofskys influence

has been considerable in the other fields of humanistic

research Since ldquoiconologyrdquo aimed at discovering ideas

expressed by a work of art it awoke in art historians

an interest in the history of ideas This general shift

of emphasis and of the direction of studies from mainly

formal ones to studies aiming at ideas underlying art

was perhaps responsible among others for the fact that

several contributions to the Journal of the History of

Ideas have been written by historians of art

It is not difficult to see that such a development

should have provoked criticism on the side of those

who care about the purity and autonomy of methods

Iconology was criticized as far as its internal coherence

and also as far as its claim to be the integral method

of the study of art are concerned (Białostocki 1962)

Studies by R Klein E Forssman G Previtali G

Kubler B Teyssegravedre C Ginzburg and G Hermeren

expressed critical opinions in one or the other respect

Iconology linked art with the rest of history but it

disrupted the links between the work of art and other

things (Kubler 1962) Concentrating on meaning

iconology neglected art as form as individual expres-

sion Iconology implied a rational relationship between

intellectual content and artistic form On the one hand

one spoke of ldquoiconological diminutionsrdquo (Kubler

1962)mdashlimitations of research to meaning only But

on the other hand the overstatements of iconology

were criticized its representatives sometimes seemed

540

to assume everything symbolized something And some

iconologists seemed to consider important in art not

that which makes art a different field of human activity

but that which connects art with other fieldsmdashwith

the history of ideas

There were of course critics who had the opposite

opinion Since the end of the eighteenth century a

direct experience of art was more and more valued

and its symbolical function considered as a burden

J G von Herder said ein Kunstwerk ist der Kunst

wegen da aber bei einem Symbole ist die Kunst

dienend (ldquoA work of art is there because of art but

with a symbol art is a servicerdquo) Similar opinions were

expressed by nineteenth-century art writers and in this

century they have been voiced by Benedetto Croce and

by other Italian opponents of contenutismo by which

they meant interest in content For such critics to put

stress on iconography was to miss the essential in art

and to focus attention on a subordinate function of art

Also among scholars who considered the function

of representation and of communication as a legitimate

and important function of art criticism was expressed

not against the principle of an iconographical or icon-

ological investigation but against overstatements in

their application The introduction of the idea of ldquodis-

guised symbolismrdquo has created a danger of course of

opening the way to fanciful interpretations The alle-

gorical and symbolical function of mythological imag-

ery in classical art is also difficult to interpret precisely

Since no literary sources give a key to an interpretation

of the iconography of the sarcophagi very divergent

theories have been expressed concerning their meaning

Some archaeologists like F Cumont (1942) believe

that mythological and allegorical imagery (Anadyo-

mene Sea-Thiasos Personifications of the Seasons) is

to be read symbolically The Sea-Thiasos for instance

is to be interpreted as a symbol of the journey of the

souls of the deceased to the islands of the blessed

Others like A D Nock (1946) do not find enough

evidence to accept other than a decorative function

in such imagery

The intrusion of some representatives of psychology

eg C G Jung into iconographic studies giving them

an unhistorical turn in their search for ldquoarchetypal

imagesrdquo has complicated the situation although art

historians in general understandably have not accepted

that kind of approach to symbolism (Frankfort 1958

Gombrich 1965)

The fact that iconographic interpretations sometimes

lack satisfactory proofs does not detract from the im-

portance of such investigations so long as they are

conducted according to the requirements of historical

methods and take into account the corrective princi-

ples established by Panofsky A correct acquaintance

with the way of thinking of the artist the patron or the

viewer based on a satisfactory knowledge of documen-

tary visual and literary sources an awareness of the

choice situations produced by historical developments

may enable art historians to discover the secondary

meaning of a work of art as well as its intrinsic mean-

ing It is of course possible that the art historian will

meet some works for which it will not be possible to re-

construct in a satisfactory way the world of ideas that

would account for the meaning of those works In such

cases a reliable interpretation is simply not possible

R Berliner (1945 1966) criticized the widespread

opinion according to which content of the works of

visual arts in the Middle Ages had to be checked

against the literary sources considered as the only

medium in which ideological innovations were per-

mitted Berliner pleaded for assuming a considerable

ldquofreedomrdquo in the medieval artist and he considered

iconographic innovation possible even when no writ-

ten evidence could be found Meyer Schapiro (1947)

presented proofs that sometimes purely aesthetic rea-

sons decided the character of the work of art even as

early as the Romanesque period

We can only touch on some specific discussions going

on in the field of iconographic research But iconogra-

phic research is far from being a closed system and

the relative share of iconographic and stylistic criticism

in the work of art historians is always a matter of

discussion It is certain that the ldquoiconographicrdquo period

in the study of art has enlarged in a considerable way

the understanding of the art of the past and that it

has connected art history in a way unknown before

with the other historical disciplines and above all others

with the history of ideas

BIBLIOGRAPHY

L B Alberti On Painting ed J Spencer (New Haven

1956 revised ed 1966) E Auerbach ldquoFigurardquo (1944) trans

and published in Scenes From the Drama of European Liter-

ature (New York 1959) pp 11-76 K Bauch ldquoImagordquo

(1960) Studien zur Kunstgeschichte (Berlin 1967) pp 1-20

G P Bellori Descrizione delle imagini dipinte da Raffaello

(Rome 1695 ed used is 1751) R Berliner ldquoThe Free-

dom of Medieval Artrdquo Gazette des Beaux-Arts 628 (1945)

263-88 idem ldquoBemerkungen zu einigen Darstellungen des

Erloumlsers als Schmerzensmannrdquo Das Muumlnster 9 (1956)

97-117x J Białostocki ldquoIconografia e Iconologiardquo Enciclo-

pedia Universale dellArte (1962) Vol VII cols 163-75

trans as Encyclopedia of World Art (1966) Vol VII cols

769-85 lists almost all important older contributions to this

field idem ldquoRomantische Ikonographierdquo Stil und Ikonog-

raphie (Dresden 1966) pp 156-81 idem ldquoKompozycja

emblematyczna epitafioacutew ślaskich XVI wiekurdquo (ldquoEmblem-

atic Composition of Silesian Epitaphs of the Sixteenth Cen-

turyrdquo) Ze studioacutew nad Sztuka XVI wieku na Řlasku

(Wrocław 1968) pp 77-93 idem ldquoEsilio Privatordquo Bulletin

du Museacutee National de Varsovie 10 (1969) 95-101 J

541

Chydenius The Theory of Medieval Symbolism (Helsingfors

1960) Series of the Societas Scientiarum Fennica Com-

mentationes Humanarum Litterarum 27 2 R J Clements

Picta Poesis (Rome 1960) F Creuzer Symbolik und

Mythologie der Alten Voumllker (Leipzig and Darmstadt 1810

revised ed 1819) F Cumont Recherches sur le symbolisme

funeacuteraire des Romains (Paris 1942) L Eitner ldquoThe Open

Window and the Storm-Tossed Boatrdquo Art Bulletin 37

(1955) 281-90 H Frankfort ldquoThe Archetype in Analytical

Psychology and the History of Religionrdquo Journal of the

Warburg and Courtauld Institutes 21 (1958) 166-78

K Garas ldquoAllegorie und Geschichte in der Venezianischen

Malerei des 18 Jahrhundertsrdquo in proceedings of the XXI

International Congress of the History of Art Bonn Stil und

Uumlberlieferung in der Kunst des Abendlandes (Berlin 1967)

3 280-83 K Giehlow ldquoDie Hieroglyphenkunde des

Humanismus in der Allegorie der Renaissancerdquo Jahrbuch

der Kunsthistorischen Sammlungen des Allerhochsten

Kaiserhauses 32 (1915) 1-232 C Gilbert ldquoOn Subject and

Not-Subject in Italian Renaissance Picturesrdquo Art Bulletin

34 (1952) 202-16 C Ginzburg ldquoDa A Warburg a E H

Gombrich Note su un problema di metodordquo Studi medi-

evali series 3 7 (1966) 1015-65 E H Gombrich ldquoIcones

Symbolicae The Visual Image in Neo-Platonic Thoughtrdquo

Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes 11 (1948)

163-92 idem ldquoThe Use of Art for the Study of Symbolsrdquo

American Psychologist 20 (1965) A Grabar Liconoclasme

byzantin Dossier archeacuteologique (Paris 1957) idem Chris-

tian Iconography A Study of Its Origins (Princeton 1969)

S J Gudlaugsson De Comedianten bij Jan Steen en zijn

tijdgenooten (s-Gravenhage 1945) W S Heckscher ldquoThe

Genesis of Iconologyrdquo Stl und Uumlberlieferung in der Kunst

des Abendlandes Akten des XXI Internationalen Kon-

gresses fuumlr Kunstgeschichte (Berlin 1967) 3 239-62 G

Hermereacuten Representation and Meaning in the Visual Arts

A Study in the Methodology of Iconography and Iconology

Lund Studies in Philosophy Vol I (Lund 1969) R Hinks

Myth and Allegory in Ancient Art (London 1939) W

Hofmann Das Irdische Paradies (Munich 1960) G J

Hoogewerff ldquoLIconologie et son importance pour leacutetude

systeacutematique de lart chreacutetienrdquo Rivista dArcheologia Cris-

tiana 8 (1931) 53-82 E de Jongh Zinne- en minnebeelden

in de schilderkunst van de zeventiende eeuw (mdash1967) idem

ldquoErotica in Vogelperspectief De dubbelzinnigheid van een

reeks 17de eeuwse genrevoorstellingenrdquo Simiolus 3

(1968-69) 22-72 L Kalinowski ldquoTreści ideowe i estetyczne

Drzwi Gnieźnieńskichrdquo (ldquoIdeological and Aesthetic Content

of the Gniezno Bronze Doorsrdquo) in Drzwi Gnieźnieńskie ed

M Walicki (Wroclaw 1959) 2 7-160 H Keller Tizians

Poesie fuumlr Koumlnig Philip II von Spanien (Wiesbaden 1969)

R Klein ldquoLa theacuteorie de lexpression figureacutee dans les traiteacutes

italiens sur les imprese 1555-1612rdquo Bibliothegraveque dHu-

manisme et Renaissance 19 (1957) 320-41 republished with

the other relevant studies in la forme et lintelligible (Paris

1969) R Klibansky E Panofsky F Saxl Saturn and Melan-

choly (London 1964) J B Knipping Ikonografie van de

Contra-Reformatie in de Nederlanden (Hilversum 1939-40)

G Kubler The Shape of Time (New Haven and London

1962) R W Lee ldquoUt pictura poesisrdquo Art Bulletin 22

(1940) 197-269 E Macircle Lart religieux du XIIIe siegravecle en

France (Paris 1898) English ed used (New York 1958)

idem Lart religieux de la fin du Moyen-Age en France

(Paris 1908) idem Lart religieux du XIIe siegravecle en France

(Paris 1922) idem Lart religieux apregraves le Concile de Trente

(Paris 1932) J Maurin Białostocka Lessing i sztuki plas-

tyczne (ldquoLessing and the visual artsrdquo) (Wroclaw Warszawa

Krakoacutew 1969) E F von Monroy Embleme und Emblem-

buumlcher in den Niederlanden 1560-1630 ed H M von Erffa

(Utrecht 1964) J Montagu ldquoThe Painted Enigma and

French Seventeenth Century Artrdquo Journal of the Warburg

and Courtauld Institutes 31 (1968) 307-35 W Mrazek

Ikonologie der barocken Deckenmalerei (Vienna 1953)

Uumlsterreichische Akademie der Wissenschaften Philo-

sophisch-historische Klasse Sitzungsberichte 2283 A D

Nock ldquoSarcophagi and Symbolismrdquo American Journal of

Archaeology 50 (1946) 166ff D Panofsky and E Panofsky

ldquoThe Iconography of the Galeacuterie Franccedilois Ier at Fontaine-

bleaurdquo Gazette des Beaux-Arts 652 (1958) 113-90

E Panofsky ldquoUumlber das Verhaumlltnis der Kunstgeschichte zur

Kunsttheorierdquo Zeitschrift fuumlr Aesthetik und allgemeine

Kunstwissenschaft 18 (1925) 129-61 idem Studies in

Iconology (New York 1939) idem ed Abbot Suger (Prince-

ton 1946) idem Gothic Architecture and Scholasticism

(Latrobe Pa 1951) idem Early Netherlandish Painting

(Cambridge Mass 1953) idem Meaning in the Visual Arts

(Garden City N Y 1955) idem Renaissance and Renas-

cences in Western Art (Stockholm 1960) idem Tomb Sculp-

ture (New York 1964) E Panofsky and F Saxl ldquoClassical

Mythology in Medieval Artrdquo Metropolitan Museum Studies

4 (1932-33) 228-80 M Praz Studies in Seventeenth Cen-

tury Imagery (London 1939-47 2nd ed Rome 1964) S

Ringbom ldquoDevotional Images and Imaginative Devotions

Notes on the Place of Art in Late Medieval Private Pietyrdquo

Gazette des Beaux-Arts 6 73 (1969) 159-70 Joseph Sauer

Symbolik des Kirchengebaumludes und seiner Ausstattung in

der Auffassung des Mittelalters 2nd ed (Freiburg i B

1924) F Saxl ldquoFruumlhes Christentum und spaumltes Heidentum

in ihren kuumlnstlerischen Ausdrucksformenrdquo Wiener Jahrbuch

fuumlr Kunstgeschichte 2 (1923) 63-121 M Schapiro ldquoThe

Ruthwell Crossrdquo Art Bulletin 26 (1944) 232-45 idem ldquoOn

the Aesthetic Attitude in Romanesque Artrdquo in Art and

Thought issued in Honour of Ananda Coomaraswamy

(London 1947) 139-50 J Seznec The Survival of the Pagan

Gods (New York 1953) O G von Simson The Gothic

Cathedral (New York 1956) R E Spear ldquoThe Literary

Source of Poussins Realm of Florardquo The Burlington Maga-

zine 107 (1965) 563-69 L Volkmann Bilderschriften der

Renaissance (Leipzig 1923) Hans van de Waal Drie

eeuwen vaderlandsche geschieduitbeelding 1500-1800 (s-

Gravenhage 1952) idem ldquoSome Principles of a General

Iconographical Classificationrdquo in Actes du XVIIe Congregraves

International dHistoire de lArt Amsterdam 1952 (La Haye

1955) 601-06 E Wind ldquoCharity the Case History of a

Patternrdquo Journal of the Warburg Institute 1 (1937) 322ff

JAN BIAŁOSTOCKI

[See also Allegory Baroque Classicism Criticism Enlight-

enment Motif Myth Naturalism in Art Neo-Platonism

Renaissance Humanism Romanticism Symbolism Tem-

perance Ut pictura poesis]

quire equal rights with religious and humanistic history

and allegory predominantly in Venice and in Antwerp

Even then however the representations of people

working in fields (Jacopo or Francesco Bassano) fol-

lowed the old traditions of Calendar-pictures and in

the background of genre scenes as in Pieter Aertsens

pictures a biblical motif may be found which trans-

forms the whole composition into a storia however

unorthodox

With the development of realistic painting in the

seventeenth century there appeared specific iconogra-

phic problems New subjects slowly found convenient

form They entered the scene patterned after the ven-

erable stories of sacred or of profane iconography

H van de Waal described (1952) the process of the for-

mation of national historical iconography in Holland

Scenes depicting recent happenings from a long strug-

gle for national independence appeared first in forms

assimilated to well-known religious or mythical scenes

This was not only an expedient facilitating their com-

position for by this means the new subjects gained the

decorum inherent in the adopted patterns formed to

express traditional stories Similar procedures may be

seen in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries when

more and more sections of reality became interesting

enough to be represented in art

The transfer of decorum from the sacred or allegori-

cal figures to the humans represented is a means used

in what modern iconographers call ldquoallegorical por-

traiturerdquo Renaissance painters had represented real

people under mythological or even sacred disguise

they gave actual faces of living people to the figures

represented with all the attributes and characteristics

of their mythical sacred or even allegorical qualities

Later it was only the pattern which remained still in

the eighteenth century English portraitists patterned

the effigies of contemporary aristocrats after Michel-

angelos Sybils or after allegories like the Caritas

(Wind 1937) J B Oudry represented the Polish King

in exile Stanisław Leszczyński with all the attributes

of the allegory of exile taken from Ripa identifying

him in this way with personification of his most promi-

nent quality (Białostocki 1969)

Dutch realistic painting of the seventeenth century

is a document of an important iconographic conquest

Landscapes seascapes moonlit night scenes snapshots

of people skating in winter landscapes views of market

places church interiors backyards fishermen old

women preparing food fashionable dishes ready for

lunch merchants and artisans elegant gentlemen pay-

ing visits and folk-surgeons performing sensational

street-operations all this became subject matter for

representation and continued to be considered worthy

of depiction until the end of the nineteenth century

It was first considered as such in Holland only then

slowly everyday subject matter was recognized also by

art-theorists in other countries although it was re-

garded as much less dignified than religious mytholog-

ical or allegorical subjects Only in the nineteenth

century did the vogue of realistic representation of

everyday subjects become widespread In Dutch pic-

tures of the seventeenth century we are often con-

fronted with nothing else than representations of pic-

turesque reality Sometimes however these genre

pictures appear to be illustrations of proverbs expres-

sing moralistic folk-wisdom sometimes they recall

scenes from the popular threater of the rederijkers or

rhetoricians especially pictures by Jan Steen (Gud-

laugsson 1945) they contain allusions to emblems

Sometimes the elegant scenes from bourgeois life in-

clude quite indecent erotic allusions (de Jongh 1967

1969) The ambiguity of these pictures was certainly

a source of specific pleasure for those who knew the

key to their true meaning

7 In Catholic countries allegorical art sacred as

well as profane flourished The twofold character of

symbolic representations mentioned above persisted

in the seventeenth century Aristotelian rational sym-

bolism which used images as words was widespread

in the orthodox Catholic iconography of the Counter-

Reformation as well as in the humanistic visual lan-

guage codified by Ripa and others A mystical Neo-

Platonic symbolism transcending reason reappeared

too Its outspoken document is the treatise by Chris-

toforo Giarda Bibliothecae alexandrinae icones sym-

bolicae of 1626 (Gombrich 1948) For Giarda symbolic

images give the beholder a direct insight into the

mysteries of religion which are not accessible to rea-

son

Thanks to symbolic images the mind which is banished from

heaven into this dark cave of the body its actions held in

bondage by the senses can behold the beauty and form

of the Virtues and Sciences divorced from all matter and

yet adumbrated if not perfectly expressed in colours and

is thus roused to an even more fervent love and desire for

them Who then can sufficiently estimate the magni-

tude of the debt we owe to those who expressed the Arts

and Sciences themselves in images and so brought it about

that we could not only know them but look at them as

it were with our eyes that we can meet them and almost

converse with them

(Gombrich [1948] pp 188f)

Great allegorical compositions covering the ceilings of

baroque churches are often realizations of this princi-

ple For those however who conceived allegory as a

rational operation as a language used for didactic aims

the main problem remained the clarity of the allegori-

533

cal message The larger the audience to whom allegory

was addressed the simpler more obvious its symbolism

should have been The banality of allegorical language

provoked criticism in the eighteenth century Fran-

cesco Algarotti (1762) prefers without any doubt his-

torical representations to the ldquoempty allegories and

complicated mythological allusionsrdquo (Garas [1967] p

280) Especially criticized was the obscurity of these

allegories in which completely original unknown sym-

bols were used Roger de Piles praises his favorite

master Rubens who ldquointroduced only such allegories

elements of which were already known from ancient

artrdquo and opposes him to Charles Lebrun who ldquoinstead

of taking symbols from some known source as the

ancient fable and medals has invented almost all of

them and thus the pictures of this kind became riddles

which the beholder does not want to take the task to

solverdquo To keep the balance between platitudinous

redundancy and utter incomprehensibility was the

crucial problem of late baroque allegorism What is

interesting however is that the idea of the picture

as a riddle was not foreign to the seventeenth century

It appears in France as well as in Sweden where David

Kloumlcker Ehrenstrahl (1694) proposed that pictures

present riddles that could not be solved by everyone

In France however the ldquopainted enigmardquo fostered

by the Jesuits in their schools flourished especially well

in the seventeenth century (Montagu 1968) These

ldquopainted enigmasrdquo lent themselves to various inter-

pretations and gave interpreters an opportunity to

show their ingenuity These pictures and their inter-

pretations seem to prove that a considerable flexibility

of meaning was intended

We might rather accept that a work of art was regarded

in the seventeenth century as in a certain sense an open

symbol raw material like the myth or sacred story which

it illustrates on which the interpreter might exercise the

power of his ingenuity turning it into an allegory of Chris-

tian doctrine or a panegyric in honour of his patron

(Montagu [1968] p 334)

Such a situation probably existed only in some specific

circles It was a limiting case The other extreme was

to use in an uninteresting routine way Ripas symbolic

images or those of other popular symbolic handbooks

Such practice continued well into the eighteenth cen-

tury The general trend fed by ideas of the Enlighten-

ment was to make allegories more and more obvious

It is understandable that some theorists like the Count

de Caylus looked for new subject matter presenting

as he did Tableaux tireacutes de lIliade (1755) or that

J J Winckelmann tried to revive allegory and to give

it a new force It was however too late In the eight-

eenth century together with the whole system of

humanistic tradition the systems of iconography began

to disintegrate The great break in the tradition con-

cerned not only style but also iconography Emblem-

atic roots may be discovered in Goyas symbolism as

well as in the reasonable allegories of the Enlighten-

ment but generally speaking there was a search for

new not known or not used sourcesmdashas in William

Blakes biblical individualistic imagerymdashor the new

staging of the old ones as in Jacques Louis Davids

classical subjects

The art of romanticism was a definite break with

the past much more in the field of ideas and iconogra-

phy than in a stylistic respect where romanticists

retrospectively looked back either to medieval and

pre-Raphaelite or to baroque sources Symbols and

allegories yielded to an all-pervading mood and the

traditional repertory of religious allegorical mytho-

logical and historical iconography gave way to a new

iconography Although several encompassing images

of Christian and humanistic art survived they received

new content and essentially changed their character

New attitudes of the individual to the world of nature

and history to society and destiny to time and death

and new problems resulting from the striving after

freedom (which was a new perhaps most important

principle of human behavior in all fields of human

activity) found expression in new thematic fields and

in new particular themes such as ldquoStorm-tossed Boatrdquo

ldquoLonely Wanderer in the Mountainsrdquo ldquoA Death of the

Herordquo (Eitner 1955 Hofmann 1960 Białostocki

1966)

Romanticism has not formed and could not have

formed an iconographic system for since they strived

first of all for originality of individual conception the

romantics interpreted images in a subjective way as

expressions of mood Romanticism has on the other

hand introduced new heroes and martyrs into art

instead of religious ones the national social and artis-

tic ones It created a new image of history seen now

as a set of political and moral examplesmdashas in

baroquemdashbut often put together now according to a

very individualistic principle of choice A correlative

to pathetic and heroic romanticism was a bourgeois

and intimate romanticism its expression was for ex-

ample the new imagery of the open window which

shows to the viewer wide perspectives but shelters him

at the same time from the dangers of the unknown

(Eitner 1955)

When the world of ideas and images created at the

moment of the flowering of romanticism began to be

popularized for the use of the large bourgeois masses

the contentmdashideological and iconographicalmdashof ro-

manticism lost its original authenticity and left be-

hind not a new system of original images but a dispo-

534

sition to melodramatic experiences and an inflation of

a theatrical gesture (Hofmann 1960 Białostocki 1966)

The nineteenth century developed a realistic por-

traiture of man and nature and took over worn out

clicheacutes of the Renaissance and baroque allegories It

introduced new subject matter taken partly from tra-

dition partly from observation of reality tinted with

vague symbolism such as ldquoForgerdquo or the ldquoFuneral of

the Peasantrdquo but it did not create a new system of

iconography in spite of short-lived revivals of symbol-

istic attitudes in such movementsmdashincidentally not

limited to and not initiated in the visual artsmdashas

ldquosymbolismrdquo

New ephemeral artistic movements which consti-

tuted the history of European art in the last hundred

years show an interesting bracketing of style and icon-

ography in spite of a preponderant lack of iconogra-

phic interest Their representatives chose subjects suit-

able to specific artistic aims and means which they

developed and were interested in Impressionists

painted seaside scenes landscapes and genre pictures

showing the life of artistic and intellectual milieus

Cubists introduced a specific repertory of still-life

motifs symbols of the artists atelier and of the life

of the bohegraveme bottles musical instruments books

fruits flowers newspapers How much these motifs

were connected with specific cubist style appears when

one looks at works of artists foreign to the original

cubist group but imitating its style as for instance

several Czech artists like Emil Filla They adopted

cubist iconography together with cubist style Abstract

movements in general lacked iconography although

they were not foreign to symbolic tendencies espe-

cially in sculpture (Brancusi Moore) Only in the dec-

ades of 1950-70 can a revival of more articulated and

programmatic symbolism be observed One may sup-

pose that this revival is at least in part brought about

by the development of research in iconography and

symbolism which took place in the second and third

quarters of our century

II

1 The origins of ldquointerpretative iconographyrdquo may

be seen in the descriptions (ekphrasis) of works of art

known in classical literature But these descriptions

like those by Philostratus the Elder or Lucian are

limited simply to description and lack in general any

interpretation Moreover it is not certain whether they

are descriptions of actual or fictitious works of art at

least opinions in this respect vary Brief medieval tituli

which formulated in words the content of religious

images were to be sure interpretative sometimes but

they were short and cannot be connected with the

tradition of artistic erudition We have to look to

modern times to indicate the beginnings of iconogra-

phic interpretation and research From Vasaris Rag-

ionamenti in which interpretations of the paintings

decorating the Palazzo Vecchio in Florence are given

we learn how complicated and how undecipherable

iconographic concepts might have been even to peo-

ple living in buildings decorated by paintings expres-

sing these concepts But perhaps the first really to be

considered as interested in iconographic research was

the seventeenth-century archaeologist and art theorist

Giovanni Pietro Bellori In the introduction to his Lives

of Artists (1672) Bellori stressed that he paid special

attention to the content of the works of art he was

talking about and he even credited the painter Nicolas

Poussin with having directed his attention to iconogra-

phy In his Lives Bellori presented short interpretative

descriptions of pictures and he sometimes developed

these interpretations further in small iconographic

essays the influence of classical ekphrasis on him is

a possibility Sometimes his errors took deep roots in

the subsequent history of art as when he explained

Poussins Triumph of Flora (Dresden) by designating

Ovids Metamorphoses as its source The true source

Marinos Adona was finally found by R E Spear in

1965

What is interesting in Belloris procedure is that he

first identifies the motifs tries to connect them with

classical or modern literary sources and then proceeds

to find out the deep meaning the general symbolic

idea of the work Therefore he may be considered as

one of the pioneers not only of iconography as a disci-

pline of research but also of iconology as formulated

by its recent partisans That even in the second half

of the sixteenth century some observers were inclined

to look for hidden meaning in each element of the work

of art we learn from Joannes Molanus (1570) who in

De picturis et imaginibus sacris states reasonably that

ldquoit is not necessary to ask for meaning of everything

that can be observed in a picture in such cases a lot

of absurd things may resultrdquo But the consciousness of

the importance of iconography increased and at the

end of the seventeenth century Andreacute Feacutelibien stressed

that in order to attribute a picture to a painter it is

not enough to know the way he uses his brush one

needs also to know his esprit to learn his geacutenie and

to be able to foresee in which way he is able to form

his conceptions Thus iconographic analysis was con-

sidered necessary even for the purpose of attribution

Descriptive interpretations of the works of ancient

art appeared in the big archaeological publications of

the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries such as

Jacques Spons Miscellanea eruditae antiquitatis (1679)

G P Belloris Admiranda romanarum antiquitatum ac

veteris sculpturae vestigia (1693) P de Caylus Recueil

535

dantiquiteacutes eacutegyptiennes eacutetrusques grecques et

romaines (1752-67) and in an interesting endeavor

(although very much criticized by Lessing) of Joseph

Spence to explain classical poets through works of art

and vice versa (Polymetis 1747) Classical archaeology

however has not been especially interested in iconog-

raphy and the use of the term itself by archaeolo-

gists was limited to portraiture The first great devel-

opment of iconographic studies was connected with

the romantic movement although an important pre-

lude for it was hagiographical collections of sources

such as Acta sanctorum published by the Bollandists

(1643-1794 resumed later) Among the pre-romantic

scholars in iconography the eminent German poet

G E Lessing is to be noted His study of the repre-

sentation of death in classical times can be considered

as one of the first essays in interpretative iconography

which is now called iconology In Wie die Alten den

Tod gebildet (1769) Lessing tries to interpret the classi-

cal iconographic type of Amor with the inverted torch

and to find its ldquointrinsic meaningrdquo by taking into ac-

count the religion customs and philosophy of the

classical world The work of art is interpreted by Less-

ing as ldquoa symptom of something elserdquo While Lessings

predecessors (like B de Montfaucon) ldquoexplained the

classical past by monumentsrdquo he for the first time did

the opposite ldquohe explained the monuments by Antiq-

uityrdquo (Maurin Białostocka [1969] pp 92-100)

Pre-romantic and romantic interests in myth and

symbol found their expression in publications and dis-

cussions by German philosophers and scholars like F

Schlegel J Herder J J von Goumlrres and F Creuzer

Creuzers work Symbolik und Mythologie der alten

Voumllker (1810) which shows the influence of mystical

Neo-Platonic ideas on symbols (Gombrich 1965) was

the most influential in the romantic period in Ger-

many Under the impact of Chateaubriands le Geacutenie

du christianisme (1802) research in medieval iconog-

raphy developed mainly in France Works by French

scholars mostly clergymen which were indeed con-

cerned with Christian medieval art dominated icon-

ographical study in the nineteenth century Since most

of these writers were not professional scholars their

work was often amateurish in character but it is unde-

niable that books by A N Didron Histoire de Dieu

(Paris 1843) the first part of a comprehensive pro-

jected but not completed iconography of Christian art

A Crosnier Iconographie chreacutetienne (Caen 1848) C

Cahier Caracteacuteristiques des saints (Paris 1867) C

Rohault de Fleury Archeacuteologie chreacutetienne les saints

de la messe et leurs monuments 12 vols (Paris

1893-1900) L Breacutehier Lart chreacutetien son deacuteveloppe-

ment iconographique des origines agrave nos jours (Paris

1918) P Perdrizet V Leroquais and G de Jerphanion

have built up a solid body of iconographical knowl-

edge on which scholars of the twentieth century were

able to erect a modern comprehensive structure In

the field of Byzantine iconography it was Gabriel

Millets Recherches sur liconographie de leacutevangile aux

XIVe XVe et XVIe siegravecles (Paris 1916 reprint

1960) that was basic for any further study For Western

chiefly French art a well-written and learned work

appealing to the general reader as well as to the

scholar was produced by Eacutemile Macircle who in his four

volumes of the history of religious art (1898-1932) has

presented a well-composed synthetic image of icono-

graphical development A lexicographic summary of

these studies of generations of French scholars is pre-

sented in the Dictionnaire darcheacuteologie chreacutetienne et

de liturgie published from 1907 to 1953 and edited

by F Cabrol and H Leclerq A recent reference work

is that by L Reacuteau Iconographie de lart chreacutetien (Paris

1955-59) Russian scholars have done important work

in the field of Byzantine and Orthodox iconography

of religious art The most prominent are N P Kon-

dakov Ikonografia Bogomatieri (St Petersburg 1911

2nd ed 1914-15) D V Ainalov Mosaiki IV i V vekov

(St Petersburg 1895) and N Pokrovski Otcherki

pamyatnikov christianskogo isskusstva i ikonografii (St

Petersburg 1894 3rd ed 1910) V Lasarev and M

Alpatov belonging to the mid-twentieth-century gen-

eration of Russian scholars discuss iconography in

several works on religious art German scholarship

produced in the nineteenth century works by F Piper

A Springer and H Detzel Useful compendia were

produced in the early twentieth century by J Sauer

W Molsdorf K Kuumlnstle and J Braun Dutch scholars

C Smits J B Knipping and J J M Timmers contrib-

uted to iconographic studies in recent times Knip-

pings book (1939-40) being the most important work

on the iconography of the Counter-Reformation and

supplementing Macircles volume of 1932 In the twentieth

century on C R Moreys initiative iconographic

studies were inaugurated in North America Focused

on earlier medieval art these studies developed at

Princeton University

A new direction characteristic of iconographic

studies in the twentieth century has been given to

them by the international school of art historical re-

search inaugurated by the Hamburg scholar Aby

Warburg At the International Congress for the History

of Art at Rome in 1912 he presented a sensational

astrological interpretation of the frescoes painted by

Francesco Cossa and his collaborators in Palazzo

Schifanoja at Ferrara Warburg solved the secret of

those representations which had puzzled the ingenuity

of several former students interpreting them as images

of zodiacal signs and their decans But he did not limit

536

his contribution to the presentation of his results He

wanted to stress the importance of his approach and

of the method of study which later became connected

with his name He said

I hope that through the method used by me for explication

of the frescoes at the Palazzo Schifanoja of Ferrara I have

proved that an iconological analysis which does not allow

itself to be diverted by the rules of frontier police from

considering antiquity Middle Ages and modern times as

interconnected periods nor from analyzing the most liberal

and the most applied works of art as equally important

documents of expression that this method endeavoring as

it does to throw light upon one dark spot clears up at

the same time great interconnected developments

(Warburg 1912 Heckscher 1967)

Warburgs influence on the history of art was very

great although he himself did not write much It was

mainly the posthumous impact of his ideas promul-

gated as they were by Fritz Saxl which contributed

to the specific direction of studies concentrated in the

library Warburg founded in Hamburg and which Saxl

succeeded in transplanting during the Nazi era to

London where it became the Warburg Institute of the

University of London While the object of study of the

nineteenth-century iconographers was mainly religious

art in its relation to religious literary sources and lit-

urgy for Warburg the study of images was a study

of their relations to religion to poetry to myth to

science and to social and political life Art was for

him closely connected with the polyphonic structure

of historical life

Warburgs ideas had a great importance for the most

influential theory of iconographic interpretation in our

century that elaborated by Erwin Panofsky In Ham-

burg where Warburg Saxl and Panofsky were active

in the twenties Ernst Cassirer built up his philosophy

of symbolic forms which constituted an additional

background for Panofskys system being derived as

his own methodology was from the traditions of

Kantian philosophy Around 1930 Panofskys ideas

ripened into a system which found formulation in his

book herkules am Scheidewege (1930) and later in a

theoretical article of 1932 G J Hoogewerff was how-

ever the first to propose the word ldquoiconologyrdquo as a

name for the method of an analysis of content in a

work of art (Warburg spoke of iconological analysis)

In 1931 he proposed distinguishing between iconogra-

phy as a descriptive science aiming at the identifica-

tion of themes and ldquoiconologyrdquo aiming at the under-

standing ldquoof symbolic dogmatic or mystical meaning

which is expressed (or hidden) in figurative formsrdquo He

stressed that ldquoiconologyrdquo deals with works of art with-

out classifying them according to the technique used

or to the achieved perfection taking into account only

their meaning Hoogewerff saw the last aim of iconol-

ogy in finding out the cultural and ideological back-

ground expressed by works of art and the cultural and

social significance which can be attributed to certain

forms and to means of expression in the same time

Hoogewerffs part in the expansion of iconology was

limited because he did not endorse his methodical

proposals with examples of historical interpretations

Erwin Panofsky with whose name iconology has

been connected ever since not only developed its

theoretical foundations but contributed by his practi-

cal work in art history to the main triumph of iconol-

ogy after the Second World War The most influential

book by Panofsky has been Studies in Iconology (1939)

in which his masterly presentation of the method was

connected with its equally excellent exemplification

2 Panofsky considers the interpretation of a work

of art as falling on three levels On the first level the

object of interpretation is the primary or natural sub-

ject matter The function of interpretation is called

ldquopre-iconographical descriptionrdquo In order to be able

to arrive at a correct interpretation on that level the

interpreter must have a practical experience (ldquofamili-

arity with objects and eventsrdquo) common to everybody

at least in one cultural sphere However he has to

control his observations by a ldquocorrective knowledge

of the history of stylerdquo (ldquoinsight into the manner in

which under varying historical conditions objects and

events were expressed by formsrdquo) On the second level

the function of interpretation is called ldquoiconographical

analysisrdquo its object is the ldquosecondary or conventional

subject matterrdquo constituting the world of images his-

tories and allegories The interpreters equipment in

this case is obviously the knowledge of literary sources

giving him a ldquofamiliarity with specific themes and

conceptsrdquo The interpreter has to control his observa-

tions by ldquothe insight into the manner in which under

varying historical conditions specific themes or con-

cepts were expressed by objects and eventsrdquo On the

third level the function of interpreting is called ldquoicon-

ographical analysis in a deeper senserdquo (1939) or ldquoicon-

ological analysisrdquo (1955) Its object is the ldquointrinsic

meaning or contentrdquo of a work of art The interpreters

equipment on that level should be a ldquofamiliarity with

the essential tendencies of the human mindrdquo and he

has to control his interpretation by the ldquoinsight into

the manner in which under varying historical condi-

tions essential tendencies of the human mind were

expressed by specific themes and conceptsrdquo Thus

taking all the time into account what Panofsky calls

the history of tradition the interpreter has to aim at

understanding the work of art its ldquoprimaryrdquo as well

as ldquosecondary subject matterrdquo as symptoms of some

fundamental tendency of the human mind typical of

537

a place a time a civilization and of an individual

responsible for the creation of the work ldquoIconologyrdquomdash

for Panofskymdashldquois a method of interpretation which

arises from synthesis rather than analysisrdquo Trying to

find the intrinsic meaning of a work of art

The art historian will have to check what he thinks is the

intrinsic meaning of the work or group of works against

what he thinks is the intrinsic meaning of as many other

documents of civilization historically related to that work

or group of works as he can master It is in the search

for intrinsic meaning or content that the various humanistic

disciplines meet on a common plane instead of serving as

handmaidens to each other

(Panofsky [1955] p 39)

The concept of intrinsic meaning of a work of art

was elaborated by Panofsky much earlier (1925) when

he interpreted in his own way the concept of Kunst-

wollen introduced by A Riegl to research in art

Panofsky understood this ldquoartistic volitionrdquo as an im-

manent ultimate meaning of a work of art which is

manifested in the way basic artistic problems are solved

in that work He used the same concept further to bring

art closer to the other fields of human activity Since

the ldquoimmanent ultimate senserdquo of the work of art is

nothing else than uniformity in the way of solving basic

artistic problems it is possible to compare that imma-

nent sense with immanent senses of the other human

works in various fields Panofsky did it for instance

when in one of his later works he compared the struc-

tural principles of Gothic architecture with those of

scholastic thinking (1951)

The system elaborated by Panofsky and exemplified

by his own work in art history was the first consistent

system of an integral interpretation of a work of visual

arts based on the analysis of content In principle

Panofskys system takes into account all the elements

of the work of art since it takes as the point of depar-

ture the sensual exterior shape of the work It is

however clear that its main scope is not the inter-

pretation of form as a bearer of meaning but the

understanding and interpretation of conventional alle-

gories literary themes and symbols as symptoms of

the history of the human mind It was that method

in the history of art which programmatically fostered

a collaboration with all the other disciplines of histori-

cal studies It was therefore one of the most influential

methods not only among art historians but also among

representatives of the other branches of humanistic

studies Although there were art historians who ex-

pressed a critical attitude toward ldquoiconologyrdquo as the

new method was soon baptized its influence was over-

whelming

3 It is not only but mainly due to Panofsky that

one can venture to call ldquoiconographicalrdquo that period

of art history as a historical discipline which followed

the Second World War and to oppose it to the ldquostylis-

ticrdquo one which preceded it It does not mean of course

that no iconographic research took place in the

twenties or thirties the works of Macircle Knipping van

Marle Wilpert Saxl and of Panofsky himself would

contradict such a statement Neither is it true that

purely formal research aiming at stylistic classification

and analysis discontinued after World War II It is

evident that in the last decades (from 1940 on) icono-

graphic interests came to the fore and became domi-

nant in many countries Iconographical studies grew

so much in number and importance that they made

it possible to undertake and to publish new reference

works of iconographic character like dictionaries

written by one scholar (Guy de Tervarent Aurenham-

mer) as well as larger works based on a collaboration

of several scholars (Encyclopedias of German art of

Antiquity and Christian civilization of Byzantine art)

Interest in meaning and iconography has appeared

also among historians of political social and religious

institutions The symbolism of signs ceremonies cos-

tumes and arms was studied by such scholars as A

Alfoumlldi ldquoInsignien und Tracht der roumlmischen Kaiserrdquo

Mitteilungen des deutschen Archaumlologischen Instituts

Roumlmische Abteilung (1935) 1ff ldquoDie Geburt der

kaiserlichen Bildsymbolikrdquo museum Helveticum 9

(1952) 204ff also by A Grabar Martyrium (Paris

1943-46) by E H Kantorowicz laudes Regiae

(Berkeley and Los Angeles 1946) The Kings Two

Bodies (Princeton 1957) by H P L Orange Studies

in the Iconography of Cosmic Kingship in the Ancient

World (Oslo 1953) Art Forms and Civic Life in the

Late Roman Empire (Princeton 1965) and by P E

Schramm herrschaftszeichen und Staatssymbolik

(Stuttgart 1954-56) In their studies iconography far

transcends the borders of art and it helps to build up

a history of ideas by following their various visual

expressions

Pioneering studies by K Giehlow F Saxl and E

Panofsky enlarged iconographical interests above all

to encompass the large field of secular art whereas

they had been mainly limited to religious iconography

in the work of preceding generations of scholars The

whole complicated and hardly known large body of

meanings disguised by the cryptic language of hiero-

glyphs emblems and iconologies became one of the

main topics of study

This established a collaboration between historians

of art and literature Mario Prazs admirable study of

emblems and his bibliography of emblem books

(1939-47) belongs now to the foundations of studies

in that field Publications by W S Heckscher and

A K Wirth by R S Clements E F von Monroy and

538

H M von Erffa E de Jongh and H Miedema and

several other scholars have elucidated the structure

and meaning of emblems and have shown their tre-

mendous influence on art even in its most monumental

and dignified forms An uninterrupted flow of reprints

of emblem books which brought within the reach of

modern students inaccessible volumes of sixteenth- and

seventeenth-century emblem writers were crowned by

the monumental undertaking of Arthur Henkel and

Albrecht Schoumlne who compiled an excellent volume

including almost all the texts and images needed for

the study of emblemsmdashEmblemata Handbuch zur

Sinnbildkunst des XVI und XVII Jahrhunderts

(Stuttgart 1967) Research was under way on hiero-

glyphs (Erik Iversen) and on the imprese (the late

Robert Klein) as well as on iconologies and allegories

These studies have disclosed meanings of the art of

the Renaissance of mannerism and of the baroque not

understood by nineteenth-century scholars

E Panofsky deciphered extremely farfetched and

individualistic programs of decoration of such famous

ensembles as the Camera di San Paolo by Correggio

in Parma the Gallery of Franccedilois I at Fontainebleau

Edgar Wind Andreacute Chastel and other scholars inter-

preted Raphaels decorations in the Popes apartments

Michelangelos art furnished material to detailed com-

prehensive studies by Panofsky Ch de Tolnay H von

Einem and Pope-Hennessy in which the share of

Neo-Platonic thinking in the ideological background

of the celebrated works of Michelangelo was discussed

Innumerable studies have been devoted to Titians

mythological paintings J R Martin presented expla-

nations of the Carracci frescoes in the Camerino Far-

nese and in the great gallery of the Palazzo Farnese

Bruegel considered in the nineteenth century as a drocircle

painter of peasant life has been shown by de Tolnay

Stridbeck and others to be an allegorist expressing a

skeptical humanistic outlook J S Held and W

Stechow contributed several articles to the under-

standing of mythological and allegorical contents in

Flemish and Dutch art of the sixteenth and seventeenth

centuries Rembrandts iconography was put into new

light by the two above-mentioned scholars as well as

by H M Rotermund H van de Waal J G van Gelder

H von Einem and Ch Tuumlmpel The intricate symbol-

ism and subject matter of historical and mythological

pictures by Nicolas Poussin were elucidated by such

masters of iconographic research as E H Gombrich

W Friedlaumlnder E Panofsky and above all by A Blunt

who in his monograph on Poussin presented a new

deep synthetic view of the ideas expressed by that

artists works Goyas individualistic secret symbolism

was also studied with the help of emblems and the

allegorical tradition Berninis works received iconolo

gical treatment by R Wittkower and H Kauffmann

All of this research does not mean that there was a

lack of interest in religious iconography M Schapiro

A Katzenellenbogen H Bober F Wormald and V

Elbern among others have contributed considerably

to deepen our understanding of the not completely

explained motifs and prominent works of medieval art

Panofsky has also shed a new light on several problems

of sepulchral iconography studies by such scholars as

R Berliner G von der Osten L Kalinowski S

Ringbom and T Dobrzeniecki contributed to late

medieval iconography in a new way Berliner stressed

the autonomous invention of visual artists or their

patrons while according to the traditional view popu-

larized by Macircle late medieval art should have followed

strictly literary sources

The religious content of modern art especially its

allegorical form in the late baroque period has been

examined and thanks to studies by such scholars as

W Mrazek and H Bauer has become better known

and understandable A great change was introduced

by ldquoiconologyrdquo into architectural history Buildings

which were formerly interpreted from aesthetic and

functional points of view only have been shown to

present allegorical symbolical or even emblematic

ideas Publications by leading art historians (R Witt-

kower B Smith G Bandmann O von Simson and

G C Argan) have presented medieval and modern

architecture as a bearer of meaning and have essen-

tially changed the character of architectural history

The iconography of classicism and romanticism

received a thorough treatment in books by W Hof-

mann and R Rosenblum as well as in several studies

devoted to individual themes and pictures G Hersey

has for example shown how much Delacroixs decora-

tion of the library in the Palais Bourbon owed to

Giambattista Vicos ideas about history More recently

studies on ldquoSymbolismrdquo have been undertaken Vincent

van Goghs symbolic language and iconography were

the object of studies by J Seznec C Nordenfalk and

other scholars On Ceacutezannes iconography interesting

remarks have been published by M Schapiro

Along with the development of iconographic studies

the establishment of centers of documentation has

advanced The ldquoFrenchrdquo stage in the development of

iconography has not left any marked trace in this

respect It was in America thanks to C R Morey that

the famous Index of Christian Art at the Department

of Art and Archaeology of Princeton University was

founded at first limited to the early Middle Ages then

enlarged so as to include art up to the end of the

medieval period Copies of the Princeton Index are

to be found also at the Istituto Pontificio dArcheolo-

gia in Rome and in the Dumbarton Oaks Library and

539

Collection in Washington DC But that Index ends

ldquowhere art beginsrdquomdashas Panofsky used to say jokingly

The need for systematic iconographic files for modern

art was strongly felt In 1956 A Pigler published a

very useful book Barockthemen in which he listed

thousands of works of art of the baroque period ac-

cording to their subjects It was however far from

being a systematic work The first essay in establishing

a systematic iconographic index for art of any time

was done by The Netherlands Institute for Art History

at the Hague then directed by H Gerson which took

the initiative around 1950 of publishing a postcard-size

photographic index of its rich collection of photographs

of Netherlandish art ordered according to an icono-

graphic principle Once such an idea was formulated

the need for a comprehensive consistent and clear

iconographic classification was urgent H van de Waal

of Leiden University devised such a system of classifi-

cation based on decimal divisions consistent and easy

to read He based his system on experiences of ethnol-

ogy and on such elaborated systems of classification

as that devised by Stith Thompson in his Motif-Index

of Folk Literature Vols I-VI (Bloomington Ind

1932-36 rev ed 1955-58) Van de Waal has elabor-

ated a system in which the first five main sections

classify five fundamental groups of portrayable things

namely (1) The Supernatural (2) Nature (3) Man (4)

Society (5) Abstracts The last four classify specific

subjects such as (6) History (7) The Bible (8) Myths

Legends and Tales (with the exception of classical

antiquity) (9) Myths and Legends of Classical Antiq-

uity Van de Waal combines the classification in the

first and in the second group in order to classify general

as well as specific subjects Christ in his system is

described with the sign ldquo11 Drdquo (ldquo1rdquo standing for Su-

pernatural ldquo11rdquo for Christianity ldquoDrdquo for Christ) the

adult Christ = 11 D 3 since ldquoshepherdrdquo on the other

hand bears the signature 47 I 221 the adult Christ

as a shepherd can be described in this system by the

following formula 11 D 3 = 47 I 221 Van de Waal

has also provided means to describe more complex

images which he expresses by adding elements between

brackets The Annunciation with God the Father and

a winged Angel is expressed by the following formula

73 A 5 (+1 +41) ldquo1rdquo standing for God the Father

and ldquo41rdquo for a winged Angel (van de Waal 1952) This

system elaborated for many years by its inventor and

prepared for publication in many volumes has proved

most useful in the practical arrangement of the Icono-

graphical Index of the Netherlandish Art and as the

only one until now in existence it became used more

and more in spite of some ambiguities and difficulties

As an endeavor to classify ldquoall portrayablerdquo things

persons events and ideas and to create a consistent

method to describe every possible image van de Waals

system may be considered as one of the important

achievements of the ldquoiconographical stagerdquo in the

development of art history Iconographic files exist of

course in many institutions as for example in the Ikon-

ologisch Instituut of Utrecht University one of the

main centers of study in emblematics and of course

in the most venerable institution of iconographic re-

search the Warburg Institute of the London University

and in other places

4 What was the result of this ldquoiconographicrdquo turn

in the development of the history of art One thing

is certain that this discipline by necessity has come

closer to other humanistic disciplines Since the

ldquointrinsicrdquo meaningmdashin Panofskys terminologymdashof a

work of art cannot be described in terms used by the

history of art but only in terms borrowed from the

history of philosophy of religion of social structures

of science and so on the ldquoiconological methodrdquo took

for granted and provoked such a collaboration Art

history was perhaps the first or one of the first to show

new interest in investigation of meaning It was fol-

lowed by similar developments in ethnology and in

linguistics

We have mentioned above a parallel development

in Byzantine and classical studies Panofskys influence

has been considerable in the other fields of humanistic

research Since ldquoiconologyrdquo aimed at discovering ideas

expressed by a work of art it awoke in art historians

an interest in the history of ideas This general shift

of emphasis and of the direction of studies from mainly

formal ones to studies aiming at ideas underlying art

was perhaps responsible among others for the fact that

several contributions to the Journal of the History of

Ideas have been written by historians of art

It is not difficult to see that such a development

should have provoked criticism on the side of those

who care about the purity and autonomy of methods

Iconology was criticized as far as its internal coherence

and also as far as its claim to be the integral method

of the study of art are concerned (Białostocki 1962)

Studies by R Klein E Forssman G Previtali G

Kubler B Teyssegravedre C Ginzburg and G Hermeren

expressed critical opinions in one or the other respect

Iconology linked art with the rest of history but it

disrupted the links between the work of art and other

things (Kubler 1962) Concentrating on meaning

iconology neglected art as form as individual expres-

sion Iconology implied a rational relationship between

intellectual content and artistic form On the one hand

one spoke of ldquoiconological diminutionsrdquo (Kubler

1962)mdashlimitations of research to meaning only But

on the other hand the overstatements of iconology

were criticized its representatives sometimes seemed

540

to assume everything symbolized something And some

iconologists seemed to consider important in art not

that which makes art a different field of human activity

but that which connects art with other fieldsmdashwith

the history of ideas

There were of course critics who had the opposite

opinion Since the end of the eighteenth century a

direct experience of art was more and more valued

and its symbolical function considered as a burden

J G von Herder said ein Kunstwerk ist der Kunst

wegen da aber bei einem Symbole ist die Kunst

dienend (ldquoA work of art is there because of art but

with a symbol art is a servicerdquo) Similar opinions were

expressed by nineteenth-century art writers and in this

century they have been voiced by Benedetto Croce and

by other Italian opponents of contenutismo by which

they meant interest in content For such critics to put

stress on iconography was to miss the essential in art

and to focus attention on a subordinate function of art

Also among scholars who considered the function

of representation and of communication as a legitimate

and important function of art criticism was expressed

not against the principle of an iconographical or icon-

ological investigation but against overstatements in

their application The introduction of the idea of ldquodis-

guised symbolismrdquo has created a danger of course of

opening the way to fanciful interpretations The alle-

gorical and symbolical function of mythological imag-

ery in classical art is also difficult to interpret precisely

Since no literary sources give a key to an interpretation

of the iconography of the sarcophagi very divergent

theories have been expressed concerning their meaning

Some archaeologists like F Cumont (1942) believe

that mythological and allegorical imagery (Anadyo-

mene Sea-Thiasos Personifications of the Seasons) is

to be read symbolically The Sea-Thiasos for instance

is to be interpreted as a symbol of the journey of the

souls of the deceased to the islands of the blessed

Others like A D Nock (1946) do not find enough

evidence to accept other than a decorative function

in such imagery

The intrusion of some representatives of psychology

eg C G Jung into iconographic studies giving them

an unhistorical turn in their search for ldquoarchetypal

imagesrdquo has complicated the situation although art

historians in general understandably have not accepted

that kind of approach to symbolism (Frankfort 1958

Gombrich 1965)

The fact that iconographic interpretations sometimes

lack satisfactory proofs does not detract from the im-

portance of such investigations so long as they are

conducted according to the requirements of historical

methods and take into account the corrective princi-

ples established by Panofsky A correct acquaintance

with the way of thinking of the artist the patron or the

viewer based on a satisfactory knowledge of documen-

tary visual and literary sources an awareness of the

choice situations produced by historical developments

may enable art historians to discover the secondary

meaning of a work of art as well as its intrinsic mean-

ing It is of course possible that the art historian will

meet some works for which it will not be possible to re-

construct in a satisfactory way the world of ideas that

would account for the meaning of those works In such

cases a reliable interpretation is simply not possible

R Berliner (1945 1966) criticized the widespread

opinion according to which content of the works of

visual arts in the Middle Ages had to be checked

against the literary sources considered as the only

medium in which ideological innovations were per-

mitted Berliner pleaded for assuming a considerable

ldquofreedomrdquo in the medieval artist and he considered

iconographic innovation possible even when no writ-

ten evidence could be found Meyer Schapiro (1947)

presented proofs that sometimes purely aesthetic rea-

sons decided the character of the work of art even as

early as the Romanesque period

We can only touch on some specific discussions going

on in the field of iconographic research But iconogra-

phic research is far from being a closed system and

the relative share of iconographic and stylistic criticism

in the work of art historians is always a matter of

discussion It is certain that the ldquoiconographicrdquo period

in the study of art has enlarged in a considerable way

the understanding of the art of the past and that it

has connected art history in a way unknown before

with the other historical disciplines and above all others

with the history of ideas

BIBLIOGRAPHY

L B Alberti On Painting ed J Spencer (New Haven

1956 revised ed 1966) E Auerbach ldquoFigurardquo (1944) trans

and published in Scenes From the Drama of European Liter-

ature (New York 1959) pp 11-76 K Bauch ldquoImagordquo

(1960) Studien zur Kunstgeschichte (Berlin 1967) pp 1-20

G P Bellori Descrizione delle imagini dipinte da Raffaello

(Rome 1695 ed used is 1751) R Berliner ldquoThe Free-

dom of Medieval Artrdquo Gazette des Beaux-Arts 628 (1945)

263-88 idem ldquoBemerkungen zu einigen Darstellungen des

Erloumlsers als Schmerzensmannrdquo Das Muumlnster 9 (1956)

97-117x J Białostocki ldquoIconografia e Iconologiardquo Enciclo-

pedia Universale dellArte (1962) Vol VII cols 163-75

trans as Encyclopedia of World Art (1966) Vol VII cols

769-85 lists almost all important older contributions to this

field idem ldquoRomantische Ikonographierdquo Stil und Ikonog-

raphie (Dresden 1966) pp 156-81 idem ldquoKompozycja

emblematyczna epitafioacutew ślaskich XVI wiekurdquo (ldquoEmblem-

atic Composition of Silesian Epitaphs of the Sixteenth Cen-

turyrdquo) Ze studioacutew nad Sztuka XVI wieku na Řlasku

(Wrocław 1968) pp 77-93 idem ldquoEsilio Privatordquo Bulletin

du Museacutee National de Varsovie 10 (1969) 95-101 J

541

Chydenius The Theory of Medieval Symbolism (Helsingfors

1960) Series of the Societas Scientiarum Fennica Com-

mentationes Humanarum Litterarum 27 2 R J Clements

Picta Poesis (Rome 1960) F Creuzer Symbolik und

Mythologie der Alten Voumllker (Leipzig and Darmstadt 1810

revised ed 1819) F Cumont Recherches sur le symbolisme

funeacuteraire des Romains (Paris 1942) L Eitner ldquoThe Open

Window and the Storm-Tossed Boatrdquo Art Bulletin 37

(1955) 281-90 H Frankfort ldquoThe Archetype in Analytical

Psychology and the History of Religionrdquo Journal of the

Warburg and Courtauld Institutes 21 (1958) 166-78

K Garas ldquoAllegorie und Geschichte in der Venezianischen

Malerei des 18 Jahrhundertsrdquo in proceedings of the XXI

International Congress of the History of Art Bonn Stil und

Uumlberlieferung in der Kunst des Abendlandes (Berlin 1967)

3 280-83 K Giehlow ldquoDie Hieroglyphenkunde des

Humanismus in der Allegorie der Renaissancerdquo Jahrbuch

der Kunsthistorischen Sammlungen des Allerhochsten

Kaiserhauses 32 (1915) 1-232 C Gilbert ldquoOn Subject and

Not-Subject in Italian Renaissance Picturesrdquo Art Bulletin

34 (1952) 202-16 C Ginzburg ldquoDa A Warburg a E H

Gombrich Note su un problema di metodordquo Studi medi-

evali series 3 7 (1966) 1015-65 E H Gombrich ldquoIcones

Symbolicae The Visual Image in Neo-Platonic Thoughtrdquo

Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes 11 (1948)

163-92 idem ldquoThe Use of Art for the Study of Symbolsrdquo

American Psychologist 20 (1965) A Grabar Liconoclasme

byzantin Dossier archeacuteologique (Paris 1957) idem Chris-

tian Iconography A Study of Its Origins (Princeton 1969)

S J Gudlaugsson De Comedianten bij Jan Steen en zijn

tijdgenooten (s-Gravenhage 1945) W S Heckscher ldquoThe

Genesis of Iconologyrdquo Stl und Uumlberlieferung in der Kunst

des Abendlandes Akten des XXI Internationalen Kon-

gresses fuumlr Kunstgeschichte (Berlin 1967) 3 239-62 G

Hermereacuten Representation and Meaning in the Visual Arts

A Study in the Methodology of Iconography and Iconology

Lund Studies in Philosophy Vol I (Lund 1969) R Hinks

Myth and Allegory in Ancient Art (London 1939) W

Hofmann Das Irdische Paradies (Munich 1960) G J

Hoogewerff ldquoLIconologie et son importance pour leacutetude

systeacutematique de lart chreacutetienrdquo Rivista dArcheologia Cris-

tiana 8 (1931) 53-82 E de Jongh Zinne- en minnebeelden

in de schilderkunst van de zeventiende eeuw (mdash1967) idem

ldquoErotica in Vogelperspectief De dubbelzinnigheid van een

reeks 17de eeuwse genrevoorstellingenrdquo Simiolus 3

(1968-69) 22-72 L Kalinowski ldquoTreści ideowe i estetyczne

Drzwi Gnieźnieńskichrdquo (ldquoIdeological and Aesthetic Content

of the Gniezno Bronze Doorsrdquo) in Drzwi Gnieźnieńskie ed

M Walicki (Wroclaw 1959) 2 7-160 H Keller Tizians

Poesie fuumlr Koumlnig Philip II von Spanien (Wiesbaden 1969)

R Klein ldquoLa theacuteorie de lexpression figureacutee dans les traiteacutes

italiens sur les imprese 1555-1612rdquo Bibliothegraveque dHu-

manisme et Renaissance 19 (1957) 320-41 republished with

the other relevant studies in la forme et lintelligible (Paris

1969) R Klibansky E Panofsky F Saxl Saturn and Melan-

choly (London 1964) J B Knipping Ikonografie van de

Contra-Reformatie in de Nederlanden (Hilversum 1939-40)

G Kubler The Shape of Time (New Haven and London

1962) R W Lee ldquoUt pictura poesisrdquo Art Bulletin 22

(1940) 197-269 E Macircle Lart religieux du XIIIe siegravecle en

France (Paris 1898) English ed used (New York 1958)

idem Lart religieux de la fin du Moyen-Age en France

(Paris 1908) idem Lart religieux du XIIe siegravecle en France

(Paris 1922) idem Lart religieux apregraves le Concile de Trente

(Paris 1932) J Maurin Białostocka Lessing i sztuki plas-

tyczne (ldquoLessing and the visual artsrdquo) (Wroclaw Warszawa

Krakoacutew 1969) E F von Monroy Embleme und Emblem-

buumlcher in den Niederlanden 1560-1630 ed H M von Erffa

(Utrecht 1964) J Montagu ldquoThe Painted Enigma and

French Seventeenth Century Artrdquo Journal of the Warburg

and Courtauld Institutes 31 (1968) 307-35 W Mrazek

Ikonologie der barocken Deckenmalerei (Vienna 1953)

Uumlsterreichische Akademie der Wissenschaften Philo-

sophisch-historische Klasse Sitzungsberichte 2283 A D

Nock ldquoSarcophagi and Symbolismrdquo American Journal of

Archaeology 50 (1946) 166ff D Panofsky and E Panofsky

ldquoThe Iconography of the Galeacuterie Franccedilois Ier at Fontaine-

bleaurdquo Gazette des Beaux-Arts 652 (1958) 113-90

E Panofsky ldquoUumlber das Verhaumlltnis der Kunstgeschichte zur

Kunsttheorierdquo Zeitschrift fuumlr Aesthetik und allgemeine

Kunstwissenschaft 18 (1925) 129-61 idem Studies in

Iconology (New York 1939) idem ed Abbot Suger (Prince-

ton 1946) idem Gothic Architecture and Scholasticism

(Latrobe Pa 1951) idem Early Netherlandish Painting

(Cambridge Mass 1953) idem Meaning in the Visual Arts

(Garden City N Y 1955) idem Renaissance and Renas-

cences in Western Art (Stockholm 1960) idem Tomb Sculp-

ture (New York 1964) E Panofsky and F Saxl ldquoClassical

Mythology in Medieval Artrdquo Metropolitan Museum Studies

4 (1932-33) 228-80 M Praz Studies in Seventeenth Cen-

tury Imagery (London 1939-47 2nd ed Rome 1964) S

Ringbom ldquoDevotional Images and Imaginative Devotions

Notes on the Place of Art in Late Medieval Private Pietyrdquo

Gazette des Beaux-Arts 6 73 (1969) 159-70 Joseph Sauer

Symbolik des Kirchengebaumludes und seiner Ausstattung in

der Auffassung des Mittelalters 2nd ed (Freiburg i B

1924) F Saxl ldquoFruumlhes Christentum und spaumltes Heidentum

in ihren kuumlnstlerischen Ausdrucksformenrdquo Wiener Jahrbuch

fuumlr Kunstgeschichte 2 (1923) 63-121 M Schapiro ldquoThe

Ruthwell Crossrdquo Art Bulletin 26 (1944) 232-45 idem ldquoOn

the Aesthetic Attitude in Romanesque Artrdquo in Art and

Thought issued in Honour of Ananda Coomaraswamy

(London 1947) 139-50 J Seznec The Survival of the Pagan

Gods (New York 1953) O G von Simson The Gothic

Cathedral (New York 1956) R E Spear ldquoThe Literary

Source of Poussins Realm of Florardquo The Burlington Maga-

zine 107 (1965) 563-69 L Volkmann Bilderschriften der

Renaissance (Leipzig 1923) Hans van de Waal Drie

eeuwen vaderlandsche geschieduitbeelding 1500-1800 (s-

Gravenhage 1952) idem ldquoSome Principles of a General

Iconographical Classificationrdquo in Actes du XVIIe Congregraves

International dHistoire de lArt Amsterdam 1952 (La Haye

1955) 601-06 E Wind ldquoCharity the Case History of a

Patternrdquo Journal of the Warburg Institute 1 (1937) 322ff

JAN BIAŁOSTOCKI

[See also Allegory Baroque Classicism Criticism Enlight-

enment Motif Myth Naturalism in Art Neo-Platonism

Renaissance Humanism Romanticism Symbolism Tem-

perance Ut pictura poesis]

places church interiors backyards fishermen old

women preparing food fashionable dishes ready for

lunch merchants and artisans elegant gentlemen pay-

ing visits and folk-surgeons performing sensational

street-operations all this became subject matter for

representation and continued to be considered worthy

of depiction until the end of the nineteenth century

It was first considered as such in Holland only then

slowly everyday subject matter was recognized also by

art-theorists in other countries although it was re-

garded as much less dignified than religious mytholog-

ical or allegorical subjects Only in the nineteenth

century did the vogue of realistic representation of

everyday subjects become widespread In Dutch pic-

tures of the seventeenth century we are often con-

fronted with nothing else than representations of pic-

turesque reality Sometimes however these genre

pictures appear to be illustrations of proverbs expres-

sing moralistic folk-wisdom sometimes they recall

scenes from the popular threater of the rederijkers or

rhetoricians especially pictures by Jan Steen (Gud-

laugsson 1945) they contain allusions to emblems

Sometimes the elegant scenes from bourgeois life in-

clude quite indecent erotic allusions (de Jongh 1967

1969) The ambiguity of these pictures was certainly

a source of specific pleasure for those who knew the

key to their true meaning

7 In Catholic countries allegorical art sacred as

well as profane flourished The twofold character of

symbolic representations mentioned above persisted

in the seventeenth century Aristotelian rational sym-

bolism which used images as words was widespread

in the orthodox Catholic iconography of the Counter-

Reformation as well as in the humanistic visual lan-

guage codified by Ripa and others A mystical Neo-

Platonic symbolism transcending reason reappeared

too Its outspoken document is the treatise by Chris-

toforo Giarda Bibliothecae alexandrinae icones sym-

bolicae of 1626 (Gombrich 1948) For Giarda symbolic

images give the beholder a direct insight into the

mysteries of religion which are not accessible to rea-

son

Thanks to symbolic images the mind which is banished from

heaven into this dark cave of the body its actions held in

bondage by the senses can behold the beauty and form

of the Virtues and Sciences divorced from all matter and

yet adumbrated if not perfectly expressed in colours and

is thus roused to an even more fervent love and desire for

them Who then can sufficiently estimate the magni-

tude of the debt we owe to those who expressed the Arts

and Sciences themselves in images and so brought it about

that we could not only know them but look at them as

it were with our eyes that we can meet them and almost

converse with them

(Gombrich [1948] pp 188f)

Great allegorical compositions covering the ceilings of

baroque churches are often realizations of this princi-

ple For those however who conceived allegory as a

rational operation as a language used for didactic aims

the main problem remained the clarity of the allegori-

533

cal message The larger the audience to whom allegory

was addressed the simpler more obvious its symbolism

should have been The banality of allegorical language

provoked criticism in the eighteenth century Fran-

cesco Algarotti (1762) prefers without any doubt his-

torical representations to the ldquoempty allegories and

complicated mythological allusionsrdquo (Garas [1967] p

280) Especially criticized was the obscurity of these

allegories in which completely original unknown sym-

bols were used Roger de Piles praises his favorite

master Rubens who ldquointroduced only such allegories

elements of which were already known from ancient

artrdquo and opposes him to Charles Lebrun who ldquoinstead

of taking symbols from some known source as the

ancient fable and medals has invented almost all of

them and thus the pictures of this kind became riddles

which the beholder does not want to take the task to

solverdquo To keep the balance between platitudinous

redundancy and utter incomprehensibility was the

crucial problem of late baroque allegorism What is

interesting however is that the idea of the picture

as a riddle was not foreign to the seventeenth century

It appears in France as well as in Sweden where David

Kloumlcker Ehrenstrahl (1694) proposed that pictures

present riddles that could not be solved by everyone

In France however the ldquopainted enigmardquo fostered

by the Jesuits in their schools flourished especially well

in the seventeenth century (Montagu 1968) These

ldquopainted enigmasrdquo lent themselves to various inter-

pretations and gave interpreters an opportunity to

show their ingenuity These pictures and their inter-

pretations seem to prove that a considerable flexibility

of meaning was intended

We might rather accept that a work of art was regarded

in the seventeenth century as in a certain sense an open

symbol raw material like the myth or sacred story which

it illustrates on which the interpreter might exercise the

power of his ingenuity turning it into an allegory of Chris-

tian doctrine or a panegyric in honour of his patron

(Montagu [1968] p 334)

Such a situation probably existed only in some specific

circles It was a limiting case The other extreme was

to use in an uninteresting routine way Ripas symbolic

images or those of other popular symbolic handbooks

Such practice continued well into the eighteenth cen-

tury The general trend fed by ideas of the Enlighten-

ment was to make allegories more and more obvious

It is understandable that some theorists like the Count

de Caylus looked for new subject matter presenting

as he did Tableaux tireacutes de lIliade (1755) or that

J J Winckelmann tried to revive allegory and to give

it a new force It was however too late In the eight-

eenth century together with the whole system of

humanistic tradition the systems of iconography began

to disintegrate The great break in the tradition con-

cerned not only style but also iconography Emblem-

atic roots may be discovered in Goyas symbolism as

well as in the reasonable allegories of the Enlighten-

ment but generally speaking there was a search for

new not known or not used sourcesmdashas in William

Blakes biblical individualistic imagerymdashor the new

staging of the old ones as in Jacques Louis Davids

classical subjects

The art of romanticism was a definite break with

the past much more in the field of ideas and iconogra-

phy than in a stylistic respect where romanticists

retrospectively looked back either to medieval and

pre-Raphaelite or to baroque sources Symbols and

allegories yielded to an all-pervading mood and the

traditional repertory of religious allegorical mytho-

logical and historical iconography gave way to a new

iconography Although several encompassing images

of Christian and humanistic art survived they received

new content and essentially changed their character

New attitudes of the individual to the world of nature

and history to society and destiny to time and death

and new problems resulting from the striving after

freedom (which was a new perhaps most important

principle of human behavior in all fields of human

activity) found expression in new thematic fields and

in new particular themes such as ldquoStorm-tossed Boatrdquo

ldquoLonely Wanderer in the Mountainsrdquo ldquoA Death of the

Herordquo (Eitner 1955 Hofmann 1960 Białostocki

1966)

Romanticism has not formed and could not have

formed an iconographic system for since they strived

first of all for originality of individual conception the

romantics interpreted images in a subjective way as

expressions of mood Romanticism has on the other

hand introduced new heroes and martyrs into art

instead of religious ones the national social and artis-

tic ones It created a new image of history seen now

as a set of political and moral examplesmdashas in

baroquemdashbut often put together now according to a

very individualistic principle of choice A correlative

to pathetic and heroic romanticism was a bourgeois

and intimate romanticism its expression was for ex-

ample the new imagery of the open window which

shows to the viewer wide perspectives but shelters him

at the same time from the dangers of the unknown

(Eitner 1955)

When the world of ideas and images created at the

moment of the flowering of romanticism began to be

popularized for the use of the large bourgeois masses

the contentmdashideological and iconographicalmdashof ro-

manticism lost its original authenticity and left be-

hind not a new system of original images but a dispo-

534

sition to melodramatic experiences and an inflation of

a theatrical gesture (Hofmann 1960 Białostocki 1966)

The nineteenth century developed a realistic por-

traiture of man and nature and took over worn out

clicheacutes of the Renaissance and baroque allegories It

introduced new subject matter taken partly from tra-

dition partly from observation of reality tinted with

vague symbolism such as ldquoForgerdquo or the ldquoFuneral of

the Peasantrdquo but it did not create a new system of

iconography in spite of short-lived revivals of symbol-

istic attitudes in such movementsmdashincidentally not

limited to and not initiated in the visual artsmdashas

ldquosymbolismrdquo

New ephemeral artistic movements which consti-

tuted the history of European art in the last hundred

years show an interesting bracketing of style and icon-

ography in spite of a preponderant lack of iconogra-

phic interest Their representatives chose subjects suit-

able to specific artistic aims and means which they

developed and were interested in Impressionists

painted seaside scenes landscapes and genre pictures

showing the life of artistic and intellectual milieus

Cubists introduced a specific repertory of still-life

motifs symbols of the artists atelier and of the life

of the bohegraveme bottles musical instruments books

fruits flowers newspapers How much these motifs

were connected with specific cubist style appears when

one looks at works of artists foreign to the original

cubist group but imitating its style as for instance

several Czech artists like Emil Filla They adopted

cubist iconography together with cubist style Abstract

movements in general lacked iconography although

they were not foreign to symbolic tendencies espe-

cially in sculpture (Brancusi Moore) Only in the dec-

ades of 1950-70 can a revival of more articulated and

programmatic symbolism be observed One may sup-

pose that this revival is at least in part brought about

by the development of research in iconography and

symbolism which took place in the second and third

quarters of our century

II

1 The origins of ldquointerpretative iconographyrdquo may

be seen in the descriptions (ekphrasis) of works of art

known in classical literature But these descriptions

like those by Philostratus the Elder or Lucian are

limited simply to description and lack in general any

interpretation Moreover it is not certain whether they

are descriptions of actual or fictitious works of art at

least opinions in this respect vary Brief medieval tituli

which formulated in words the content of religious

images were to be sure interpretative sometimes but

they were short and cannot be connected with the

tradition of artistic erudition We have to look to

modern times to indicate the beginnings of iconogra-

phic interpretation and research From Vasaris Rag-

ionamenti in which interpretations of the paintings

decorating the Palazzo Vecchio in Florence are given

we learn how complicated and how undecipherable

iconographic concepts might have been even to peo-

ple living in buildings decorated by paintings expres-

sing these concepts But perhaps the first really to be

considered as interested in iconographic research was

the seventeenth-century archaeologist and art theorist

Giovanni Pietro Bellori In the introduction to his Lives

of Artists (1672) Bellori stressed that he paid special

attention to the content of the works of art he was

talking about and he even credited the painter Nicolas

Poussin with having directed his attention to iconogra-

phy In his Lives Bellori presented short interpretative

descriptions of pictures and he sometimes developed

these interpretations further in small iconographic

essays the influence of classical ekphrasis on him is

a possibility Sometimes his errors took deep roots in

the subsequent history of art as when he explained

Poussins Triumph of Flora (Dresden) by designating

Ovids Metamorphoses as its source The true source

Marinos Adona was finally found by R E Spear in

1965

What is interesting in Belloris procedure is that he

first identifies the motifs tries to connect them with

classical or modern literary sources and then proceeds

to find out the deep meaning the general symbolic

idea of the work Therefore he may be considered as

one of the pioneers not only of iconography as a disci-

pline of research but also of iconology as formulated

by its recent partisans That even in the second half

of the sixteenth century some observers were inclined

to look for hidden meaning in each element of the work

of art we learn from Joannes Molanus (1570) who in

De picturis et imaginibus sacris states reasonably that

ldquoit is not necessary to ask for meaning of everything

that can be observed in a picture in such cases a lot

of absurd things may resultrdquo But the consciousness of

the importance of iconography increased and at the

end of the seventeenth century Andreacute Feacutelibien stressed

that in order to attribute a picture to a painter it is

not enough to know the way he uses his brush one

needs also to know his esprit to learn his geacutenie and

to be able to foresee in which way he is able to form

his conceptions Thus iconographic analysis was con-

sidered necessary even for the purpose of attribution

Descriptive interpretations of the works of ancient

art appeared in the big archaeological publications of

the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries such as

Jacques Spons Miscellanea eruditae antiquitatis (1679)

G P Belloris Admiranda romanarum antiquitatum ac

veteris sculpturae vestigia (1693) P de Caylus Recueil

535

dantiquiteacutes eacutegyptiennes eacutetrusques grecques et

romaines (1752-67) and in an interesting endeavor

(although very much criticized by Lessing) of Joseph

Spence to explain classical poets through works of art

and vice versa (Polymetis 1747) Classical archaeology

however has not been especially interested in iconog-

raphy and the use of the term itself by archaeolo-

gists was limited to portraiture The first great devel-

opment of iconographic studies was connected with

the romantic movement although an important pre-

lude for it was hagiographical collections of sources

such as Acta sanctorum published by the Bollandists

(1643-1794 resumed later) Among the pre-romantic

scholars in iconography the eminent German poet

G E Lessing is to be noted His study of the repre-

sentation of death in classical times can be considered

as one of the first essays in interpretative iconography

which is now called iconology In Wie die Alten den

Tod gebildet (1769) Lessing tries to interpret the classi-

cal iconographic type of Amor with the inverted torch

and to find its ldquointrinsic meaningrdquo by taking into ac-

count the religion customs and philosophy of the

classical world The work of art is interpreted by Less-

ing as ldquoa symptom of something elserdquo While Lessings

predecessors (like B de Montfaucon) ldquoexplained the

classical past by monumentsrdquo he for the first time did

the opposite ldquohe explained the monuments by Antiq-

uityrdquo (Maurin Białostocka [1969] pp 92-100)

Pre-romantic and romantic interests in myth and

symbol found their expression in publications and dis-

cussions by German philosophers and scholars like F

Schlegel J Herder J J von Goumlrres and F Creuzer

Creuzers work Symbolik und Mythologie der alten

Voumllker (1810) which shows the influence of mystical

Neo-Platonic ideas on symbols (Gombrich 1965) was

the most influential in the romantic period in Ger-

many Under the impact of Chateaubriands le Geacutenie

du christianisme (1802) research in medieval iconog-

raphy developed mainly in France Works by French

scholars mostly clergymen which were indeed con-

cerned with Christian medieval art dominated icon-

ographical study in the nineteenth century Since most

of these writers were not professional scholars their

work was often amateurish in character but it is unde-

niable that books by A N Didron Histoire de Dieu

(Paris 1843) the first part of a comprehensive pro-

jected but not completed iconography of Christian art

A Crosnier Iconographie chreacutetienne (Caen 1848) C

Cahier Caracteacuteristiques des saints (Paris 1867) C

Rohault de Fleury Archeacuteologie chreacutetienne les saints

de la messe et leurs monuments 12 vols (Paris

1893-1900) L Breacutehier Lart chreacutetien son deacuteveloppe-

ment iconographique des origines agrave nos jours (Paris

1918) P Perdrizet V Leroquais and G de Jerphanion

have built up a solid body of iconographical knowl-

edge on which scholars of the twentieth century were

able to erect a modern comprehensive structure In

the field of Byzantine iconography it was Gabriel

Millets Recherches sur liconographie de leacutevangile aux

XIVe XVe et XVIe siegravecles (Paris 1916 reprint

1960) that was basic for any further study For Western

chiefly French art a well-written and learned work

appealing to the general reader as well as to the

scholar was produced by Eacutemile Macircle who in his four

volumes of the history of religious art (1898-1932) has

presented a well-composed synthetic image of icono-

graphical development A lexicographic summary of

these studies of generations of French scholars is pre-

sented in the Dictionnaire darcheacuteologie chreacutetienne et

de liturgie published from 1907 to 1953 and edited

by F Cabrol and H Leclerq A recent reference work

is that by L Reacuteau Iconographie de lart chreacutetien (Paris

1955-59) Russian scholars have done important work

in the field of Byzantine and Orthodox iconography

of religious art The most prominent are N P Kon-

dakov Ikonografia Bogomatieri (St Petersburg 1911

2nd ed 1914-15) D V Ainalov Mosaiki IV i V vekov

(St Petersburg 1895) and N Pokrovski Otcherki

pamyatnikov christianskogo isskusstva i ikonografii (St

Petersburg 1894 3rd ed 1910) V Lasarev and M

Alpatov belonging to the mid-twentieth-century gen-

eration of Russian scholars discuss iconography in

several works on religious art German scholarship

produced in the nineteenth century works by F Piper

A Springer and H Detzel Useful compendia were

produced in the early twentieth century by J Sauer

W Molsdorf K Kuumlnstle and J Braun Dutch scholars

C Smits J B Knipping and J J M Timmers contrib-

uted to iconographic studies in recent times Knip-

pings book (1939-40) being the most important work

on the iconography of the Counter-Reformation and

supplementing Macircles volume of 1932 In the twentieth

century on C R Moreys initiative iconographic

studies were inaugurated in North America Focused

on earlier medieval art these studies developed at

Princeton University

A new direction characteristic of iconographic

studies in the twentieth century has been given to

them by the international school of art historical re-

search inaugurated by the Hamburg scholar Aby

Warburg At the International Congress for the History

of Art at Rome in 1912 he presented a sensational

astrological interpretation of the frescoes painted by

Francesco Cossa and his collaborators in Palazzo

Schifanoja at Ferrara Warburg solved the secret of

those representations which had puzzled the ingenuity

of several former students interpreting them as images

of zodiacal signs and their decans But he did not limit

536

his contribution to the presentation of his results He

wanted to stress the importance of his approach and

of the method of study which later became connected

with his name He said

I hope that through the method used by me for explication

of the frescoes at the Palazzo Schifanoja of Ferrara I have

proved that an iconological analysis which does not allow

itself to be diverted by the rules of frontier police from

considering antiquity Middle Ages and modern times as

interconnected periods nor from analyzing the most liberal

and the most applied works of art as equally important

documents of expression that this method endeavoring as

it does to throw light upon one dark spot clears up at

the same time great interconnected developments

(Warburg 1912 Heckscher 1967)

Warburgs influence on the history of art was very

great although he himself did not write much It was

mainly the posthumous impact of his ideas promul-

gated as they were by Fritz Saxl which contributed

to the specific direction of studies concentrated in the

library Warburg founded in Hamburg and which Saxl

succeeded in transplanting during the Nazi era to

London where it became the Warburg Institute of the

University of London While the object of study of the

nineteenth-century iconographers was mainly religious

art in its relation to religious literary sources and lit-

urgy for Warburg the study of images was a study

of their relations to religion to poetry to myth to

science and to social and political life Art was for

him closely connected with the polyphonic structure

of historical life

Warburgs ideas had a great importance for the most

influential theory of iconographic interpretation in our

century that elaborated by Erwin Panofsky In Ham-

burg where Warburg Saxl and Panofsky were active

in the twenties Ernst Cassirer built up his philosophy

of symbolic forms which constituted an additional

background for Panofskys system being derived as

his own methodology was from the traditions of

Kantian philosophy Around 1930 Panofskys ideas

ripened into a system which found formulation in his

book herkules am Scheidewege (1930) and later in a

theoretical article of 1932 G J Hoogewerff was how-

ever the first to propose the word ldquoiconologyrdquo as a

name for the method of an analysis of content in a

work of art (Warburg spoke of iconological analysis)

In 1931 he proposed distinguishing between iconogra-

phy as a descriptive science aiming at the identifica-

tion of themes and ldquoiconologyrdquo aiming at the under-

standing ldquoof symbolic dogmatic or mystical meaning

which is expressed (or hidden) in figurative formsrdquo He

stressed that ldquoiconologyrdquo deals with works of art with-

out classifying them according to the technique used

or to the achieved perfection taking into account only

their meaning Hoogewerff saw the last aim of iconol-

ogy in finding out the cultural and ideological back-

ground expressed by works of art and the cultural and

social significance which can be attributed to certain

forms and to means of expression in the same time

Hoogewerffs part in the expansion of iconology was

limited because he did not endorse his methodical

proposals with examples of historical interpretations

Erwin Panofsky with whose name iconology has

been connected ever since not only developed its

theoretical foundations but contributed by his practi-

cal work in art history to the main triumph of iconol-

ogy after the Second World War The most influential

book by Panofsky has been Studies in Iconology (1939)

in which his masterly presentation of the method was

connected with its equally excellent exemplification

2 Panofsky considers the interpretation of a work

of art as falling on three levels On the first level the

object of interpretation is the primary or natural sub-

ject matter The function of interpretation is called

ldquopre-iconographical descriptionrdquo In order to be able

to arrive at a correct interpretation on that level the

interpreter must have a practical experience (ldquofamili-

arity with objects and eventsrdquo) common to everybody

at least in one cultural sphere However he has to

control his observations by a ldquocorrective knowledge

of the history of stylerdquo (ldquoinsight into the manner in

which under varying historical conditions objects and

events were expressed by formsrdquo) On the second level

the function of interpretation is called ldquoiconographical

analysisrdquo its object is the ldquosecondary or conventional

subject matterrdquo constituting the world of images his-

tories and allegories The interpreters equipment in

this case is obviously the knowledge of literary sources

giving him a ldquofamiliarity with specific themes and

conceptsrdquo The interpreter has to control his observa-

tions by ldquothe insight into the manner in which under

varying historical conditions specific themes or con-

cepts were expressed by objects and eventsrdquo On the

third level the function of interpreting is called ldquoicon-

ographical analysis in a deeper senserdquo (1939) or ldquoicon-

ological analysisrdquo (1955) Its object is the ldquointrinsic

meaning or contentrdquo of a work of art The interpreters

equipment on that level should be a ldquofamiliarity with

the essential tendencies of the human mindrdquo and he

has to control his interpretation by the ldquoinsight into

the manner in which under varying historical condi-

tions essential tendencies of the human mind were

expressed by specific themes and conceptsrdquo Thus

taking all the time into account what Panofsky calls

the history of tradition the interpreter has to aim at

understanding the work of art its ldquoprimaryrdquo as well

as ldquosecondary subject matterrdquo as symptoms of some

fundamental tendency of the human mind typical of

537

a place a time a civilization and of an individual

responsible for the creation of the work ldquoIconologyrdquomdash

for Panofskymdashldquois a method of interpretation which

arises from synthesis rather than analysisrdquo Trying to

find the intrinsic meaning of a work of art

The art historian will have to check what he thinks is the

intrinsic meaning of the work or group of works against

what he thinks is the intrinsic meaning of as many other

documents of civilization historically related to that work

or group of works as he can master It is in the search

for intrinsic meaning or content that the various humanistic

disciplines meet on a common plane instead of serving as

handmaidens to each other

(Panofsky [1955] p 39)

The concept of intrinsic meaning of a work of art

was elaborated by Panofsky much earlier (1925) when

he interpreted in his own way the concept of Kunst-

wollen introduced by A Riegl to research in art

Panofsky understood this ldquoartistic volitionrdquo as an im-

manent ultimate meaning of a work of art which is

manifested in the way basic artistic problems are solved

in that work He used the same concept further to bring

art closer to the other fields of human activity Since

the ldquoimmanent ultimate senserdquo of the work of art is

nothing else than uniformity in the way of solving basic

artistic problems it is possible to compare that imma-

nent sense with immanent senses of the other human

works in various fields Panofsky did it for instance

when in one of his later works he compared the struc-

tural principles of Gothic architecture with those of

scholastic thinking (1951)

The system elaborated by Panofsky and exemplified

by his own work in art history was the first consistent

system of an integral interpretation of a work of visual

arts based on the analysis of content In principle

Panofskys system takes into account all the elements

of the work of art since it takes as the point of depar-

ture the sensual exterior shape of the work It is

however clear that its main scope is not the inter-

pretation of form as a bearer of meaning but the

understanding and interpretation of conventional alle-

gories literary themes and symbols as symptoms of

the history of the human mind It was that method

in the history of art which programmatically fostered

a collaboration with all the other disciplines of histori-

cal studies It was therefore one of the most influential

methods not only among art historians but also among

representatives of the other branches of humanistic

studies Although there were art historians who ex-

pressed a critical attitude toward ldquoiconologyrdquo as the

new method was soon baptized its influence was over-

whelming

3 It is not only but mainly due to Panofsky that

one can venture to call ldquoiconographicalrdquo that period

of art history as a historical discipline which followed

the Second World War and to oppose it to the ldquostylis-

ticrdquo one which preceded it It does not mean of course

that no iconographic research took place in the

twenties or thirties the works of Macircle Knipping van

Marle Wilpert Saxl and of Panofsky himself would

contradict such a statement Neither is it true that

purely formal research aiming at stylistic classification

and analysis discontinued after World War II It is

evident that in the last decades (from 1940 on) icono-

graphic interests came to the fore and became domi-

nant in many countries Iconographical studies grew

so much in number and importance that they made

it possible to undertake and to publish new reference

works of iconographic character like dictionaries

written by one scholar (Guy de Tervarent Aurenham-

mer) as well as larger works based on a collaboration

of several scholars (Encyclopedias of German art of

Antiquity and Christian civilization of Byzantine art)

Interest in meaning and iconography has appeared

also among historians of political social and religious

institutions The symbolism of signs ceremonies cos-

tumes and arms was studied by such scholars as A

Alfoumlldi ldquoInsignien und Tracht der roumlmischen Kaiserrdquo

Mitteilungen des deutschen Archaumlologischen Instituts

Roumlmische Abteilung (1935) 1ff ldquoDie Geburt der

kaiserlichen Bildsymbolikrdquo museum Helveticum 9

(1952) 204ff also by A Grabar Martyrium (Paris

1943-46) by E H Kantorowicz laudes Regiae

(Berkeley and Los Angeles 1946) The Kings Two

Bodies (Princeton 1957) by H P L Orange Studies

in the Iconography of Cosmic Kingship in the Ancient

World (Oslo 1953) Art Forms and Civic Life in the

Late Roman Empire (Princeton 1965) and by P E

Schramm herrschaftszeichen und Staatssymbolik

(Stuttgart 1954-56) In their studies iconography far

transcends the borders of art and it helps to build up

a history of ideas by following their various visual

expressions

Pioneering studies by K Giehlow F Saxl and E

Panofsky enlarged iconographical interests above all

to encompass the large field of secular art whereas

they had been mainly limited to religious iconography

in the work of preceding generations of scholars The

whole complicated and hardly known large body of

meanings disguised by the cryptic language of hiero-

glyphs emblems and iconologies became one of the

main topics of study

This established a collaboration between historians

of art and literature Mario Prazs admirable study of

emblems and his bibliography of emblem books

(1939-47) belongs now to the foundations of studies

in that field Publications by W S Heckscher and

A K Wirth by R S Clements E F von Monroy and

538

H M von Erffa E de Jongh and H Miedema and

several other scholars have elucidated the structure

and meaning of emblems and have shown their tre-

mendous influence on art even in its most monumental

and dignified forms An uninterrupted flow of reprints

of emblem books which brought within the reach of

modern students inaccessible volumes of sixteenth- and

seventeenth-century emblem writers were crowned by

the monumental undertaking of Arthur Henkel and

Albrecht Schoumlne who compiled an excellent volume

including almost all the texts and images needed for

the study of emblemsmdashEmblemata Handbuch zur

Sinnbildkunst des XVI und XVII Jahrhunderts

(Stuttgart 1967) Research was under way on hiero-

glyphs (Erik Iversen) and on the imprese (the late

Robert Klein) as well as on iconologies and allegories

These studies have disclosed meanings of the art of

the Renaissance of mannerism and of the baroque not

understood by nineteenth-century scholars

E Panofsky deciphered extremely farfetched and

individualistic programs of decoration of such famous

ensembles as the Camera di San Paolo by Correggio

in Parma the Gallery of Franccedilois I at Fontainebleau

Edgar Wind Andreacute Chastel and other scholars inter-

preted Raphaels decorations in the Popes apartments

Michelangelos art furnished material to detailed com-

prehensive studies by Panofsky Ch de Tolnay H von

Einem and Pope-Hennessy in which the share of

Neo-Platonic thinking in the ideological background

of the celebrated works of Michelangelo was discussed

Innumerable studies have been devoted to Titians

mythological paintings J R Martin presented expla-

nations of the Carracci frescoes in the Camerino Far-

nese and in the great gallery of the Palazzo Farnese

Bruegel considered in the nineteenth century as a drocircle

painter of peasant life has been shown by de Tolnay

Stridbeck and others to be an allegorist expressing a

skeptical humanistic outlook J S Held and W

Stechow contributed several articles to the under-

standing of mythological and allegorical contents in

Flemish and Dutch art of the sixteenth and seventeenth

centuries Rembrandts iconography was put into new

light by the two above-mentioned scholars as well as

by H M Rotermund H van de Waal J G van Gelder

H von Einem and Ch Tuumlmpel The intricate symbol-

ism and subject matter of historical and mythological

pictures by Nicolas Poussin were elucidated by such

masters of iconographic research as E H Gombrich

W Friedlaumlnder E Panofsky and above all by A Blunt

who in his monograph on Poussin presented a new

deep synthetic view of the ideas expressed by that

artists works Goyas individualistic secret symbolism

was also studied with the help of emblems and the

allegorical tradition Berninis works received iconolo

gical treatment by R Wittkower and H Kauffmann

All of this research does not mean that there was a

lack of interest in religious iconography M Schapiro

A Katzenellenbogen H Bober F Wormald and V

Elbern among others have contributed considerably

to deepen our understanding of the not completely

explained motifs and prominent works of medieval art

Panofsky has also shed a new light on several problems

of sepulchral iconography studies by such scholars as

R Berliner G von der Osten L Kalinowski S

Ringbom and T Dobrzeniecki contributed to late

medieval iconography in a new way Berliner stressed

the autonomous invention of visual artists or their

patrons while according to the traditional view popu-

larized by Macircle late medieval art should have followed

strictly literary sources

The religious content of modern art especially its

allegorical form in the late baroque period has been

examined and thanks to studies by such scholars as

W Mrazek and H Bauer has become better known

and understandable A great change was introduced

by ldquoiconologyrdquo into architectural history Buildings

which were formerly interpreted from aesthetic and

functional points of view only have been shown to

present allegorical symbolical or even emblematic

ideas Publications by leading art historians (R Witt-

kower B Smith G Bandmann O von Simson and

G C Argan) have presented medieval and modern

architecture as a bearer of meaning and have essen-

tially changed the character of architectural history

The iconography of classicism and romanticism

received a thorough treatment in books by W Hof-

mann and R Rosenblum as well as in several studies

devoted to individual themes and pictures G Hersey

has for example shown how much Delacroixs decora-

tion of the library in the Palais Bourbon owed to

Giambattista Vicos ideas about history More recently

studies on ldquoSymbolismrdquo have been undertaken Vincent

van Goghs symbolic language and iconography were

the object of studies by J Seznec C Nordenfalk and

other scholars On Ceacutezannes iconography interesting

remarks have been published by M Schapiro

Along with the development of iconographic studies

the establishment of centers of documentation has

advanced The ldquoFrenchrdquo stage in the development of

iconography has not left any marked trace in this

respect It was in America thanks to C R Morey that

the famous Index of Christian Art at the Department

of Art and Archaeology of Princeton University was

founded at first limited to the early Middle Ages then

enlarged so as to include art up to the end of the

medieval period Copies of the Princeton Index are

to be found also at the Istituto Pontificio dArcheolo-

gia in Rome and in the Dumbarton Oaks Library and

539

Collection in Washington DC But that Index ends

ldquowhere art beginsrdquomdashas Panofsky used to say jokingly

The need for systematic iconographic files for modern

art was strongly felt In 1956 A Pigler published a

very useful book Barockthemen in which he listed

thousands of works of art of the baroque period ac-

cording to their subjects It was however far from

being a systematic work The first essay in establishing

a systematic iconographic index for art of any time

was done by The Netherlands Institute for Art History

at the Hague then directed by H Gerson which took

the initiative around 1950 of publishing a postcard-size

photographic index of its rich collection of photographs

of Netherlandish art ordered according to an icono-

graphic principle Once such an idea was formulated

the need for a comprehensive consistent and clear

iconographic classification was urgent H van de Waal

of Leiden University devised such a system of classifi-

cation based on decimal divisions consistent and easy

to read He based his system on experiences of ethnol-

ogy and on such elaborated systems of classification

as that devised by Stith Thompson in his Motif-Index

of Folk Literature Vols I-VI (Bloomington Ind

1932-36 rev ed 1955-58) Van de Waal has elabor-

ated a system in which the first five main sections

classify five fundamental groups of portrayable things

namely (1) The Supernatural (2) Nature (3) Man (4)

Society (5) Abstracts The last four classify specific

subjects such as (6) History (7) The Bible (8) Myths

Legends and Tales (with the exception of classical

antiquity) (9) Myths and Legends of Classical Antiq-

uity Van de Waal combines the classification in the

first and in the second group in order to classify general

as well as specific subjects Christ in his system is

described with the sign ldquo11 Drdquo (ldquo1rdquo standing for Su-

pernatural ldquo11rdquo for Christianity ldquoDrdquo for Christ) the

adult Christ = 11 D 3 since ldquoshepherdrdquo on the other

hand bears the signature 47 I 221 the adult Christ

as a shepherd can be described in this system by the

following formula 11 D 3 = 47 I 221 Van de Waal

has also provided means to describe more complex

images which he expresses by adding elements between

brackets The Annunciation with God the Father and

a winged Angel is expressed by the following formula

73 A 5 (+1 +41) ldquo1rdquo standing for God the Father

and ldquo41rdquo for a winged Angel (van de Waal 1952) This

system elaborated for many years by its inventor and

prepared for publication in many volumes has proved

most useful in the practical arrangement of the Icono-

graphical Index of the Netherlandish Art and as the

only one until now in existence it became used more

and more in spite of some ambiguities and difficulties

As an endeavor to classify ldquoall portrayablerdquo things

persons events and ideas and to create a consistent

method to describe every possible image van de Waals

system may be considered as one of the important

achievements of the ldquoiconographical stagerdquo in the

development of art history Iconographic files exist of

course in many institutions as for example in the Ikon-

ologisch Instituut of Utrecht University one of the

main centers of study in emblematics and of course

in the most venerable institution of iconographic re-

search the Warburg Institute of the London University

and in other places

4 What was the result of this ldquoiconographicrdquo turn

in the development of the history of art One thing

is certain that this discipline by necessity has come

closer to other humanistic disciplines Since the

ldquointrinsicrdquo meaningmdashin Panofskys terminologymdashof a

work of art cannot be described in terms used by the

history of art but only in terms borrowed from the

history of philosophy of religion of social structures

of science and so on the ldquoiconological methodrdquo took

for granted and provoked such a collaboration Art

history was perhaps the first or one of the first to show

new interest in investigation of meaning It was fol-

lowed by similar developments in ethnology and in

linguistics

We have mentioned above a parallel development

in Byzantine and classical studies Panofskys influence

has been considerable in the other fields of humanistic

research Since ldquoiconologyrdquo aimed at discovering ideas

expressed by a work of art it awoke in art historians

an interest in the history of ideas This general shift

of emphasis and of the direction of studies from mainly

formal ones to studies aiming at ideas underlying art

was perhaps responsible among others for the fact that

several contributions to the Journal of the History of

Ideas have been written by historians of art

It is not difficult to see that such a development

should have provoked criticism on the side of those

who care about the purity and autonomy of methods

Iconology was criticized as far as its internal coherence

and also as far as its claim to be the integral method

of the study of art are concerned (Białostocki 1962)

Studies by R Klein E Forssman G Previtali G

Kubler B Teyssegravedre C Ginzburg and G Hermeren

expressed critical opinions in one or the other respect

Iconology linked art with the rest of history but it

disrupted the links between the work of art and other

things (Kubler 1962) Concentrating on meaning

iconology neglected art as form as individual expres-

sion Iconology implied a rational relationship between

intellectual content and artistic form On the one hand

one spoke of ldquoiconological diminutionsrdquo (Kubler

1962)mdashlimitations of research to meaning only But

on the other hand the overstatements of iconology

were criticized its representatives sometimes seemed

540

to assume everything symbolized something And some

iconologists seemed to consider important in art not

that which makes art a different field of human activity

but that which connects art with other fieldsmdashwith

the history of ideas

There were of course critics who had the opposite

opinion Since the end of the eighteenth century a

direct experience of art was more and more valued

and its symbolical function considered as a burden

J G von Herder said ein Kunstwerk ist der Kunst

wegen da aber bei einem Symbole ist die Kunst

dienend (ldquoA work of art is there because of art but

with a symbol art is a servicerdquo) Similar opinions were

expressed by nineteenth-century art writers and in this

century they have been voiced by Benedetto Croce and

by other Italian opponents of contenutismo by which

they meant interest in content For such critics to put

stress on iconography was to miss the essential in art

and to focus attention on a subordinate function of art

Also among scholars who considered the function

of representation and of communication as a legitimate

and important function of art criticism was expressed

not against the principle of an iconographical or icon-

ological investigation but against overstatements in

their application The introduction of the idea of ldquodis-

guised symbolismrdquo has created a danger of course of

opening the way to fanciful interpretations The alle-

gorical and symbolical function of mythological imag-

ery in classical art is also difficult to interpret precisely

Since no literary sources give a key to an interpretation

of the iconography of the sarcophagi very divergent

theories have been expressed concerning their meaning

Some archaeologists like F Cumont (1942) believe

that mythological and allegorical imagery (Anadyo-

mene Sea-Thiasos Personifications of the Seasons) is

to be read symbolically The Sea-Thiasos for instance

is to be interpreted as a symbol of the journey of the

souls of the deceased to the islands of the blessed

Others like A D Nock (1946) do not find enough

evidence to accept other than a decorative function

in such imagery

The intrusion of some representatives of psychology

eg C G Jung into iconographic studies giving them

an unhistorical turn in their search for ldquoarchetypal

imagesrdquo has complicated the situation although art

historians in general understandably have not accepted

that kind of approach to symbolism (Frankfort 1958

Gombrich 1965)

The fact that iconographic interpretations sometimes

lack satisfactory proofs does not detract from the im-

portance of such investigations so long as they are

conducted according to the requirements of historical

methods and take into account the corrective princi-

ples established by Panofsky A correct acquaintance

with the way of thinking of the artist the patron or the

viewer based on a satisfactory knowledge of documen-

tary visual and literary sources an awareness of the

choice situations produced by historical developments

may enable art historians to discover the secondary

meaning of a work of art as well as its intrinsic mean-

ing It is of course possible that the art historian will

meet some works for which it will not be possible to re-

construct in a satisfactory way the world of ideas that

would account for the meaning of those works In such

cases a reliable interpretation is simply not possible

R Berliner (1945 1966) criticized the widespread

opinion according to which content of the works of

visual arts in the Middle Ages had to be checked

against the literary sources considered as the only

medium in which ideological innovations were per-

mitted Berliner pleaded for assuming a considerable

ldquofreedomrdquo in the medieval artist and he considered

iconographic innovation possible even when no writ-

ten evidence could be found Meyer Schapiro (1947)

presented proofs that sometimes purely aesthetic rea-

sons decided the character of the work of art even as

early as the Romanesque period

We can only touch on some specific discussions going

on in the field of iconographic research But iconogra-

phic research is far from being a closed system and

the relative share of iconographic and stylistic criticism

in the work of art historians is always a matter of

discussion It is certain that the ldquoiconographicrdquo period

in the study of art has enlarged in a considerable way

the understanding of the art of the past and that it

has connected art history in a way unknown before

with the other historical disciplines and above all others

with the history of ideas

BIBLIOGRAPHY

L B Alberti On Painting ed J Spencer (New Haven

1956 revised ed 1966) E Auerbach ldquoFigurardquo (1944) trans

and published in Scenes From the Drama of European Liter-

ature (New York 1959) pp 11-76 K Bauch ldquoImagordquo

(1960) Studien zur Kunstgeschichte (Berlin 1967) pp 1-20

G P Bellori Descrizione delle imagini dipinte da Raffaello

(Rome 1695 ed used is 1751) R Berliner ldquoThe Free-

dom of Medieval Artrdquo Gazette des Beaux-Arts 628 (1945)

263-88 idem ldquoBemerkungen zu einigen Darstellungen des

Erloumlsers als Schmerzensmannrdquo Das Muumlnster 9 (1956)

97-117x J Białostocki ldquoIconografia e Iconologiardquo Enciclo-

pedia Universale dellArte (1962) Vol VII cols 163-75

trans as Encyclopedia of World Art (1966) Vol VII cols

769-85 lists almost all important older contributions to this

field idem ldquoRomantische Ikonographierdquo Stil und Ikonog-

raphie (Dresden 1966) pp 156-81 idem ldquoKompozycja

emblematyczna epitafioacutew ślaskich XVI wiekurdquo (ldquoEmblem-

atic Composition of Silesian Epitaphs of the Sixteenth Cen-

turyrdquo) Ze studioacutew nad Sztuka XVI wieku na Řlasku

(Wrocław 1968) pp 77-93 idem ldquoEsilio Privatordquo Bulletin

du Museacutee National de Varsovie 10 (1969) 95-101 J

541

Chydenius The Theory of Medieval Symbolism (Helsingfors

1960) Series of the Societas Scientiarum Fennica Com-

mentationes Humanarum Litterarum 27 2 R J Clements

Picta Poesis (Rome 1960) F Creuzer Symbolik und

Mythologie der Alten Voumllker (Leipzig and Darmstadt 1810

revised ed 1819) F Cumont Recherches sur le symbolisme

funeacuteraire des Romains (Paris 1942) L Eitner ldquoThe Open

Window and the Storm-Tossed Boatrdquo Art Bulletin 37

(1955) 281-90 H Frankfort ldquoThe Archetype in Analytical

Psychology and the History of Religionrdquo Journal of the

Warburg and Courtauld Institutes 21 (1958) 166-78

K Garas ldquoAllegorie und Geschichte in der Venezianischen

Malerei des 18 Jahrhundertsrdquo in proceedings of the XXI

International Congress of the History of Art Bonn Stil und

Uumlberlieferung in der Kunst des Abendlandes (Berlin 1967)

3 280-83 K Giehlow ldquoDie Hieroglyphenkunde des

Humanismus in der Allegorie der Renaissancerdquo Jahrbuch

der Kunsthistorischen Sammlungen des Allerhochsten

Kaiserhauses 32 (1915) 1-232 C Gilbert ldquoOn Subject and

Not-Subject in Italian Renaissance Picturesrdquo Art Bulletin

34 (1952) 202-16 C Ginzburg ldquoDa A Warburg a E H

Gombrich Note su un problema di metodordquo Studi medi-

evali series 3 7 (1966) 1015-65 E H Gombrich ldquoIcones

Symbolicae The Visual Image in Neo-Platonic Thoughtrdquo

Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes 11 (1948)

163-92 idem ldquoThe Use of Art for the Study of Symbolsrdquo

American Psychologist 20 (1965) A Grabar Liconoclasme

byzantin Dossier archeacuteologique (Paris 1957) idem Chris-

tian Iconography A Study of Its Origins (Princeton 1969)

S J Gudlaugsson De Comedianten bij Jan Steen en zijn

tijdgenooten (s-Gravenhage 1945) W S Heckscher ldquoThe

Genesis of Iconologyrdquo Stl und Uumlberlieferung in der Kunst

des Abendlandes Akten des XXI Internationalen Kon-

gresses fuumlr Kunstgeschichte (Berlin 1967) 3 239-62 G

Hermereacuten Representation and Meaning in the Visual Arts

A Study in the Methodology of Iconography and Iconology

Lund Studies in Philosophy Vol I (Lund 1969) R Hinks

Myth and Allegory in Ancient Art (London 1939) W

Hofmann Das Irdische Paradies (Munich 1960) G J

Hoogewerff ldquoLIconologie et son importance pour leacutetude

systeacutematique de lart chreacutetienrdquo Rivista dArcheologia Cris-

tiana 8 (1931) 53-82 E de Jongh Zinne- en minnebeelden

in de schilderkunst van de zeventiende eeuw (mdash1967) idem

ldquoErotica in Vogelperspectief De dubbelzinnigheid van een

reeks 17de eeuwse genrevoorstellingenrdquo Simiolus 3

(1968-69) 22-72 L Kalinowski ldquoTreści ideowe i estetyczne

Drzwi Gnieźnieńskichrdquo (ldquoIdeological and Aesthetic Content

of the Gniezno Bronze Doorsrdquo) in Drzwi Gnieźnieńskie ed

M Walicki (Wroclaw 1959) 2 7-160 H Keller Tizians

Poesie fuumlr Koumlnig Philip II von Spanien (Wiesbaden 1969)

R Klein ldquoLa theacuteorie de lexpression figureacutee dans les traiteacutes

italiens sur les imprese 1555-1612rdquo Bibliothegraveque dHu-

manisme et Renaissance 19 (1957) 320-41 republished with

the other relevant studies in la forme et lintelligible (Paris

1969) R Klibansky E Panofsky F Saxl Saturn and Melan-

choly (London 1964) J B Knipping Ikonografie van de

Contra-Reformatie in de Nederlanden (Hilversum 1939-40)

G Kubler The Shape of Time (New Haven and London

1962) R W Lee ldquoUt pictura poesisrdquo Art Bulletin 22

(1940) 197-269 E Macircle Lart religieux du XIIIe siegravecle en

France (Paris 1898) English ed used (New York 1958)

idem Lart religieux de la fin du Moyen-Age en France

(Paris 1908) idem Lart religieux du XIIe siegravecle en France

(Paris 1922) idem Lart religieux apregraves le Concile de Trente

(Paris 1932) J Maurin Białostocka Lessing i sztuki plas-

tyczne (ldquoLessing and the visual artsrdquo) (Wroclaw Warszawa

Krakoacutew 1969) E F von Monroy Embleme und Emblem-

buumlcher in den Niederlanden 1560-1630 ed H M von Erffa

(Utrecht 1964) J Montagu ldquoThe Painted Enigma and

French Seventeenth Century Artrdquo Journal of the Warburg

and Courtauld Institutes 31 (1968) 307-35 W Mrazek

Ikonologie der barocken Deckenmalerei (Vienna 1953)

Uumlsterreichische Akademie der Wissenschaften Philo-

sophisch-historische Klasse Sitzungsberichte 2283 A D

Nock ldquoSarcophagi and Symbolismrdquo American Journal of

Archaeology 50 (1946) 166ff D Panofsky and E Panofsky

ldquoThe Iconography of the Galeacuterie Franccedilois Ier at Fontaine-

bleaurdquo Gazette des Beaux-Arts 652 (1958) 113-90

E Panofsky ldquoUumlber das Verhaumlltnis der Kunstgeschichte zur

Kunsttheorierdquo Zeitschrift fuumlr Aesthetik und allgemeine

Kunstwissenschaft 18 (1925) 129-61 idem Studies in

Iconology (New York 1939) idem ed Abbot Suger (Prince-

ton 1946) idem Gothic Architecture and Scholasticism

(Latrobe Pa 1951) idem Early Netherlandish Painting

(Cambridge Mass 1953) idem Meaning in the Visual Arts

(Garden City N Y 1955) idem Renaissance and Renas-

cences in Western Art (Stockholm 1960) idem Tomb Sculp-

ture (New York 1964) E Panofsky and F Saxl ldquoClassical

Mythology in Medieval Artrdquo Metropolitan Museum Studies

4 (1932-33) 228-80 M Praz Studies in Seventeenth Cen-

tury Imagery (London 1939-47 2nd ed Rome 1964) S

Ringbom ldquoDevotional Images and Imaginative Devotions

Notes on the Place of Art in Late Medieval Private Pietyrdquo

Gazette des Beaux-Arts 6 73 (1969) 159-70 Joseph Sauer

Symbolik des Kirchengebaumludes und seiner Ausstattung in

der Auffassung des Mittelalters 2nd ed (Freiburg i B

1924) F Saxl ldquoFruumlhes Christentum und spaumltes Heidentum

in ihren kuumlnstlerischen Ausdrucksformenrdquo Wiener Jahrbuch

fuumlr Kunstgeschichte 2 (1923) 63-121 M Schapiro ldquoThe

Ruthwell Crossrdquo Art Bulletin 26 (1944) 232-45 idem ldquoOn

the Aesthetic Attitude in Romanesque Artrdquo in Art and

Thought issued in Honour of Ananda Coomaraswamy

(London 1947) 139-50 J Seznec The Survival of the Pagan

Gods (New York 1953) O G von Simson The Gothic

Cathedral (New York 1956) R E Spear ldquoThe Literary

Source of Poussins Realm of Florardquo The Burlington Maga-

zine 107 (1965) 563-69 L Volkmann Bilderschriften der

Renaissance (Leipzig 1923) Hans van de Waal Drie

eeuwen vaderlandsche geschieduitbeelding 1500-1800 (s-

Gravenhage 1952) idem ldquoSome Principles of a General

Iconographical Classificationrdquo in Actes du XVIIe Congregraves

International dHistoire de lArt Amsterdam 1952 (La Haye

1955) 601-06 E Wind ldquoCharity the Case History of a

Patternrdquo Journal of the Warburg Institute 1 (1937) 322ff

JAN BIAŁOSTOCKI

[See also Allegory Baroque Classicism Criticism Enlight-

enment Motif Myth Naturalism in Art Neo-Platonism

Renaissance Humanism Romanticism Symbolism Tem-

perance Ut pictura poesis]

them Who then can sufficiently estimate the magni-

tude of the debt we owe to those who expressed the Arts

and Sciences themselves in images and so brought it about

that we could not only know them but look at them as

it were with our eyes that we can meet them and almost

converse with them

(Gombrich [1948] pp 188f)

Great allegorical compositions covering the ceilings of

baroque churches are often realizations of this princi-

ple For those however who conceived allegory as a

rational operation as a language used for didactic aims

the main problem remained the clarity of the allegori-

533

cal message The larger the audience to whom allegory

was addressed the simpler more obvious its symbolism

should have been The banality of allegorical language

provoked criticism in the eighteenth century Fran-

cesco Algarotti (1762) prefers without any doubt his-

torical representations to the ldquoempty allegories and

complicated mythological allusionsrdquo (Garas [1967] p

280) Especially criticized was the obscurity of these

allegories in which completely original unknown sym-

bols were used Roger de Piles praises his favorite

master Rubens who ldquointroduced only such allegories

elements of which were already known from ancient

artrdquo and opposes him to Charles Lebrun who ldquoinstead

of taking symbols from some known source as the

ancient fable and medals has invented almost all of

them and thus the pictures of this kind became riddles

which the beholder does not want to take the task to

solverdquo To keep the balance between platitudinous

redundancy and utter incomprehensibility was the

crucial problem of late baroque allegorism What is

interesting however is that the idea of the picture

as a riddle was not foreign to the seventeenth century

It appears in France as well as in Sweden where David

Kloumlcker Ehrenstrahl (1694) proposed that pictures

present riddles that could not be solved by everyone

In France however the ldquopainted enigmardquo fostered

by the Jesuits in their schools flourished especially well

in the seventeenth century (Montagu 1968) These

ldquopainted enigmasrdquo lent themselves to various inter-

pretations and gave interpreters an opportunity to

show their ingenuity These pictures and their inter-

pretations seem to prove that a considerable flexibility

of meaning was intended

We might rather accept that a work of art was regarded

in the seventeenth century as in a certain sense an open

symbol raw material like the myth or sacred story which

it illustrates on which the interpreter might exercise the

power of his ingenuity turning it into an allegory of Chris-

tian doctrine or a panegyric in honour of his patron

(Montagu [1968] p 334)

Such a situation probably existed only in some specific

circles It was a limiting case The other extreme was

to use in an uninteresting routine way Ripas symbolic

images or those of other popular symbolic handbooks

Such practice continued well into the eighteenth cen-

tury The general trend fed by ideas of the Enlighten-

ment was to make allegories more and more obvious

It is understandable that some theorists like the Count

de Caylus looked for new subject matter presenting

as he did Tableaux tireacutes de lIliade (1755) or that

J J Winckelmann tried to revive allegory and to give

it a new force It was however too late In the eight-

eenth century together with the whole system of

humanistic tradition the systems of iconography began

to disintegrate The great break in the tradition con-

cerned not only style but also iconography Emblem-

atic roots may be discovered in Goyas symbolism as

well as in the reasonable allegories of the Enlighten-

ment but generally speaking there was a search for

new not known or not used sourcesmdashas in William

Blakes biblical individualistic imagerymdashor the new

staging of the old ones as in Jacques Louis Davids

classical subjects

The art of romanticism was a definite break with

the past much more in the field of ideas and iconogra-

phy than in a stylistic respect where romanticists

retrospectively looked back either to medieval and

pre-Raphaelite or to baroque sources Symbols and

allegories yielded to an all-pervading mood and the

traditional repertory of religious allegorical mytho-

logical and historical iconography gave way to a new

iconography Although several encompassing images

of Christian and humanistic art survived they received

new content and essentially changed their character

New attitudes of the individual to the world of nature

and history to society and destiny to time and death

and new problems resulting from the striving after

freedom (which was a new perhaps most important

principle of human behavior in all fields of human

activity) found expression in new thematic fields and

in new particular themes such as ldquoStorm-tossed Boatrdquo

ldquoLonely Wanderer in the Mountainsrdquo ldquoA Death of the

Herordquo (Eitner 1955 Hofmann 1960 Białostocki

1966)

Romanticism has not formed and could not have

formed an iconographic system for since they strived

first of all for originality of individual conception the

romantics interpreted images in a subjective way as

expressions of mood Romanticism has on the other

hand introduced new heroes and martyrs into art

instead of religious ones the national social and artis-

tic ones It created a new image of history seen now

as a set of political and moral examplesmdashas in

baroquemdashbut often put together now according to a

very individualistic principle of choice A correlative

to pathetic and heroic romanticism was a bourgeois

and intimate romanticism its expression was for ex-

ample the new imagery of the open window which

shows to the viewer wide perspectives but shelters him

at the same time from the dangers of the unknown

(Eitner 1955)

When the world of ideas and images created at the

moment of the flowering of romanticism began to be

popularized for the use of the large bourgeois masses

the contentmdashideological and iconographicalmdashof ro-

manticism lost its original authenticity and left be-

hind not a new system of original images but a dispo-

534

sition to melodramatic experiences and an inflation of

a theatrical gesture (Hofmann 1960 Białostocki 1966)

The nineteenth century developed a realistic por-

traiture of man and nature and took over worn out

clicheacutes of the Renaissance and baroque allegories It

introduced new subject matter taken partly from tra-

dition partly from observation of reality tinted with

vague symbolism such as ldquoForgerdquo or the ldquoFuneral of

the Peasantrdquo but it did not create a new system of

iconography in spite of short-lived revivals of symbol-

istic attitudes in such movementsmdashincidentally not

limited to and not initiated in the visual artsmdashas

ldquosymbolismrdquo

New ephemeral artistic movements which consti-

tuted the history of European art in the last hundred

years show an interesting bracketing of style and icon-

ography in spite of a preponderant lack of iconogra-

phic interest Their representatives chose subjects suit-

able to specific artistic aims and means which they

developed and were interested in Impressionists

painted seaside scenes landscapes and genre pictures

showing the life of artistic and intellectual milieus

Cubists introduced a specific repertory of still-life

motifs symbols of the artists atelier and of the life

of the bohegraveme bottles musical instruments books

fruits flowers newspapers How much these motifs

were connected with specific cubist style appears when

one looks at works of artists foreign to the original

cubist group but imitating its style as for instance

several Czech artists like Emil Filla They adopted

cubist iconography together with cubist style Abstract

movements in general lacked iconography although

they were not foreign to symbolic tendencies espe-

cially in sculpture (Brancusi Moore) Only in the dec-

ades of 1950-70 can a revival of more articulated and

programmatic symbolism be observed One may sup-

pose that this revival is at least in part brought about

by the development of research in iconography and

symbolism which took place in the second and third

quarters of our century

II

1 The origins of ldquointerpretative iconographyrdquo may

be seen in the descriptions (ekphrasis) of works of art

known in classical literature But these descriptions

like those by Philostratus the Elder or Lucian are

limited simply to description and lack in general any

interpretation Moreover it is not certain whether they

are descriptions of actual or fictitious works of art at

least opinions in this respect vary Brief medieval tituli

which formulated in words the content of religious

images were to be sure interpretative sometimes but

they were short and cannot be connected with the

tradition of artistic erudition We have to look to

modern times to indicate the beginnings of iconogra-

phic interpretation and research From Vasaris Rag-

ionamenti in which interpretations of the paintings

decorating the Palazzo Vecchio in Florence are given

we learn how complicated and how undecipherable

iconographic concepts might have been even to peo-

ple living in buildings decorated by paintings expres-

sing these concepts But perhaps the first really to be

considered as interested in iconographic research was

the seventeenth-century archaeologist and art theorist

Giovanni Pietro Bellori In the introduction to his Lives

of Artists (1672) Bellori stressed that he paid special

attention to the content of the works of art he was

talking about and he even credited the painter Nicolas

Poussin with having directed his attention to iconogra-

phy In his Lives Bellori presented short interpretative

descriptions of pictures and he sometimes developed

these interpretations further in small iconographic

essays the influence of classical ekphrasis on him is

a possibility Sometimes his errors took deep roots in

the subsequent history of art as when he explained

Poussins Triumph of Flora (Dresden) by designating

Ovids Metamorphoses as its source The true source

Marinos Adona was finally found by R E Spear in

1965

What is interesting in Belloris procedure is that he

first identifies the motifs tries to connect them with

classical or modern literary sources and then proceeds

to find out the deep meaning the general symbolic

idea of the work Therefore he may be considered as

one of the pioneers not only of iconography as a disci-

pline of research but also of iconology as formulated

by its recent partisans That even in the second half

of the sixteenth century some observers were inclined

to look for hidden meaning in each element of the work

of art we learn from Joannes Molanus (1570) who in

De picturis et imaginibus sacris states reasonably that

ldquoit is not necessary to ask for meaning of everything

that can be observed in a picture in such cases a lot

of absurd things may resultrdquo But the consciousness of

the importance of iconography increased and at the

end of the seventeenth century Andreacute Feacutelibien stressed

that in order to attribute a picture to a painter it is

not enough to know the way he uses his brush one

needs also to know his esprit to learn his geacutenie and

to be able to foresee in which way he is able to form

his conceptions Thus iconographic analysis was con-

sidered necessary even for the purpose of attribution

Descriptive interpretations of the works of ancient

art appeared in the big archaeological publications of

the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries such as

Jacques Spons Miscellanea eruditae antiquitatis (1679)

G P Belloris Admiranda romanarum antiquitatum ac

veteris sculpturae vestigia (1693) P de Caylus Recueil

535

dantiquiteacutes eacutegyptiennes eacutetrusques grecques et

romaines (1752-67) and in an interesting endeavor

(although very much criticized by Lessing) of Joseph

Spence to explain classical poets through works of art

and vice versa (Polymetis 1747) Classical archaeology

however has not been especially interested in iconog-

raphy and the use of the term itself by archaeolo-

gists was limited to portraiture The first great devel-

opment of iconographic studies was connected with

the romantic movement although an important pre-

lude for it was hagiographical collections of sources

such as Acta sanctorum published by the Bollandists

(1643-1794 resumed later) Among the pre-romantic

scholars in iconography the eminent German poet

G E Lessing is to be noted His study of the repre-

sentation of death in classical times can be considered

as one of the first essays in interpretative iconography

which is now called iconology In Wie die Alten den

Tod gebildet (1769) Lessing tries to interpret the classi-

cal iconographic type of Amor with the inverted torch

and to find its ldquointrinsic meaningrdquo by taking into ac-

count the religion customs and philosophy of the

classical world The work of art is interpreted by Less-

ing as ldquoa symptom of something elserdquo While Lessings

predecessors (like B de Montfaucon) ldquoexplained the

classical past by monumentsrdquo he for the first time did

the opposite ldquohe explained the monuments by Antiq-

uityrdquo (Maurin Białostocka [1969] pp 92-100)

Pre-romantic and romantic interests in myth and

symbol found their expression in publications and dis-

cussions by German philosophers and scholars like F

Schlegel J Herder J J von Goumlrres and F Creuzer

Creuzers work Symbolik und Mythologie der alten

Voumllker (1810) which shows the influence of mystical

Neo-Platonic ideas on symbols (Gombrich 1965) was

the most influential in the romantic period in Ger-

many Under the impact of Chateaubriands le Geacutenie

du christianisme (1802) research in medieval iconog-

raphy developed mainly in France Works by French

scholars mostly clergymen which were indeed con-

cerned with Christian medieval art dominated icon-

ographical study in the nineteenth century Since most

of these writers were not professional scholars their

work was often amateurish in character but it is unde-

niable that books by A N Didron Histoire de Dieu

(Paris 1843) the first part of a comprehensive pro-

jected but not completed iconography of Christian art

A Crosnier Iconographie chreacutetienne (Caen 1848) C

Cahier Caracteacuteristiques des saints (Paris 1867) C

Rohault de Fleury Archeacuteologie chreacutetienne les saints

de la messe et leurs monuments 12 vols (Paris

1893-1900) L Breacutehier Lart chreacutetien son deacuteveloppe-

ment iconographique des origines agrave nos jours (Paris

1918) P Perdrizet V Leroquais and G de Jerphanion

have built up a solid body of iconographical knowl-

edge on which scholars of the twentieth century were

able to erect a modern comprehensive structure In

the field of Byzantine iconography it was Gabriel

Millets Recherches sur liconographie de leacutevangile aux

XIVe XVe et XVIe siegravecles (Paris 1916 reprint

1960) that was basic for any further study For Western

chiefly French art a well-written and learned work

appealing to the general reader as well as to the

scholar was produced by Eacutemile Macircle who in his four

volumes of the history of religious art (1898-1932) has

presented a well-composed synthetic image of icono-

graphical development A lexicographic summary of

these studies of generations of French scholars is pre-

sented in the Dictionnaire darcheacuteologie chreacutetienne et

de liturgie published from 1907 to 1953 and edited

by F Cabrol and H Leclerq A recent reference work

is that by L Reacuteau Iconographie de lart chreacutetien (Paris

1955-59) Russian scholars have done important work

in the field of Byzantine and Orthodox iconography

of religious art The most prominent are N P Kon-

dakov Ikonografia Bogomatieri (St Petersburg 1911

2nd ed 1914-15) D V Ainalov Mosaiki IV i V vekov

(St Petersburg 1895) and N Pokrovski Otcherki

pamyatnikov christianskogo isskusstva i ikonografii (St

Petersburg 1894 3rd ed 1910) V Lasarev and M

Alpatov belonging to the mid-twentieth-century gen-

eration of Russian scholars discuss iconography in

several works on religious art German scholarship

produced in the nineteenth century works by F Piper

A Springer and H Detzel Useful compendia were

produced in the early twentieth century by J Sauer

W Molsdorf K Kuumlnstle and J Braun Dutch scholars

C Smits J B Knipping and J J M Timmers contrib-

uted to iconographic studies in recent times Knip-

pings book (1939-40) being the most important work

on the iconography of the Counter-Reformation and

supplementing Macircles volume of 1932 In the twentieth

century on C R Moreys initiative iconographic

studies were inaugurated in North America Focused

on earlier medieval art these studies developed at

Princeton University

A new direction characteristic of iconographic

studies in the twentieth century has been given to

them by the international school of art historical re-

search inaugurated by the Hamburg scholar Aby

Warburg At the International Congress for the History

of Art at Rome in 1912 he presented a sensational

astrological interpretation of the frescoes painted by

Francesco Cossa and his collaborators in Palazzo

Schifanoja at Ferrara Warburg solved the secret of

those representations which had puzzled the ingenuity

of several former students interpreting them as images

of zodiacal signs and their decans But he did not limit

536

his contribution to the presentation of his results He

wanted to stress the importance of his approach and

of the method of study which later became connected

with his name He said

I hope that through the method used by me for explication

of the frescoes at the Palazzo Schifanoja of Ferrara I have

proved that an iconological analysis which does not allow

itself to be diverted by the rules of frontier police from

considering antiquity Middle Ages and modern times as

interconnected periods nor from analyzing the most liberal

and the most applied works of art as equally important

documents of expression that this method endeavoring as

it does to throw light upon one dark spot clears up at

the same time great interconnected developments

(Warburg 1912 Heckscher 1967)

Warburgs influence on the history of art was very

great although he himself did not write much It was

mainly the posthumous impact of his ideas promul-

gated as they were by Fritz Saxl which contributed

to the specific direction of studies concentrated in the

library Warburg founded in Hamburg and which Saxl

succeeded in transplanting during the Nazi era to

London where it became the Warburg Institute of the

University of London While the object of study of the

nineteenth-century iconographers was mainly religious

art in its relation to religious literary sources and lit-

urgy for Warburg the study of images was a study

of their relations to religion to poetry to myth to

science and to social and political life Art was for

him closely connected with the polyphonic structure

of historical life

Warburgs ideas had a great importance for the most

influential theory of iconographic interpretation in our

century that elaborated by Erwin Panofsky In Ham-

burg where Warburg Saxl and Panofsky were active

in the twenties Ernst Cassirer built up his philosophy

of symbolic forms which constituted an additional

background for Panofskys system being derived as

his own methodology was from the traditions of

Kantian philosophy Around 1930 Panofskys ideas

ripened into a system which found formulation in his

book herkules am Scheidewege (1930) and later in a

theoretical article of 1932 G J Hoogewerff was how-

ever the first to propose the word ldquoiconologyrdquo as a

name for the method of an analysis of content in a

work of art (Warburg spoke of iconological analysis)

In 1931 he proposed distinguishing between iconogra-

phy as a descriptive science aiming at the identifica-

tion of themes and ldquoiconologyrdquo aiming at the under-

standing ldquoof symbolic dogmatic or mystical meaning

which is expressed (or hidden) in figurative formsrdquo He

stressed that ldquoiconologyrdquo deals with works of art with-

out classifying them according to the technique used

or to the achieved perfection taking into account only

their meaning Hoogewerff saw the last aim of iconol-

ogy in finding out the cultural and ideological back-

ground expressed by works of art and the cultural and

social significance which can be attributed to certain

forms and to means of expression in the same time

Hoogewerffs part in the expansion of iconology was

limited because he did not endorse his methodical

proposals with examples of historical interpretations

Erwin Panofsky with whose name iconology has

been connected ever since not only developed its

theoretical foundations but contributed by his practi-

cal work in art history to the main triumph of iconol-

ogy after the Second World War The most influential

book by Panofsky has been Studies in Iconology (1939)

in which his masterly presentation of the method was

connected with its equally excellent exemplification

2 Panofsky considers the interpretation of a work

of art as falling on three levels On the first level the

object of interpretation is the primary or natural sub-

ject matter The function of interpretation is called

ldquopre-iconographical descriptionrdquo In order to be able

to arrive at a correct interpretation on that level the

interpreter must have a practical experience (ldquofamili-

arity with objects and eventsrdquo) common to everybody

at least in one cultural sphere However he has to

control his observations by a ldquocorrective knowledge

of the history of stylerdquo (ldquoinsight into the manner in

which under varying historical conditions objects and

events were expressed by formsrdquo) On the second level

the function of interpretation is called ldquoiconographical

analysisrdquo its object is the ldquosecondary or conventional

subject matterrdquo constituting the world of images his-

tories and allegories The interpreters equipment in

this case is obviously the knowledge of literary sources

giving him a ldquofamiliarity with specific themes and

conceptsrdquo The interpreter has to control his observa-

tions by ldquothe insight into the manner in which under

varying historical conditions specific themes or con-

cepts were expressed by objects and eventsrdquo On the

third level the function of interpreting is called ldquoicon-

ographical analysis in a deeper senserdquo (1939) or ldquoicon-

ological analysisrdquo (1955) Its object is the ldquointrinsic

meaning or contentrdquo of a work of art The interpreters

equipment on that level should be a ldquofamiliarity with

the essential tendencies of the human mindrdquo and he

has to control his interpretation by the ldquoinsight into

the manner in which under varying historical condi-

tions essential tendencies of the human mind were

expressed by specific themes and conceptsrdquo Thus

taking all the time into account what Panofsky calls

the history of tradition the interpreter has to aim at

understanding the work of art its ldquoprimaryrdquo as well

as ldquosecondary subject matterrdquo as symptoms of some

fundamental tendency of the human mind typical of

537

a place a time a civilization and of an individual

responsible for the creation of the work ldquoIconologyrdquomdash

for Panofskymdashldquois a method of interpretation which

arises from synthesis rather than analysisrdquo Trying to

find the intrinsic meaning of a work of art

The art historian will have to check what he thinks is the

intrinsic meaning of the work or group of works against

what he thinks is the intrinsic meaning of as many other

documents of civilization historically related to that work

or group of works as he can master It is in the search

for intrinsic meaning or content that the various humanistic

disciplines meet on a common plane instead of serving as

handmaidens to each other

(Panofsky [1955] p 39)

The concept of intrinsic meaning of a work of art

was elaborated by Panofsky much earlier (1925) when

he interpreted in his own way the concept of Kunst-

wollen introduced by A Riegl to research in art

Panofsky understood this ldquoartistic volitionrdquo as an im-

manent ultimate meaning of a work of art which is

manifested in the way basic artistic problems are solved

in that work He used the same concept further to bring

art closer to the other fields of human activity Since

the ldquoimmanent ultimate senserdquo of the work of art is

nothing else than uniformity in the way of solving basic

artistic problems it is possible to compare that imma-

nent sense with immanent senses of the other human

works in various fields Panofsky did it for instance

when in one of his later works he compared the struc-

tural principles of Gothic architecture with those of

scholastic thinking (1951)

The system elaborated by Panofsky and exemplified

by his own work in art history was the first consistent

system of an integral interpretation of a work of visual

arts based on the analysis of content In principle

Panofskys system takes into account all the elements

of the work of art since it takes as the point of depar-

ture the sensual exterior shape of the work It is

however clear that its main scope is not the inter-

pretation of form as a bearer of meaning but the

understanding and interpretation of conventional alle-

gories literary themes and symbols as symptoms of

the history of the human mind It was that method

in the history of art which programmatically fostered

a collaboration with all the other disciplines of histori-

cal studies It was therefore one of the most influential

methods not only among art historians but also among

representatives of the other branches of humanistic

studies Although there were art historians who ex-

pressed a critical attitude toward ldquoiconologyrdquo as the

new method was soon baptized its influence was over-

whelming

3 It is not only but mainly due to Panofsky that

one can venture to call ldquoiconographicalrdquo that period

of art history as a historical discipline which followed

the Second World War and to oppose it to the ldquostylis-

ticrdquo one which preceded it It does not mean of course

that no iconographic research took place in the

twenties or thirties the works of Macircle Knipping van

Marle Wilpert Saxl and of Panofsky himself would

contradict such a statement Neither is it true that

purely formal research aiming at stylistic classification

and analysis discontinued after World War II It is

evident that in the last decades (from 1940 on) icono-

graphic interests came to the fore and became domi-

nant in many countries Iconographical studies grew

so much in number and importance that they made

it possible to undertake and to publish new reference

works of iconographic character like dictionaries

written by one scholar (Guy de Tervarent Aurenham-

mer) as well as larger works based on a collaboration

of several scholars (Encyclopedias of German art of

Antiquity and Christian civilization of Byzantine art)

Interest in meaning and iconography has appeared

also among historians of political social and religious

institutions The symbolism of signs ceremonies cos-

tumes and arms was studied by such scholars as A

Alfoumlldi ldquoInsignien und Tracht der roumlmischen Kaiserrdquo

Mitteilungen des deutschen Archaumlologischen Instituts

Roumlmische Abteilung (1935) 1ff ldquoDie Geburt der

kaiserlichen Bildsymbolikrdquo museum Helveticum 9

(1952) 204ff also by A Grabar Martyrium (Paris

1943-46) by E H Kantorowicz laudes Regiae

(Berkeley and Los Angeles 1946) The Kings Two

Bodies (Princeton 1957) by H P L Orange Studies

in the Iconography of Cosmic Kingship in the Ancient

World (Oslo 1953) Art Forms and Civic Life in the

Late Roman Empire (Princeton 1965) and by P E

Schramm herrschaftszeichen und Staatssymbolik

(Stuttgart 1954-56) In their studies iconography far

transcends the borders of art and it helps to build up

a history of ideas by following their various visual

expressions

Pioneering studies by K Giehlow F Saxl and E

Panofsky enlarged iconographical interests above all

to encompass the large field of secular art whereas

they had been mainly limited to religious iconography

in the work of preceding generations of scholars The

whole complicated and hardly known large body of

meanings disguised by the cryptic language of hiero-

glyphs emblems and iconologies became one of the

main topics of study

This established a collaboration between historians

of art and literature Mario Prazs admirable study of

emblems and his bibliography of emblem books

(1939-47) belongs now to the foundations of studies

in that field Publications by W S Heckscher and

A K Wirth by R S Clements E F von Monroy and

538

H M von Erffa E de Jongh and H Miedema and

several other scholars have elucidated the structure

and meaning of emblems and have shown their tre-

mendous influence on art even in its most monumental

and dignified forms An uninterrupted flow of reprints

of emblem books which brought within the reach of

modern students inaccessible volumes of sixteenth- and

seventeenth-century emblem writers were crowned by

the monumental undertaking of Arthur Henkel and

Albrecht Schoumlne who compiled an excellent volume

including almost all the texts and images needed for

the study of emblemsmdashEmblemata Handbuch zur

Sinnbildkunst des XVI und XVII Jahrhunderts

(Stuttgart 1967) Research was under way on hiero-

glyphs (Erik Iversen) and on the imprese (the late

Robert Klein) as well as on iconologies and allegories

These studies have disclosed meanings of the art of

the Renaissance of mannerism and of the baroque not

understood by nineteenth-century scholars

E Panofsky deciphered extremely farfetched and

individualistic programs of decoration of such famous

ensembles as the Camera di San Paolo by Correggio

in Parma the Gallery of Franccedilois I at Fontainebleau

Edgar Wind Andreacute Chastel and other scholars inter-

preted Raphaels decorations in the Popes apartments

Michelangelos art furnished material to detailed com-

prehensive studies by Panofsky Ch de Tolnay H von

Einem and Pope-Hennessy in which the share of

Neo-Platonic thinking in the ideological background

of the celebrated works of Michelangelo was discussed

Innumerable studies have been devoted to Titians

mythological paintings J R Martin presented expla-

nations of the Carracci frescoes in the Camerino Far-

nese and in the great gallery of the Palazzo Farnese

Bruegel considered in the nineteenth century as a drocircle

painter of peasant life has been shown by de Tolnay

Stridbeck and others to be an allegorist expressing a

skeptical humanistic outlook J S Held and W

Stechow contributed several articles to the under-

standing of mythological and allegorical contents in

Flemish and Dutch art of the sixteenth and seventeenth

centuries Rembrandts iconography was put into new

light by the two above-mentioned scholars as well as

by H M Rotermund H van de Waal J G van Gelder

H von Einem and Ch Tuumlmpel The intricate symbol-

ism and subject matter of historical and mythological

pictures by Nicolas Poussin were elucidated by such

masters of iconographic research as E H Gombrich

W Friedlaumlnder E Panofsky and above all by A Blunt

who in his monograph on Poussin presented a new

deep synthetic view of the ideas expressed by that

artists works Goyas individualistic secret symbolism

was also studied with the help of emblems and the

allegorical tradition Berninis works received iconolo

gical treatment by R Wittkower and H Kauffmann

All of this research does not mean that there was a

lack of interest in religious iconography M Schapiro

A Katzenellenbogen H Bober F Wormald and V

Elbern among others have contributed considerably

to deepen our understanding of the not completely

explained motifs and prominent works of medieval art

Panofsky has also shed a new light on several problems

of sepulchral iconography studies by such scholars as

R Berliner G von der Osten L Kalinowski S

Ringbom and T Dobrzeniecki contributed to late

medieval iconography in a new way Berliner stressed

the autonomous invention of visual artists or their

patrons while according to the traditional view popu-

larized by Macircle late medieval art should have followed

strictly literary sources

The religious content of modern art especially its

allegorical form in the late baroque period has been

examined and thanks to studies by such scholars as

W Mrazek and H Bauer has become better known

and understandable A great change was introduced

by ldquoiconologyrdquo into architectural history Buildings

which were formerly interpreted from aesthetic and

functional points of view only have been shown to

present allegorical symbolical or even emblematic

ideas Publications by leading art historians (R Witt-

kower B Smith G Bandmann O von Simson and

G C Argan) have presented medieval and modern

architecture as a bearer of meaning and have essen-

tially changed the character of architectural history

The iconography of classicism and romanticism

received a thorough treatment in books by W Hof-

mann and R Rosenblum as well as in several studies

devoted to individual themes and pictures G Hersey

has for example shown how much Delacroixs decora-

tion of the library in the Palais Bourbon owed to

Giambattista Vicos ideas about history More recently

studies on ldquoSymbolismrdquo have been undertaken Vincent

van Goghs symbolic language and iconography were

the object of studies by J Seznec C Nordenfalk and

other scholars On Ceacutezannes iconography interesting

remarks have been published by M Schapiro

Along with the development of iconographic studies

the establishment of centers of documentation has

advanced The ldquoFrenchrdquo stage in the development of

iconography has not left any marked trace in this

respect It was in America thanks to C R Morey that

the famous Index of Christian Art at the Department

of Art and Archaeology of Princeton University was

founded at first limited to the early Middle Ages then

enlarged so as to include art up to the end of the

medieval period Copies of the Princeton Index are

to be found also at the Istituto Pontificio dArcheolo-

gia in Rome and in the Dumbarton Oaks Library and

539

Collection in Washington DC But that Index ends

ldquowhere art beginsrdquomdashas Panofsky used to say jokingly

The need for systematic iconographic files for modern

art was strongly felt In 1956 A Pigler published a

very useful book Barockthemen in which he listed

thousands of works of art of the baroque period ac-

cording to their subjects It was however far from

being a systematic work The first essay in establishing

a systematic iconographic index for art of any time

was done by The Netherlands Institute for Art History

at the Hague then directed by H Gerson which took

the initiative around 1950 of publishing a postcard-size

photographic index of its rich collection of photographs

of Netherlandish art ordered according to an icono-

graphic principle Once such an idea was formulated

the need for a comprehensive consistent and clear

iconographic classification was urgent H van de Waal

of Leiden University devised such a system of classifi-

cation based on decimal divisions consistent and easy

to read He based his system on experiences of ethnol-

ogy and on such elaborated systems of classification

as that devised by Stith Thompson in his Motif-Index

of Folk Literature Vols I-VI (Bloomington Ind

1932-36 rev ed 1955-58) Van de Waal has elabor-

ated a system in which the first five main sections

classify five fundamental groups of portrayable things

namely (1) The Supernatural (2) Nature (3) Man (4)

Society (5) Abstracts The last four classify specific

subjects such as (6) History (7) The Bible (8) Myths

Legends and Tales (with the exception of classical

antiquity) (9) Myths and Legends of Classical Antiq-

uity Van de Waal combines the classification in the

first and in the second group in order to classify general

as well as specific subjects Christ in his system is

described with the sign ldquo11 Drdquo (ldquo1rdquo standing for Su-

pernatural ldquo11rdquo for Christianity ldquoDrdquo for Christ) the

adult Christ = 11 D 3 since ldquoshepherdrdquo on the other

hand bears the signature 47 I 221 the adult Christ

as a shepherd can be described in this system by the

following formula 11 D 3 = 47 I 221 Van de Waal

has also provided means to describe more complex

images which he expresses by adding elements between

brackets The Annunciation with God the Father and

a winged Angel is expressed by the following formula

73 A 5 (+1 +41) ldquo1rdquo standing for God the Father

and ldquo41rdquo for a winged Angel (van de Waal 1952) This

system elaborated for many years by its inventor and

prepared for publication in many volumes has proved

most useful in the practical arrangement of the Icono-

graphical Index of the Netherlandish Art and as the

only one until now in existence it became used more

and more in spite of some ambiguities and difficulties

As an endeavor to classify ldquoall portrayablerdquo things

persons events and ideas and to create a consistent

method to describe every possible image van de Waals

system may be considered as one of the important

achievements of the ldquoiconographical stagerdquo in the

development of art history Iconographic files exist of

course in many institutions as for example in the Ikon-

ologisch Instituut of Utrecht University one of the

main centers of study in emblematics and of course

in the most venerable institution of iconographic re-

search the Warburg Institute of the London University

and in other places

4 What was the result of this ldquoiconographicrdquo turn

in the development of the history of art One thing

is certain that this discipline by necessity has come

closer to other humanistic disciplines Since the

ldquointrinsicrdquo meaningmdashin Panofskys terminologymdashof a

work of art cannot be described in terms used by the

history of art but only in terms borrowed from the

history of philosophy of religion of social structures

of science and so on the ldquoiconological methodrdquo took

for granted and provoked such a collaboration Art

history was perhaps the first or one of the first to show

new interest in investigation of meaning It was fol-

lowed by similar developments in ethnology and in

linguistics

We have mentioned above a parallel development

in Byzantine and classical studies Panofskys influence

has been considerable in the other fields of humanistic

research Since ldquoiconologyrdquo aimed at discovering ideas

expressed by a work of art it awoke in art historians

an interest in the history of ideas This general shift

of emphasis and of the direction of studies from mainly

formal ones to studies aiming at ideas underlying art

was perhaps responsible among others for the fact that

several contributions to the Journal of the History of

Ideas have been written by historians of art

It is not difficult to see that such a development

should have provoked criticism on the side of those

who care about the purity and autonomy of methods

Iconology was criticized as far as its internal coherence

and also as far as its claim to be the integral method

of the study of art are concerned (Białostocki 1962)

Studies by R Klein E Forssman G Previtali G

Kubler B Teyssegravedre C Ginzburg and G Hermeren

expressed critical opinions in one or the other respect

Iconology linked art with the rest of history but it

disrupted the links between the work of art and other

things (Kubler 1962) Concentrating on meaning

iconology neglected art as form as individual expres-

sion Iconology implied a rational relationship between

intellectual content and artistic form On the one hand

one spoke of ldquoiconological diminutionsrdquo (Kubler

1962)mdashlimitations of research to meaning only But

on the other hand the overstatements of iconology

were criticized its representatives sometimes seemed

540

to assume everything symbolized something And some

iconologists seemed to consider important in art not

that which makes art a different field of human activity

but that which connects art with other fieldsmdashwith

the history of ideas

There were of course critics who had the opposite

opinion Since the end of the eighteenth century a

direct experience of art was more and more valued

and its symbolical function considered as a burden

J G von Herder said ein Kunstwerk ist der Kunst

wegen da aber bei einem Symbole ist die Kunst

dienend (ldquoA work of art is there because of art but

with a symbol art is a servicerdquo) Similar opinions were

expressed by nineteenth-century art writers and in this

century they have been voiced by Benedetto Croce and

by other Italian opponents of contenutismo by which

they meant interest in content For such critics to put

stress on iconography was to miss the essential in art

and to focus attention on a subordinate function of art

Also among scholars who considered the function

of representation and of communication as a legitimate

and important function of art criticism was expressed

not against the principle of an iconographical or icon-

ological investigation but against overstatements in

their application The introduction of the idea of ldquodis-

guised symbolismrdquo has created a danger of course of

opening the way to fanciful interpretations The alle-

gorical and symbolical function of mythological imag-

ery in classical art is also difficult to interpret precisely

Since no literary sources give a key to an interpretation

of the iconography of the sarcophagi very divergent

theories have been expressed concerning their meaning

Some archaeologists like F Cumont (1942) believe

that mythological and allegorical imagery (Anadyo-

mene Sea-Thiasos Personifications of the Seasons) is

to be read symbolically The Sea-Thiasos for instance

is to be interpreted as a symbol of the journey of the

souls of the deceased to the islands of the blessed

Others like A D Nock (1946) do not find enough

evidence to accept other than a decorative function

in such imagery

The intrusion of some representatives of psychology

eg C G Jung into iconographic studies giving them

an unhistorical turn in their search for ldquoarchetypal

imagesrdquo has complicated the situation although art

historians in general understandably have not accepted

that kind of approach to symbolism (Frankfort 1958

Gombrich 1965)

The fact that iconographic interpretations sometimes

lack satisfactory proofs does not detract from the im-

portance of such investigations so long as they are

conducted according to the requirements of historical

methods and take into account the corrective princi-

ples established by Panofsky A correct acquaintance

with the way of thinking of the artist the patron or the

viewer based on a satisfactory knowledge of documen-

tary visual and literary sources an awareness of the

choice situations produced by historical developments

may enable art historians to discover the secondary

meaning of a work of art as well as its intrinsic mean-

ing It is of course possible that the art historian will

meet some works for which it will not be possible to re-

construct in a satisfactory way the world of ideas that

would account for the meaning of those works In such

cases a reliable interpretation is simply not possible

R Berliner (1945 1966) criticized the widespread

opinion according to which content of the works of

visual arts in the Middle Ages had to be checked

against the literary sources considered as the only

medium in which ideological innovations were per-

mitted Berliner pleaded for assuming a considerable

ldquofreedomrdquo in the medieval artist and he considered

iconographic innovation possible even when no writ-

ten evidence could be found Meyer Schapiro (1947)

presented proofs that sometimes purely aesthetic rea-

sons decided the character of the work of art even as

early as the Romanesque period

We can only touch on some specific discussions going

on in the field of iconographic research But iconogra-

phic research is far from being a closed system and

the relative share of iconographic and stylistic criticism

in the work of art historians is always a matter of

discussion It is certain that the ldquoiconographicrdquo period

in the study of art has enlarged in a considerable way

the understanding of the art of the past and that it

has connected art history in a way unknown before

with the other historical disciplines and above all others

with the history of ideas

BIBLIOGRAPHY

L B Alberti On Painting ed J Spencer (New Haven

1956 revised ed 1966) E Auerbach ldquoFigurardquo (1944) trans

and published in Scenes From the Drama of European Liter-

ature (New York 1959) pp 11-76 K Bauch ldquoImagordquo

(1960) Studien zur Kunstgeschichte (Berlin 1967) pp 1-20

G P Bellori Descrizione delle imagini dipinte da Raffaello

(Rome 1695 ed used is 1751) R Berliner ldquoThe Free-

dom of Medieval Artrdquo Gazette des Beaux-Arts 628 (1945)

263-88 idem ldquoBemerkungen zu einigen Darstellungen des

Erloumlsers als Schmerzensmannrdquo Das Muumlnster 9 (1956)

97-117x J Białostocki ldquoIconografia e Iconologiardquo Enciclo-

pedia Universale dellArte (1962) Vol VII cols 163-75

trans as Encyclopedia of World Art (1966) Vol VII cols

769-85 lists almost all important older contributions to this

field idem ldquoRomantische Ikonographierdquo Stil und Ikonog-

raphie (Dresden 1966) pp 156-81 idem ldquoKompozycja

emblematyczna epitafioacutew ślaskich XVI wiekurdquo (ldquoEmblem-

atic Composition of Silesian Epitaphs of the Sixteenth Cen-

turyrdquo) Ze studioacutew nad Sztuka XVI wieku na Řlasku

(Wrocław 1968) pp 77-93 idem ldquoEsilio Privatordquo Bulletin

du Museacutee National de Varsovie 10 (1969) 95-101 J

541

Chydenius The Theory of Medieval Symbolism (Helsingfors

1960) Series of the Societas Scientiarum Fennica Com-

mentationes Humanarum Litterarum 27 2 R J Clements

Picta Poesis (Rome 1960) F Creuzer Symbolik und

Mythologie der Alten Voumllker (Leipzig and Darmstadt 1810

revised ed 1819) F Cumont Recherches sur le symbolisme

funeacuteraire des Romains (Paris 1942) L Eitner ldquoThe Open

Window and the Storm-Tossed Boatrdquo Art Bulletin 37

(1955) 281-90 H Frankfort ldquoThe Archetype in Analytical

Psychology and the History of Religionrdquo Journal of the

Warburg and Courtauld Institutes 21 (1958) 166-78

K Garas ldquoAllegorie und Geschichte in der Venezianischen

Malerei des 18 Jahrhundertsrdquo in proceedings of the XXI

International Congress of the History of Art Bonn Stil und

Uumlberlieferung in der Kunst des Abendlandes (Berlin 1967)

3 280-83 K Giehlow ldquoDie Hieroglyphenkunde des

Humanismus in der Allegorie der Renaissancerdquo Jahrbuch

der Kunsthistorischen Sammlungen des Allerhochsten

Kaiserhauses 32 (1915) 1-232 C Gilbert ldquoOn Subject and

Not-Subject in Italian Renaissance Picturesrdquo Art Bulletin

34 (1952) 202-16 C Ginzburg ldquoDa A Warburg a E H

Gombrich Note su un problema di metodordquo Studi medi-

evali series 3 7 (1966) 1015-65 E H Gombrich ldquoIcones

Symbolicae The Visual Image in Neo-Platonic Thoughtrdquo

Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes 11 (1948)

163-92 idem ldquoThe Use of Art for the Study of Symbolsrdquo

American Psychologist 20 (1965) A Grabar Liconoclasme

byzantin Dossier archeacuteologique (Paris 1957) idem Chris-

tian Iconography A Study of Its Origins (Princeton 1969)

S J Gudlaugsson De Comedianten bij Jan Steen en zijn

tijdgenooten (s-Gravenhage 1945) W S Heckscher ldquoThe

Genesis of Iconologyrdquo Stl und Uumlberlieferung in der Kunst

des Abendlandes Akten des XXI Internationalen Kon-

gresses fuumlr Kunstgeschichte (Berlin 1967) 3 239-62 G

Hermereacuten Representation and Meaning in the Visual Arts

A Study in the Methodology of Iconography and Iconology

Lund Studies in Philosophy Vol I (Lund 1969) R Hinks

Myth and Allegory in Ancient Art (London 1939) W

Hofmann Das Irdische Paradies (Munich 1960) G J

Hoogewerff ldquoLIconologie et son importance pour leacutetude

systeacutematique de lart chreacutetienrdquo Rivista dArcheologia Cris-

tiana 8 (1931) 53-82 E de Jongh Zinne- en minnebeelden

in de schilderkunst van de zeventiende eeuw (mdash1967) idem

ldquoErotica in Vogelperspectief De dubbelzinnigheid van een

reeks 17de eeuwse genrevoorstellingenrdquo Simiolus 3

(1968-69) 22-72 L Kalinowski ldquoTreści ideowe i estetyczne

Drzwi Gnieźnieńskichrdquo (ldquoIdeological and Aesthetic Content

of the Gniezno Bronze Doorsrdquo) in Drzwi Gnieźnieńskie ed

M Walicki (Wroclaw 1959) 2 7-160 H Keller Tizians

Poesie fuumlr Koumlnig Philip II von Spanien (Wiesbaden 1969)

R Klein ldquoLa theacuteorie de lexpression figureacutee dans les traiteacutes

italiens sur les imprese 1555-1612rdquo Bibliothegraveque dHu-

manisme et Renaissance 19 (1957) 320-41 republished with

the other relevant studies in la forme et lintelligible (Paris

1969) R Klibansky E Panofsky F Saxl Saturn and Melan-

choly (London 1964) J B Knipping Ikonografie van de

Contra-Reformatie in de Nederlanden (Hilversum 1939-40)

G Kubler The Shape of Time (New Haven and London

1962) R W Lee ldquoUt pictura poesisrdquo Art Bulletin 22

(1940) 197-269 E Macircle Lart religieux du XIIIe siegravecle en

France (Paris 1898) English ed used (New York 1958)

idem Lart religieux de la fin du Moyen-Age en France

(Paris 1908) idem Lart religieux du XIIe siegravecle en France

(Paris 1922) idem Lart religieux apregraves le Concile de Trente

(Paris 1932) J Maurin Białostocka Lessing i sztuki plas-

tyczne (ldquoLessing and the visual artsrdquo) (Wroclaw Warszawa

Krakoacutew 1969) E F von Monroy Embleme und Emblem-

buumlcher in den Niederlanden 1560-1630 ed H M von Erffa

(Utrecht 1964) J Montagu ldquoThe Painted Enigma and

French Seventeenth Century Artrdquo Journal of the Warburg

and Courtauld Institutes 31 (1968) 307-35 W Mrazek

Ikonologie der barocken Deckenmalerei (Vienna 1953)

Uumlsterreichische Akademie der Wissenschaften Philo-

sophisch-historische Klasse Sitzungsberichte 2283 A D

Nock ldquoSarcophagi and Symbolismrdquo American Journal of

Archaeology 50 (1946) 166ff D Panofsky and E Panofsky

ldquoThe Iconography of the Galeacuterie Franccedilois Ier at Fontaine-

bleaurdquo Gazette des Beaux-Arts 652 (1958) 113-90

E Panofsky ldquoUumlber das Verhaumlltnis der Kunstgeschichte zur

Kunsttheorierdquo Zeitschrift fuumlr Aesthetik und allgemeine

Kunstwissenschaft 18 (1925) 129-61 idem Studies in

Iconology (New York 1939) idem ed Abbot Suger (Prince-

ton 1946) idem Gothic Architecture and Scholasticism

(Latrobe Pa 1951) idem Early Netherlandish Painting

(Cambridge Mass 1953) idem Meaning in the Visual Arts

(Garden City N Y 1955) idem Renaissance and Renas-

cences in Western Art (Stockholm 1960) idem Tomb Sculp-

ture (New York 1964) E Panofsky and F Saxl ldquoClassical

Mythology in Medieval Artrdquo Metropolitan Museum Studies

4 (1932-33) 228-80 M Praz Studies in Seventeenth Cen-

tury Imagery (London 1939-47 2nd ed Rome 1964) S

Ringbom ldquoDevotional Images and Imaginative Devotions

Notes on the Place of Art in Late Medieval Private Pietyrdquo

Gazette des Beaux-Arts 6 73 (1969) 159-70 Joseph Sauer

Symbolik des Kirchengebaumludes und seiner Ausstattung in

der Auffassung des Mittelalters 2nd ed (Freiburg i B

1924) F Saxl ldquoFruumlhes Christentum und spaumltes Heidentum

in ihren kuumlnstlerischen Ausdrucksformenrdquo Wiener Jahrbuch

fuumlr Kunstgeschichte 2 (1923) 63-121 M Schapiro ldquoThe

Ruthwell Crossrdquo Art Bulletin 26 (1944) 232-45 idem ldquoOn

the Aesthetic Attitude in Romanesque Artrdquo in Art and

Thought issued in Honour of Ananda Coomaraswamy

(London 1947) 139-50 J Seznec The Survival of the Pagan

Gods (New York 1953) O G von Simson The Gothic

Cathedral (New York 1956) R E Spear ldquoThe Literary

Source of Poussins Realm of Florardquo The Burlington Maga-

zine 107 (1965) 563-69 L Volkmann Bilderschriften der

Renaissance (Leipzig 1923) Hans van de Waal Drie

eeuwen vaderlandsche geschieduitbeelding 1500-1800 (s-

Gravenhage 1952) idem ldquoSome Principles of a General

Iconographical Classificationrdquo in Actes du XVIIe Congregraves

International dHistoire de lArt Amsterdam 1952 (La Haye

1955) 601-06 E Wind ldquoCharity the Case History of a

Patternrdquo Journal of the Warburg Institute 1 (1937) 322ff

JAN BIAŁOSTOCKI

[See also Allegory Baroque Classicism Criticism Enlight-

enment Motif Myth Naturalism in Art Neo-Platonism

Renaissance Humanism Romanticism Symbolism Tem-

perance Ut pictura poesis]

pretations seem to prove that a considerable flexibility

of meaning was intended

We might rather accept that a work of art was regarded

in the seventeenth century as in a certain sense an open

symbol raw material like the myth or sacred story which

it illustrates on which the interpreter might exercise the

power of his ingenuity turning it into an allegory of Chris-

tian doctrine or a panegyric in honour of his patron

(Montagu [1968] p 334)

Such a situation probably existed only in some specific

circles It was a limiting case The other extreme was

to use in an uninteresting routine way Ripas symbolic

images or those of other popular symbolic handbooks

Such practice continued well into the eighteenth cen-

tury The general trend fed by ideas of the Enlighten-

ment was to make allegories more and more obvious

It is understandable that some theorists like the Count

de Caylus looked for new subject matter presenting

as he did Tableaux tireacutes de lIliade (1755) or that

J J Winckelmann tried to revive allegory and to give

it a new force It was however too late In the eight-

eenth century together with the whole system of

humanistic tradition the systems of iconography began

to disintegrate The great break in the tradition con-

cerned not only style but also iconography Emblem-

atic roots may be discovered in Goyas symbolism as

well as in the reasonable allegories of the Enlighten-

ment but generally speaking there was a search for

new not known or not used sourcesmdashas in William

Blakes biblical individualistic imagerymdashor the new

staging of the old ones as in Jacques Louis Davids

classical subjects

The art of romanticism was a definite break with

the past much more in the field of ideas and iconogra-

phy than in a stylistic respect where romanticists

retrospectively looked back either to medieval and

pre-Raphaelite or to baroque sources Symbols and

allegories yielded to an all-pervading mood and the

traditional repertory of religious allegorical mytho-

logical and historical iconography gave way to a new

iconography Although several encompassing images

of Christian and humanistic art survived they received

new content and essentially changed their character

New attitudes of the individual to the world of nature

and history to society and destiny to time and death

and new problems resulting from the striving after

freedom (which was a new perhaps most important

principle of human behavior in all fields of human

activity) found expression in new thematic fields and

in new particular themes such as ldquoStorm-tossed Boatrdquo

ldquoLonely Wanderer in the Mountainsrdquo ldquoA Death of the

Herordquo (Eitner 1955 Hofmann 1960 Białostocki

1966)

Romanticism has not formed and could not have

formed an iconographic system for since they strived

first of all for originality of individual conception the

romantics interpreted images in a subjective way as

expressions of mood Romanticism has on the other

hand introduced new heroes and martyrs into art

instead of religious ones the national social and artis-

tic ones It created a new image of history seen now

as a set of political and moral examplesmdashas in

baroquemdashbut often put together now according to a

very individualistic principle of choice A correlative

to pathetic and heroic romanticism was a bourgeois

and intimate romanticism its expression was for ex-

ample the new imagery of the open window which

shows to the viewer wide perspectives but shelters him

at the same time from the dangers of the unknown

(Eitner 1955)

When the world of ideas and images created at the

moment of the flowering of romanticism began to be

popularized for the use of the large bourgeois masses

the contentmdashideological and iconographicalmdashof ro-

manticism lost its original authenticity and left be-

hind not a new system of original images but a dispo-

534

sition to melodramatic experiences and an inflation of

a theatrical gesture (Hofmann 1960 Białostocki 1966)

The nineteenth century developed a realistic por-

traiture of man and nature and took over worn out

clicheacutes of the Renaissance and baroque allegories It

introduced new subject matter taken partly from tra-

dition partly from observation of reality tinted with

vague symbolism such as ldquoForgerdquo or the ldquoFuneral of

the Peasantrdquo but it did not create a new system of

iconography in spite of short-lived revivals of symbol-

istic attitudes in such movementsmdashincidentally not

limited to and not initiated in the visual artsmdashas

ldquosymbolismrdquo

New ephemeral artistic movements which consti-

tuted the history of European art in the last hundred

years show an interesting bracketing of style and icon-

ography in spite of a preponderant lack of iconogra-

phic interest Their representatives chose subjects suit-

able to specific artistic aims and means which they

developed and were interested in Impressionists

painted seaside scenes landscapes and genre pictures

showing the life of artistic and intellectual milieus

Cubists introduced a specific repertory of still-life

motifs symbols of the artists atelier and of the life

of the bohegraveme bottles musical instruments books

fruits flowers newspapers How much these motifs

were connected with specific cubist style appears when

one looks at works of artists foreign to the original

cubist group but imitating its style as for instance

several Czech artists like Emil Filla They adopted

cubist iconography together with cubist style Abstract

movements in general lacked iconography although

they were not foreign to symbolic tendencies espe-

cially in sculpture (Brancusi Moore) Only in the dec-

ades of 1950-70 can a revival of more articulated and

programmatic symbolism be observed One may sup-

pose that this revival is at least in part brought about

by the development of research in iconography and

symbolism which took place in the second and third

quarters of our century

II

1 The origins of ldquointerpretative iconographyrdquo may

be seen in the descriptions (ekphrasis) of works of art

known in classical literature But these descriptions

like those by Philostratus the Elder or Lucian are

limited simply to description and lack in general any

interpretation Moreover it is not certain whether they

are descriptions of actual or fictitious works of art at

least opinions in this respect vary Brief medieval tituli

which formulated in words the content of religious

images were to be sure interpretative sometimes but

they were short and cannot be connected with the

tradition of artistic erudition We have to look to

modern times to indicate the beginnings of iconogra-

phic interpretation and research From Vasaris Rag-

ionamenti in which interpretations of the paintings

decorating the Palazzo Vecchio in Florence are given

we learn how complicated and how undecipherable

iconographic concepts might have been even to peo-

ple living in buildings decorated by paintings expres-

sing these concepts But perhaps the first really to be

considered as interested in iconographic research was

the seventeenth-century archaeologist and art theorist

Giovanni Pietro Bellori In the introduction to his Lives

of Artists (1672) Bellori stressed that he paid special

attention to the content of the works of art he was

talking about and he even credited the painter Nicolas

Poussin with having directed his attention to iconogra-

phy In his Lives Bellori presented short interpretative

descriptions of pictures and he sometimes developed

these interpretations further in small iconographic

essays the influence of classical ekphrasis on him is

a possibility Sometimes his errors took deep roots in

the subsequent history of art as when he explained

Poussins Triumph of Flora (Dresden) by designating

Ovids Metamorphoses as its source The true source

Marinos Adona was finally found by R E Spear in

1965

What is interesting in Belloris procedure is that he

first identifies the motifs tries to connect them with

classical or modern literary sources and then proceeds

to find out the deep meaning the general symbolic

idea of the work Therefore he may be considered as

one of the pioneers not only of iconography as a disci-

pline of research but also of iconology as formulated

by its recent partisans That even in the second half

of the sixteenth century some observers were inclined

to look for hidden meaning in each element of the work

of art we learn from Joannes Molanus (1570) who in

De picturis et imaginibus sacris states reasonably that

ldquoit is not necessary to ask for meaning of everything

that can be observed in a picture in such cases a lot

of absurd things may resultrdquo But the consciousness of

the importance of iconography increased and at the

end of the seventeenth century Andreacute Feacutelibien stressed

that in order to attribute a picture to a painter it is

not enough to know the way he uses his brush one

needs also to know his esprit to learn his geacutenie and

to be able to foresee in which way he is able to form

his conceptions Thus iconographic analysis was con-

sidered necessary even for the purpose of attribution

Descriptive interpretations of the works of ancient

art appeared in the big archaeological publications of

the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries such as

Jacques Spons Miscellanea eruditae antiquitatis (1679)

G P Belloris Admiranda romanarum antiquitatum ac

veteris sculpturae vestigia (1693) P de Caylus Recueil

535

dantiquiteacutes eacutegyptiennes eacutetrusques grecques et

romaines (1752-67) and in an interesting endeavor

(although very much criticized by Lessing) of Joseph

Spence to explain classical poets through works of art

and vice versa (Polymetis 1747) Classical archaeology

however has not been especially interested in iconog-

raphy and the use of the term itself by archaeolo-

gists was limited to portraiture The first great devel-

opment of iconographic studies was connected with

the romantic movement although an important pre-

lude for it was hagiographical collections of sources

such as Acta sanctorum published by the Bollandists

(1643-1794 resumed later) Among the pre-romantic

scholars in iconography the eminent German poet

G E Lessing is to be noted His study of the repre-

sentation of death in classical times can be considered

as one of the first essays in interpretative iconography

which is now called iconology In Wie die Alten den

Tod gebildet (1769) Lessing tries to interpret the classi-

cal iconographic type of Amor with the inverted torch

and to find its ldquointrinsic meaningrdquo by taking into ac-

count the religion customs and philosophy of the

classical world The work of art is interpreted by Less-

ing as ldquoa symptom of something elserdquo While Lessings

predecessors (like B de Montfaucon) ldquoexplained the

classical past by monumentsrdquo he for the first time did

the opposite ldquohe explained the monuments by Antiq-

uityrdquo (Maurin Białostocka [1969] pp 92-100)

Pre-romantic and romantic interests in myth and

symbol found their expression in publications and dis-

cussions by German philosophers and scholars like F

Schlegel J Herder J J von Goumlrres and F Creuzer

Creuzers work Symbolik und Mythologie der alten

Voumllker (1810) which shows the influence of mystical

Neo-Platonic ideas on symbols (Gombrich 1965) was

the most influential in the romantic period in Ger-

many Under the impact of Chateaubriands le Geacutenie

du christianisme (1802) research in medieval iconog-

raphy developed mainly in France Works by French

scholars mostly clergymen which were indeed con-

cerned with Christian medieval art dominated icon-

ographical study in the nineteenth century Since most

of these writers were not professional scholars their

work was often amateurish in character but it is unde-

niable that books by A N Didron Histoire de Dieu

(Paris 1843) the first part of a comprehensive pro-

jected but not completed iconography of Christian art

A Crosnier Iconographie chreacutetienne (Caen 1848) C

Cahier Caracteacuteristiques des saints (Paris 1867) C

Rohault de Fleury Archeacuteologie chreacutetienne les saints

de la messe et leurs monuments 12 vols (Paris

1893-1900) L Breacutehier Lart chreacutetien son deacuteveloppe-

ment iconographique des origines agrave nos jours (Paris

1918) P Perdrizet V Leroquais and G de Jerphanion

have built up a solid body of iconographical knowl-

edge on which scholars of the twentieth century were

able to erect a modern comprehensive structure In

the field of Byzantine iconography it was Gabriel

Millets Recherches sur liconographie de leacutevangile aux

XIVe XVe et XVIe siegravecles (Paris 1916 reprint

1960) that was basic for any further study For Western

chiefly French art a well-written and learned work

appealing to the general reader as well as to the

scholar was produced by Eacutemile Macircle who in his four

volumes of the history of religious art (1898-1932) has

presented a well-composed synthetic image of icono-

graphical development A lexicographic summary of

these studies of generations of French scholars is pre-

sented in the Dictionnaire darcheacuteologie chreacutetienne et

de liturgie published from 1907 to 1953 and edited

by F Cabrol and H Leclerq A recent reference work

is that by L Reacuteau Iconographie de lart chreacutetien (Paris

1955-59) Russian scholars have done important work

in the field of Byzantine and Orthodox iconography

of religious art The most prominent are N P Kon-

dakov Ikonografia Bogomatieri (St Petersburg 1911

2nd ed 1914-15) D V Ainalov Mosaiki IV i V vekov

(St Petersburg 1895) and N Pokrovski Otcherki

pamyatnikov christianskogo isskusstva i ikonografii (St

Petersburg 1894 3rd ed 1910) V Lasarev and M

Alpatov belonging to the mid-twentieth-century gen-

eration of Russian scholars discuss iconography in

several works on religious art German scholarship

produced in the nineteenth century works by F Piper

A Springer and H Detzel Useful compendia were

produced in the early twentieth century by J Sauer

W Molsdorf K Kuumlnstle and J Braun Dutch scholars

C Smits J B Knipping and J J M Timmers contrib-

uted to iconographic studies in recent times Knip-

pings book (1939-40) being the most important work

on the iconography of the Counter-Reformation and

supplementing Macircles volume of 1932 In the twentieth

century on C R Moreys initiative iconographic

studies were inaugurated in North America Focused

on earlier medieval art these studies developed at

Princeton University

A new direction characteristic of iconographic

studies in the twentieth century has been given to

them by the international school of art historical re-

search inaugurated by the Hamburg scholar Aby

Warburg At the International Congress for the History

of Art at Rome in 1912 he presented a sensational

astrological interpretation of the frescoes painted by

Francesco Cossa and his collaborators in Palazzo

Schifanoja at Ferrara Warburg solved the secret of

those representations which had puzzled the ingenuity

of several former students interpreting them as images

of zodiacal signs and their decans But he did not limit

536

his contribution to the presentation of his results He

wanted to stress the importance of his approach and

of the method of study which later became connected

with his name He said

I hope that through the method used by me for explication

of the frescoes at the Palazzo Schifanoja of Ferrara I have

proved that an iconological analysis which does not allow

itself to be diverted by the rules of frontier police from

considering antiquity Middle Ages and modern times as

interconnected periods nor from analyzing the most liberal

and the most applied works of art as equally important

documents of expression that this method endeavoring as

it does to throw light upon one dark spot clears up at

the same time great interconnected developments

(Warburg 1912 Heckscher 1967)

Warburgs influence on the history of art was very

great although he himself did not write much It was

mainly the posthumous impact of his ideas promul-

gated as they were by Fritz Saxl which contributed

to the specific direction of studies concentrated in the

library Warburg founded in Hamburg and which Saxl

succeeded in transplanting during the Nazi era to

London where it became the Warburg Institute of the

University of London While the object of study of the

nineteenth-century iconographers was mainly religious

art in its relation to religious literary sources and lit-

urgy for Warburg the study of images was a study

of their relations to religion to poetry to myth to

science and to social and political life Art was for

him closely connected with the polyphonic structure

of historical life

Warburgs ideas had a great importance for the most

influential theory of iconographic interpretation in our

century that elaborated by Erwin Panofsky In Ham-

burg where Warburg Saxl and Panofsky were active

in the twenties Ernst Cassirer built up his philosophy

of symbolic forms which constituted an additional

background for Panofskys system being derived as

his own methodology was from the traditions of

Kantian philosophy Around 1930 Panofskys ideas

ripened into a system which found formulation in his

book herkules am Scheidewege (1930) and later in a

theoretical article of 1932 G J Hoogewerff was how-

ever the first to propose the word ldquoiconologyrdquo as a

name for the method of an analysis of content in a

work of art (Warburg spoke of iconological analysis)

In 1931 he proposed distinguishing between iconogra-

phy as a descriptive science aiming at the identifica-

tion of themes and ldquoiconologyrdquo aiming at the under-

standing ldquoof symbolic dogmatic or mystical meaning

which is expressed (or hidden) in figurative formsrdquo He

stressed that ldquoiconologyrdquo deals with works of art with-

out classifying them according to the technique used

or to the achieved perfection taking into account only

their meaning Hoogewerff saw the last aim of iconol-

ogy in finding out the cultural and ideological back-

ground expressed by works of art and the cultural and

social significance which can be attributed to certain

forms and to means of expression in the same time

Hoogewerffs part in the expansion of iconology was

limited because he did not endorse his methodical

proposals with examples of historical interpretations

Erwin Panofsky with whose name iconology has

been connected ever since not only developed its

theoretical foundations but contributed by his practi-

cal work in art history to the main triumph of iconol-

ogy after the Second World War The most influential

book by Panofsky has been Studies in Iconology (1939)

in which his masterly presentation of the method was

connected with its equally excellent exemplification

2 Panofsky considers the interpretation of a work

of art as falling on three levels On the first level the

object of interpretation is the primary or natural sub-

ject matter The function of interpretation is called

ldquopre-iconographical descriptionrdquo In order to be able

to arrive at a correct interpretation on that level the

interpreter must have a practical experience (ldquofamili-

arity with objects and eventsrdquo) common to everybody

at least in one cultural sphere However he has to

control his observations by a ldquocorrective knowledge

of the history of stylerdquo (ldquoinsight into the manner in

which under varying historical conditions objects and

events were expressed by formsrdquo) On the second level

the function of interpretation is called ldquoiconographical

analysisrdquo its object is the ldquosecondary or conventional

subject matterrdquo constituting the world of images his-

tories and allegories The interpreters equipment in

this case is obviously the knowledge of literary sources

giving him a ldquofamiliarity with specific themes and

conceptsrdquo The interpreter has to control his observa-

tions by ldquothe insight into the manner in which under

varying historical conditions specific themes or con-

cepts were expressed by objects and eventsrdquo On the

third level the function of interpreting is called ldquoicon-

ographical analysis in a deeper senserdquo (1939) or ldquoicon-

ological analysisrdquo (1955) Its object is the ldquointrinsic

meaning or contentrdquo of a work of art The interpreters

equipment on that level should be a ldquofamiliarity with

the essential tendencies of the human mindrdquo and he

has to control his interpretation by the ldquoinsight into

the manner in which under varying historical condi-

tions essential tendencies of the human mind were

expressed by specific themes and conceptsrdquo Thus

taking all the time into account what Panofsky calls

the history of tradition the interpreter has to aim at

understanding the work of art its ldquoprimaryrdquo as well

as ldquosecondary subject matterrdquo as symptoms of some

fundamental tendency of the human mind typical of

537

a place a time a civilization and of an individual

responsible for the creation of the work ldquoIconologyrdquomdash

for Panofskymdashldquois a method of interpretation which

arises from synthesis rather than analysisrdquo Trying to

find the intrinsic meaning of a work of art

The art historian will have to check what he thinks is the

intrinsic meaning of the work or group of works against

what he thinks is the intrinsic meaning of as many other

documents of civilization historically related to that work

or group of works as he can master It is in the search

for intrinsic meaning or content that the various humanistic

disciplines meet on a common plane instead of serving as

handmaidens to each other

(Panofsky [1955] p 39)

The concept of intrinsic meaning of a work of art

was elaborated by Panofsky much earlier (1925) when

he interpreted in his own way the concept of Kunst-

wollen introduced by A Riegl to research in art

Panofsky understood this ldquoartistic volitionrdquo as an im-

manent ultimate meaning of a work of art which is

manifested in the way basic artistic problems are solved

in that work He used the same concept further to bring

art closer to the other fields of human activity Since

the ldquoimmanent ultimate senserdquo of the work of art is

nothing else than uniformity in the way of solving basic

artistic problems it is possible to compare that imma-

nent sense with immanent senses of the other human

works in various fields Panofsky did it for instance

when in one of his later works he compared the struc-

tural principles of Gothic architecture with those of

scholastic thinking (1951)

The system elaborated by Panofsky and exemplified

by his own work in art history was the first consistent

system of an integral interpretation of a work of visual

arts based on the analysis of content In principle

Panofskys system takes into account all the elements

of the work of art since it takes as the point of depar-

ture the sensual exterior shape of the work It is

however clear that its main scope is not the inter-

pretation of form as a bearer of meaning but the

understanding and interpretation of conventional alle-

gories literary themes and symbols as symptoms of

the history of the human mind It was that method

in the history of art which programmatically fostered

a collaboration with all the other disciplines of histori-

cal studies It was therefore one of the most influential

methods not only among art historians but also among

representatives of the other branches of humanistic

studies Although there were art historians who ex-

pressed a critical attitude toward ldquoiconologyrdquo as the

new method was soon baptized its influence was over-

whelming

3 It is not only but mainly due to Panofsky that

one can venture to call ldquoiconographicalrdquo that period

of art history as a historical discipline which followed

the Second World War and to oppose it to the ldquostylis-

ticrdquo one which preceded it It does not mean of course

that no iconographic research took place in the

twenties or thirties the works of Macircle Knipping van

Marle Wilpert Saxl and of Panofsky himself would

contradict such a statement Neither is it true that

purely formal research aiming at stylistic classification

and analysis discontinued after World War II It is

evident that in the last decades (from 1940 on) icono-

graphic interests came to the fore and became domi-

nant in many countries Iconographical studies grew

so much in number and importance that they made

it possible to undertake and to publish new reference

works of iconographic character like dictionaries

written by one scholar (Guy de Tervarent Aurenham-

mer) as well as larger works based on a collaboration

of several scholars (Encyclopedias of German art of

Antiquity and Christian civilization of Byzantine art)

Interest in meaning and iconography has appeared

also among historians of political social and religious

institutions The symbolism of signs ceremonies cos-

tumes and arms was studied by such scholars as A

Alfoumlldi ldquoInsignien und Tracht der roumlmischen Kaiserrdquo

Mitteilungen des deutschen Archaumlologischen Instituts

Roumlmische Abteilung (1935) 1ff ldquoDie Geburt der

kaiserlichen Bildsymbolikrdquo museum Helveticum 9

(1952) 204ff also by A Grabar Martyrium (Paris

1943-46) by E H Kantorowicz laudes Regiae

(Berkeley and Los Angeles 1946) The Kings Two

Bodies (Princeton 1957) by H P L Orange Studies

in the Iconography of Cosmic Kingship in the Ancient

World (Oslo 1953) Art Forms and Civic Life in the

Late Roman Empire (Princeton 1965) and by P E

Schramm herrschaftszeichen und Staatssymbolik

(Stuttgart 1954-56) In their studies iconography far

transcends the borders of art and it helps to build up

a history of ideas by following their various visual

expressions

Pioneering studies by K Giehlow F Saxl and E

Panofsky enlarged iconographical interests above all

to encompass the large field of secular art whereas

they had been mainly limited to religious iconography

in the work of preceding generations of scholars The

whole complicated and hardly known large body of

meanings disguised by the cryptic language of hiero-

glyphs emblems and iconologies became one of the

main topics of study

This established a collaboration between historians

of art and literature Mario Prazs admirable study of

emblems and his bibliography of emblem books

(1939-47) belongs now to the foundations of studies

in that field Publications by W S Heckscher and

A K Wirth by R S Clements E F von Monroy and

538

H M von Erffa E de Jongh and H Miedema and

several other scholars have elucidated the structure

and meaning of emblems and have shown their tre-

mendous influence on art even in its most monumental

and dignified forms An uninterrupted flow of reprints

of emblem books which brought within the reach of

modern students inaccessible volumes of sixteenth- and

seventeenth-century emblem writers were crowned by

the monumental undertaking of Arthur Henkel and

Albrecht Schoumlne who compiled an excellent volume

including almost all the texts and images needed for

the study of emblemsmdashEmblemata Handbuch zur

Sinnbildkunst des XVI und XVII Jahrhunderts

(Stuttgart 1967) Research was under way on hiero-

glyphs (Erik Iversen) and on the imprese (the late

Robert Klein) as well as on iconologies and allegories

These studies have disclosed meanings of the art of

the Renaissance of mannerism and of the baroque not

understood by nineteenth-century scholars

E Panofsky deciphered extremely farfetched and

individualistic programs of decoration of such famous

ensembles as the Camera di San Paolo by Correggio

in Parma the Gallery of Franccedilois I at Fontainebleau

Edgar Wind Andreacute Chastel and other scholars inter-

preted Raphaels decorations in the Popes apartments

Michelangelos art furnished material to detailed com-

prehensive studies by Panofsky Ch de Tolnay H von

Einem and Pope-Hennessy in which the share of

Neo-Platonic thinking in the ideological background

of the celebrated works of Michelangelo was discussed

Innumerable studies have been devoted to Titians

mythological paintings J R Martin presented expla-

nations of the Carracci frescoes in the Camerino Far-

nese and in the great gallery of the Palazzo Farnese

Bruegel considered in the nineteenth century as a drocircle

painter of peasant life has been shown by de Tolnay

Stridbeck and others to be an allegorist expressing a

skeptical humanistic outlook J S Held and W

Stechow contributed several articles to the under-

standing of mythological and allegorical contents in

Flemish and Dutch art of the sixteenth and seventeenth

centuries Rembrandts iconography was put into new

light by the two above-mentioned scholars as well as

by H M Rotermund H van de Waal J G van Gelder

H von Einem and Ch Tuumlmpel The intricate symbol-

ism and subject matter of historical and mythological

pictures by Nicolas Poussin were elucidated by such

masters of iconographic research as E H Gombrich

W Friedlaumlnder E Panofsky and above all by A Blunt

who in his monograph on Poussin presented a new

deep synthetic view of the ideas expressed by that

artists works Goyas individualistic secret symbolism

was also studied with the help of emblems and the

allegorical tradition Berninis works received iconolo

gical treatment by R Wittkower and H Kauffmann

All of this research does not mean that there was a

lack of interest in religious iconography M Schapiro

A Katzenellenbogen H Bober F Wormald and V

Elbern among others have contributed considerably

to deepen our understanding of the not completely

explained motifs and prominent works of medieval art

Panofsky has also shed a new light on several problems

of sepulchral iconography studies by such scholars as

R Berliner G von der Osten L Kalinowski S

Ringbom and T Dobrzeniecki contributed to late

medieval iconography in a new way Berliner stressed

the autonomous invention of visual artists or their

patrons while according to the traditional view popu-

larized by Macircle late medieval art should have followed

strictly literary sources

The religious content of modern art especially its

allegorical form in the late baroque period has been

examined and thanks to studies by such scholars as

W Mrazek and H Bauer has become better known

and understandable A great change was introduced

by ldquoiconologyrdquo into architectural history Buildings

which were formerly interpreted from aesthetic and

functional points of view only have been shown to

present allegorical symbolical or even emblematic

ideas Publications by leading art historians (R Witt-

kower B Smith G Bandmann O von Simson and

G C Argan) have presented medieval and modern

architecture as a bearer of meaning and have essen-

tially changed the character of architectural history

The iconography of classicism and romanticism

received a thorough treatment in books by W Hof-

mann and R Rosenblum as well as in several studies

devoted to individual themes and pictures G Hersey

has for example shown how much Delacroixs decora-

tion of the library in the Palais Bourbon owed to

Giambattista Vicos ideas about history More recently

studies on ldquoSymbolismrdquo have been undertaken Vincent

van Goghs symbolic language and iconography were

the object of studies by J Seznec C Nordenfalk and

other scholars On Ceacutezannes iconography interesting

remarks have been published by M Schapiro

Along with the development of iconographic studies

the establishment of centers of documentation has

advanced The ldquoFrenchrdquo stage in the development of

iconography has not left any marked trace in this

respect It was in America thanks to C R Morey that

the famous Index of Christian Art at the Department

of Art and Archaeology of Princeton University was

founded at first limited to the early Middle Ages then

enlarged so as to include art up to the end of the

medieval period Copies of the Princeton Index are

to be found also at the Istituto Pontificio dArcheolo-

gia in Rome and in the Dumbarton Oaks Library and

539

Collection in Washington DC But that Index ends

ldquowhere art beginsrdquomdashas Panofsky used to say jokingly

The need for systematic iconographic files for modern

art was strongly felt In 1956 A Pigler published a

very useful book Barockthemen in which he listed

thousands of works of art of the baroque period ac-

cording to their subjects It was however far from

being a systematic work The first essay in establishing

a systematic iconographic index for art of any time

was done by The Netherlands Institute for Art History

at the Hague then directed by H Gerson which took

the initiative around 1950 of publishing a postcard-size

photographic index of its rich collection of photographs

of Netherlandish art ordered according to an icono-

graphic principle Once such an idea was formulated

the need for a comprehensive consistent and clear

iconographic classification was urgent H van de Waal

of Leiden University devised such a system of classifi-

cation based on decimal divisions consistent and easy

to read He based his system on experiences of ethnol-

ogy and on such elaborated systems of classification

as that devised by Stith Thompson in his Motif-Index

of Folk Literature Vols I-VI (Bloomington Ind

1932-36 rev ed 1955-58) Van de Waal has elabor-

ated a system in which the first five main sections

classify five fundamental groups of portrayable things

namely (1) The Supernatural (2) Nature (3) Man (4)

Society (5) Abstracts The last four classify specific

subjects such as (6) History (7) The Bible (8) Myths

Legends and Tales (with the exception of classical

antiquity) (9) Myths and Legends of Classical Antiq-

uity Van de Waal combines the classification in the

first and in the second group in order to classify general

as well as specific subjects Christ in his system is

described with the sign ldquo11 Drdquo (ldquo1rdquo standing for Su-

pernatural ldquo11rdquo for Christianity ldquoDrdquo for Christ) the

adult Christ = 11 D 3 since ldquoshepherdrdquo on the other

hand bears the signature 47 I 221 the adult Christ

as a shepherd can be described in this system by the

following formula 11 D 3 = 47 I 221 Van de Waal

has also provided means to describe more complex

images which he expresses by adding elements between

brackets The Annunciation with God the Father and

a winged Angel is expressed by the following formula

73 A 5 (+1 +41) ldquo1rdquo standing for God the Father

and ldquo41rdquo for a winged Angel (van de Waal 1952) This

system elaborated for many years by its inventor and

prepared for publication in many volumes has proved

most useful in the practical arrangement of the Icono-

graphical Index of the Netherlandish Art and as the

only one until now in existence it became used more

and more in spite of some ambiguities and difficulties

As an endeavor to classify ldquoall portrayablerdquo things

persons events and ideas and to create a consistent

method to describe every possible image van de Waals

system may be considered as one of the important

achievements of the ldquoiconographical stagerdquo in the

development of art history Iconographic files exist of

course in many institutions as for example in the Ikon-

ologisch Instituut of Utrecht University one of the

main centers of study in emblematics and of course

in the most venerable institution of iconographic re-

search the Warburg Institute of the London University

and in other places

4 What was the result of this ldquoiconographicrdquo turn

in the development of the history of art One thing

is certain that this discipline by necessity has come

closer to other humanistic disciplines Since the

ldquointrinsicrdquo meaningmdashin Panofskys terminologymdashof a

work of art cannot be described in terms used by the

history of art but only in terms borrowed from the

history of philosophy of religion of social structures

of science and so on the ldquoiconological methodrdquo took

for granted and provoked such a collaboration Art

history was perhaps the first or one of the first to show

new interest in investigation of meaning It was fol-

lowed by similar developments in ethnology and in

linguistics

We have mentioned above a parallel development

in Byzantine and classical studies Panofskys influence

has been considerable in the other fields of humanistic

research Since ldquoiconologyrdquo aimed at discovering ideas

expressed by a work of art it awoke in art historians

an interest in the history of ideas This general shift

of emphasis and of the direction of studies from mainly

formal ones to studies aiming at ideas underlying art

was perhaps responsible among others for the fact that

several contributions to the Journal of the History of

Ideas have been written by historians of art

It is not difficult to see that such a development

should have provoked criticism on the side of those

who care about the purity and autonomy of methods

Iconology was criticized as far as its internal coherence

and also as far as its claim to be the integral method

of the study of art are concerned (Białostocki 1962)

Studies by R Klein E Forssman G Previtali G

Kubler B Teyssegravedre C Ginzburg and G Hermeren

expressed critical opinions in one or the other respect

Iconology linked art with the rest of history but it

disrupted the links between the work of art and other

things (Kubler 1962) Concentrating on meaning

iconology neglected art as form as individual expres-

sion Iconology implied a rational relationship between

intellectual content and artistic form On the one hand

one spoke of ldquoiconological diminutionsrdquo (Kubler

1962)mdashlimitations of research to meaning only But

on the other hand the overstatements of iconology

were criticized its representatives sometimes seemed

540

to assume everything symbolized something And some

iconologists seemed to consider important in art not

that which makes art a different field of human activity

but that which connects art with other fieldsmdashwith

the history of ideas

There were of course critics who had the opposite

opinion Since the end of the eighteenth century a

direct experience of art was more and more valued

and its symbolical function considered as a burden

J G von Herder said ein Kunstwerk ist der Kunst

wegen da aber bei einem Symbole ist die Kunst

dienend (ldquoA work of art is there because of art but

with a symbol art is a servicerdquo) Similar opinions were

expressed by nineteenth-century art writers and in this

century they have been voiced by Benedetto Croce and

by other Italian opponents of contenutismo by which

they meant interest in content For such critics to put

stress on iconography was to miss the essential in art

and to focus attention on a subordinate function of art

Also among scholars who considered the function

of representation and of communication as a legitimate

and important function of art criticism was expressed

not against the principle of an iconographical or icon-

ological investigation but against overstatements in

their application The introduction of the idea of ldquodis-

guised symbolismrdquo has created a danger of course of

opening the way to fanciful interpretations The alle-

gorical and symbolical function of mythological imag-

ery in classical art is also difficult to interpret precisely

Since no literary sources give a key to an interpretation

of the iconography of the sarcophagi very divergent

theories have been expressed concerning their meaning

Some archaeologists like F Cumont (1942) believe

that mythological and allegorical imagery (Anadyo-

mene Sea-Thiasos Personifications of the Seasons) is

to be read symbolically The Sea-Thiasos for instance

is to be interpreted as a symbol of the journey of the

souls of the deceased to the islands of the blessed

Others like A D Nock (1946) do not find enough

evidence to accept other than a decorative function

in such imagery

The intrusion of some representatives of psychology

eg C G Jung into iconographic studies giving them

an unhistorical turn in their search for ldquoarchetypal

imagesrdquo has complicated the situation although art

historians in general understandably have not accepted

that kind of approach to symbolism (Frankfort 1958

Gombrich 1965)

The fact that iconographic interpretations sometimes

lack satisfactory proofs does not detract from the im-

portance of such investigations so long as they are

conducted according to the requirements of historical

methods and take into account the corrective princi-

ples established by Panofsky A correct acquaintance

with the way of thinking of the artist the patron or the

viewer based on a satisfactory knowledge of documen-

tary visual and literary sources an awareness of the

choice situations produced by historical developments

may enable art historians to discover the secondary

meaning of a work of art as well as its intrinsic mean-

ing It is of course possible that the art historian will

meet some works for which it will not be possible to re-

construct in a satisfactory way the world of ideas that

would account for the meaning of those works In such

cases a reliable interpretation is simply not possible

R Berliner (1945 1966) criticized the widespread

opinion according to which content of the works of

visual arts in the Middle Ages had to be checked

against the literary sources considered as the only

medium in which ideological innovations were per-

mitted Berliner pleaded for assuming a considerable

ldquofreedomrdquo in the medieval artist and he considered

iconographic innovation possible even when no writ-

ten evidence could be found Meyer Schapiro (1947)

presented proofs that sometimes purely aesthetic rea-

sons decided the character of the work of art even as

early as the Romanesque period

We can only touch on some specific discussions going

on in the field of iconographic research But iconogra-

phic research is far from being a closed system and

the relative share of iconographic and stylistic criticism

in the work of art historians is always a matter of

discussion It is certain that the ldquoiconographicrdquo period

in the study of art has enlarged in a considerable way

the understanding of the art of the past and that it

has connected art history in a way unknown before

with the other historical disciplines and above all others

with the history of ideas

BIBLIOGRAPHY

L B Alberti On Painting ed J Spencer (New Haven

1956 revised ed 1966) E Auerbach ldquoFigurardquo (1944) trans

and published in Scenes From the Drama of European Liter-

ature (New York 1959) pp 11-76 K Bauch ldquoImagordquo

(1960) Studien zur Kunstgeschichte (Berlin 1967) pp 1-20

G P Bellori Descrizione delle imagini dipinte da Raffaello

(Rome 1695 ed used is 1751) R Berliner ldquoThe Free-

dom of Medieval Artrdquo Gazette des Beaux-Arts 628 (1945)

263-88 idem ldquoBemerkungen zu einigen Darstellungen des

Erloumlsers als Schmerzensmannrdquo Das Muumlnster 9 (1956)

97-117x J Białostocki ldquoIconografia e Iconologiardquo Enciclo-

pedia Universale dellArte (1962) Vol VII cols 163-75

trans as Encyclopedia of World Art (1966) Vol VII cols

769-85 lists almost all important older contributions to this

field idem ldquoRomantische Ikonographierdquo Stil und Ikonog-

raphie (Dresden 1966) pp 156-81 idem ldquoKompozycja

emblematyczna epitafioacutew ślaskich XVI wiekurdquo (ldquoEmblem-

atic Composition of Silesian Epitaphs of the Sixteenth Cen-

turyrdquo) Ze studioacutew nad Sztuka XVI wieku na Řlasku

(Wrocław 1968) pp 77-93 idem ldquoEsilio Privatordquo Bulletin

du Museacutee National de Varsovie 10 (1969) 95-101 J

541

Chydenius The Theory of Medieval Symbolism (Helsingfors

1960) Series of the Societas Scientiarum Fennica Com-

mentationes Humanarum Litterarum 27 2 R J Clements

Picta Poesis (Rome 1960) F Creuzer Symbolik und

Mythologie der Alten Voumllker (Leipzig and Darmstadt 1810

revised ed 1819) F Cumont Recherches sur le symbolisme

funeacuteraire des Romains (Paris 1942) L Eitner ldquoThe Open

Window and the Storm-Tossed Boatrdquo Art Bulletin 37

(1955) 281-90 H Frankfort ldquoThe Archetype in Analytical

Psychology and the History of Religionrdquo Journal of the

Warburg and Courtauld Institutes 21 (1958) 166-78

K Garas ldquoAllegorie und Geschichte in der Venezianischen

Malerei des 18 Jahrhundertsrdquo in proceedings of the XXI

International Congress of the History of Art Bonn Stil und

Uumlberlieferung in der Kunst des Abendlandes (Berlin 1967)

3 280-83 K Giehlow ldquoDie Hieroglyphenkunde des

Humanismus in der Allegorie der Renaissancerdquo Jahrbuch

der Kunsthistorischen Sammlungen des Allerhochsten

Kaiserhauses 32 (1915) 1-232 C Gilbert ldquoOn Subject and

Not-Subject in Italian Renaissance Picturesrdquo Art Bulletin

34 (1952) 202-16 C Ginzburg ldquoDa A Warburg a E H

Gombrich Note su un problema di metodordquo Studi medi-

evali series 3 7 (1966) 1015-65 E H Gombrich ldquoIcones

Symbolicae The Visual Image in Neo-Platonic Thoughtrdquo

Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes 11 (1948)

163-92 idem ldquoThe Use of Art for the Study of Symbolsrdquo

American Psychologist 20 (1965) A Grabar Liconoclasme

byzantin Dossier archeacuteologique (Paris 1957) idem Chris-

tian Iconography A Study of Its Origins (Princeton 1969)

S J Gudlaugsson De Comedianten bij Jan Steen en zijn

tijdgenooten (s-Gravenhage 1945) W S Heckscher ldquoThe

Genesis of Iconologyrdquo Stl und Uumlberlieferung in der Kunst

des Abendlandes Akten des XXI Internationalen Kon-

gresses fuumlr Kunstgeschichte (Berlin 1967) 3 239-62 G

Hermereacuten Representation and Meaning in the Visual Arts

A Study in the Methodology of Iconography and Iconology

Lund Studies in Philosophy Vol I (Lund 1969) R Hinks

Myth and Allegory in Ancient Art (London 1939) W

Hofmann Das Irdische Paradies (Munich 1960) G J

Hoogewerff ldquoLIconologie et son importance pour leacutetude

systeacutematique de lart chreacutetienrdquo Rivista dArcheologia Cris-

tiana 8 (1931) 53-82 E de Jongh Zinne- en minnebeelden

in de schilderkunst van de zeventiende eeuw (mdash1967) idem

ldquoErotica in Vogelperspectief De dubbelzinnigheid van een

reeks 17de eeuwse genrevoorstellingenrdquo Simiolus 3

(1968-69) 22-72 L Kalinowski ldquoTreści ideowe i estetyczne

Drzwi Gnieźnieńskichrdquo (ldquoIdeological and Aesthetic Content

of the Gniezno Bronze Doorsrdquo) in Drzwi Gnieźnieńskie ed

M Walicki (Wroclaw 1959) 2 7-160 H Keller Tizians

Poesie fuumlr Koumlnig Philip II von Spanien (Wiesbaden 1969)

R Klein ldquoLa theacuteorie de lexpression figureacutee dans les traiteacutes

italiens sur les imprese 1555-1612rdquo Bibliothegraveque dHu-

manisme et Renaissance 19 (1957) 320-41 republished with

the other relevant studies in la forme et lintelligible (Paris

1969) R Klibansky E Panofsky F Saxl Saturn and Melan-

choly (London 1964) J B Knipping Ikonografie van de

Contra-Reformatie in de Nederlanden (Hilversum 1939-40)

G Kubler The Shape of Time (New Haven and London

1962) R W Lee ldquoUt pictura poesisrdquo Art Bulletin 22

(1940) 197-269 E Macircle Lart religieux du XIIIe siegravecle en

France (Paris 1898) English ed used (New York 1958)

idem Lart religieux de la fin du Moyen-Age en France

(Paris 1908) idem Lart religieux du XIIe siegravecle en France

(Paris 1922) idem Lart religieux apregraves le Concile de Trente

(Paris 1932) J Maurin Białostocka Lessing i sztuki plas-

tyczne (ldquoLessing and the visual artsrdquo) (Wroclaw Warszawa

Krakoacutew 1969) E F von Monroy Embleme und Emblem-

buumlcher in den Niederlanden 1560-1630 ed H M von Erffa

(Utrecht 1964) J Montagu ldquoThe Painted Enigma and

French Seventeenth Century Artrdquo Journal of the Warburg

and Courtauld Institutes 31 (1968) 307-35 W Mrazek

Ikonologie der barocken Deckenmalerei (Vienna 1953)

Uumlsterreichische Akademie der Wissenschaften Philo-

sophisch-historische Klasse Sitzungsberichte 2283 A D

Nock ldquoSarcophagi and Symbolismrdquo American Journal of

Archaeology 50 (1946) 166ff D Panofsky and E Panofsky

ldquoThe Iconography of the Galeacuterie Franccedilois Ier at Fontaine-

bleaurdquo Gazette des Beaux-Arts 652 (1958) 113-90

E Panofsky ldquoUumlber das Verhaumlltnis der Kunstgeschichte zur

Kunsttheorierdquo Zeitschrift fuumlr Aesthetik und allgemeine

Kunstwissenschaft 18 (1925) 129-61 idem Studies in

Iconology (New York 1939) idem ed Abbot Suger (Prince-

ton 1946) idem Gothic Architecture and Scholasticism

(Latrobe Pa 1951) idem Early Netherlandish Painting

(Cambridge Mass 1953) idem Meaning in the Visual Arts

(Garden City N Y 1955) idem Renaissance and Renas-

cences in Western Art (Stockholm 1960) idem Tomb Sculp-

ture (New York 1964) E Panofsky and F Saxl ldquoClassical

Mythology in Medieval Artrdquo Metropolitan Museum Studies

4 (1932-33) 228-80 M Praz Studies in Seventeenth Cen-

tury Imagery (London 1939-47 2nd ed Rome 1964) S

Ringbom ldquoDevotional Images and Imaginative Devotions

Notes on the Place of Art in Late Medieval Private Pietyrdquo

Gazette des Beaux-Arts 6 73 (1969) 159-70 Joseph Sauer

Symbolik des Kirchengebaumludes und seiner Ausstattung in

der Auffassung des Mittelalters 2nd ed (Freiburg i B

1924) F Saxl ldquoFruumlhes Christentum und spaumltes Heidentum

in ihren kuumlnstlerischen Ausdrucksformenrdquo Wiener Jahrbuch

fuumlr Kunstgeschichte 2 (1923) 63-121 M Schapiro ldquoThe

Ruthwell Crossrdquo Art Bulletin 26 (1944) 232-45 idem ldquoOn

the Aesthetic Attitude in Romanesque Artrdquo in Art and

Thought issued in Honour of Ananda Coomaraswamy

(London 1947) 139-50 J Seznec The Survival of the Pagan

Gods (New York 1953) O G von Simson The Gothic

Cathedral (New York 1956) R E Spear ldquoThe Literary

Source of Poussins Realm of Florardquo The Burlington Maga-

zine 107 (1965) 563-69 L Volkmann Bilderschriften der

Renaissance (Leipzig 1923) Hans van de Waal Drie

eeuwen vaderlandsche geschieduitbeelding 1500-1800 (s-

Gravenhage 1952) idem ldquoSome Principles of a General

Iconographical Classificationrdquo in Actes du XVIIe Congregraves

International dHistoire de lArt Amsterdam 1952 (La Haye

1955) 601-06 E Wind ldquoCharity the Case History of a

Patternrdquo Journal of the Warburg Institute 1 (1937) 322ff

JAN BIAŁOSTOCKI

[See also Allegory Baroque Classicism Criticism Enlight-

enment Motif Myth Naturalism in Art Neo-Platonism

Renaissance Humanism Romanticism Symbolism Tem-

perance Ut pictura poesis]

and history to society and destiny to time and death

and new problems resulting from the striving after

freedom (which was a new perhaps most important

principle of human behavior in all fields of human

activity) found expression in new thematic fields and

in new particular themes such as ldquoStorm-tossed Boatrdquo

ldquoLonely Wanderer in the Mountainsrdquo ldquoA Death of the

Herordquo (Eitner 1955 Hofmann 1960 Białostocki

1966)

Romanticism has not formed and could not have

formed an iconographic system for since they strived

first of all for originality of individual conception the

romantics interpreted images in a subjective way as

expressions of mood Romanticism has on the other

hand introduced new heroes and martyrs into art

instead of religious ones the national social and artis-

tic ones It created a new image of history seen now

as a set of political and moral examplesmdashas in

baroquemdashbut often put together now according to a

very individualistic principle of choice A correlative

to pathetic and heroic romanticism was a bourgeois

and intimate romanticism its expression was for ex-

ample the new imagery of the open window which

shows to the viewer wide perspectives but shelters him

at the same time from the dangers of the unknown

(Eitner 1955)

When the world of ideas and images created at the

moment of the flowering of romanticism began to be

popularized for the use of the large bourgeois masses

the contentmdashideological and iconographicalmdashof ro-

manticism lost its original authenticity and left be-

hind not a new system of original images but a dispo-

534

sition to melodramatic experiences and an inflation of

a theatrical gesture (Hofmann 1960 Białostocki 1966)

The nineteenth century developed a realistic por-

traiture of man and nature and took over worn out

clicheacutes of the Renaissance and baroque allegories It

introduced new subject matter taken partly from tra-

dition partly from observation of reality tinted with

vague symbolism such as ldquoForgerdquo or the ldquoFuneral of

the Peasantrdquo but it did not create a new system of

iconography in spite of short-lived revivals of symbol-

istic attitudes in such movementsmdashincidentally not

limited to and not initiated in the visual artsmdashas

ldquosymbolismrdquo

New ephemeral artistic movements which consti-

tuted the history of European art in the last hundred

years show an interesting bracketing of style and icon-

ography in spite of a preponderant lack of iconogra-

phic interest Their representatives chose subjects suit-

able to specific artistic aims and means which they

developed and were interested in Impressionists

painted seaside scenes landscapes and genre pictures

showing the life of artistic and intellectual milieus

Cubists introduced a specific repertory of still-life

motifs symbols of the artists atelier and of the life

of the bohegraveme bottles musical instruments books

fruits flowers newspapers How much these motifs

were connected with specific cubist style appears when

one looks at works of artists foreign to the original

cubist group but imitating its style as for instance

several Czech artists like Emil Filla They adopted

cubist iconography together with cubist style Abstract

movements in general lacked iconography although

they were not foreign to symbolic tendencies espe-

cially in sculpture (Brancusi Moore) Only in the dec-

ades of 1950-70 can a revival of more articulated and

programmatic symbolism be observed One may sup-

pose that this revival is at least in part brought about

by the development of research in iconography and

symbolism which took place in the second and third

quarters of our century

II

1 The origins of ldquointerpretative iconographyrdquo may

be seen in the descriptions (ekphrasis) of works of art

known in classical literature But these descriptions

like those by Philostratus the Elder or Lucian are

limited simply to description and lack in general any

interpretation Moreover it is not certain whether they

are descriptions of actual or fictitious works of art at

least opinions in this respect vary Brief medieval tituli

which formulated in words the content of religious

images were to be sure interpretative sometimes but

they were short and cannot be connected with the

tradition of artistic erudition We have to look to

modern times to indicate the beginnings of iconogra-

phic interpretation and research From Vasaris Rag-

ionamenti in which interpretations of the paintings

decorating the Palazzo Vecchio in Florence are given

we learn how complicated and how undecipherable

iconographic concepts might have been even to peo-

ple living in buildings decorated by paintings expres-

sing these concepts But perhaps the first really to be

considered as interested in iconographic research was

the seventeenth-century archaeologist and art theorist

Giovanni Pietro Bellori In the introduction to his Lives

of Artists (1672) Bellori stressed that he paid special

attention to the content of the works of art he was

talking about and he even credited the painter Nicolas

Poussin with having directed his attention to iconogra-

phy In his Lives Bellori presented short interpretative

descriptions of pictures and he sometimes developed

these interpretations further in small iconographic

essays the influence of classical ekphrasis on him is

a possibility Sometimes his errors took deep roots in

the subsequent history of art as when he explained

Poussins Triumph of Flora (Dresden) by designating

Ovids Metamorphoses as its source The true source

Marinos Adona was finally found by R E Spear in

1965

What is interesting in Belloris procedure is that he

first identifies the motifs tries to connect them with

classical or modern literary sources and then proceeds

to find out the deep meaning the general symbolic

idea of the work Therefore he may be considered as

one of the pioneers not only of iconography as a disci-

pline of research but also of iconology as formulated

by its recent partisans That even in the second half

of the sixteenth century some observers were inclined

to look for hidden meaning in each element of the work

of art we learn from Joannes Molanus (1570) who in

De picturis et imaginibus sacris states reasonably that

ldquoit is not necessary to ask for meaning of everything

that can be observed in a picture in such cases a lot

of absurd things may resultrdquo But the consciousness of

the importance of iconography increased and at the

end of the seventeenth century Andreacute Feacutelibien stressed

that in order to attribute a picture to a painter it is

not enough to know the way he uses his brush one

needs also to know his esprit to learn his geacutenie and

to be able to foresee in which way he is able to form

his conceptions Thus iconographic analysis was con-

sidered necessary even for the purpose of attribution

Descriptive interpretations of the works of ancient

art appeared in the big archaeological publications of

the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries such as

Jacques Spons Miscellanea eruditae antiquitatis (1679)

G P Belloris Admiranda romanarum antiquitatum ac

veteris sculpturae vestigia (1693) P de Caylus Recueil

535

dantiquiteacutes eacutegyptiennes eacutetrusques grecques et

romaines (1752-67) and in an interesting endeavor

(although very much criticized by Lessing) of Joseph

Spence to explain classical poets through works of art

and vice versa (Polymetis 1747) Classical archaeology

however has not been especially interested in iconog-

raphy and the use of the term itself by archaeolo-

gists was limited to portraiture The first great devel-

opment of iconographic studies was connected with

the romantic movement although an important pre-

lude for it was hagiographical collections of sources

such as Acta sanctorum published by the Bollandists

(1643-1794 resumed later) Among the pre-romantic

scholars in iconography the eminent German poet

G E Lessing is to be noted His study of the repre-

sentation of death in classical times can be considered

as one of the first essays in interpretative iconography

which is now called iconology In Wie die Alten den

Tod gebildet (1769) Lessing tries to interpret the classi-

cal iconographic type of Amor with the inverted torch

and to find its ldquointrinsic meaningrdquo by taking into ac-

count the religion customs and philosophy of the

classical world The work of art is interpreted by Less-

ing as ldquoa symptom of something elserdquo While Lessings

predecessors (like B de Montfaucon) ldquoexplained the

classical past by monumentsrdquo he for the first time did

the opposite ldquohe explained the monuments by Antiq-

uityrdquo (Maurin Białostocka [1969] pp 92-100)

Pre-romantic and romantic interests in myth and

symbol found their expression in publications and dis-

cussions by German philosophers and scholars like F

Schlegel J Herder J J von Goumlrres and F Creuzer

Creuzers work Symbolik und Mythologie der alten

Voumllker (1810) which shows the influence of mystical

Neo-Platonic ideas on symbols (Gombrich 1965) was

the most influential in the romantic period in Ger-

many Under the impact of Chateaubriands le Geacutenie

du christianisme (1802) research in medieval iconog-

raphy developed mainly in France Works by French

scholars mostly clergymen which were indeed con-

cerned with Christian medieval art dominated icon-

ographical study in the nineteenth century Since most

of these writers were not professional scholars their

work was often amateurish in character but it is unde-

niable that books by A N Didron Histoire de Dieu

(Paris 1843) the first part of a comprehensive pro-

jected but not completed iconography of Christian art

A Crosnier Iconographie chreacutetienne (Caen 1848) C

Cahier Caracteacuteristiques des saints (Paris 1867) C

Rohault de Fleury Archeacuteologie chreacutetienne les saints

de la messe et leurs monuments 12 vols (Paris

1893-1900) L Breacutehier Lart chreacutetien son deacuteveloppe-

ment iconographique des origines agrave nos jours (Paris

1918) P Perdrizet V Leroquais and G de Jerphanion

have built up a solid body of iconographical knowl-

edge on which scholars of the twentieth century were

able to erect a modern comprehensive structure In

the field of Byzantine iconography it was Gabriel

Millets Recherches sur liconographie de leacutevangile aux

XIVe XVe et XVIe siegravecles (Paris 1916 reprint

1960) that was basic for any further study For Western

chiefly French art a well-written and learned work

appealing to the general reader as well as to the

scholar was produced by Eacutemile Macircle who in his four

volumes of the history of religious art (1898-1932) has

presented a well-composed synthetic image of icono-

graphical development A lexicographic summary of

these studies of generations of French scholars is pre-

sented in the Dictionnaire darcheacuteologie chreacutetienne et

de liturgie published from 1907 to 1953 and edited

by F Cabrol and H Leclerq A recent reference work

is that by L Reacuteau Iconographie de lart chreacutetien (Paris

1955-59) Russian scholars have done important work

in the field of Byzantine and Orthodox iconography

of religious art The most prominent are N P Kon-

dakov Ikonografia Bogomatieri (St Petersburg 1911

2nd ed 1914-15) D V Ainalov Mosaiki IV i V vekov

(St Petersburg 1895) and N Pokrovski Otcherki

pamyatnikov christianskogo isskusstva i ikonografii (St

Petersburg 1894 3rd ed 1910) V Lasarev and M

Alpatov belonging to the mid-twentieth-century gen-

eration of Russian scholars discuss iconography in

several works on religious art German scholarship

produced in the nineteenth century works by F Piper

A Springer and H Detzel Useful compendia were

produced in the early twentieth century by J Sauer

W Molsdorf K Kuumlnstle and J Braun Dutch scholars

C Smits J B Knipping and J J M Timmers contrib-

uted to iconographic studies in recent times Knip-

pings book (1939-40) being the most important work

on the iconography of the Counter-Reformation and

supplementing Macircles volume of 1932 In the twentieth

century on C R Moreys initiative iconographic

studies were inaugurated in North America Focused

on earlier medieval art these studies developed at

Princeton University

A new direction characteristic of iconographic

studies in the twentieth century has been given to

them by the international school of art historical re-

search inaugurated by the Hamburg scholar Aby

Warburg At the International Congress for the History

of Art at Rome in 1912 he presented a sensational

astrological interpretation of the frescoes painted by

Francesco Cossa and his collaborators in Palazzo

Schifanoja at Ferrara Warburg solved the secret of

those representations which had puzzled the ingenuity

of several former students interpreting them as images

of zodiacal signs and their decans But he did not limit

536

his contribution to the presentation of his results He

wanted to stress the importance of his approach and

of the method of study which later became connected

with his name He said

I hope that through the method used by me for explication

of the frescoes at the Palazzo Schifanoja of Ferrara I have

proved that an iconological analysis which does not allow

itself to be diverted by the rules of frontier police from

considering antiquity Middle Ages and modern times as

interconnected periods nor from analyzing the most liberal

and the most applied works of art as equally important

documents of expression that this method endeavoring as

it does to throw light upon one dark spot clears up at

the same time great interconnected developments

(Warburg 1912 Heckscher 1967)

Warburgs influence on the history of art was very

great although he himself did not write much It was

mainly the posthumous impact of his ideas promul-

gated as they were by Fritz Saxl which contributed

to the specific direction of studies concentrated in the

library Warburg founded in Hamburg and which Saxl

succeeded in transplanting during the Nazi era to

London where it became the Warburg Institute of the

University of London While the object of study of the

nineteenth-century iconographers was mainly religious

art in its relation to religious literary sources and lit-

urgy for Warburg the study of images was a study

of their relations to religion to poetry to myth to

science and to social and political life Art was for

him closely connected with the polyphonic structure

of historical life

Warburgs ideas had a great importance for the most

influential theory of iconographic interpretation in our

century that elaborated by Erwin Panofsky In Ham-

burg where Warburg Saxl and Panofsky were active

in the twenties Ernst Cassirer built up his philosophy

of symbolic forms which constituted an additional

background for Panofskys system being derived as

his own methodology was from the traditions of

Kantian philosophy Around 1930 Panofskys ideas

ripened into a system which found formulation in his

book herkules am Scheidewege (1930) and later in a

theoretical article of 1932 G J Hoogewerff was how-

ever the first to propose the word ldquoiconologyrdquo as a

name for the method of an analysis of content in a

work of art (Warburg spoke of iconological analysis)

In 1931 he proposed distinguishing between iconogra-

phy as a descriptive science aiming at the identifica-

tion of themes and ldquoiconologyrdquo aiming at the under-

standing ldquoof symbolic dogmatic or mystical meaning

which is expressed (or hidden) in figurative formsrdquo He

stressed that ldquoiconologyrdquo deals with works of art with-

out classifying them according to the technique used

or to the achieved perfection taking into account only

their meaning Hoogewerff saw the last aim of iconol-

ogy in finding out the cultural and ideological back-

ground expressed by works of art and the cultural and

social significance which can be attributed to certain

forms and to means of expression in the same time

Hoogewerffs part in the expansion of iconology was

limited because he did not endorse his methodical

proposals with examples of historical interpretations

Erwin Panofsky with whose name iconology has

been connected ever since not only developed its

theoretical foundations but contributed by his practi-

cal work in art history to the main triumph of iconol-

ogy after the Second World War The most influential

book by Panofsky has been Studies in Iconology (1939)

in which his masterly presentation of the method was

connected with its equally excellent exemplification

2 Panofsky considers the interpretation of a work

of art as falling on three levels On the first level the

object of interpretation is the primary or natural sub-

ject matter The function of interpretation is called

ldquopre-iconographical descriptionrdquo In order to be able

to arrive at a correct interpretation on that level the

interpreter must have a practical experience (ldquofamili-

arity with objects and eventsrdquo) common to everybody

at least in one cultural sphere However he has to

control his observations by a ldquocorrective knowledge

of the history of stylerdquo (ldquoinsight into the manner in

which under varying historical conditions objects and

events were expressed by formsrdquo) On the second level

the function of interpretation is called ldquoiconographical

analysisrdquo its object is the ldquosecondary or conventional

subject matterrdquo constituting the world of images his-

tories and allegories The interpreters equipment in

this case is obviously the knowledge of literary sources

giving him a ldquofamiliarity with specific themes and

conceptsrdquo The interpreter has to control his observa-

tions by ldquothe insight into the manner in which under

varying historical conditions specific themes or con-

cepts were expressed by objects and eventsrdquo On the

third level the function of interpreting is called ldquoicon-

ographical analysis in a deeper senserdquo (1939) or ldquoicon-

ological analysisrdquo (1955) Its object is the ldquointrinsic

meaning or contentrdquo of a work of art The interpreters

equipment on that level should be a ldquofamiliarity with

the essential tendencies of the human mindrdquo and he

has to control his interpretation by the ldquoinsight into

the manner in which under varying historical condi-

tions essential tendencies of the human mind were

expressed by specific themes and conceptsrdquo Thus

taking all the time into account what Panofsky calls

the history of tradition the interpreter has to aim at

understanding the work of art its ldquoprimaryrdquo as well

as ldquosecondary subject matterrdquo as symptoms of some

fundamental tendency of the human mind typical of

537

a place a time a civilization and of an individual

responsible for the creation of the work ldquoIconologyrdquomdash

for Panofskymdashldquois a method of interpretation which

arises from synthesis rather than analysisrdquo Trying to

find the intrinsic meaning of a work of art

The art historian will have to check what he thinks is the

intrinsic meaning of the work or group of works against

what he thinks is the intrinsic meaning of as many other

documents of civilization historically related to that work

or group of works as he can master It is in the search

for intrinsic meaning or content that the various humanistic

disciplines meet on a common plane instead of serving as

handmaidens to each other

(Panofsky [1955] p 39)

The concept of intrinsic meaning of a work of art

was elaborated by Panofsky much earlier (1925) when

he interpreted in his own way the concept of Kunst-

wollen introduced by A Riegl to research in art

Panofsky understood this ldquoartistic volitionrdquo as an im-

manent ultimate meaning of a work of art which is

manifested in the way basic artistic problems are solved

in that work He used the same concept further to bring

art closer to the other fields of human activity Since

the ldquoimmanent ultimate senserdquo of the work of art is

nothing else than uniformity in the way of solving basic

artistic problems it is possible to compare that imma-

nent sense with immanent senses of the other human

works in various fields Panofsky did it for instance

when in one of his later works he compared the struc-

tural principles of Gothic architecture with those of

scholastic thinking (1951)

The system elaborated by Panofsky and exemplified

by his own work in art history was the first consistent

system of an integral interpretation of a work of visual

arts based on the analysis of content In principle

Panofskys system takes into account all the elements

of the work of art since it takes as the point of depar-

ture the sensual exterior shape of the work It is

however clear that its main scope is not the inter-

pretation of form as a bearer of meaning but the

understanding and interpretation of conventional alle-

gories literary themes and symbols as symptoms of

the history of the human mind It was that method

in the history of art which programmatically fostered

a collaboration with all the other disciplines of histori-

cal studies It was therefore one of the most influential

methods not only among art historians but also among

representatives of the other branches of humanistic

studies Although there were art historians who ex-

pressed a critical attitude toward ldquoiconologyrdquo as the

new method was soon baptized its influence was over-

whelming

3 It is not only but mainly due to Panofsky that

one can venture to call ldquoiconographicalrdquo that period

of art history as a historical discipline which followed

the Second World War and to oppose it to the ldquostylis-

ticrdquo one which preceded it It does not mean of course

that no iconographic research took place in the

twenties or thirties the works of Macircle Knipping van

Marle Wilpert Saxl and of Panofsky himself would

contradict such a statement Neither is it true that

purely formal research aiming at stylistic classification

and analysis discontinued after World War II It is

evident that in the last decades (from 1940 on) icono-

graphic interests came to the fore and became domi-

nant in many countries Iconographical studies grew

so much in number and importance that they made

it possible to undertake and to publish new reference

works of iconographic character like dictionaries

written by one scholar (Guy de Tervarent Aurenham-

mer) as well as larger works based on a collaboration

of several scholars (Encyclopedias of German art of

Antiquity and Christian civilization of Byzantine art)

Interest in meaning and iconography has appeared

also among historians of political social and religious

institutions The symbolism of signs ceremonies cos-

tumes and arms was studied by such scholars as A

Alfoumlldi ldquoInsignien und Tracht der roumlmischen Kaiserrdquo

Mitteilungen des deutschen Archaumlologischen Instituts

Roumlmische Abteilung (1935) 1ff ldquoDie Geburt der

kaiserlichen Bildsymbolikrdquo museum Helveticum 9

(1952) 204ff also by A Grabar Martyrium (Paris

1943-46) by E H Kantorowicz laudes Regiae

(Berkeley and Los Angeles 1946) The Kings Two

Bodies (Princeton 1957) by H P L Orange Studies

in the Iconography of Cosmic Kingship in the Ancient

World (Oslo 1953) Art Forms and Civic Life in the

Late Roman Empire (Princeton 1965) and by P E

Schramm herrschaftszeichen und Staatssymbolik

(Stuttgart 1954-56) In their studies iconography far

transcends the borders of art and it helps to build up

a history of ideas by following their various visual

expressions

Pioneering studies by K Giehlow F Saxl and E

Panofsky enlarged iconographical interests above all

to encompass the large field of secular art whereas

they had been mainly limited to religious iconography

in the work of preceding generations of scholars The

whole complicated and hardly known large body of

meanings disguised by the cryptic language of hiero-

glyphs emblems and iconologies became one of the

main topics of study

This established a collaboration between historians

of art and literature Mario Prazs admirable study of

emblems and his bibliography of emblem books

(1939-47) belongs now to the foundations of studies

in that field Publications by W S Heckscher and

A K Wirth by R S Clements E F von Monroy and

538

H M von Erffa E de Jongh and H Miedema and

several other scholars have elucidated the structure

and meaning of emblems and have shown their tre-

mendous influence on art even in its most monumental

and dignified forms An uninterrupted flow of reprints

of emblem books which brought within the reach of

modern students inaccessible volumes of sixteenth- and

seventeenth-century emblem writers were crowned by

the monumental undertaking of Arthur Henkel and

Albrecht Schoumlne who compiled an excellent volume

including almost all the texts and images needed for

the study of emblemsmdashEmblemata Handbuch zur

Sinnbildkunst des XVI und XVII Jahrhunderts

(Stuttgart 1967) Research was under way on hiero-

glyphs (Erik Iversen) and on the imprese (the late

Robert Klein) as well as on iconologies and allegories

These studies have disclosed meanings of the art of

the Renaissance of mannerism and of the baroque not

understood by nineteenth-century scholars

E Panofsky deciphered extremely farfetched and

individualistic programs of decoration of such famous

ensembles as the Camera di San Paolo by Correggio

in Parma the Gallery of Franccedilois I at Fontainebleau

Edgar Wind Andreacute Chastel and other scholars inter-

preted Raphaels decorations in the Popes apartments

Michelangelos art furnished material to detailed com-

prehensive studies by Panofsky Ch de Tolnay H von

Einem and Pope-Hennessy in which the share of

Neo-Platonic thinking in the ideological background

of the celebrated works of Michelangelo was discussed

Innumerable studies have been devoted to Titians

mythological paintings J R Martin presented expla-

nations of the Carracci frescoes in the Camerino Far-

nese and in the great gallery of the Palazzo Farnese

Bruegel considered in the nineteenth century as a drocircle

painter of peasant life has been shown by de Tolnay

Stridbeck and others to be an allegorist expressing a

skeptical humanistic outlook J S Held and W

Stechow contributed several articles to the under-

standing of mythological and allegorical contents in

Flemish and Dutch art of the sixteenth and seventeenth

centuries Rembrandts iconography was put into new

light by the two above-mentioned scholars as well as

by H M Rotermund H van de Waal J G van Gelder

H von Einem and Ch Tuumlmpel The intricate symbol-

ism and subject matter of historical and mythological

pictures by Nicolas Poussin were elucidated by such

masters of iconographic research as E H Gombrich

W Friedlaumlnder E Panofsky and above all by A Blunt

who in his monograph on Poussin presented a new

deep synthetic view of the ideas expressed by that

artists works Goyas individualistic secret symbolism

was also studied with the help of emblems and the

allegorical tradition Berninis works received iconolo

gical treatment by R Wittkower and H Kauffmann

All of this research does not mean that there was a

lack of interest in religious iconography M Schapiro

A Katzenellenbogen H Bober F Wormald and V

Elbern among others have contributed considerably

to deepen our understanding of the not completely

explained motifs and prominent works of medieval art

Panofsky has also shed a new light on several problems

of sepulchral iconography studies by such scholars as

R Berliner G von der Osten L Kalinowski S

Ringbom and T Dobrzeniecki contributed to late

medieval iconography in a new way Berliner stressed

the autonomous invention of visual artists or their

patrons while according to the traditional view popu-

larized by Macircle late medieval art should have followed

strictly literary sources

The religious content of modern art especially its

allegorical form in the late baroque period has been

examined and thanks to studies by such scholars as

W Mrazek and H Bauer has become better known

and understandable A great change was introduced

by ldquoiconologyrdquo into architectural history Buildings

which were formerly interpreted from aesthetic and

functional points of view only have been shown to

present allegorical symbolical or even emblematic

ideas Publications by leading art historians (R Witt-

kower B Smith G Bandmann O von Simson and

G C Argan) have presented medieval and modern

architecture as a bearer of meaning and have essen-

tially changed the character of architectural history

The iconography of classicism and romanticism

received a thorough treatment in books by W Hof-

mann and R Rosenblum as well as in several studies

devoted to individual themes and pictures G Hersey

has for example shown how much Delacroixs decora-

tion of the library in the Palais Bourbon owed to

Giambattista Vicos ideas about history More recently

studies on ldquoSymbolismrdquo have been undertaken Vincent

van Goghs symbolic language and iconography were

the object of studies by J Seznec C Nordenfalk and

other scholars On Ceacutezannes iconography interesting

remarks have been published by M Schapiro

Along with the development of iconographic studies

the establishment of centers of documentation has

advanced The ldquoFrenchrdquo stage in the development of

iconography has not left any marked trace in this

respect It was in America thanks to C R Morey that

the famous Index of Christian Art at the Department

of Art and Archaeology of Princeton University was

founded at first limited to the early Middle Ages then

enlarged so as to include art up to the end of the

medieval period Copies of the Princeton Index are

to be found also at the Istituto Pontificio dArcheolo-

gia in Rome and in the Dumbarton Oaks Library and

539

Collection in Washington DC But that Index ends

ldquowhere art beginsrdquomdashas Panofsky used to say jokingly

The need for systematic iconographic files for modern

art was strongly felt In 1956 A Pigler published a

very useful book Barockthemen in which he listed

thousands of works of art of the baroque period ac-

cording to their subjects It was however far from

being a systematic work The first essay in establishing

a systematic iconographic index for art of any time

was done by The Netherlands Institute for Art History

at the Hague then directed by H Gerson which took

the initiative around 1950 of publishing a postcard-size

photographic index of its rich collection of photographs

of Netherlandish art ordered according to an icono-

graphic principle Once such an idea was formulated

the need for a comprehensive consistent and clear

iconographic classification was urgent H van de Waal

of Leiden University devised such a system of classifi-

cation based on decimal divisions consistent and easy

to read He based his system on experiences of ethnol-

ogy and on such elaborated systems of classification

as that devised by Stith Thompson in his Motif-Index

of Folk Literature Vols I-VI (Bloomington Ind

1932-36 rev ed 1955-58) Van de Waal has elabor-

ated a system in which the first five main sections

classify five fundamental groups of portrayable things

namely (1) The Supernatural (2) Nature (3) Man (4)

Society (5) Abstracts The last four classify specific

subjects such as (6) History (7) The Bible (8) Myths

Legends and Tales (with the exception of classical

antiquity) (9) Myths and Legends of Classical Antiq-

uity Van de Waal combines the classification in the

first and in the second group in order to classify general

as well as specific subjects Christ in his system is

described with the sign ldquo11 Drdquo (ldquo1rdquo standing for Su-

pernatural ldquo11rdquo for Christianity ldquoDrdquo for Christ) the

adult Christ = 11 D 3 since ldquoshepherdrdquo on the other

hand bears the signature 47 I 221 the adult Christ

as a shepherd can be described in this system by the

following formula 11 D 3 = 47 I 221 Van de Waal

has also provided means to describe more complex

images which he expresses by adding elements between

brackets The Annunciation with God the Father and

a winged Angel is expressed by the following formula

73 A 5 (+1 +41) ldquo1rdquo standing for God the Father

and ldquo41rdquo for a winged Angel (van de Waal 1952) This

system elaborated for many years by its inventor and

prepared for publication in many volumes has proved

most useful in the practical arrangement of the Icono-

graphical Index of the Netherlandish Art and as the

only one until now in existence it became used more

and more in spite of some ambiguities and difficulties

As an endeavor to classify ldquoall portrayablerdquo things

persons events and ideas and to create a consistent

method to describe every possible image van de Waals

system may be considered as one of the important

achievements of the ldquoiconographical stagerdquo in the

development of art history Iconographic files exist of

course in many institutions as for example in the Ikon-

ologisch Instituut of Utrecht University one of the

main centers of study in emblematics and of course

in the most venerable institution of iconographic re-

search the Warburg Institute of the London University

and in other places

4 What was the result of this ldquoiconographicrdquo turn

in the development of the history of art One thing

is certain that this discipline by necessity has come

closer to other humanistic disciplines Since the

ldquointrinsicrdquo meaningmdashin Panofskys terminologymdashof a

work of art cannot be described in terms used by the

history of art but only in terms borrowed from the

history of philosophy of religion of social structures

of science and so on the ldquoiconological methodrdquo took

for granted and provoked such a collaboration Art

history was perhaps the first or one of the first to show

new interest in investigation of meaning It was fol-

lowed by similar developments in ethnology and in

linguistics

We have mentioned above a parallel development

in Byzantine and classical studies Panofskys influence

has been considerable in the other fields of humanistic

research Since ldquoiconologyrdquo aimed at discovering ideas

expressed by a work of art it awoke in art historians

an interest in the history of ideas This general shift

of emphasis and of the direction of studies from mainly

formal ones to studies aiming at ideas underlying art

was perhaps responsible among others for the fact that

several contributions to the Journal of the History of

Ideas have been written by historians of art

It is not difficult to see that such a development

should have provoked criticism on the side of those

who care about the purity and autonomy of methods

Iconology was criticized as far as its internal coherence

and also as far as its claim to be the integral method

of the study of art are concerned (Białostocki 1962)

Studies by R Klein E Forssman G Previtali G

Kubler B Teyssegravedre C Ginzburg and G Hermeren

expressed critical opinions in one or the other respect

Iconology linked art with the rest of history but it

disrupted the links between the work of art and other

things (Kubler 1962) Concentrating on meaning

iconology neglected art as form as individual expres-

sion Iconology implied a rational relationship between

intellectual content and artistic form On the one hand

one spoke of ldquoiconological diminutionsrdquo (Kubler

1962)mdashlimitations of research to meaning only But

on the other hand the overstatements of iconology

were criticized its representatives sometimes seemed

540

to assume everything symbolized something And some

iconologists seemed to consider important in art not

that which makes art a different field of human activity

but that which connects art with other fieldsmdashwith

the history of ideas

There were of course critics who had the opposite

opinion Since the end of the eighteenth century a

direct experience of art was more and more valued

and its symbolical function considered as a burden

J G von Herder said ein Kunstwerk ist der Kunst

wegen da aber bei einem Symbole ist die Kunst

dienend (ldquoA work of art is there because of art but

with a symbol art is a servicerdquo) Similar opinions were

expressed by nineteenth-century art writers and in this

century they have been voiced by Benedetto Croce and

by other Italian opponents of contenutismo by which

they meant interest in content For such critics to put

stress on iconography was to miss the essential in art

and to focus attention on a subordinate function of art

Also among scholars who considered the function

of representation and of communication as a legitimate

and important function of art criticism was expressed

not against the principle of an iconographical or icon-

ological investigation but against overstatements in

their application The introduction of the idea of ldquodis-

guised symbolismrdquo has created a danger of course of

opening the way to fanciful interpretations The alle-

gorical and symbolical function of mythological imag-

ery in classical art is also difficult to interpret precisely

Since no literary sources give a key to an interpretation

of the iconography of the sarcophagi very divergent

theories have been expressed concerning their meaning

Some archaeologists like F Cumont (1942) believe

that mythological and allegorical imagery (Anadyo-

mene Sea-Thiasos Personifications of the Seasons) is

to be read symbolically The Sea-Thiasos for instance

is to be interpreted as a symbol of the journey of the

souls of the deceased to the islands of the blessed

Others like A D Nock (1946) do not find enough

evidence to accept other than a decorative function

in such imagery

The intrusion of some representatives of psychology

eg C G Jung into iconographic studies giving them

an unhistorical turn in their search for ldquoarchetypal

imagesrdquo has complicated the situation although art

historians in general understandably have not accepted

that kind of approach to symbolism (Frankfort 1958

Gombrich 1965)

The fact that iconographic interpretations sometimes

lack satisfactory proofs does not detract from the im-

portance of such investigations so long as they are

conducted according to the requirements of historical

methods and take into account the corrective princi-

ples established by Panofsky A correct acquaintance

with the way of thinking of the artist the patron or the

viewer based on a satisfactory knowledge of documen-

tary visual and literary sources an awareness of the

choice situations produced by historical developments

may enable art historians to discover the secondary

meaning of a work of art as well as its intrinsic mean-

ing It is of course possible that the art historian will

meet some works for which it will not be possible to re-

construct in a satisfactory way the world of ideas that

would account for the meaning of those works In such

cases a reliable interpretation is simply not possible

R Berliner (1945 1966) criticized the widespread

opinion according to which content of the works of

visual arts in the Middle Ages had to be checked

against the literary sources considered as the only

medium in which ideological innovations were per-

mitted Berliner pleaded for assuming a considerable

ldquofreedomrdquo in the medieval artist and he considered

iconographic innovation possible even when no writ-

ten evidence could be found Meyer Schapiro (1947)

presented proofs that sometimes purely aesthetic rea-

sons decided the character of the work of art even as

early as the Romanesque period

We can only touch on some specific discussions going

on in the field of iconographic research But iconogra-

phic research is far from being a closed system and

the relative share of iconographic and stylistic criticism

in the work of art historians is always a matter of

discussion It is certain that the ldquoiconographicrdquo period

in the study of art has enlarged in a considerable way

the understanding of the art of the past and that it

has connected art history in a way unknown before

with the other historical disciplines and above all others

with the history of ideas

BIBLIOGRAPHY

L B Alberti On Painting ed J Spencer (New Haven

1956 revised ed 1966) E Auerbach ldquoFigurardquo (1944) trans

and published in Scenes From the Drama of European Liter-

ature (New York 1959) pp 11-76 K Bauch ldquoImagordquo

(1960) Studien zur Kunstgeschichte (Berlin 1967) pp 1-20

G P Bellori Descrizione delle imagini dipinte da Raffaello

(Rome 1695 ed used is 1751) R Berliner ldquoThe Free-

dom of Medieval Artrdquo Gazette des Beaux-Arts 628 (1945)

263-88 idem ldquoBemerkungen zu einigen Darstellungen des

Erloumlsers als Schmerzensmannrdquo Das Muumlnster 9 (1956)

97-117x J Białostocki ldquoIconografia e Iconologiardquo Enciclo-

pedia Universale dellArte (1962) Vol VII cols 163-75

trans as Encyclopedia of World Art (1966) Vol VII cols

769-85 lists almost all important older contributions to this

field idem ldquoRomantische Ikonographierdquo Stil und Ikonog-

raphie (Dresden 1966) pp 156-81 idem ldquoKompozycja

emblematyczna epitafioacutew ślaskich XVI wiekurdquo (ldquoEmblem-

atic Composition of Silesian Epitaphs of the Sixteenth Cen-

turyrdquo) Ze studioacutew nad Sztuka XVI wieku na Řlasku

(Wrocław 1968) pp 77-93 idem ldquoEsilio Privatordquo Bulletin

du Museacutee National de Varsovie 10 (1969) 95-101 J

541

Chydenius The Theory of Medieval Symbolism (Helsingfors

1960) Series of the Societas Scientiarum Fennica Com-

mentationes Humanarum Litterarum 27 2 R J Clements

Picta Poesis (Rome 1960) F Creuzer Symbolik und

Mythologie der Alten Voumllker (Leipzig and Darmstadt 1810

revised ed 1819) F Cumont Recherches sur le symbolisme

funeacuteraire des Romains (Paris 1942) L Eitner ldquoThe Open

Window and the Storm-Tossed Boatrdquo Art Bulletin 37

(1955) 281-90 H Frankfort ldquoThe Archetype in Analytical

Psychology and the History of Religionrdquo Journal of the

Warburg and Courtauld Institutes 21 (1958) 166-78

K Garas ldquoAllegorie und Geschichte in der Venezianischen

Malerei des 18 Jahrhundertsrdquo in proceedings of the XXI

International Congress of the History of Art Bonn Stil und

Uumlberlieferung in der Kunst des Abendlandes (Berlin 1967)

3 280-83 K Giehlow ldquoDie Hieroglyphenkunde des

Humanismus in der Allegorie der Renaissancerdquo Jahrbuch

der Kunsthistorischen Sammlungen des Allerhochsten

Kaiserhauses 32 (1915) 1-232 C Gilbert ldquoOn Subject and

Not-Subject in Italian Renaissance Picturesrdquo Art Bulletin

34 (1952) 202-16 C Ginzburg ldquoDa A Warburg a E H

Gombrich Note su un problema di metodordquo Studi medi-

evali series 3 7 (1966) 1015-65 E H Gombrich ldquoIcones

Symbolicae The Visual Image in Neo-Platonic Thoughtrdquo

Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes 11 (1948)

163-92 idem ldquoThe Use of Art for the Study of Symbolsrdquo

American Psychologist 20 (1965) A Grabar Liconoclasme

byzantin Dossier archeacuteologique (Paris 1957) idem Chris-

tian Iconography A Study of Its Origins (Princeton 1969)

S J Gudlaugsson De Comedianten bij Jan Steen en zijn

tijdgenooten (s-Gravenhage 1945) W S Heckscher ldquoThe

Genesis of Iconologyrdquo Stl und Uumlberlieferung in der Kunst

des Abendlandes Akten des XXI Internationalen Kon-

gresses fuumlr Kunstgeschichte (Berlin 1967) 3 239-62 G

Hermereacuten Representation and Meaning in the Visual Arts

A Study in the Methodology of Iconography and Iconology

Lund Studies in Philosophy Vol I (Lund 1969) R Hinks

Myth and Allegory in Ancient Art (London 1939) W

Hofmann Das Irdische Paradies (Munich 1960) G J

Hoogewerff ldquoLIconologie et son importance pour leacutetude

systeacutematique de lart chreacutetienrdquo Rivista dArcheologia Cris-

tiana 8 (1931) 53-82 E de Jongh Zinne- en minnebeelden

in de schilderkunst van de zeventiende eeuw (mdash1967) idem

ldquoErotica in Vogelperspectief De dubbelzinnigheid van een

reeks 17de eeuwse genrevoorstellingenrdquo Simiolus 3

(1968-69) 22-72 L Kalinowski ldquoTreści ideowe i estetyczne

Drzwi Gnieźnieńskichrdquo (ldquoIdeological and Aesthetic Content

of the Gniezno Bronze Doorsrdquo) in Drzwi Gnieźnieńskie ed

M Walicki (Wroclaw 1959) 2 7-160 H Keller Tizians

Poesie fuumlr Koumlnig Philip II von Spanien (Wiesbaden 1969)

R Klein ldquoLa theacuteorie de lexpression figureacutee dans les traiteacutes

italiens sur les imprese 1555-1612rdquo Bibliothegraveque dHu-

manisme et Renaissance 19 (1957) 320-41 republished with

the other relevant studies in la forme et lintelligible (Paris

1969) R Klibansky E Panofsky F Saxl Saturn and Melan-

choly (London 1964) J B Knipping Ikonografie van de

Contra-Reformatie in de Nederlanden (Hilversum 1939-40)

G Kubler The Shape of Time (New Haven and London

1962) R W Lee ldquoUt pictura poesisrdquo Art Bulletin 22

(1940) 197-269 E Macircle Lart religieux du XIIIe siegravecle en

France (Paris 1898) English ed used (New York 1958)

idem Lart religieux de la fin du Moyen-Age en France

(Paris 1908) idem Lart religieux du XIIe siegravecle en France

(Paris 1922) idem Lart religieux apregraves le Concile de Trente

(Paris 1932) J Maurin Białostocka Lessing i sztuki plas-

tyczne (ldquoLessing and the visual artsrdquo) (Wroclaw Warszawa

Krakoacutew 1969) E F von Monroy Embleme und Emblem-

buumlcher in den Niederlanden 1560-1630 ed H M von Erffa

(Utrecht 1964) J Montagu ldquoThe Painted Enigma and

French Seventeenth Century Artrdquo Journal of the Warburg

and Courtauld Institutes 31 (1968) 307-35 W Mrazek

Ikonologie der barocken Deckenmalerei (Vienna 1953)

Uumlsterreichische Akademie der Wissenschaften Philo-

sophisch-historische Klasse Sitzungsberichte 2283 A D

Nock ldquoSarcophagi and Symbolismrdquo American Journal of

Archaeology 50 (1946) 166ff D Panofsky and E Panofsky

ldquoThe Iconography of the Galeacuterie Franccedilois Ier at Fontaine-

bleaurdquo Gazette des Beaux-Arts 652 (1958) 113-90

E Panofsky ldquoUumlber das Verhaumlltnis der Kunstgeschichte zur

Kunsttheorierdquo Zeitschrift fuumlr Aesthetik und allgemeine

Kunstwissenschaft 18 (1925) 129-61 idem Studies in

Iconology (New York 1939) idem ed Abbot Suger (Prince-

ton 1946) idem Gothic Architecture and Scholasticism

(Latrobe Pa 1951) idem Early Netherlandish Painting

(Cambridge Mass 1953) idem Meaning in the Visual Arts

(Garden City N Y 1955) idem Renaissance and Renas-

cences in Western Art (Stockholm 1960) idem Tomb Sculp-

ture (New York 1964) E Panofsky and F Saxl ldquoClassical

Mythology in Medieval Artrdquo Metropolitan Museum Studies

4 (1932-33) 228-80 M Praz Studies in Seventeenth Cen-

tury Imagery (London 1939-47 2nd ed Rome 1964) S

Ringbom ldquoDevotional Images and Imaginative Devotions

Notes on the Place of Art in Late Medieval Private Pietyrdquo

Gazette des Beaux-Arts 6 73 (1969) 159-70 Joseph Sauer

Symbolik des Kirchengebaumludes und seiner Ausstattung in

der Auffassung des Mittelalters 2nd ed (Freiburg i B

1924) F Saxl ldquoFruumlhes Christentum und spaumltes Heidentum

in ihren kuumlnstlerischen Ausdrucksformenrdquo Wiener Jahrbuch

fuumlr Kunstgeschichte 2 (1923) 63-121 M Schapiro ldquoThe

Ruthwell Crossrdquo Art Bulletin 26 (1944) 232-45 idem ldquoOn

the Aesthetic Attitude in Romanesque Artrdquo in Art and

Thought issued in Honour of Ananda Coomaraswamy

(London 1947) 139-50 J Seznec The Survival of the Pagan

Gods (New York 1953) O G von Simson The Gothic

Cathedral (New York 1956) R E Spear ldquoThe Literary

Source of Poussins Realm of Florardquo The Burlington Maga-

zine 107 (1965) 563-69 L Volkmann Bilderschriften der

Renaissance (Leipzig 1923) Hans van de Waal Drie

eeuwen vaderlandsche geschieduitbeelding 1500-1800 (s-

Gravenhage 1952) idem ldquoSome Principles of a General

Iconographical Classificationrdquo in Actes du XVIIe Congregraves

International dHistoire de lArt Amsterdam 1952 (La Haye

1955) 601-06 E Wind ldquoCharity the Case History of a

Patternrdquo Journal of the Warburg Institute 1 (1937) 322ff

JAN BIAŁOSTOCKI

[See also Allegory Baroque Classicism Criticism Enlight-

enment Motif Myth Naturalism in Art Neo-Platonism

Renaissance Humanism Romanticism Symbolism Tem-

perance Ut pictura poesis]

limited to and not initiated in the visual artsmdashas

ldquosymbolismrdquo

New ephemeral artistic movements which consti-

tuted the history of European art in the last hundred

years show an interesting bracketing of style and icon-

ography in spite of a preponderant lack of iconogra-

phic interest Their representatives chose subjects suit-

able to specific artistic aims and means which they

developed and were interested in Impressionists

painted seaside scenes landscapes and genre pictures

showing the life of artistic and intellectual milieus

Cubists introduced a specific repertory of still-life

motifs symbols of the artists atelier and of the life

of the bohegraveme bottles musical instruments books

fruits flowers newspapers How much these motifs

were connected with specific cubist style appears when

one looks at works of artists foreign to the original

cubist group but imitating its style as for instance

several Czech artists like Emil Filla They adopted

cubist iconography together with cubist style Abstract

movements in general lacked iconography although

they were not foreign to symbolic tendencies espe-

cially in sculpture (Brancusi Moore) Only in the dec-

ades of 1950-70 can a revival of more articulated and

programmatic symbolism be observed One may sup-

pose that this revival is at least in part brought about

by the development of research in iconography and

symbolism which took place in the second and third

quarters of our century

II

1 The origins of ldquointerpretative iconographyrdquo may

be seen in the descriptions (ekphrasis) of works of art

known in classical literature But these descriptions

like those by Philostratus the Elder or Lucian are

limited simply to description and lack in general any

interpretation Moreover it is not certain whether they

are descriptions of actual or fictitious works of art at

least opinions in this respect vary Brief medieval tituli

which formulated in words the content of religious

images were to be sure interpretative sometimes but

they were short and cannot be connected with the

tradition of artistic erudition We have to look to

modern times to indicate the beginnings of iconogra-

phic interpretation and research From Vasaris Rag-

ionamenti in which interpretations of the paintings

decorating the Palazzo Vecchio in Florence are given

we learn how complicated and how undecipherable

iconographic concepts might have been even to peo-

ple living in buildings decorated by paintings expres-

sing these concepts But perhaps the first really to be

considered as interested in iconographic research was

the seventeenth-century archaeologist and art theorist

Giovanni Pietro Bellori In the introduction to his Lives

of Artists (1672) Bellori stressed that he paid special

attention to the content of the works of art he was

talking about and he even credited the painter Nicolas

Poussin with having directed his attention to iconogra-

phy In his Lives Bellori presented short interpretative

descriptions of pictures and he sometimes developed

these interpretations further in small iconographic

essays the influence of classical ekphrasis on him is

a possibility Sometimes his errors took deep roots in

the subsequent history of art as when he explained

Poussins Triumph of Flora (Dresden) by designating

Ovids Metamorphoses as its source The true source

Marinos Adona was finally found by R E Spear in

1965

What is interesting in Belloris procedure is that he

first identifies the motifs tries to connect them with

classical or modern literary sources and then proceeds

to find out the deep meaning the general symbolic

idea of the work Therefore he may be considered as

one of the pioneers not only of iconography as a disci-

pline of research but also of iconology as formulated

by its recent partisans That even in the second half

of the sixteenth century some observers were inclined

to look for hidden meaning in each element of the work

of art we learn from Joannes Molanus (1570) who in

De picturis et imaginibus sacris states reasonably that

ldquoit is not necessary to ask for meaning of everything

that can be observed in a picture in such cases a lot

of absurd things may resultrdquo But the consciousness of

the importance of iconography increased and at the

end of the seventeenth century Andreacute Feacutelibien stressed

that in order to attribute a picture to a painter it is

not enough to know the way he uses his brush one

needs also to know his esprit to learn his geacutenie and

to be able to foresee in which way he is able to form

his conceptions Thus iconographic analysis was con-

sidered necessary even for the purpose of attribution

Descriptive interpretations of the works of ancient

art appeared in the big archaeological publications of

the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries such as

Jacques Spons Miscellanea eruditae antiquitatis (1679)

G P Belloris Admiranda romanarum antiquitatum ac

veteris sculpturae vestigia (1693) P de Caylus Recueil

535

dantiquiteacutes eacutegyptiennes eacutetrusques grecques et

romaines (1752-67) and in an interesting endeavor

(although very much criticized by Lessing) of Joseph

Spence to explain classical poets through works of art

and vice versa (Polymetis 1747) Classical archaeology

however has not been especially interested in iconog-

raphy and the use of the term itself by archaeolo-

gists was limited to portraiture The first great devel-

opment of iconographic studies was connected with

the romantic movement although an important pre-

lude for it was hagiographical collections of sources

such as Acta sanctorum published by the Bollandists

(1643-1794 resumed later) Among the pre-romantic

scholars in iconography the eminent German poet

G E Lessing is to be noted His study of the repre-

sentation of death in classical times can be considered

as one of the first essays in interpretative iconography

which is now called iconology In Wie die Alten den

Tod gebildet (1769) Lessing tries to interpret the classi-

cal iconographic type of Amor with the inverted torch

and to find its ldquointrinsic meaningrdquo by taking into ac-

count the religion customs and philosophy of the

classical world The work of art is interpreted by Less-

ing as ldquoa symptom of something elserdquo While Lessings

predecessors (like B de Montfaucon) ldquoexplained the

classical past by monumentsrdquo he for the first time did

the opposite ldquohe explained the monuments by Antiq-

uityrdquo (Maurin Białostocka [1969] pp 92-100)

Pre-romantic and romantic interests in myth and

symbol found their expression in publications and dis-

cussions by German philosophers and scholars like F

Schlegel J Herder J J von Goumlrres and F Creuzer

Creuzers work Symbolik und Mythologie der alten

Voumllker (1810) which shows the influence of mystical

Neo-Platonic ideas on symbols (Gombrich 1965) was

the most influential in the romantic period in Ger-

many Under the impact of Chateaubriands le Geacutenie

du christianisme (1802) research in medieval iconog-

raphy developed mainly in France Works by French

scholars mostly clergymen which were indeed con-

cerned with Christian medieval art dominated icon-

ographical study in the nineteenth century Since most

of these writers were not professional scholars their

work was often amateurish in character but it is unde-

niable that books by A N Didron Histoire de Dieu

(Paris 1843) the first part of a comprehensive pro-

jected but not completed iconography of Christian art

A Crosnier Iconographie chreacutetienne (Caen 1848) C

Cahier Caracteacuteristiques des saints (Paris 1867) C

Rohault de Fleury Archeacuteologie chreacutetienne les saints

de la messe et leurs monuments 12 vols (Paris

1893-1900) L Breacutehier Lart chreacutetien son deacuteveloppe-

ment iconographique des origines agrave nos jours (Paris

1918) P Perdrizet V Leroquais and G de Jerphanion

have built up a solid body of iconographical knowl-

edge on which scholars of the twentieth century were

able to erect a modern comprehensive structure In

the field of Byzantine iconography it was Gabriel

Millets Recherches sur liconographie de leacutevangile aux

XIVe XVe et XVIe siegravecles (Paris 1916 reprint

1960) that was basic for any further study For Western

chiefly French art a well-written and learned work

appealing to the general reader as well as to the

scholar was produced by Eacutemile Macircle who in his four

volumes of the history of religious art (1898-1932) has

presented a well-composed synthetic image of icono-

graphical development A lexicographic summary of

these studies of generations of French scholars is pre-

sented in the Dictionnaire darcheacuteologie chreacutetienne et

de liturgie published from 1907 to 1953 and edited

by F Cabrol and H Leclerq A recent reference work

is that by L Reacuteau Iconographie de lart chreacutetien (Paris

1955-59) Russian scholars have done important work

in the field of Byzantine and Orthodox iconography

of religious art The most prominent are N P Kon-

dakov Ikonografia Bogomatieri (St Petersburg 1911

2nd ed 1914-15) D V Ainalov Mosaiki IV i V vekov

(St Petersburg 1895) and N Pokrovski Otcherki

pamyatnikov christianskogo isskusstva i ikonografii (St

Petersburg 1894 3rd ed 1910) V Lasarev and M

Alpatov belonging to the mid-twentieth-century gen-

eration of Russian scholars discuss iconography in

several works on religious art German scholarship

produced in the nineteenth century works by F Piper

A Springer and H Detzel Useful compendia were

produced in the early twentieth century by J Sauer

W Molsdorf K Kuumlnstle and J Braun Dutch scholars

C Smits J B Knipping and J J M Timmers contrib-

uted to iconographic studies in recent times Knip-

pings book (1939-40) being the most important work

on the iconography of the Counter-Reformation and

supplementing Macircles volume of 1932 In the twentieth

century on C R Moreys initiative iconographic

studies were inaugurated in North America Focused

on earlier medieval art these studies developed at

Princeton University

A new direction characteristic of iconographic

studies in the twentieth century has been given to

them by the international school of art historical re-

search inaugurated by the Hamburg scholar Aby

Warburg At the International Congress for the History

of Art at Rome in 1912 he presented a sensational

astrological interpretation of the frescoes painted by

Francesco Cossa and his collaborators in Palazzo

Schifanoja at Ferrara Warburg solved the secret of

those representations which had puzzled the ingenuity

of several former students interpreting them as images

of zodiacal signs and their decans But he did not limit

536

his contribution to the presentation of his results He

wanted to stress the importance of his approach and

of the method of study which later became connected

with his name He said

I hope that through the method used by me for explication

of the frescoes at the Palazzo Schifanoja of Ferrara I have

proved that an iconological analysis which does not allow

itself to be diverted by the rules of frontier police from

considering antiquity Middle Ages and modern times as

interconnected periods nor from analyzing the most liberal

and the most applied works of art as equally important

documents of expression that this method endeavoring as

it does to throw light upon one dark spot clears up at

the same time great interconnected developments

(Warburg 1912 Heckscher 1967)

Warburgs influence on the history of art was very

great although he himself did not write much It was

mainly the posthumous impact of his ideas promul-

gated as they were by Fritz Saxl which contributed

to the specific direction of studies concentrated in the

library Warburg founded in Hamburg and which Saxl

succeeded in transplanting during the Nazi era to

London where it became the Warburg Institute of the

University of London While the object of study of the

nineteenth-century iconographers was mainly religious

art in its relation to religious literary sources and lit-

urgy for Warburg the study of images was a study

of their relations to religion to poetry to myth to

science and to social and political life Art was for

him closely connected with the polyphonic structure

of historical life

Warburgs ideas had a great importance for the most

influential theory of iconographic interpretation in our

century that elaborated by Erwin Panofsky In Ham-

burg where Warburg Saxl and Panofsky were active

in the twenties Ernst Cassirer built up his philosophy

of symbolic forms which constituted an additional

background for Panofskys system being derived as

his own methodology was from the traditions of

Kantian philosophy Around 1930 Panofskys ideas

ripened into a system which found formulation in his

book herkules am Scheidewege (1930) and later in a

theoretical article of 1932 G J Hoogewerff was how-

ever the first to propose the word ldquoiconologyrdquo as a

name for the method of an analysis of content in a

work of art (Warburg spoke of iconological analysis)

In 1931 he proposed distinguishing between iconogra-

phy as a descriptive science aiming at the identifica-

tion of themes and ldquoiconologyrdquo aiming at the under-

standing ldquoof symbolic dogmatic or mystical meaning

which is expressed (or hidden) in figurative formsrdquo He

stressed that ldquoiconologyrdquo deals with works of art with-

out classifying them according to the technique used

or to the achieved perfection taking into account only

their meaning Hoogewerff saw the last aim of iconol-

ogy in finding out the cultural and ideological back-

ground expressed by works of art and the cultural and

social significance which can be attributed to certain

forms and to means of expression in the same time

Hoogewerffs part in the expansion of iconology was

limited because he did not endorse his methodical

proposals with examples of historical interpretations

Erwin Panofsky with whose name iconology has

been connected ever since not only developed its

theoretical foundations but contributed by his practi-

cal work in art history to the main triumph of iconol-

ogy after the Second World War The most influential

book by Panofsky has been Studies in Iconology (1939)

in which his masterly presentation of the method was

connected with its equally excellent exemplification

2 Panofsky considers the interpretation of a work

of art as falling on three levels On the first level the

object of interpretation is the primary or natural sub-

ject matter The function of interpretation is called

ldquopre-iconographical descriptionrdquo In order to be able

to arrive at a correct interpretation on that level the

interpreter must have a practical experience (ldquofamili-

arity with objects and eventsrdquo) common to everybody

at least in one cultural sphere However he has to

control his observations by a ldquocorrective knowledge

of the history of stylerdquo (ldquoinsight into the manner in

which under varying historical conditions objects and

events were expressed by formsrdquo) On the second level

the function of interpretation is called ldquoiconographical

analysisrdquo its object is the ldquosecondary or conventional

subject matterrdquo constituting the world of images his-

tories and allegories The interpreters equipment in

this case is obviously the knowledge of literary sources

giving him a ldquofamiliarity with specific themes and

conceptsrdquo The interpreter has to control his observa-

tions by ldquothe insight into the manner in which under

varying historical conditions specific themes or con-

cepts were expressed by objects and eventsrdquo On the

third level the function of interpreting is called ldquoicon-

ographical analysis in a deeper senserdquo (1939) or ldquoicon-

ological analysisrdquo (1955) Its object is the ldquointrinsic

meaning or contentrdquo of a work of art The interpreters

equipment on that level should be a ldquofamiliarity with

the essential tendencies of the human mindrdquo and he

has to control his interpretation by the ldquoinsight into

the manner in which under varying historical condi-

tions essential tendencies of the human mind were

expressed by specific themes and conceptsrdquo Thus

taking all the time into account what Panofsky calls

the history of tradition the interpreter has to aim at

understanding the work of art its ldquoprimaryrdquo as well

as ldquosecondary subject matterrdquo as symptoms of some

fundamental tendency of the human mind typical of

537

a place a time a civilization and of an individual

responsible for the creation of the work ldquoIconologyrdquomdash

for Panofskymdashldquois a method of interpretation which

arises from synthesis rather than analysisrdquo Trying to

find the intrinsic meaning of a work of art

The art historian will have to check what he thinks is the

intrinsic meaning of the work or group of works against

what he thinks is the intrinsic meaning of as many other

documents of civilization historically related to that work

or group of works as he can master It is in the search

for intrinsic meaning or content that the various humanistic

disciplines meet on a common plane instead of serving as

handmaidens to each other

(Panofsky [1955] p 39)

The concept of intrinsic meaning of a work of art

was elaborated by Panofsky much earlier (1925) when

he interpreted in his own way the concept of Kunst-

wollen introduced by A Riegl to research in art

Panofsky understood this ldquoartistic volitionrdquo as an im-

manent ultimate meaning of a work of art which is

manifested in the way basic artistic problems are solved

in that work He used the same concept further to bring

art closer to the other fields of human activity Since

the ldquoimmanent ultimate senserdquo of the work of art is

nothing else than uniformity in the way of solving basic

artistic problems it is possible to compare that imma-

nent sense with immanent senses of the other human

works in various fields Panofsky did it for instance

when in one of his later works he compared the struc-

tural principles of Gothic architecture with those of

scholastic thinking (1951)

The system elaborated by Panofsky and exemplified

by his own work in art history was the first consistent

system of an integral interpretation of a work of visual

arts based on the analysis of content In principle

Panofskys system takes into account all the elements

of the work of art since it takes as the point of depar-

ture the sensual exterior shape of the work It is

however clear that its main scope is not the inter-

pretation of form as a bearer of meaning but the

understanding and interpretation of conventional alle-

gories literary themes and symbols as symptoms of

the history of the human mind It was that method

in the history of art which programmatically fostered

a collaboration with all the other disciplines of histori-

cal studies It was therefore one of the most influential

methods not only among art historians but also among

representatives of the other branches of humanistic

studies Although there were art historians who ex-

pressed a critical attitude toward ldquoiconologyrdquo as the

new method was soon baptized its influence was over-

whelming

3 It is not only but mainly due to Panofsky that

one can venture to call ldquoiconographicalrdquo that period

of art history as a historical discipline which followed

the Second World War and to oppose it to the ldquostylis-

ticrdquo one which preceded it It does not mean of course

that no iconographic research took place in the

twenties or thirties the works of Macircle Knipping van

Marle Wilpert Saxl and of Panofsky himself would

contradict such a statement Neither is it true that

purely formal research aiming at stylistic classification

and analysis discontinued after World War II It is

evident that in the last decades (from 1940 on) icono-

graphic interests came to the fore and became domi-

nant in many countries Iconographical studies grew

so much in number and importance that they made

it possible to undertake and to publish new reference

works of iconographic character like dictionaries

written by one scholar (Guy de Tervarent Aurenham-

mer) as well as larger works based on a collaboration

of several scholars (Encyclopedias of German art of

Antiquity and Christian civilization of Byzantine art)

Interest in meaning and iconography has appeared

also among historians of political social and religious

institutions The symbolism of signs ceremonies cos-

tumes and arms was studied by such scholars as A

Alfoumlldi ldquoInsignien und Tracht der roumlmischen Kaiserrdquo

Mitteilungen des deutschen Archaumlologischen Instituts

Roumlmische Abteilung (1935) 1ff ldquoDie Geburt der

kaiserlichen Bildsymbolikrdquo museum Helveticum 9

(1952) 204ff also by A Grabar Martyrium (Paris

1943-46) by E H Kantorowicz laudes Regiae

(Berkeley and Los Angeles 1946) The Kings Two

Bodies (Princeton 1957) by H P L Orange Studies

in the Iconography of Cosmic Kingship in the Ancient

World (Oslo 1953) Art Forms and Civic Life in the

Late Roman Empire (Princeton 1965) and by P E

Schramm herrschaftszeichen und Staatssymbolik

(Stuttgart 1954-56) In their studies iconography far

transcends the borders of art and it helps to build up

a history of ideas by following their various visual

expressions

Pioneering studies by K Giehlow F Saxl and E

Panofsky enlarged iconographical interests above all

to encompass the large field of secular art whereas

they had been mainly limited to religious iconography

in the work of preceding generations of scholars The

whole complicated and hardly known large body of

meanings disguised by the cryptic language of hiero-

glyphs emblems and iconologies became one of the

main topics of study

This established a collaboration between historians

of art and literature Mario Prazs admirable study of

emblems and his bibliography of emblem books

(1939-47) belongs now to the foundations of studies

in that field Publications by W S Heckscher and

A K Wirth by R S Clements E F von Monroy and

538

H M von Erffa E de Jongh and H Miedema and

several other scholars have elucidated the structure

and meaning of emblems and have shown their tre-

mendous influence on art even in its most monumental

and dignified forms An uninterrupted flow of reprints

of emblem books which brought within the reach of

modern students inaccessible volumes of sixteenth- and

seventeenth-century emblem writers were crowned by

the monumental undertaking of Arthur Henkel and

Albrecht Schoumlne who compiled an excellent volume

including almost all the texts and images needed for

the study of emblemsmdashEmblemata Handbuch zur

Sinnbildkunst des XVI und XVII Jahrhunderts

(Stuttgart 1967) Research was under way on hiero-

glyphs (Erik Iversen) and on the imprese (the late

Robert Klein) as well as on iconologies and allegories

These studies have disclosed meanings of the art of

the Renaissance of mannerism and of the baroque not

understood by nineteenth-century scholars

E Panofsky deciphered extremely farfetched and

individualistic programs of decoration of such famous

ensembles as the Camera di San Paolo by Correggio

in Parma the Gallery of Franccedilois I at Fontainebleau

Edgar Wind Andreacute Chastel and other scholars inter-

preted Raphaels decorations in the Popes apartments

Michelangelos art furnished material to detailed com-

prehensive studies by Panofsky Ch de Tolnay H von

Einem and Pope-Hennessy in which the share of

Neo-Platonic thinking in the ideological background

of the celebrated works of Michelangelo was discussed

Innumerable studies have been devoted to Titians

mythological paintings J R Martin presented expla-

nations of the Carracci frescoes in the Camerino Far-

nese and in the great gallery of the Palazzo Farnese

Bruegel considered in the nineteenth century as a drocircle

painter of peasant life has been shown by de Tolnay

Stridbeck and others to be an allegorist expressing a

skeptical humanistic outlook J S Held and W

Stechow contributed several articles to the under-

standing of mythological and allegorical contents in

Flemish and Dutch art of the sixteenth and seventeenth

centuries Rembrandts iconography was put into new

light by the two above-mentioned scholars as well as

by H M Rotermund H van de Waal J G van Gelder

H von Einem and Ch Tuumlmpel The intricate symbol-

ism and subject matter of historical and mythological

pictures by Nicolas Poussin were elucidated by such

masters of iconographic research as E H Gombrich

W Friedlaumlnder E Panofsky and above all by A Blunt

who in his monograph on Poussin presented a new

deep synthetic view of the ideas expressed by that

artists works Goyas individualistic secret symbolism

was also studied with the help of emblems and the

allegorical tradition Berninis works received iconolo

gical treatment by R Wittkower and H Kauffmann

All of this research does not mean that there was a

lack of interest in religious iconography M Schapiro

A Katzenellenbogen H Bober F Wormald and V

Elbern among others have contributed considerably

to deepen our understanding of the not completely

explained motifs and prominent works of medieval art

Panofsky has also shed a new light on several problems

of sepulchral iconography studies by such scholars as

R Berliner G von der Osten L Kalinowski S

Ringbom and T Dobrzeniecki contributed to late

medieval iconography in a new way Berliner stressed

the autonomous invention of visual artists or their

patrons while according to the traditional view popu-

larized by Macircle late medieval art should have followed

strictly literary sources

The religious content of modern art especially its

allegorical form in the late baroque period has been

examined and thanks to studies by such scholars as

W Mrazek and H Bauer has become better known

and understandable A great change was introduced

by ldquoiconologyrdquo into architectural history Buildings

which were formerly interpreted from aesthetic and

functional points of view only have been shown to

present allegorical symbolical or even emblematic

ideas Publications by leading art historians (R Witt-

kower B Smith G Bandmann O von Simson and

G C Argan) have presented medieval and modern

architecture as a bearer of meaning and have essen-

tially changed the character of architectural history

The iconography of classicism and romanticism

received a thorough treatment in books by W Hof-

mann and R Rosenblum as well as in several studies

devoted to individual themes and pictures G Hersey

has for example shown how much Delacroixs decora-

tion of the library in the Palais Bourbon owed to

Giambattista Vicos ideas about history More recently

studies on ldquoSymbolismrdquo have been undertaken Vincent

van Goghs symbolic language and iconography were

the object of studies by J Seznec C Nordenfalk and

other scholars On Ceacutezannes iconography interesting

remarks have been published by M Schapiro

Along with the development of iconographic studies

the establishment of centers of documentation has

advanced The ldquoFrenchrdquo stage in the development of

iconography has not left any marked trace in this

respect It was in America thanks to C R Morey that

the famous Index of Christian Art at the Department

of Art and Archaeology of Princeton University was

founded at first limited to the early Middle Ages then

enlarged so as to include art up to the end of the

medieval period Copies of the Princeton Index are

to be found also at the Istituto Pontificio dArcheolo-

gia in Rome and in the Dumbarton Oaks Library and

539

Collection in Washington DC But that Index ends

ldquowhere art beginsrdquomdashas Panofsky used to say jokingly

The need for systematic iconographic files for modern

art was strongly felt In 1956 A Pigler published a

very useful book Barockthemen in which he listed

thousands of works of art of the baroque period ac-

cording to their subjects It was however far from

being a systematic work The first essay in establishing

a systematic iconographic index for art of any time

was done by The Netherlands Institute for Art History

at the Hague then directed by H Gerson which took

the initiative around 1950 of publishing a postcard-size

photographic index of its rich collection of photographs

of Netherlandish art ordered according to an icono-

graphic principle Once such an idea was formulated

the need for a comprehensive consistent and clear

iconographic classification was urgent H van de Waal

of Leiden University devised such a system of classifi-

cation based on decimal divisions consistent and easy

to read He based his system on experiences of ethnol-

ogy and on such elaborated systems of classification

as that devised by Stith Thompson in his Motif-Index

of Folk Literature Vols I-VI (Bloomington Ind

1932-36 rev ed 1955-58) Van de Waal has elabor-

ated a system in which the first five main sections

classify five fundamental groups of portrayable things

namely (1) The Supernatural (2) Nature (3) Man (4)

Society (5) Abstracts The last four classify specific

subjects such as (6) History (7) The Bible (8) Myths

Legends and Tales (with the exception of classical

antiquity) (9) Myths and Legends of Classical Antiq-

uity Van de Waal combines the classification in the

first and in the second group in order to classify general

as well as specific subjects Christ in his system is

described with the sign ldquo11 Drdquo (ldquo1rdquo standing for Su-

pernatural ldquo11rdquo for Christianity ldquoDrdquo for Christ) the

adult Christ = 11 D 3 since ldquoshepherdrdquo on the other

hand bears the signature 47 I 221 the adult Christ

as a shepherd can be described in this system by the

following formula 11 D 3 = 47 I 221 Van de Waal

has also provided means to describe more complex

images which he expresses by adding elements between

brackets The Annunciation with God the Father and

a winged Angel is expressed by the following formula

73 A 5 (+1 +41) ldquo1rdquo standing for God the Father

and ldquo41rdquo for a winged Angel (van de Waal 1952) This

system elaborated for many years by its inventor and

prepared for publication in many volumes has proved

most useful in the practical arrangement of the Icono-

graphical Index of the Netherlandish Art and as the

only one until now in existence it became used more

and more in spite of some ambiguities and difficulties

As an endeavor to classify ldquoall portrayablerdquo things

persons events and ideas and to create a consistent

method to describe every possible image van de Waals

system may be considered as one of the important

achievements of the ldquoiconographical stagerdquo in the

development of art history Iconographic files exist of

course in many institutions as for example in the Ikon-

ologisch Instituut of Utrecht University one of the

main centers of study in emblematics and of course

in the most venerable institution of iconographic re-

search the Warburg Institute of the London University

and in other places

4 What was the result of this ldquoiconographicrdquo turn

in the development of the history of art One thing

is certain that this discipline by necessity has come

closer to other humanistic disciplines Since the

ldquointrinsicrdquo meaningmdashin Panofskys terminologymdashof a

work of art cannot be described in terms used by the

history of art but only in terms borrowed from the

history of philosophy of religion of social structures

of science and so on the ldquoiconological methodrdquo took

for granted and provoked such a collaboration Art

history was perhaps the first or one of the first to show

new interest in investigation of meaning It was fol-

lowed by similar developments in ethnology and in

linguistics

We have mentioned above a parallel development

in Byzantine and classical studies Panofskys influence

has been considerable in the other fields of humanistic

research Since ldquoiconologyrdquo aimed at discovering ideas

expressed by a work of art it awoke in art historians

an interest in the history of ideas This general shift

of emphasis and of the direction of studies from mainly

formal ones to studies aiming at ideas underlying art

was perhaps responsible among others for the fact that

several contributions to the Journal of the History of

Ideas have been written by historians of art

It is not difficult to see that such a development

should have provoked criticism on the side of those

who care about the purity and autonomy of methods

Iconology was criticized as far as its internal coherence

and also as far as its claim to be the integral method

of the study of art are concerned (Białostocki 1962)

Studies by R Klein E Forssman G Previtali G

Kubler B Teyssegravedre C Ginzburg and G Hermeren

expressed critical opinions in one or the other respect

Iconology linked art with the rest of history but it

disrupted the links between the work of art and other

things (Kubler 1962) Concentrating on meaning

iconology neglected art as form as individual expres-

sion Iconology implied a rational relationship between

intellectual content and artistic form On the one hand

one spoke of ldquoiconological diminutionsrdquo (Kubler

1962)mdashlimitations of research to meaning only But

on the other hand the overstatements of iconology

were criticized its representatives sometimes seemed

540

to assume everything symbolized something And some

iconologists seemed to consider important in art not

that which makes art a different field of human activity

but that which connects art with other fieldsmdashwith

the history of ideas

There were of course critics who had the opposite

opinion Since the end of the eighteenth century a

direct experience of art was more and more valued

and its symbolical function considered as a burden

J G von Herder said ein Kunstwerk ist der Kunst

wegen da aber bei einem Symbole ist die Kunst

dienend (ldquoA work of art is there because of art but

with a symbol art is a servicerdquo) Similar opinions were

expressed by nineteenth-century art writers and in this

century they have been voiced by Benedetto Croce and

by other Italian opponents of contenutismo by which

they meant interest in content For such critics to put

stress on iconography was to miss the essential in art

and to focus attention on a subordinate function of art

Also among scholars who considered the function

of representation and of communication as a legitimate

and important function of art criticism was expressed

not against the principle of an iconographical or icon-

ological investigation but against overstatements in

their application The introduction of the idea of ldquodis-

guised symbolismrdquo has created a danger of course of

opening the way to fanciful interpretations The alle-

gorical and symbolical function of mythological imag-

ery in classical art is also difficult to interpret precisely

Since no literary sources give a key to an interpretation

of the iconography of the sarcophagi very divergent

theories have been expressed concerning their meaning

Some archaeologists like F Cumont (1942) believe

that mythological and allegorical imagery (Anadyo-

mene Sea-Thiasos Personifications of the Seasons) is

to be read symbolically The Sea-Thiasos for instance

is to be interpreted as a symbol of the journey of the

souls of the deceased to the islands of the blessed

Others like A D Nock (1946) do not find enough

evidence to accept other than a decorative function

in such imagery

The intrusion of some representatives of psychology

eg C G Jung into iconographic studies giving them

an unhistorical turn in their search for ldquoarchetypal

imagesrdquo has complicated the situation although art

historians in general understandably have not accepted

that kind of approach to symbolism (Frankfort 1958

Gombrich 1965)

The fact that iconographic interpretations sometimes

lack satisfactory proofs does not detract from the im-

portance of such investigations so long as they are

conducted according to the requirements of historical

methods and take into account the corrective princi-

ples established by Panofsky A correct acquaintance

with the way of thinking of the artist the patron or the

viewer based on a satisfactory knowledge of documen-

tary visual and literary sources an awareness of the

choice situations produced by historical developments

may enable art historians to discover the secondary

meaning of a work of art as well as its intrinsic mean-

ing It is of course possible that the art historian will

meet some works for which it will not be possible to re-

construct in a satisfactory way the world of ideas that

would account for the meaning of those works In such

cases a reliable interpretation is simply not possible

R Berliner (1945 1966) criticized the widespread

opinion according to which content of the works of

visual arts in the Middle Ages had to be checked

against the literary sources considered as the only

medium in which ideological innovations were per-

mitted Berliner pleaded for assuming a considerable

ldquofreedomrdquo in the medieval artist and he considered

iconographic innovation possible even when no writ-

ten evidence could be found Meyer Schapiro (1947)

presented proofs that sometimes purely aesthetic rea-

sons decided the character of the work of art even as

early as the Romanesque period

We can only touch on some specific discussions going

on in the field of iconographic research But iconogra-

phic research is far from being a closed system and

the relative share of iconographic and stylistic criticism

in the work of art historians is always a matter of

discussion It is certain that the ldquoiconographicrdquo period

in the study of art has enlarged in a considerable way

the understanding of the art of the past and that it

has connected art history in a way unknown before

with the other historical disciplines and above all others

with the history of ideas

BIBLIOGRAPHY

L B Alberti On Painting ed J Spencer (New Haven

1956 revised ed 1966) E Auerbach ldquoFigurardquo (1944) trans

and published in Scenes From the Drama of European Liter-

ature (New York 1959) pp 11-76 K Bauch ldquoImagordquo

(1960) Studien zur Kunstgeschichte (Berlin 1967) pp 1-20

G P Bellori Descrizione delle imagini dipinte da Raffaello

(Rome 1695 ed used is 1751) R Berliner ldquoThe Free-

dom of Medieval Artrdquo Gazette des Beaux-Arts 628 (1945)

263-88 idem ldquoBemerkungen zu einigen Darstellungen des

Erloumlsers als Schmerzensmannrdquo Das Muumlnster 9 (1956)

97-117x J Białostocki ldquoIconografia e Iconologiardquo Enciclo-

pedia Universale dellArte (1962) Vol VII cols 163-75

trans as Encyclopedia of World Art (1966) Vol VII cols

769-85 lists almost all important older contributions to this

field idem ldquoRomantische Ikonographierdquo Stil und Ikonog-

raphie (Dresden 1966) pp 156-81 idem ldquoKompozycja

emblematyczna epitafioacutew ślaskich XVI wiekurdquo (ldquoEmblem-

atic Composition of Silesian Epitaphs of the Sixteenth Cen-

turyrdquo) Ze studioacutew nad Sztuka XVI wieku na Řlasku

(Wrocław 1968) pp 77-93 idem ldquoEsilio Privatordquo Bulletin

du Museacutee National de Varsovie 10 (1969) 95-101 J

541

Chydenius The Theory of Medieval Symbolism (Helsingfors

1960) Series of the Societas Scientiarum Fennica Com-

mentationes Humanarum Litterarum 27 2 R J Clements

Picta Poesis (Rome 1960) F Creuzer Symbolik und

Mythologie der Alten Voumllker (Leipzig and Darmstadt 1810

revised ed 1819) F Cumont Recherches sur le symbolisme

funeacuteraire des Romains (Paris 1942) L Eitner ldquoThe Open

Window and the Storm-Tossed Boatrdquo Art Bulletin 37

(1955) 281-90 H Frankfort ldquoThe Archetype in Analytical

Psychology and the History of Religionrdquo Journal of the

Warburg and Courtauld Institutes 21 (1958) 166-78

K Garas ldquoAllegorie und Geschichte in der Venezianischen

Malerei des 18 Jahrhundertsrdquo in proceedings of the XXI

International Congress of the History of Art Bonn Stil und

Uumlberlieferung in der Kunst des Abendlandes (Berlin 1967)

3 280-83 K Giehlow ldquoDie Hieroglyphenkunde des

Humanismus in der Allegorie der Renaissancerdquo Jahrbuch

der Kunsthistorischen Sammlungen des Allerhochsten

Kaiserhauses 32 (1915) 1-232 C Gilbert ldquoOn Subject and

Not-Subject in Italian Renaissance Picturesrdquo Art Bulletin

34 (1952) 202-16 C Ginzburg ldquoDa A Warburg a E H

Gombrich Note su un problema di metodordquo Studi medi-

evali series 3 7 (1966) 1015-65 E H Gombrich ldquoIcones

Symbolicae The Visual Image in Neo-Platonic Thoughtrdquo

Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes 11 (1948)

163-92 idem ldquoThe Use of Art for the Study of Symbolsrdquo

American Psychologist 20 (1965) A Grabar Liconoclasme

byzantin Dossier archeacuteologique (Paris 1957) idem Chris-

tian Iconography A Study of Its Origins (Princeton 1969)

S J Gudlaugsson De Comedianten bij Jan Steen en zijn

tijdgenooten (s-Gravenhage 1945) W S Heckscher ldquoThe

Genesis of Iconologyrdquo Stl und Uumlberlieferung in der Kunst

des Abendlandes Akten des XXI Internationalen Kon-

gresses fuumlr Kunstgeschichte (Berlin 1967) 3 239-62 G

Hermereacuten Representation and Meaning in the Visual Arts

A Study in the Methodology of Iconography and Iconology

Lund Studies in Philosophy Vol I (Lund 1969) R Hinks

Myth and Allegory in Ancient Art (London 1939) W

Hofmann Das Irdische Paradies (Munich 1960) G J

Hoogewerff ldquoLIconologie et son importance pour leacutetude

systeacutematique de lart chreacutetienrdquo Rivista dArcheologia Cris-

tiana 8 (1931) 53-82 E de Jongh Zinne- en minnebeelden

in de schilderkunst van de zeventiende eeuw (mdash1967) idem

ldquoErotica in Vogelperspectief De dubbelzinnigheid van een

reeks 17de eeuwse genrevoorstellingenrdquo Simiolus 3

(1968-69) 22-72 L Kalinowski ldquoTreści ideowe i estetyczne

Drzwi Gnieźnieńskichrdquo (ldquoIdeological and Aesthetic Content

of the Gniezno Bronze Doorsrdquo) in Drzwi Gnieźnieńskie ed

M Walicki (Wroclaw 1959) 2 7-160 H Keller Tizians

Poesie fuumlr Koumlnig Philip II von Spanien (Wiesbaden 1969)

R Klein ldquoLa theacuteorie de lexpression figureacutee dans les traiteacutes

italiens sur les imprese 1555-1612rdquo Bibliothegraveque dHu-

manisme et Renaissance 19 (1957) 320-41 republished with

the other relevant studies in la forme et lintelligible (Paris

1969) R Klibansky E Panofsky F Saxl Saturn and Melan-

choly (London 1964) J B Knipping Ikonografie van de

Contra-Reformatie in de Nederlanden (Hilversum 1939-40)

G Kubler The Shape of Time (New Haven and London

1962) R W Lee ldquoUt pictura poesisrdquo Art Bulletin 22

(1940) 197-269 E Macircle Lart religieux du XIIIe siegravecle en

France (Paris 1898) English ed used (New York 1958)

idem Lart religieux de la fin du Moyen-Age en France

(Paris 1908) idem Lart religieux du XIIe siegravecle en France

(Paris 1922) idem Lart religieux apregraves le Concile de Trente

(Paris 1932) J Maurin Białostocka Lessing i sztuki plas-

tyczne (ldquoLessing and the visual artsrdquo) (Wroclaw Warszawa

Krakoacutew 1969) E F von Monroy Embleme und Emblem-

buumlcher in den Niederlanden 1560-1630 ed H M von Erffa

(Utrecht 1964) J Montagu ldquoThe Painted Enigma and

French Seventeenth Century Artrdquo Journal of the Warburg

and Courtauld Institutes 31 (1968) 307-35 W Mrazek

Ikonologie der barocken Deckenmalerei (Vienna 1953)

Uumlsterreichische Akademie der Wissenschaften Philo-

sophisch-historische Klasse Sitzungsberichte 2283 A D

Nock ldquoSarcophagi and Symbolismrdquo American Journal of

Archaeology 50 (1946) 166ff D Panofsky and E Panofsky

ldquoThe Iconography of the Galeacuterie Franccedilois Ier at Fontaine-

bleaurdquo Gazette des Beaux-Arts 652 (1958) 113-90

E Panofsky ldquoUumlber das Verhaumlltnis der Kunstgeschichte zur

Kunsttheorierdquo Zeitschrift fuumlr Aesthetik und allgemeine

Kunstwissenschaft 18 (1925) 129-61 idem Studies in

Iconology (New York 1939) idem ed Abbot Suger (Prince-

ton 1946) idem Gothic Architecture and Scholasticism

(Latrobe Pa 1951) idem Early Netherlandish Painting

(Cambridge Mass 1953) idem Meaning in the Visual Arts

(Garden City N Y 1955) idem Renaissance and Renas-

cences in Western Art (Stockholm 1960) idem Tomb Sculp-

ture (New York 1964) E Panofsky and F Saxl ldquoClassical

Mythology in Medieval Artrdquo Metropolitan Museum Studies

4 (1932-33) 228-80 M Praz Studies in Seventeenth Cen-

tury Imagery (London 1939-47 2nd ed Rome 1964) S

Ringbom ldquoDevotional Images and Imaginative Devotions

Notes on the Place of Art in Late Medieval Private Pietyrdquo

Gazette des Beaux-Arts 6 73 (1969) 159-70 Joseph Sauer

Symbolik des Kirchengebaumludes und seiner Ausstattung in

der Auffassung des Mittelalters 2nd ed (Freiburg i B

1924) F Saxl ldquoFruumlhes Christentum und spaumltes Heidentum

in ihren kuumlnstlerischen Ausdrucksformenrdquo Wiener Jahrbuch

fuumlr Kunstgeschichte 2 (1923) 63-121 M Schapiro ldquoThe

Ruthwell Crossrdquo Art Bulletin 26 (1944) 232-45 idem ldquoOn

the Aesthetic Attitude in Romanesque Artrdquo in Art and

Thought issued in Honour of Ananda Coomaraswamy

(London 1947) 139-50 J Seznec The Survival of the Pagan

Gods (New York 1953) O G von Simson The Gothic

Cathedral (New York 1956) R E Spear ldquoThe Literary

Source of Poussins Realm of Florardquo The Burlington Maga-

zine 107 (1965) 563-69 L Volkmann Bilderschriften der

Renaissance (Leipzig 1923) Hans van de Waal Drie

eeuwen vaderlandsche geschieduitbeelding 1500-1800 (s-

Gravenhage 1952) idem ldquoSome Principles of a General

Iconographical Classificationrdquo in Actes du XVIIe Congregraves

International dHistoire de lArt Amsterdam 1952 (La Haye

1955) 601-06 E Wind ldquoCharity the Case History of a

Patternrdquo Journal of the Warburg Institute 1 (1937) 322ff

JAN BIAŁOSTOCKI

[See also Allegory Baroque Classicism Criticism Enlight-

enment Motif Myth Naturalism in Art Neo-Platonism

Renaissance Humanism Romanticism Symbolism Tem-

perance Ut pictura poesis]

iconographic concepts might have been even to peo-

ple living in buildings decorated by paintings expres-

sing these concepts But perhaps the first really to be

considered as interested in iconographic research was

the seventeenth-century archaeologist and art theorist

Giovanni Pietro Bellori In the introduction to his Lives

of Artists (1672) Bellori stressed that he paid special

attention to the content of the works of art he was

talking about and he even credited the painter Nicolas

Poussin with having directed his attention to iconogra-

phy In his Lives Bellori presented short interpretative

descriptions of pictures and he sometimes developed

these interpretations further in small iconographic

essays the influence of classical ekphrasis on him is

a possibility Sometimes his errors took deep roots in

the subsequent history of art as when he explained

Poussins Triumph of Flora (Dresden) by designating

Ovids Metamorphoses as its source The true source

Marinos Adona was finally found by R E Spear in

1965

What is interesting in Belloris procedure is that he

first identifies the motifs tries to connect them with

classical or modern literary sources and then proceeds

to find out the deep meaning the general symbolic

idea of the work Therefore he may be considered as

one of the pioneers not only of iconography as a disci-

pline of research but also of iconology as formulated

by its recent partisans That even in the second half

of the sixteenth century some observers were inclined

to look for hidden meaning in each element of the work

of art we learn from Joannes Molanus (1570) who in

De picturis et imaginibus sacris states reasonably that

ldquoit is not necessary to ask for meaning of everything

that can be observed in a picture in such cases a lot

of absurd things may resultrdquo But the consciousness of

the importance of iconography increased and at the

end of the seventeenth century Andreacute Feacutelibien stressed

that in order to attribute a picture to a painter it is

not enough to know the way he uses his brush one

needs also to know his esprit to learn his geacutenie and

to be able to foresee in which way he is able to form

his conceptions Thus iconographic analysis was con-

sidered necessary even for the purpose of attribution

Descriptive interpretations of the works of ancient

art appeared in the big archaeological publications of

the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries such as

Jacques Spons Miscellanea eruditae antiquitatis (1679)

G P Belloris Admiranda romanarum antiquitatum ac

veteris sculpturae vestigia (1693) P de Caylus Recueil

535

dantiquiteacutes eacutegyptiennes eacutetrusques grecques et

romaines (1752-67) and in an interesting endeavor

(although very much criticized by Lessing) of Joseph

Spence to explain classical poets through works of art

and vice versa (Polymetis 1747) Classical archaeology

however has not been especially interested in iconog-

raphy and the use of the term itself by archaeolo-

gists was limited to portraiture The first great devel-

opment of iconographic studies was connected with

the romantic movement although an important pre-

lude for it was hagiographical collections of sources

such as Acta sanctorum published by the Bollandists

(1643-1794 resumed later) Among the pre-romantic

scholars in iconography the eminent German poet

G E Lessing is to be noted His study of the repre-

sentation of death in classical times can be considered

as one of the first essays in interpretative iconography

which is now called iconology In Wie die Alten den

Tod gebildet (1769) Lessing tries to interpret the classi-

cal iconographic type of Amor with the inverted torch

and to find its ldquointrinsic meaningrdquo by taking into ac-

count the religion customs and philosophy of the

classical world The work of art is interpreted by Less-

ing as ldquoa symptom of something elserdquo While Lessings

predecessors (like B de Montfaucon) ldquoexplained the

classical past by monumentsrdquo he for the first time did

the opposite ldquohe explained the monuments by Antiq-

uityrdquo (Maurin Białostocka [1969] pp 92-100)

Pre-romantic and romantic interests in myth and

symbol found their expression in publications and dis-

cussions by German philosophers and scholars like F

Schlegel J Herder J J von Goumlrres and F Creuzer

Creuzers work Symbolik und Mythologie der alten

Voumllker (1810) which shows the influence of mystical

Neo-Platonic ideas on symbols (Gombrich 1965) was

the most influential in the romantic period in Ger-

many Under the impact of Chateaubriands le Geacutenie

du christianisme (1802) research in medieval iconog-

raphy developed mainly in France Works by French

scholars mostly clergymen which were indeed con-

cerned with Christian medieval art dominated icon-

ographical study in the nineteenth century Since most

of these writers were not professional scholars their

work was often amateurish in character but it is unde-

niable that books by A N Didron Histoire de Dieu

(Paris 1843) the first part of a comprehensive pro-

jected but not completed iconography of Christian art

A Crosnier Iconographie chreacutetienne (Caen 1848) C

Cahier Caracteacuteristiques des saints (Paris 1867) C

Rohault de Fleury Archeacuteologie chreacutetienne les saints

de la messe et leurs monuments 12 vols (Paris

1893-1900) L Breacutehier Lart chreacutetien son deacuteveloppe-

ment iconographique des origines agrave nos jours (Paris

1918) P Perdrizet V Leroquais and G de Jerphanion

have built up a solid body of iconographical knowl-

edge on which scholars of the twentieth century were

able to erect a modern comprehensive structure In

the field of Byzantine iconography it was Gabriel

Millets Recherches sur liconographie de leacutevangile aux

XIVe XVe et XVIe siegravecles (Paris 1916 reprint

1960) that was basic for any further study For Western

chiefly French art a well-written and learned work

appealing to the general reader as well as to the

scholar was produced by Eacutemile Macircle who in his four

volumes of the history of religious art (1898-1932) has

presented a well-composed synthetic image of icono-

graphical development A lexicographic summary of

these studies of generations of French scholars is pre-

sented in the Dictionnaire darcheacuteologie chreacutetienne et

de liturgie published from 1907 to 1953 and edited

by F Cabrol and H Leclerq A recent reference work

is that by L Reacuteau Iconographie de lart chreacutetien (Paris

1955-59) Russian scholars have done important work

in the field of Byzantine and Orthodox iconography

of religious art The most prominent are N P Kon-

dakov Ikonografia Bogomatieri (St Petersburg 1911

2nd ed 1914-15) D V Ainalov Mosaiki IV i V vekov

(St Petersburg 1895) and N Pokrovski Otcherki

pamyatnikov christianskogo isskusstva i ikonografii (St

Petersburg 1894 3rd ed 1910) V Lasarev and M

Alpatov belonging to the mid-twentieth-century gen-

eration of Russian scholars discuss iconography in

several works on religious art German scholarship

produced in the nineteenth century works by F Piper

A Springer and H Detzel Useful compendia were

produced in the early twentieth century by J Sauer

W Molsdorf K Kuumlnstle and J Braun Dutch scholars

C Smits J B Knipping and J J M Timmers contrib-

uted to iconographic studies in recent times Knip-

pings book (1939-40) being the most important work

on the iconography of the Counter-Reformation and

supplementing Macircles volume of 1932 In the twentieth

century on C R Moreys initiative iconographic

studies were inaugurated in North America Focused

on earlier medieval art these studies developed at

Princeton University

A new direction characteristic of iconographic

studies in the twentieth century has been given to

them by the international school of art historical re-

search inaugurated by the Hamburg scholar Aby

Warburg At the International Congress for the History

of Art at Rome in 1912 he presented a sensational

astrological interpretation of the frescoes painted by

Francesco Cossa and his collaborators in Palazzo

Schifanoja at Ferrara Warburg solved the secret of

those representations which had puzzled the ingenuity

of several former students interpreting them as images

of zodiacal signs and their decans But he did not limit

536

his contribution to the presentation of his results He

wanted to stress the importance of his approach and

of the method of study which later became connected

with his name He said

I hope that through the method used by me for explication

of the frescoes at the Palazzo Schifanoja of Ferrara I have

proved that an iconological analysis which does not allow

itself to be diverted by the rules of frontier police from

considering antiquity Middle Ages and modern times as

interconnected periods nor from analyzing the most liberal

and the most applied works of art as equally important

documents of expression that this method endeavoring as

it does to throw light upon one dark spot clears up at

the same time great interconnected developments

(Warburg 1912 Heckscher 1967)

Warburgs influence on the history of art was very

great although he himself did not write much It was

mainly the posthumous impact of his ideas promul-

gated as they were by Fritz Saxl which contributed

to the specific direction of studies concentrated in the

library Warburg founded in Hamburg and which Saxl

succeeded in transplanting during the Nazi era to

London where it became the Warburg Institute of the

University of London While the object of study of the

nineteenth-century iconographers was mainly religious

art in its relation to religious literary sources and lit-

urgy for Warburg the study of images was a study

of their relations to religion to poetry to myth to

science and to social and political life Art was for

him closely connected with the polyphonic structure

of historical life

Warburgs ideas had a great importance for the most

influential theory of iconographic interpretation in our

century that elaborated by Erwin Panofsky In Ham-

burg where Warburg Saxl and Panofsky were active

in the twenties Ernst Cassirer built up his philosophy

of symbolic forms which constituted an additional

background for Panofskys system being derived as

his own methodology was from the traditions of

Kantian philosophy Around 1930 Panofskys ideas

ripened into a system which found formulation in his

book herkules am Scheidewege (1930) and later in a

theoretical article of 1932 G J Hoogewerff was how-

ever the first to propose the word ldquoiconologyrdquo as a

name for the method of an analysis of content in a

work of art (Warburg spoke of iconological analysis)

In 1931 he proposed distinguishing between iconogra-

phy as a descriptive science aiming at the identifica-

tion of themes and ldquoiconologyrdquo aiming at the under-

standing ldquoof symbolic dogmatic or mystical meaning

which is expressed (or hidden) in figurative formsrdquo He

stressed that ldquoiconologyrdquo deals with works of art with-

out classifying them according to the technique used

or to the achieved perfection taking into account only

their meaning Hoogewerff saw the last aim of iconol-

ogy in finding out the cultural and ideological back-

ground expressed by works of art and the cultural and

social significance which can be attributed to certain

forms and to means of expression in the same time

Hoogewerffs part in the expansion of iconology was

limited because he did not endorse his methodical

proposals with examples of historical interpretations

Erwin Panofsky with whose name iconology has

been connected ever since not only developed its

theoretical foundations but contributed by his practi-

cal work in art history to the main triumph of iconol-

ogy after the Second World War The most influential

book by Panofsky has been Studies in Iconology (1939)

in which his masterly presentation of the method was

connected with its equally excellent exemplification

2 Panofsky considers the interpretation of a work

of art as falling on three levels On the first level the

object of interpretation is the primary or natural sub-

ject matter The function of interpretation is called

ldquopre-iconographical descriptionrdquo In order to be able

to arrive at a correct interpretation on that level the

interpreter must have a practical experience (ldquofamili-

arity with objects and eventsrdquo) common to everybody

at least in one cultural sphere However he has to

control his observations by a ldquocorrective knowledge

of the history of stylerdquo (ldquoinsight into the manner in

which under varying historical conditions objects and

events were expressed by formsrdquo) On the second level

the function of interpretation is called ldquoiconographical

analysisrdquo its object is the ldquosecondary or conventional

subject matterrdquo constituting the world of images his-

tories and allegories The interpreters equipment in

this case is obviously the knowledge of literary sources

giving him a ldquofamiliarity with specific themes and

conceptsrdquo The interpreter has to control his observa-

tions by ldquothe insight into the manner in which under

varying historical conditions specific themes or con-

cepts were expressed by objects and eventsrdquo On the

third level the function of interpreting is called ldquoicon-

ographical analysis in a deeper senserdquo (1939) or ldquoicon-

ological analysisrdquo (1955) Its object is the ldquointrinsic

meaning or contentrdquo of a work of art The interpreters

equipment on that level should be a ldquofamiliarity with

the essential tendencies of the human mindrdquo and he

has to control his interpretation by the ldquoinsight into

the manner in which under varying historical condi-

tions essential tendencies of the human mind were

expressed by specific themes and conceptsrdquo Thus

taking all the time into account what Panofsky calls

the history of tradition the interpreter has to aim at

understanding the work of art its ldquoprimaryrdquo as well

as ldquosecondary subject matterrdquo as symptoms of some

fundamental tendency of the human mind typical of

537

a place a time a civilization and of an individual

responsible for the creation of the work ldquoIconologyrdquomdash

for Panofskymdashldquois a method of interpretation which

arises from synthesis rather than analysisrdquo Trying to

find the intrinsic meaning of a work of art

The art historian will have to check what he thinks is the

intrinsic meaning of the work or group of works against

what he thinks is the intrinsic meaning of as many other

documents of civilization historically related to that work

or group of works as he can master It is in the search

for intrinsic meaning or content that the various humanistic

disciplines meet on a common plane instead of serving as

handmaidens to each other

(Panofsky [1955] p 39)

The concept of intrinsic meaning of a work of art

was elaborated by Panofsky much earlier (1925) when

he interpreted in his own way the concept of Kunst-

wollen introduced by A Riegl to research in art

Panofsky understood this ldquoartistic volitionrdquo as an im-

manent ultimate meaning of a work of art which is

manifested in the way basic artistic problems are solved

in that work He used the same concept further to bring

art closer to the other fields of human activity Since

the ldquoimmanent ultimate senserdquo of the work of art is

nothing else than uniformity in the way of solving basic

artistic problems it is possible to compare that imma-

nent sense with immanent senses of the other human

works in various fields Panofsky did it for instance

when in one of his later works he compared the struc-

tural principles of Gothic architecture with those of

scholastic thinking (1951)

The system elaborated by Panofsky and exemplified

by his own work in art history was the first consistent

system of an integral interpretation of a work of visual

arts based on the analysis of content In principle

Panofskys system takes into account all the elements

of the work of art since it takes as the point of depar-

ture the sensual exterior shape of the work It is

however clear that its main scope is not the inter-

pretation of form as a bearer of meaning but the

understanding and interpretation of conventional alle-

gories literary themes and symbols as symptoms of

the history of the human mind It was that method

in the history of art which programmatically fostered

a collaboration with all the other disciplines of histori-

cal studies It was therefore one of the most influential

methods not only among art historians but also among

representatives of the other branches of humanistic

studies Although there were art historians who ex-

pressed a critical attitude toward ldquoiconologyrdquo as the

new method was soon baptized its influence was over-

whelming

3 It is not only but mainly due to Panofsky that

one can venture to call ldquoiconographicalrdquo that period

of art history as a historical discipline which followed

the Second World War and to oppose it to the ldquostylis-

ticrdquo one which preceded it It does not mean of course

that no iconographic research took place in the

twenties or thirties the works of Macircle Knipping van

Marle Wilpert Saxl and of Panofsky himself would

contradict such a statement Neither is it true that

purely formal research aiming at stylistic classification

and analysis discontinued after World War II It is

evident that in the last decades (from 1940 on) icono-

graphic interests came to the fore and became domi-

nant in many countries Iconographical studies grew

so much in number and importance that they made

it possible to undertake and to publish new reference

works of iconographic character like dictionaries

written by one scholar (Guy de Tervarent Aurenham-

mer) as well as larger works based on a collaboration

of several scholars (Encyclopedias of German art of

Antiquity and Christian civilization of Byzantine art)

Interest in meaning and iconography has appeared

also among historians of political social and religious

institutions The symbolism of signs ceremonies cos-

tumes and arms was studied by such scholars as A

Alfoumlldi ldquoInsignien und Tracht der roumlmischen Kaiserrdquo

Mitteilungen des deutschen Archaumlologischen Instituts

Roumlmische Abteilung (1935) 1ff ldquoDie Geburt der

kaiserlichen Bildsymbolikrdquo museum Helveticum 9

(1952) 204ff also by A Grabar Martyrium (Paris

1943-46) by E H Kantorowicz laudes Regiae

(Berkeley and Los Angeles 1946) The Kings Two

Bodies (Princeton 1957) by H P L Orange Studies

in the Iconography of Cosmic Kingship in the Ancient

World (Oslo 1953) Art Forms and Civic Life in the

Late Roman Empire (Princeton 1965) and by P E

Schramm herrschaftszeichen und Staatssymbolik

(Stuttgart 1954-56) In their studies iconography far

transcends the borders of art and it helps to build up

a history of ideas by following their various visual

expressions

Pioneering studies by K Giehlow F Saxl and E

Panofsky enlarged iconographical interests above all

to encompass the large field of secular art whereas

they had been mainly limited to religious iconography

in the work of preceding generations of scholars The

whole complicated and hardly known large body of

meanings disguised by the cryptic language of hiero-

glyphs emblems and iconologies became one of the

main topics of study

This established a collaboration between historians

of art and literature Mario Prazs admirable study of

emblems and his bibliography of emblem books

(1939-47) belongs now to the foundations of studies

in that field Publications by W S Heckscher and

A K Wirth by R S Clements E F von Monroy and

538

H M von Erffa E de Jongh and H Miedema and

several other scholars have elucidated the structure

and meaning of emblems and have shown their tre-

mendous influence on art even in its most monumental

and dignified forms An uninterrupted flow of reprints

of emblem books which brought within the reach of

modern students inaccessible volumes of sixteenth- and

seventeenth-century emblem writers were crowned by

the monumental undertaking of Arthur Henkel and

Albrecht Schoumlne who compiled an excellent volume

including almost all the texts and images needed for

the study of emblemsmdashEmblemata Handbuch zur

Sinnbildkunst des XVI und XVII Jahrhunderts

(Stuttgart 1967) Research was under way on hiero-

glyphs (Erik Iversen) and on the imprese (the late

Robert Klein) as well as on iconologies and allegories

These studies have disclosed meanings of the art of

the Renaissance of mannerism and of the baroque not

understood by nineteenth-century scholars

E Panofsky deciphered extremely farfetched and

individualistic programs of decoration of such famous

ensembles as the Camera di San Paolo by Correggio

in Parma the Gallery of Franccedilois I at Fontainebleau

Edgar Wind Andreacute Chastel and other scholars inter-

preted Raphaels decorations in the Popes apartments

Michelangelos art furnished material to detailed com-

prehensive studies by Panofsky Ch de Tolnay H von

Einem and Pope-Hennessy in which the share of

Neo-Platonic thinking in the ideological background

of the celebrated works of Michelangelo was discussed

Innumerable studies have been devoted to Titians

mythological paintings J R Martin presented expla-

nations of the Carracci frescoes in the Camerino Far-

nese and in the great gallery of the Palazzo Farnese

Bruegel considered in the nineteenth century as a drocircle

painter of peasant life has been shown by de Tolnay

Stridbeck and others to be an allegorist expressing a

skeptical humanistic outlook J S Held and W

Stechow contributed several articles to the under-

standing of mythological and allegorical contents in

Flemish and Dutch art of the sixteenth and seventeenth

centuries Rembrandts iconography was put into new

light by the two above-mentioned scholars as well as

by H M Rotermund H van de Waal J G van Gelder

H von Einem and Ch Tuumlmpel The intricate symbol-

ism and subject matter of historical and mythological

pictures by Nicolas Poussin were elucidated by such

masters of iconographic research as E H Gombrich

W Friedlaumlnder E Panofsky and above all by A Blunt

who in his monograph on Poussin presented a new

deep synthetic view of the ideas expressed by that

artists works Goyas individualistic secret symbolism

was also studied with the help of emblems and the

allegorical tradition Berninis works received iconolo

gical treatment by R Wittkower and H Kauffmann

All of this research does not mean that there was a

lack of interest in religious iconography M Schapiro

A Katzenellenbogen H Bober F Wormald and V

Elbern among others have contributed considerably

to deepen our understanding of the not completely

explained motifs and prominent works of medieval art

Panofsky has also shed a new light on several problems

of sepulchral iconography studies by such scholars as

R Berliner G von der Osten L Kalinowski S

Ringbom and T Dobrzeniecki contributed to late

medieval iconography in a new way Berliner stressed

the autonomous invention of visual artists or their

patrons while according to the traditional view popu-

larized by Macircle late medieval art should have followed

strictly literary sources

The religious content of modern art especially its

allegorical form in the late baroque period has been

examined and thanks to studies by such scholars as

W Mrazek and H Bauer has become better known

and understandable A great change was introduced

by ldquoiconologyrdquo into architectural history Buildings

which were formerly interpreted from aesthetic and

functional points of view only have been shown to

present allegorical symbolical or even emblematic

ideas Publications by leading art historians (R Witt-

kower B Smith G Bandmann O von Simson and

G C Argan) have presented medieval and modern

architecture as a bearer of meaning and have essen-

tially changed the character of architectural history

The iconography of classicism and romanticism

received a thorough treatment in books by W Hof-

mann and R Rosenblum as well as in several studies

devoted to individual themes and pictures G Hersey

has for example shown how much Delacroixs decora-

tion of the library in the Palais Bourbon owed to

Giambattista Vicos ideas about history More recently

studies on ldquoSymbolismrdquo have been undertaken Vincent

van Goghs symbolic language and iconography were

the object of studies by J Seznec C Nordenfalk and

other scholars On Ceacutezannes iconography interesting

remarks have been published by M Schapiro

Along with the development of iconographic studies

the establishment of centers of documentation has

advanced The ldquoFrenchrdquo stage in the development of

iconography has not left any marked trace in this

respect It was in America thanks to C R Morey that

the famous Index of Christian Art at the Department

of Art and Archaeology of Princeton University was

founded at first limited to the early Middle Ages then

enlarged so as to include art up to the end of the

medieval period Copies of the Princeton Index are

to be found also at the Istituto Pontificio dArcheolo-

gia in Rome and in the Dumbarton Oaks Library and

539

Collection in Washington DC But that Index ends

ldquowhere art beginsrdquomdashas Panofsky used to say jokingly

The need for systematic iconographic files for modern

art was strongly felt In 1956 A Pigler published a

very useful book Barockthemen in which he listed

thousands of works of art of the baroque period ac-

cording to their subjects It was however far from

being a systematic work The first essay in establishing

a systematic iconographic index for art of any time

was done by The Netherlands Institute for Art History

at the Hague then directed by H Gerson which took

the initiative around 1950 of publishing a postcard-size

photographic index of its rich collection of photographs

of Netherlandish art ordered according to an icono-

graphic principle Once such an idea was formulated

the need for a comprehensive consistent and clear

iconographic classification was urgent H van de Waal

of Leiden University devised such a system of classifi-

cation based on decimal divisions consistent and easy

to read He based his system on experiences of ethnol-

ogy and on such elaborated systems of classification

as that devised by Stith Thompson in his Motif-Index

of Folk Literature Vols I-VI (Bloomington Ind

1932-36 rev ed 1955-58) Van de Waal has elabor-

ated a system in which the first five main sections

classify five fundamental groups of portrayable things

namely (1) The Supernatural (2) Nature (3) Man (4)

Society (5) Abstracts The last four classify specific

subjects such as (6) History (7) The Bible (8) Myths

Legends and Tales (with the exception of classical

antiquity) (9) Myths and Legends of Classical Antiq-

uity Van de Waal combines the classification in the

first and in the second group in order to classify general

as well as specific subjects Christ in his system is

described with the sign ldquo11 Drdquo (ldquo1rdquo standing for Su-

pernatural ldquo11rdquo for Christianity ldquoDrdquo for Christ) the

adult Christ = 11 D 3 since ldquoshepherdrdquo on the other

hand bears the signature 47 I 221 the adult Christ

as a shepherd can be described in this system by the

following formula 11 D 3 = 47 I 221 Van de Waal

has also provided means to describe more complex

images which he expresses by adding elements between

brackets The Annunciation with God the Father and

a winged Angel is expressed by the following formula

73 A 5 (+1 +41) ldquo1rdquo standing for God the Father

and ldquo41rdquo for a winged Angel (van de Waal 1952) This

system elaborated for many years by its inventor and

prepared for publication in many volumes has proved

most useful in the practical arrangement of the Icono-

graphical Index of the Netherlandish Art and as the

only one until now in existence it became used more

and more in spite of some ambiguities and difficulties

As an endeavor to classify ldquoall portrayablerdquo things

persons events and ideas and to create a consistent

method to describe every possible image van de Waals

system may be considered as one of the important

achievements of the ldquoiconographical stagerdquo in the

development of art history Iconographic files exist of

course in many institutions as for example in the Ikon-

ologisch Instituut of Utrecht University one of the

main centers of study in emblematics and of course

in the most venerable institution of iconographic re-

search the Warburg Institute of the London University

and in other places

4 What was the result of this ldquoiconographicrdquo turn

in the development of the history of art One thing

is certain that this discipline by necessity has come

closer to other humanistic disciplines Since the

ldquointrinsicrdquo meaningmdashin Panofskys terminologymdashof a

work of art cannot be described in terms used by the

history of art but only in terms borrowed from the

history of philosophy of religion of social structures

of science and so on the ldquoiconological methodrdquo took

for granted and provoked such a collaboration Art

history was perhaps the first or one of the first to show

new interest in investigation of meaning It was fol-

lowed by similar developments in ethnology and in

linguistics

We have mentioned above a parallel development

in Byzantine and classical studies Panofskys influence

has been considerable in the other fields of humanistic

research Since ldquoiconologyrdquo aimed at discovering ideas

expressed by a work of art it awoke in art historians

an interest in the history of ideas This general shift

of emphasis and of the direction of studies from mainly

formal ones to studies aiming at ideas underlying art

was perhaps responsible among others for the fact that

several contributions to the Journal of the History of

Ideas have been written by historians of art

It is not difficult to see that such a development

should have provoked criticism on the side of those

who care about the purity and autonomy of methods

Iconology was criticized as far as its internal coherence

and also as far as its claim to be the integral method

of the study of art are concerned (Białostocki 1962)

Studies by R Klein E Forssman G Previtali G

Kubler B Teyssegravedre C Ginzburg and G Hermeren

expressed critical opinions in one or the other respect

Iconology linked art with the rest of history but it

disrupted the links between the work of art and other

things (Kubler 1962) Concentrating on meaning

iconology neglected art as form as individual expres-

sion Iconology implied a rational relationship between

intellectual content and artistic form On the one hand

one spoke of ldquoiconological diminutionsrdquo (Kubler

1962)mdashlimitations of research to meaning only But

on the other hand the overstatements of iconology

were criticized its representatives sometimes seemed

540

to assume everything symbolized something And some

iconologists seemed to consider important in art not

that which makes art a different field of human activity

but that which connects art with other fieldsmdashwith

the history of ideas

There were of course critics who had the opposite

opinion Since the end of the eighteenth century a

direct experience of art was more and more valued

and its symbolical function considered as a burden

J G von Herder said ein Kunstwerk ist der Kunst

wegen da aber bei einem Symbole ist die Kunst

dienend (ldquoA work of art is there because of art but

with a symbol art is a servicerdquo) Similar opinions were

expressed by nineteenth-century art writers and in this

century they have been voiced by Benedetto Croce and

by other Italian opponents of contenutismo by which

they meant interest in content For such critics to put

stress on iconography was to miss the essential in art

and to focus attention on a subordinate function of art

Also among scholars who considered the function

of representation and of communication as a legitimate

and important function of art criticism was expressed

not against the principle of an iconographical or icon-

ological investigation but against overstatements in

their application The introduction of the idea of ldquodis-

guised symbolismrdquo has created a danger of course of

opening the way to fanciful interpretations The alle-

gorical and symbolical function of mythological imag-

ery in classical art is also difficult to interpret precisely

Since no literary sources give a key to an interpretation

of the iconography of the sarcophagi very divergent

theories have been expressed concerning their meaning

Some archaeologists like F Cumont (1942) believe

that mythological and allegorical imagery (Anadyo-

mene Sea-Thiasos Personifications of the Seasons) is

to be read symbolically The Sea-Thiasos for instance

is to be interpreted as a symbol of the journey of the

souls of the deceased to the islands of the blessed

Others like A D Nock (1946) do not find enough

evidence to accept other than a decorative function

in such imagery

The intrusion of some representatives of psychology

eg C G Jung into iconographic studies giving them

an unhistorical turn in their search for ldquoarchetypal

imagesrdquo has complicated the situation although art

historians in general understandably have not accepted

that kind of approach to symbolism (Frankfort 1958

Gombrich 1965)

The fact that iconographic interpretations sometimes

lack satisfactory proofs does not detract from the im-

portance of such investigations so long as they are

conducted according to the requirements of historical

methods and take into account the corrective princi-

ples established by Panofsky A correct acquaintance

with the way of thinking of the artist the patron or the

viewer based on a satisfactory knowledge of documen-

tary visual and literary sources an awareness of the

choice situations produced by historical developments

may enable art historians to discover the secondary

meaning of a work of art as well as its intrinsic mean-

ing It is of course possible that the art historian will

meet some works for which it will not be possible to re-

construct in a satisfactory way the world of ideas that

would account for the meaning of those works In such

cases a reliable interpretation is simply not possible

R Berliner (1945 1966) criticized the widespread

opinion according to which content of the works of

visual arts in the Middle Ages had to be checked

against the literary sources considered as the only

medium in which ideological innovations were per-

mitted Berliner pleaded for assuming a considerable

ldquofreedomrdquo in the medieval artist and he considered

iconographic innovation possible even when no writ-

ten evidence could be found Meyer Schapiro (1947)

presented proofs that sometimes purely aesthetic rea-

sons decided the character of the work of art even as

early as the Romanesque period

We can only touch on some specific discussions going

on in the field of iconographic research But iconogra-

phic research is far from being a closed system and

the relative share of iconographic and stylistic criticism

in the work of art historians is always a matter of

discussion It is certain that the ldquoiconographicrdquo period

in the study of art has enlarged in a considerable way

the understanding of the art of the past and that it

has connected art history in a way unknown before

with the other historical disciplines and above all others

with the history of ideas

BIBLIOGRAPHY

L B Alberti On Painting ed J Spencer (New Haven

1956 revised ed 1966) E Auerbach ldquoFigurardquo (1944) trans

and published in Scenes From the Drama of European Liter-

ature (New York 1959) pp 11-76 K Bauch ldquoImagordquo

(1960) Studien zur Kunstgeschichte (Berlin 1967) pp 1-20

G P Bellori Descrizione delle imagini dipinte da Raffaello

(Rome 1695 ed used is 1751) R Berliner ldquoThe Free-

dom of Medieval Artrdquo Gazette des Beaux-Arts 628 (1945)

263-88 idem ldquoBemerkungen zu einigen Darstellungen des

Erloumlsers als Schmerzensmannrdquo Das Muumlnster 9 (1956)

97-117x J Białostocki ldquoIconografia e Iconologiardquo Enciclo-

pedia Universale dellArte (1962) Vol VII cols 163-75

trans as Encyclopedia of World Art (1966) Vol VII cols

769-85 lists almost all important older contributions to this

field idem ldquoRomantische Ikonographierdquo Stil und Ikonog-

raphie (Dresden 1966) pp 156-81 idem ldquoKompozycja

emblematyczna epitafioacutew ślaskich XVI wiekurdquo (ldquoEmblem-

atic Composition of Silesian Epitaphs of the Sixteenth Cen-

turyrdquo) Ze studioacutew nad Sztuka XVI wieku na Řlasku

(Wrocław 1968) pp 77-93 idem ldquoEsilio Privatordquo Bulletin

du Museacutee National de Varsovie 10 (1969) 95-101 J

541

Chydenius The Theory of Medieval Symbolism (Helsingfors

1960) Series of the Societas Scientiarum Fennica Com-

mentationes Humanarum Litterarum 27 2 R J Clements

Picta Poesis (Rome 1960) F Creuzer Symbolik und

Mythologie der Alten Voumllker (Leipzig and Darmstadt 1810

revised ed 1819) F Cumont Recherches sur le symbolisme

funeacuteraire des Romains (Paris 1942) L Eitner ldquoThe Open

Window and the Storm-Tossed Boatrdquo Art Bulletin 37

(1955) 281-90 H Frankfort ldquoThe Archetype in Analytical

Psychology and the History of Religionrdquo Journal of the

Warburg and Courtauld Institutes 21 (1958) 166-78

K Garas ldquoAllegorie und Geschichte in der Venezianischen

Malerei des 18 Jahrhundertsrdquo in proceedings of the XXI

International Congress of the History of Art Bonn Stil und

Uumlberlieferung in der Kunst des Abendlandes (Berlin 1967)

3 280-83 K Giehlow ldquoDie Hieroglyphenkunde des

Humanismus in der Allegorie der Renaissancerdquo Jahrbuch

der Kunsthistorischen Sammlungen des Allerhochsten

Kaiserhauses 32 (1915) 1-232 C Gilbert ldquoOn Subject and

Not-Subject in Italian Renaissance Picturesrdquo Art Bulletin

34 (1952) 202-16 C Ginzburg ldquoDa A Warburg a E H

Gombrich Note su un problema di metodordquo Studi medi-

evali series 3 7 (1966) 1015-65 E H Gombrich ldquoIcones

Symbolicae The Visual Image in Neo-Platonic Thoughtrdquo

Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes 11 (1948)

163-92 idem ldquoThe Use of Art for the Study of Symbolsrdquo

American Psychologist 20 (1965) A Grabar Liconoclasme

byzantin Dossier archeacuteologique (Paris 1957) idem Chris-

tian Iconography A Study of Its Origins (Princeton 1969)

S J Gudlaugsson De Comedianten bij Jan Steen en zijn

tijdgenooten (s-Gravenhage 1945) W S Heckscher ldquoThe

Genesis of Iconologyrdquo Stl und Uumlberlieferung in der Kunst

des Abendlandes Akten des XXI Internationalen Kon-

gresses fuumlr Kunstgeschichte (Berlin 1967) 3 239-62 G

Hermereacuten Representation and Meaning in the Visual Arts

A Study in the Methodology of Iconography and Iconology

Lund Studies in Philosophy Vol I (Lund 1969) R Hinks

Myth and Allegory in Ancient Art (London 1939) W

Hofmann Das Irdische Paradies (Munich 1960) G J

Hoogewerff ldquoLIconologie et son importance pour leacutetude

systeacutematique de lart chreacutetienrdquo Rivista dArcheologia Cris-

tiana 8 (1931) 53-82 E de Jongh Zinne- en minnebeelden

in de schilderkunst van de zeventiende eeuw (mdash1967) idem

ldquoErotica in Vogelperspectief De dubbelzinnigheid van een

reeks 17de eeuwse genrevoorstellingenrdquo Simiolus 3

(1968-69) 22-72 L Kalinowski ldquoTreści ideowe i estetyczne

Drzwi Gnieźnieńskichrdquo (ldquoIdeological and Aesthetic Content

of the Gniezno Bronze Doorsrdquo) in Drzwi Gnieźnieńskie ed

M Walicki (Wroclaw 1959) 2 7-160 H Keller Tizians

Poesie fuumlr Koumlnig Philip II von Spanien (Wiesbaden 1969)

R Klein ldquoLa theacuteorie de lexpression figureacutee dans les traiteacutes

italiens sur les imprese 1555-1612rdquo Bibliothegraveque dHu-

manisme et Renaissance 19 (1957) 320-41 republished with

the other relevant studies in la forme et lintelligible (Paris

1969) R Klibansky E Panofsky F Saxl Saturn and Melan-

choly (London 1964) J B Knipping Ikonografie van de

Contra-Reformatie in de Nederlanden (Hilversum 1939-40)

G Kubler The Shape of Time (New Haven and London

1962) R W Lee ldquoUt pictura poesisrdquo Art Bulletin 22

(1940) 197-269 E Macircle Lart religieux du XIIIe siegravecle en

France (Paris 1898) English ed used (New York 1958)

idem Lart religieux de la fin du Moyen-Age en France

(Paris 1908) idem Lart religieux du XIIe siegravecle en France

(Paris 1922) idem Lart religieux apregraves le Concile de Trente

(Paris 1932) J Maurin Białostocka Lessing i sztuki plas-

tyczne (ldquoLessing and the visual artsrdquo) (Wroclaw Warszawa

Krakoacutew 1969) E F von Monroy Embleme und Emblem-

buumlcher in den Niederlanden 1560-1630 ed H M von Erffa

(Utrecht 1964) J Montagu ldquoThe Painted Enigma and

French Seventeenth Century Artrdquo Journal of the Warburg

and Courtauld Institutes 31 (1968) 307-35 W Mrazek

Ikonologie der barocken Deckenmalerei (Vienna 1953)

Uumlsterreichische Akademie der Wissenschaften Philo-

sophisch-historische Klasse Sitzungsberichte 2283 A D

Nock ldquoSarcophagi and Symbolismrdquo American Journal of

Archaeology 50 (1946) 166ff D Panofsky and E Panofsky

ldquoThe Iconography of the Galeacuterie Franccedilois Ier at Fontaine-

bleaurdquo Gazette des Beaux-Arts 652 (1958) 113-90

E Panofsky ldquoUumlber das Verhaumlltnis der Kunstgeschichte zur

Kunsttheorierdquo Zeitschrift fuumlr Aesthetik und allgemeine

Kunstwissenschaft 18 (1925) 129-61 idem Studies in

Iconology (New York 1939) idem ed Abbot Suger (Prince-

ton 1946) idem Gothic Architecture and Scholasticism

(Latrobe Pa 1951) idem Early Netherlandish Painting

(Cambridge Mass 1953) idem Meaning in the Visual Arts

(Garden City N Y 1955) idem Renaissance and Renas-

cences in Western Art (Stockholm 1960) idem Tomb Sculp-

ture (New York 1964) E Panofsky and F Saxl ldquoClassical

Mythology in Medieval Artrdquo Metropolitan Museum Studies

4 (1932-33) 228-80 M Praz Studies in Seventeenth Cen-

tury Imagery (London 1939-47 2nd ed Rome 1964) S

Ringbom ldquoDevotional Images and Imaginative Devotions

Notes on the Place of Art in Late Medieval Private Pietyrdquo

Gazette des Beaux-Arts 6 73 (1969) 159-70 Joseph Sauer

Symbolik des Kirchengebaumludes und seiner Ausstattung in

der Auffassung des Mittelalters 2nd ed (Freiburg i B

1924) F Saxl ldquoFruumlhes Christentum und spaumltes Heidentum

in ihren kuumlnstlerischen Ausdrucksformenrdquo Wiener Jahrbuch

fuumlr Kunstgeschichte 2 (1923) 63-121 M Schapiro ldquoThe

Ruthwell Crossrdquo Art Bulletin 26 (1944) 232-45 idem ldquoOn

the Aesthetic Attitude in Romanesque Artrdquo in Art and

Thought issued in Honour of Ananda Coomaraswamy

(London 1947) 139-50 J Seznec The Survival of the Pagan

Gods (New York 1953) O G von Simson The Gothic

Cathedral (New York 1956) R E Spear ldquoThe Literary

Source of Poussins Realm of Florardquo The Burlington Maga-

zine 107 (1965) 563-69 L Volkmann Bilderschriften der

Renaissance (Leipzig 1923) Hans van de Waal Drie

eeuwen vaderlandsche geschieduitbeelding 1500-1800 (s-

Gravenhage 1952) idem ldquoSome Principles of a General

Iconographical Classificationrdquo in Actes du XVIIe Congregraves

International dHistoire de lArt Amsterdam 1952 (La Haye

1955) 601-06 E Wind ldquoCharity the Case History of a

Patternrdquo Journal of the Warburg Institute 1 (1937) 322ff

JAN BIAŁOSTOCKI

[See also Allegory Baroque Classicism Criticism Enlight-

enment Motif Myth Naturalism in Art Neo-Platonism

Renaissance Humanism Romanticism Symbolism Tem-

perance Ut pictura poesis]

G P Belloris Admiranda romanarum antiquitatum ac

veteris sculpturae vestigia (1693) P de Caylus Recueil

535

dantiquiteacutes eacutegyptiennes eacutetrusques grecques et

romaines (1752-67) and in an interesting endeavor

(although very much criticized by Lessing) of Joseph

Spence to explain classical poets through works of art

and vice versa (Polymetis 1747) Classical archaeology

however has not been especially interested in iconog-

raphy and the use of the term itself by archaeolo-

gists was limited to portraiture The first great devel-

opment of iconographic studies was connected with

the romantic movement although an important pre-

lude for it was hagiographical collections of sources

such as Acta sanctorum published by the Bollandists

(1643-1794 resumed later) Among the pre-romantic

scholars in iconography the eminent German poet

G E Lessing is to be noted His study of the repre-

sentation of death in classical times can be considered

as one of the first essays in interpretative iconography

which is now called iconology In Wie die Alten den

Tod gebildet (1769) Lessing tries to interpret the classi-

cal iconographic type of Amor with the inverted torch

and to find its ldquointrinsic meaningrdquo by taking into ac-

count the religion customs and philosophy of the

classical world The work of art is interpreted by Less-

ing as ldquoa symptom of something elserdquo While Lessings

predecessors (like B de Montfaucon) ldquoexplained the

classical past by monumentsrdquo he for the first time did

the opposite ldquohe explained the monuments by Antiq-

uityrdquo (Maurin Białostocka [1969] pp 92-100)

Pre-romantic and romantic interests in myth and

symbol found their expression in publications and dis-

cussions by German philosophers and scholars like F

Schlegel J Herder J J von Goumlrres and F Creuzer

Creuzers work Symbolik und Mythologie der alten

Voumllker (1810) which shows the influence of mystical

Neo-Platonic ideas on symbols (Gombrich 1965) was

the most influential in the romantic period in Ger-

many Under the impact of Chateaubriands le Geacutenie

du christianisme (1802) research in medieval iconog-

raphy developed mainly in France Works by French

scholars mostly clergymen which were indeed con-

cerned with Christian medieval art dominated icon-

ographical study in the nineteenth century Since most

of these writers were not professional scholars their

work was often amateurish in character but it is unde-

niable that books by A N Didron Histoire de Dieu

(Paris 1843) the first part of a comprehensive pro-

jected but not completed iconography of Christian art

A Crosnier Iconographie chreacutetienne (Caen 1848) C

Cahier Caracteacuteristiques des saints (Paris 1867) C

Rohault de Fleury Archeacuteologie chreacutetienne les saints

de la messe et leurs monuments 12 vols (Paris

1893-1900) L Breacutehier Lart chreacutetien son deacuteveloppe-

ment iconographique des origines agrave nos jours (Paris

1918) P Perdrizet V Leroquais and G de Jerphanion

have built up a solid body of iconographical knowl-

edge on which scholars of the twentieth century were

able to erect a modern comprehensive structure In

the field of Byzantine iconography it was Gabriel

Millets Recherches sur liconographie de leacutevangile aux

XIVe XVe et XVIe siegravecles (Paris 1916 reprint

1960) that was basic for any further study For Western

chiefly French art a well-written and learned work

appealing to the general reader as well as to the

scholar was produced by Eacutemile Macircle who in his four

volumes of the history of religious art (1898-1932) has

presented a well-composed synthetic image of icono-

graphical development A lexicographic summary of

these studies of generations of French scholars is pre-

sented in the Dictionnaire darcheacuteologie chreacutetienne et

de liturgie published from 1907 to 1953 and edited

by F Cabrol and H Leclerq A recent reference work

is that by L Reacuteau Iconographie de lart chreacutetien (Paris

1955-59) Russian scholars have done important work

in the field of Byzantine and Orthodox iconography

of religious art The most prominent are N P Kon-

dakov Ikonografia Bogomatieri (St Petersburg 1911

2nd ed 1914-15) D V Ainalov Mosaiki IV i V vekov

(St Petersburg 1895) and N Pokrovski Otcherki

pamyatnikov christianskogo isskusstva i ikonografii (St

Petersburg 1894 3rd ed 1910) V Lasarev and M

Alpatov belonging to the mid-twentieth-century gen-

eration of Russian scholars discuss iconography in

several works on religious art German scholarship

produced in the nineteenth century works by F Piper

A Springer and H Detzel Useful compendia were

produced in the early twentieth century by J Sauer

W Molsdorf K Kuumlnstle and J Braun Dutch scholars

C Smits J B Knipping and J J M Timmers contrib-

uted to iconographic studies in recent times Knip-

pings book (1939-40) being the most important work

on the iconography of the Counter-Reformation and

supplementing Macircles volume of 1932 In the twentieth

century on C R Moreys initiative iconographic

studies were inaugurated in North America Focused

on earlier medieval art these studies developed at

Princeton University

A new direction characteristic of iconographic

studies in the twentieth century has been given to

them by the international school of art historical re-

search inaugurated by the Hamburg scholar Aby

Warburg At the International Congress for the History

of Art at Rome in 1912 he presented a sensational

astrological interpretation of the frescoes painted by

Francesco Cossa and his collaborators in Palazzo

Schifanoja at Ferrara Warburg solved the secret of

those representations which had puzzled the ingenuity

of several former students interpreting them as images

of zodiacal signs and their decans But he did not limit

536

his contribution to the presentation of his results He

wanted to stress the importance of his approach and

of the method of study which later became connected

with his name He said

I hope that through the method used by me for explication

of the frescoes at the Palazzo Schifanoja of Ferrara I have

proved that an iconological analysis which does not allow

itself to be diverted by the rules of frontier police from

considering antiquity Middle Ages and modern times as

interconnected periods nor from analyzing the most liberal

and the most applied works of art as equally important

documents of expression that this method endeavoring as

it does to throw light upon one dark spot clears up at

the same time great interconnected developments

(Warburg 1912 Heckscher 1967)

Warburgs influence on the history of art was very

great although he himself did not write much It was

mainly the posthumous impact of his ideas promul-

gated as they were by Fritz Saxl which contributed

to the specific direction of studies concentrated in the

library Warburg founded in Hamburg and which Saxl

succeeded in transplanting during the Nazi era to

London where it became the Warburg Institute of the

University of London While the object of study of the

nineteenth-century iconographers was mainly religious

art in its relation to religious literary sources and lit-

urgy for Warburg the study of images was a study

of their relations to religion to poetry to myth to

science and to social and political life Art was for

him closely connected with the polyphonic structure

of historical life

Warburgs ideas had a great importance for the most

influential theory of iconographic interpretation in our

century that elaborated by Erwin Panofsky In Ham-

burg where Warburg Saxl and Panofsky were active

in the twenties Ernst Cassirer built up his philosophy

of symbolic forms which constituted an additional

background for Panofskys system being derived as

his own methodology was from the traditions of

Kantian philosophy Around 1930 Panofskys ideas

ripened into a system which found formulation in his

book herkules am Scheidewege (1930) and later in a

theoretical article of 1932 G J Hoogewerff was how-

ever the first to propose the word ldquoiconologyrdquo as a

name for the method of an analysis of content in a

work of art (Warburg spoke of iconological analysis)

In 1931 he proposed distinguishing between iconogra-

phy as a descriptive science aiming at the identifica-

tion of themes and ldquoiconologyrdquo aiming at the under-

standing ldquoof symbolic dogmatic or mystical meaning

which is expressed (or hidden) in figurative formsrdquo He

stressed that ldquoiconologyrdquo deals with works of art with-

out classifying them according to the technique used

or to the achieved perfection taking into account only

their meaning Hoogewerff saw the last aim of iconol-

ogy in finding out the cultural and ideological back-

ground expressed by works of art and the cultural and

social significance which can be attributed to certain

forms and to means of expression in the same time

Hoogewerffs part in the expansion of iconology was

limited because he did not endorse his methodical

proposals with examples of historical interpretations

Erwin Panofsky with whose name iconology has

been connected ever since not only developed its

theoretical foundations but contributed by his practi-

cal work in art history to the main triumph of iconol-

ogy after the Second World War The most influential

book by Panofsky has been Studies in Iconology (1939)

in which his masterly presentation of the method was

connected with its equally excellent exemplification

2 Panofsky considers the interpretation of a work

of art as falling on three levels On the first level the

object of interpretation is the primary or natural sub-

ject matter The function of interpretation is called

ldquopre-iconographical descriptionrdquo In order to be able

to arrive at a correct interpretation on that level the

interpreter must have a practical experience (ldquofamili-

arity with objects and eventsrdquo) common to everybody

at least in one cultural sphere However he has to

control his observations by a ldquocorrective knowledge

of the history of stylerdquo (ldquoinsight into the manner in

which under varying historical conditions objects and

events were expressed by formsrdquo) On the second level

the function of interpretation is called ldquoiconographical

analysisrdquo its object is the ldquosecondary or conventional

subject matterrdquo constituting the world of images his-

tories and allegories The interpreters equipment in

this case is obviously the knowledge of literary sources

giving him a ldquofamiliarity with specific themes and

conceptsrdquo The interpreter has to control his observa-

tions by ldquothe insight into the manner in which under

varying historical conditions specific themes or con-

cepts were expressed by objects and eventsrdquo On the

third level the function of interpreting is called ldquoicon-

ographical analysis in a deeper senserdquo (1939) or ldquoicon-

ological analysisrdquo (1955) Its object is the ldquointrinsic

meaning or contentrdquo of a work of art The interpreters

equipment on that level should be a ldquofamiliarity with

the essential tendencies of the human mindrdquo and he

has to control his interpretation by the ldquoinsight into

the manner in which under varying historical condi-

tions essential tendencies of the human mind were

expressed by specific themes and conceptsrdquo Thus

taking all the time into account what Panofsky calls

the history of tradition the interpreter has to aim at

understanding the work of art its ldquoprimaryrdquo as well

as ldquosecondary subject matterrdquo as symptoms of some

fundamental tendency of the human mind typical of

537

a place a time a civilization and of an individual

responsible for the creation of the work ldquoIconologyrdquomdash

for Panofskymdashldquois a method of interpretation which

arises from synthesis rather than analysisrdquo Trying to

find the intrinsic meaning of a work of art

The art historian will have to check what he thinks is the

intrinsic meaning of the work or group of works against

what he thinks is the intrinsic meaning of as many other

documents of civilization historically related to that work

or group of works as he can master It is in the search

for intrinsic meaning or content that the various humanistic

disciplines meet on a common plane instead of serving as

handmaidens to each other

(Panofsky [1955] p 39)

The concept of intrinsic meaning of a work of art

was elaborated by Panofsky much earlier (1925) when

he interpreted in his own way the concept of Kunst-

wollen introduced by A Riegl to research in art

Panofsky understood this ldquoartistic volitionrdquo as an im-

manent ultimate meaning of a work of art which is

manifested in the way basic artistic problems are solved

in that work He used the same concept further to bring

art closer to the other fields of human activity Since

the ldquoimmanent ultimate senserdquo of the work of art is

nothing else than uniformity in the way of solving basic

artistic problems it is possible to compare that imma-

nent sense with immanent senses of the other human

works in various fields Panofsky did it for instance

when in one of his later works he compared the struc-

tural principles of Gothic architecture with those of

scholastic thinking (1951)

The system elaborated by Panofsky and exemplified

by his own work in art history was the first consistent

system of an integral interpretation of a work of visual

arts based on the analysis of content In principle

Panofskys system takes into account all the elements

of the work of art since it takes as the point of depar-

ture the sensual exterior shape of the work It is

however clear that its main scope is not the inter-

pretation of form as a bearer of meaning but the

understanding and interpretation of conventional alle-

gories literary themes and symbols as symptoms of

the history of the human mind It was that method

in the history of art which programmatically fostered

a collaboration with all the other disciplines of histori-

cal studies It was therefore one of the most influential

methods not only among art historians but also among

representatives of the other branches of humanistic

studies Although there were art historians who ex-

pressed a critical attitude toward ldquoiconologyrdquo as the

new method was soon baptized its influence was over-

whelming

3 It is not only but mainly due to Panofsky that

one can venture to call ldquoiconographicalrdquo that period

of art history as a historical discipline which followed

the Second World War and to oppose it to the ldquostylis-

ticrdquo one which preceded it It does not mean of course

that no iconographic research took place in the

twenties or thirties the works of Macircle Knipping van

Marle Wilpert Saxl and of Panofsky himself would

contradict such a statement Neither is it true that

purely formal research aiming at stylistic classification

and analysis discontinued after World War II It is

evident that in the last decades (from 1940 on) icono-

graphic interests came to the fore and became domi-

nant in many countries Iconographical studies grew

so much in number and importance that they made

it possible to undertake and to publish new reference

works of iconographic character like dictionaries

written by one scholar (Guy de Tervarent Aurenham-

mer) as well as larger works based on a collaboration

of several scholars (Encyclopedias of German art of

Antiquity and Christian civilization of Byzantine art)

Interest in meaning and iconography has appeared

also among historians of political social and religious

institutions The symbolism of signs ceremonies cos-

tumes and arms was studied by such scholars as A

Alfoumlldi ldquoInsignien und Tracht der roumlmischen Kaiserrdquo

Mitteilungen des deutschen Archaumlologischen Instituts

Roumlmische Abteilung (1935) 1ff ldquoDie Geburt der

kaiserlichen Bildsymbolikrdquo museum Helveticum 9

(1952) 204ff also by A Grabar Martyrium (Paris

1943-46) by E H Kantorowicz laudes Regiae

(Berkeley and Los Angeles 1946) The Kings Two

Bodies (Princeton 1957) by H P L Orange Studies

in the Iconography of Cosmic Kingship in the Ancient

World (Oslo 1953) Art Forms and Civic Life in the

Late Roman Empire (Princeton 1965) and by P E

Schramm herrschaftszeichen und Staatssymbolik

(Stuttgart 1954-56) In their studies iconography far

transcends the borders of art and it helps to build up

a history of ideas by following their various visual

expressions

Pioneering studies by K Giehlow F Saxl and E

Panofsky enlarged iconographical interests above all

to encompass the large field of secular art whereas

they had been mainly limited to religious iconography

in the work of preceding generations of scholars The

whole complicated and hardly known large body of

meanings disguised by the cryptic language of hiero-

glyphs emblems and iconologies became one of the

main topics of study

This established a collaboration between historians

of art and literature Mario Prazs admirable study of

emblems and his bibliography of emblem books

(1939-47) belongs now to the foundations of studies

in that field Publications by W S Heckscher and

A K Wirth by R S Clements E F von Monroy and

538

H M von Erffa E de Jongh and H Miedema and

several other scholars have elucidated the structure

and meaning of emblems and have shown their tre-

mendous influence on art even in its most monumental

and dignified forms An uninterrupted flow of reprints

of emblem books which brought within the reach of

modern students inaccessible volumes of sixteenth- and

seventeenth-century emblem writers were crowned by

the monumental undertaking of Arthur Henkel and

Albrecht Schoumlne who compiled an excellent volume

including almost all the texts and images needed for

the study of emblemsmdashEmblemata Handbuch zur

Sinnbildkunst des XVI und XVII Jahrhunderts

(Stuttgart 1967) Research was under way on hiero-

glyphs (Erik Iversen) and on the imprese (the late

Robert Klein) as well as on iconologies and allegories

These studies have disclosed meanings of the art of

the Renaissance of mannerism and of the baroque not

understood by nineteenth-century scholars

E Panofsky deciphered extremely farfetched and

individualistic programs of decoration of such famous

ensembles as the Camera di San Paolo by Correggio

in Parma the Gallery of Franccedilois I at Fontainebleau

Edgar Wind Andreacute Chastel and other scholars inter-

preted Raphaels decorations in the Popes apartments

Michelangelos art furnished material to detailed com-

prehensive studies by Panofsky Ch de Tolnay H von

Einem and Pope-Hennessy in which the share of

Neo-Platonic thinking in the ideological background

of the celebrated works of Michelangelo was discussed

Innumerable studies have been devoted to Titians

mythological paintings J R Martin presented expla-

nations of the Carracci frescoes in the Camerino Far-

nese and in the great gallery of the Palazzo Farnese

Bruegel considered in the nineteenth century as a drocircle

painter of peasant life has been shown by de Tolnay

Stridbeck and others to be an allegorist expressing a

skeptical humanistic outlook J S Held and W

Stechow contributed several articles to the under-

standing of mythological and allegorical contents in

Flemish and Dutch art of the sixteenth and seventeenth

centuries Rembrandts iconography was put into new

light by the two above-mentioned scholars as well as

by H M Rotermund H van de Waal J G van Gelder

H von Einem and Ch Tuumlmpel The intricate symbol-

ism and subject matter of historical and mythological

pictures by Nicolas Poussin were elucidated by such

masters of iconographic research as E H Gombrich

W Friedlaumlnder E Panofsky and above all by A Blunt

who in his monograph on Poussin presented a new

deep synthetic view of the ideas expressed by that

artists works Goyas individualistic secret symbolism

was also studied with the help of emblems and the

allegorical tradition Berninis works received iconolo

gical treatment by R Wittkower and H Kauffmann

All of this research does not mean that there was a

lack of interest in religious iconography M Schapiro

A Katzenellenbogen H Bober F Wormald and V

Elbern among others have contributed considerably

to deepen our understanding of the not completely

explained motifs and prominent works of medieval art

Panofsky has also shed a new light on several problems

of sepulchral iconography studies by such scholars as

R Berliner G von der Osten L Kalinowski S

Ringbom and T Dobrzeniecki contributed to late

medieval iconography in a new way Berliner stressed

the autonomous invention of visual artists or their

patrons while according to the traditional view popu-

larized by Macircle late medieval art should have followed

strictly literary sources

The religious content of modern art especially its

allegorical form in the late baroque period has been

examined and thanks to studies by such scholars as

W Mrazek and H Bauer has become better known

and understandable A great change was introduced

by ldquoiconologyrdquo into architectural history Buildings

which were formerly interpreted from aesthetic and

functional points of view only have been shown to

present allegorical symbolical or even emblematic

ideas Publications by leading art historians (R Witt-

kower B Smith G Bandmann O von Simson and

G C Argan) have presented medieval and modern

architecture as a bearer of meaning and have essen-

tially changed the character of architectural history

The iconography of classicism and romanticism

received a thorough treatment in books by W Hof-

mann and R Rosenblum as well as in several studies

devoted to individual themes and pictures G Hersey

has for example shown how much Delacroixs decora-

tion of the library in the Palais Bourbon owed to

Giambattista Vicos ideas about history More recently

studies on ldquoSymbolismrdquo have been undertaken Vincent

van Goghs symbolic language and iconography were

the object of studies by J Seznec C Nordenfalk and

other scholars On Ceacutezannes iconography interesting

remarks have been published by M Schapiro

Along with the development of iconographic studies

the establishment of centers of documentation has

advanced The ldquoFrenchrdquo stage in the development of

iconography has not left any marked trace in this

respect It was in America thanks to C R Morey that

the famous Index of Christian Art at the Department

of Art and Archaeology of Princeton University was

founded at first limited to the early Middle Ages then

enlarged so as to include art up to the end of the

medieval period Copies of the Princeton Index are

to be found also at the Istituto Pontificio dArcheolo-

gia in Rome and in the Dumbarton Oaks Library and

539

Collection in Washington DC But that Index ends

ldquowhere art beginsrdquomdashas Panofsky used to say jokingly

The need for systematic iconographic files for modern

art was strongly felt In 1956 A Pigler published a

very useful book Barockthemen in which he listed

thousands of works of art of the baroque period ac-

cording to their subjects It was however far from

being a systematic work The first essay in establishing

a systematic iconographic index for art of any time

was done by The Netherlands Institute for Art History

at the Hague then directed by H Gerson which took

the initiative around 1950 of publishing a postcard-size

photographic index of its rich collection of photographs

of Netherlandish art ordered according to an icono-

graphic principle Once such an idea was formulated

the need for a comprehensive consistent and clear

iconographic classification was urgent H van de Waal

of Leiden University devised such a system of classifi-

cation based on decimal divisions consistent and easy

to read He based his system on experiences of ethnol-

ogy and on such elaborated systems of classification

as that devised by Stith Thompson in his Motif-Index

of Folk Literature Vols I-VI (Bloomington Ind

1932-36 rev ed 1955-58) Van de Waal has elabor-

ated a system in which the first five main sections

classify five fundamental groups of portrayable things

namely (1) The Supernatural (2) Nature (3) Man (4)

Society (5) Abstracts The last four classify specific

subjects such as (6) History (7) The Bible (8) Myths

Legends and Tales (with the exception of classical

antiquity) (9) Myths and Legends of Classical Antiq-

uity Van de Waal combines the classification in the

first and in the second group in order to classify general

as well as specific subjects Christ in his system is

described with the sign ldquo11 Drdquo (ldquo1rdquo standing for Su-

pernatural ldquo11rdquo for Christianity ldquoDrdquo for Christ) the

adult Christ = 11 D 3 since ldquoshepherdrdquo on the other

hand bears the signature 47 I 221 the adult Christ

as a shepherd can be described in this system by the

following formula 11 D 3 = 47 I 221 Van de Waal

has also provided means to describe more complex

images which he expresses by adding elements between

brackets The Annunciation with God the Father and

a winged Angel is expressed by the following formula

73 A 5 (+1 +41) ldquo1rdquo standing for God the Father

and ldquo41rdquo for a winged Angel (van de Waal 1952) This

system elaborated for many years by its inventor and

prepared for publication in many volumes has proved

most useful in the practical arrangement of the Icono-

graphical Index of the Netherlandish Art and as the

only one until now in existence it became used more

and more in spite of some ambiguities and difficulties

As an endeavor to classify ldquoall portrayablerdquo things

persons events and ideas and to create a consistent

method to describe every possible image van de Waals

system may be considered as one of the important

achievements of the ldquoiconographical stagerdquo in the

development of art history Iconographic files exist of

course in many institutions as for example in the Ikon-

ologisch Instituut of Utrecht University one of the

main centers of study in emblematics and of course

in the most venerable institution of iconographic re-

search the Warburg Institute of the London University

and in other places

4 What was the result of this ldquoiconographicrdquo turn

in the development of the history of art One thing

is certain that this discipline by necessity has come

closer to other humanistic disciplines Since the

ldquointrinsicrdquo meaningmdashin Panofskys terminologymdashof a

work of art cannot be described in terms used by the

history of art but only in terms borrowed from the

history of philosophy of religion of social structures

of science and so on the ldquoiconological methodrdquo took

for granted and provoked such a collaboration Art

history was perhaps the first or one of the first to show

new interest in investigation of meaning It was fol-

lowed by similar developments in ethnology and in

linguistics

We have mentioned above a parallel development

in Byzantine and classical studies Panofskys influence

has been considerable in the other fields of humanistic

research Since ldquoiconologyrdquo aimed at discovering ideas

expressed by a work of art it awoke in art historians

an interest in the history of ideas This general shift

of emphasis and of the direction of studies from mainly

formal ones to studies aiming at ideas underlying art

was perhaps responsible among others for the fact that

several contributions to the Journal of the History of

Ideas have been written by historians of art

It is not difficult to see that such a development

should have provoked criticism on the side of those

who care about the purity and autonomy of methods

Iconology was criticized as far as its internal coherence

and also as far as its claim to be the integral method

of the study of art are concerned (Białostocki 1962)

Studies by R Klein E Forssman G Previtali G

Kubler B Teyssegravedre C Ginzburg and G Hermeren

expressed critical opinions in one or the other respect

Iconology linked art with the rest of history but it

disrupted the links between the work of art and other

things (Kubler 1962) Concentrating on meaning

iconology neglected art as form as individual expres-

sion Iconology implied a rational relationship between

intellectual content and artistic form On the one hand

one spoke of ldquoiconological diminutionsrdquo (Kubler

1962)mdashlimitations of research to meaning only But

on the other hand the overstatements of iconology

were criticized its representatives sometimes seemed

540

to assume everything symbolized something And some

iconologists seemed to consider important in art not

that which makes art a different field of human activity

but that which connects art with other fieldsmdashwith

the history of ideas

There were of course critics who had the opposite

opinion Since the end of the eighteenth century a

direct experience of art was more and more valued

and its symbolical function considered as a burden

J G von Herder said ein Kunstwerk ist der Kunst

wegen da aber bei einem Symbole ist die Kunst

dienend (ldquoA work of art is there because of art but

with a symbol art is a servicerdquo) Similar opinions were

expressed by nineteenth-century art writers and in this

century they have been voiced by Benedetto Croce and

by other Italian opponents of contenutismo by which

they meant interest in content For such critics to put

stress on iconography was to miss the essential in art

and to focus attention on a subordinate function of art

Also among scholars who considered the function

of representation and of communication as a legitimate

and important function of art criticism was expressed

not against the principle of an iconographical or icon-

ological investigation but against overstatements in

their application The introduction of the idea of ldquodis-

guised symbolismrdquo has created a danger of course of

opening the way to fanciful interpretations The alle-

gorical and symbolical function of mythological imag-

ery in classical art is also difficult to interpret precisely

Since no literary sources give a key to an interpretation

of the iconography of the sarcophagi very divergent

theories have been expressed concerning their meaning

Some archaeologists like F Cumont (1942) believe

that mythological and allegorical imagery (Anadyo-

mene Sea-Thiasos Personifications of the Seasons) is

to be read symbolically The Sea-Thiasos for instance

is to be interpreted as a symbol of the journey of the

souls of the deceased to the islands of the blessed

Others like A D Nock (1946) do not find enough

evidence to accept other than a decorative function

in such imagery

The intrusion of some representatives of psychology

eg C G Jung into iconographic studies giving them

an unhistorical turn in their search for ldquoarchetypal

imagesrdquo has complicated the situation although art

historians in general understandably have not accepted

that kind of approach to symbolism (Frankfort 1958

Gombrich 1965)

The fact that iconographic interpretations sometimes

lack satisfactory proofs does not detract from the im-

portance of such investigations so long as they are

conducted according to the requirements of historical

methods and take into account the corrective princi-

ples established by Panofsky A correct acquaintance

with the way of thinking of the artist the patron or the

viewer based on a satisfactory knowledge of documen-

tary visual and literary sources an awareness of the

choice situations produced by historical developments

may enable art historians to discover the secondary

meaning of a work of art as well as its intrinsic mean-

ing It is of course possible that the art historian will

meet some works for which it will not be possible to re-

construct in a satisfactory way the world of ideas that

would account for the meaning of those works In such

cases a reliable interpretation is simply not possible

R Berliner (1945 1966) criticized the widespread

opinion according to which content of the works of

visual arts in the Middle Ages had to be checked

against the literary sources considered as the only

medium in which ideological innovations were per-

mitted Berliner pleaded for assuming a considerable

ldquofreedomrdquo in the medieval artist and he considered

iconographic innovation possible even when no writ-

ten evidence could be found Meyer Schapiro (1947)

presented proofs that sometimes purely aesthetic rea-

sons decided the character of the work of art even as

early as the Romanesque period

We can only touch on some specific discussions going

on in the field of iconographic research But iconogra-

phic research is far from being a closed system and

the relative share of iconographic and stylistic criticism

in the work of art historians is always a matter of

discussion It is certain that the ldquoiconographicrdquo period

in the study of art has enlarged in a considerable way

the understanding of the art of the past and that it

has connected art history in a way unknown before

with the other historical disciplines and above all others

with the history of ideas

BIBLIOGRAPHY

L B Alberti On Painting ed J Spencer (New Haven

1956 revised ed 1966) E Auerbach ldquoFigurardquo (1944) trans

and published in Scenes From the Drama of European Liter-

ature (New York 1959) pp 11-76 K Bauch ldquoImagordquo

(1960) Studien zur Kunstgeschichte (Berlin 1967) pp 1-20

G P Bellori Descrizione delle imagini dipinte da Raffaello

(Rome 1695 ed used is 1751) R Berliner ldquoThe Free-

dom of Medieval Artrdquo Gazette des Beaux-Arts 628 (1945)

263-88 idem ldquoBemerkungen zu einigen Darstellungen des

Erloumlsers als Schmerzensmannrdquo Das Muumlnster 9 (1956)

97-117x J Białostocki ldquoIconografia e Iconologiardquo Enciclo-

pedia Universale dellArte (1962) Vol VII cols 163-75

trans as Encyclopedia of World Art (1966) Vol VII cols

769-85 lists almost all important older contributions to this

field idem ldquoRomantische Ikonographierdquo Stil und Ikonog-

raphie (Dresden 1966) pp 156-81 idem ldquoKompozycja

emblematyczna epitafioacutew ślaskich XVI wiekurdquo (ldquoEmblem-

atic Composition of Silesian Epitaphs of the Sixteenth Cen-

turyrdquo) Ze studioacutew nad Sztuka XVI wieku na Řlasku

(Wrocław 1968) pp 77-93 idem ldquoEsilio Privatordquo Bulletin

du Museacutee National de Varsovie 10 (1969) 95-101 J

541

Chydenius The Theory of Medieval Symbolism (Helsingfors

1960) Series of the Societas Scientiarum Fennica Com-

mentationes Humanarum Litterarum 27 2 R J Clements

Picta Poesis (Rome 1960) F Creuzer Symbolik und

Mythologie der Alten Voumllker (Leipzig and Darmstadt 1810

revised ed 1819) F Cumont Recherches sur le symbolisme

funeacuteraire des Romains (Paris 1942) L Eitner ldquoThe Open

Window and the Storm-Tossed Boatrdquo Art Bulletin 37

(1955) 281-90 H Frankfort ldquoThe Archetype in Analytical

Psychology and the History of Religionrdquo Journal of the

Warburg and Courtauld Institutes 21 (1958) 166-78

K Garas ldquoAllegorie und Geschichte in der Venezianischen

Malerei des 18 Jahrhundertsrdquo in proceedings of the XXI

International Congress of the History of Art Bonn Stil und

Uumlberlieferung in der Kunst des Abendlandes (Berlin 1967)

3 280-83 K Giehlow ldquoDie Hieroglyphenkunde des

Humanismus in der Allegorie der Renaissancerdquo Jahrbuch

der Kunsthistorischen Sammlungen des Allerhochsten

Kaiserhauses 32 (1915) 1-232 C Gilbert ldquoOn Subject and

Not-Subject in Italian Renaissance Picturesrdquo Art Bulletin

34 (1952) 202-16 C Ginzburg ldquoDa A Warburg a E H

Gombrich Note su un problema di metodordquo Studi medi-

evali series 3 7 (1966) 1015-65 E H Gombrich ldquoIcones

Symbolicae The Visual Image in Neo-Platonic Thoughtrdquo

Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes 11 (1948)

163-92 idem ldquoThe Use of Art for the Study of Symbolsrdquo

American Psychologist 20 (1965) A Grabar Liconoclasme

byzantin Dossier archeacuteologique (Paris 1957) idem Chris-

tian Iconography A Study of Its Origins (Princeton 1969)

S J Gudlaugsson De Comedianten bij Jan Steen en zijn

tijdgenooten (s-Gravenhage 1945) W S Heckscher ldquoThe

Genesis of Iconologyrdquo Stl und Uumlberlieferung in der Kunst

des Abendlandes Akten des XXI Internationalen Kon-

gresses fuumlr Kunstgeschichte (Berlin 1967) 3 239-62 G

Hermereacuten Representation and Meaning in the Visual Arts

A Study in the Methodology of Iconography and Iconology

Lund Studies in Philosophy Vol I (Lund 1969) R Hinks

Myth and Allegory in Ancient Art (London 1939) W

Hofmann Das Irdische Paradies (Munich 1960) G J

Hoogewerff ldquoLIconologie et son importance pour leacutetude

systeacutematique de lart chreacutetienrdquo Rivista dArcheologia Cris-

tiana 8 (1931) 53-82 E de Jongh Zinne- en minnebeelden

in de schilderkunst van de zeventiende eeuw (mdash1967) idem

ldquoErotica in Vogelperspectief De dubbelzinnigheid van een

reeks 17de eeuwse genrevoorstellingenrdquo Simiolus 3

(1968-69) 22-72 L Kalinowski ldquoTreści ideowe i estetyczne

Drzwi Gnieźnieńskichrdquo (ldquoIdeological and Aesthetic Content

of the Gniezno Bronze Doorsrdquo) in Drzwi Gnieźnieńskie ed

M Walicki (Wroclaw 1959) 2 7-160 H Keller Tizians

Poesie fuumlr Koumlnig Philip II von Spanien (Wiesbaden 1969)

R Klein ldquoLa theacuteorie de lexpression figureacutee dans les traiteacutes

italiens sur les imprese 1555-1612rdquo Bibliothegraveque dHu-

manisme et Renaissance 19 (1957) 320-41 republished with

the other relevant studies in la forme et lintelligible (Paris

1969) R Klibansky E Panofsky F Saxl Saturn and Melan-

choly (London 1964) J B Knipping Ikonografie van de

Contra-Reformatie in de Nederlanden (Hilversum 1939-40)

G Kubler The Shape of Time (New Haven and London

1962) R W Lee ldquoUt pictura poesisrdquo Art Bulletin 22

(1940) 197-269 E Macircle Lart religieux du XIIIe siegravecle en

France (Paris 1898) English ed used (New York 1958)

idem Lart religieux de la fin du Moyen-Age en France

(Paris 1908) idem Lart religieux du XIIe siegravecle en France

(Paris 1922) idem Lart religieux apregraves le Concile de Trente

(Paris 1932) J Maurin Białostocka Lessing i sztuki plas-

tyczne (ldquoLessing and the visual artsrdquo) (Wroclaw Warszawa

Krakoacutew 1969) E F von Monroy Embleme und Emblem-

buumlcher in den Niederlanden 1560-1630 ed H M von Erffa

(Utrecht 1964) J Montagu ldquoThe Painted Enigma and

French Seventeenth Century Artrdquo Journal of the Warburg

and Courtauld Institutes 31 (1968) 307-35 W Mrazek

Ikonologie der barocken Deckenmalerei (Vienna 1953)

Uumlsterreichische Akademie der Wissenschaften Philo-

sophisch-historische Klasse Sitzungsberichte 2283 A D

Nock ldquoSarcophagi and Symbolismrdquo American Journal of

Archaeology 50 (1946) 166ff D Panofsky and E Panofsky

ldquoThe Iconography of the Galeacuterie Franccedilois Ier at Fontaine-

bleaurdquo Gazette des Beaux-Arts 652 (1958) 113-90

E Panofsky ldquoUumlber das Verhaumlltnis der Kunstgeschichte zur

Kunsttheorierdquo Zeitschrift fuumlr Aesthetik und allgemeine

Kunstwissenschaft 18 (1925) 129-61 idem Studies in

Iconology (New York 1939) idem ed Abbot Suger (Prince-

ton 1946) idem Gothic Architecture and Scholasticism

(Latrobe Pa 1951) idem Early Netherlandish Painting

(Cambridge Mass 1953) idem Meaning in the Visual Arts

(Garden City N Y 1955) idem Renaissance and Renas-

cences in Western Art (Stockholm 1960) idem Tomb Sculp-

ture (New York 1964) E Panofsky and F Saxl ldquoClassical

Mythology in Medieval Artrdquo Metropolitan Museum Studies

4 (1932-33) 228-80 M Praz Studies in Seventeenth Cen-

tury Imagery (London 1939-47 2nd ed Rome 1964) S

Ringbom ldquoDevotional Images and Imaginative Devotions

Notes on the Place of Art in Late Medieval Private Pietyrdquo

Gazette des Beaux-Arts 6 73 (1969) 159-70 Joseph Sauer

Symbolik des Kirchengebaumludes und seiner Ausstattung in

der Auffassung des Mittelalters 2nd ed (Freiburg i B

1924) F Saxl ldquoFruumlhes Christentum und spaumltes Heidentum

in ihren kuumlnstlerischen Ausdrucksformenrdquo Wiener Jahrbuch

fuumlr Kunstgeschichte 2 (1923) 63-121 M Schapiro ldquoThe

Ruthwell Crossrdquo Art Bulletin 26 (1944) 232-45 idem ldquoOn

the Aesthetic Attitude in Romanesque Artrdquo in Art and

Thought issued in Honour of Ananda Coomaraswamy

(London 1947) 139-50 J Seznec The Survival of the Pagan

Gods (New York 1953) O G von Simson The Gothic

Cathedral (New York 1956) R E Spear ldquoThe Literary

Source of Poussins Realm of Florardquo The Burlington Maga-

zine 107 (1965) 563-69 L Volkmann Bilderschriften der

Renaissance (Leipzig 1923) Hans van de Waal Drie

eeuwen vaderlandsche geschieduitbeelding 1500-1800 (s-

Gravenhage 1952) idem ldquoSome Principles of a General

Iconographical Classificationrdquo in Actes du XVIIe Congregraves

International dHistoire de lArt Amsterdam 1952 (La Haye

1955) 601-06 E Wind ldquoCharity the Case History of a

Patternrdquo Journal of the Warburg Institute 1 (1937) 322ff

JAN BIAŁOSTOCKI

[See also Allegory Baroque Classicism Criticism Enlight-

enment Motif Myth Naturalism in Art Neo-Platonism

Renaissance Humanism Romanticism Symbolism Tem-

perance Ut pictura poesis]

work was often amateurish in character but it is unde-

niable that books by A N Didron Histoire de Dieu

(Paris 1843) the first part of a comprehensive pro-

jected but not completed iconography of Christian art

A Crosnier Iconographie chreacutetienne (Caen 1848) C

Cahier Caracteacuteristiques des saints (Paris 1867) C

Rohault de Fleury Archeacuteologie chreacutetienne les saints

de la messe et leurs monuments 12 vols (Paris

1893-1900) L Breacutehier Lart chreacutetien son deacuteveloppe-

ment iconographique des origines agrave nos jours (Paris

1918) P Perdrizet V Leroquais and G de Jerphanion

have built up a solid body of iconographical knowl-

edge on which scholars of the twentieth century were

able to erect a modern comprehensive structure In

the field of Byzantine iconography it was Gabriel

Millets Recherches sur liconographie de leacutevangile aux

XIVe XVe et XVIe siegravecles (Paris 1916 reprint

1960) that was basic for any further study For Western

chiefly French art a well-written and learned work

appealing to the general reader as well as to the

scholar was produced by Eacutemile Macircle who in his four

volumes of the history of religious art (1898-1932) has

presented a well-composed synthetic image of icono-

graphical development A lexicographic summary of

these studies of generations of French scholars is pre-

sented in the Dictionnaire darcheacuteologie chreacutetienne et

de liturgie published from 1907 to 1953 and edited

by F Cabrol and H Leclerq A recent reference work

is that by L Reacuteau Iconographie de lart chreacutetien (Paris

1955-59) Russian scholars have done important work

in the field of Byzantine and Orthodox iconography

of religious art The most prominent are N P Kon-

dakov Ikonografia Bogomatieri (St Petersburg 1911

2nd ed 1914-15) D V Ainalov Mosaiki IV i V vekov

(St Petersburg 1895) and N Pokrovski Otcherki

pamyatnikov christianskogo isskusstva i ikonografii (St

Petersburg 1894 3rd ed 1910) V Lasarev and M

Alpatov belonging to the mid-twentieth-century gen-

eration of Russian scholars discuss iconography in

several works on religious art German scholarship

produced in the nineteenth century works by F Piper

A Springer and H Detzel Useful compendia were

produced in the early twentieth century by J Sauer

W Molsdorf K Kuumlnstle and J Braun Dutch scholars

C Smits J B Knipping and J J M Timmers contrib-

uted to iconographic studies in recent times Knip-

pings book (1939-40) being the most important work

on the iconography of the Counter-Reformation and

supplementing Macircles volume of 1932 In the twentieth

century on C R Moreys initiative iconographic

studies were inaugurated in North America Focused

on earlier medieval art these studies developed at

Princeton University

A new direction characteristic of iconographic

studies in the twentieth century has been given to

them by the international school of art historical re-

search inaugurated by the Hamburg scholar Aby

Warburg At the International Congress for the History

of Art at Rome in 1912 he presented a sensational

astrological interpretation of the frescoes painted by

Francesco Cossa and his collaborators in Palazzo

Schifanoja at Ferrara Warburg solved the secret of

those representations which had puzzled the ingenuity

of several former students interpreting them as images

of zodiacal signs and their decans But he did not limit

536

his contribution to the presentation of his results He

wanted to stress the importance of his approach and

of the method of study which later became connected

with his name He said

I hope that through the method used by me for explication

of the frescoes at the Palazzo Schifanoja of Ferrara I have

proved that an iconological analysis which does not allow

itself to be diverted by the rules of frontier police from

considering antiquity Middle Ages and modern times as

interconnected periods nor from analyzing the most liberal

and the most applied works of art as equally important

documents of expression that this method endeavoring as

it does to throw light upon one dark spot clears up at

the same time great interconnected developments

(Warburg 1912 Heckscher 1967)

Warburgs influence on the history of art was very

great although he himself did not write much It was

mainly the posthumous impact of his ideas promul-

gated as they were by Fritz Saxl which contributed

to the specific direction of studies concentrated in the

library Warburg founded in Hamburg and which Saxl

succeeded in transplanting during the Nazi era to

London where it became the Warburg Institute of the

University of London While the object of study of the

nineteenth-century iconographers was mainly religious

art in its relation to religious literary sources and lit-

urgy for Warburg the study of images was a study

of their relations to religion to poetry to myth to

science and to social and political life Art was for

him closely connected with the polyphonic structure

of historical life

Warburgs ideas had a great importance for the most

influential theory of iconographic interpretation in our

century that elaborated by Erwin Panofsky In Ham-

burg where Warburg Saxl and Panofsky were active

in the twenties Ernst Cassirer built up his philosophy

of symbolic forms which constituted an additional

background for Panofskys system being derived as

his own methodology was from the traditions of

Kantian philosophy Around 1930 Panofskys ideas

ripened into a system which found formulation in his

book herkules am Scheidewege (1930) and later in a

theoretical article of 1932 G J Hoogewerff was how-

ever the first to propose the word ldquoiconologyrdquo as a

name for the method of an analysis of content in a

work of art (Warburg spoke of iconological analysis)

In 1931 he proposed distinguishing between iconogra-

phy as a descriptive science aiming at the identifica-

tion of themes and ldquoiconologyrdquo aiming at the under-

standing ldquoof symbolic dogmatic or mystical meaning

which is expressed (or hidden) in figurative formsrdquo He

stressed that ldquoiconologyrdquo deals with works of art with-

out classifying them according to the technique used

or to the achieved perfection taking into account only

their meaning Hoogewerff saw the last aim of iconol-

ogy in finding out the cultural and ideological back-

ground expressed by works of art and the cultural and

social significance which can be attributed to certain

forms and to means of expression in the same time

Hoogewerffs part in the expansion of iconology was

limited because he did not endorse his methodical

proposals with examples of historical interpretations

Erwin Panofsky with whose name iconology has

been connected ever since not only developed its

theoretical foundations but contributed by his practi-

cal work in art history to the main triumph of iconol-

ogy after the Second World War The most influential

book by Panofsky has been Studies in Iconology (1939)

in which his masterly presentation of the method was

connected with its equally excellent exemplification

2 Panofsky considers the interpretation of a work

of art as falling on three levels On the first level the

object of interpretation is the primary or natural sub-

ject matter The function of interpretation is called

ldquopre-iconographical descriptionrdquo In order to be able

to arrive at a correct interpretation on that level the

interpreter must have a practical experience (ldquofamili-

arity with objects and eventsrdquo) common to everybody

at least in one cultural sphere However he has to

control his observations by a ldquocorrective knowledge

of the history of stylerdquo (ldquoinsight into the manner in

which under varying historical conditions objects and

events were expressed by formsrdquo) On the second level

the function of interpretation is called ldquoiconographical

analysisrdquo its object is the ldquosecondary or conventional

subject matterrdquo constituting the world of images his-

tories and allegories The interpreters equipment in

this case is obviously the knowledge of literary sources

giving him a ldquofamiliarity with specific themes and

conceptsrdquo The interpreter has to control his observa-

tions by ldquothe insight into the manner in which under

varying historical conditions specific themes or con-

cepts were expressed by objects and eventsrdquo On the

third level the function of interpreting is called ldquoicon-

ographical analysis in a deeper senserdquo (1939) or ldquoicon-

ological analysisrdquo (1955) Its object is the ldquointrinsic

meaning or contentrdquo of a work of art The interpreters

equipment on that level should be a ldquofamiliarity with

the essential tendencies of the human mindrdquo and he

has to control his interpretation by the ldquoinsight into

the manner in which under varying historical condi-

tions essential tendencies of the human mind were

expressed by specific themes and conceptsrdquo Thus

taking all the time into account what Panofsky calls

the history of tradition the interpreter has to aim at

understanding the work of art its ldquoprimaryrdquo as well

as ldquosecondary subject matterrdquo as symptoms of some

fundamental tendency of the human mind typical of

537

a place a time a civilization and of an individual

responsible for the creation of the work ldquoIconologyrdquomdash

for Panofskymdashldquois a method of interpretation which

arises from synthesis rather than analysisrdquo Trying to

find the intrinsic meaning of a work of art

The art historian will have to check what he thinks is the

intrinsic meaning of the work or group of works against

what he thinks is the intrinsic meaning of as many other

documents of civilization historically related to that work

or group of works as he can master It is in the search

for intrinsic meaning or content that the various humanistic

disciplines meet on a common plane instead of serving as

handmaidens to each other

(Panofsky [1955] p 39)

The concept of intrinsic meaning of a work of art

was elaborated by Panofsky much earlier (1925) when

he interpreted in his own way the concept of Kunst-

wollen introduced by A Riegl to research in art

Panofsky understood this ldquoartistic volitionrdquo as an im-

manent ultimate meaning of a work of art which is

manifested in the way basic artistic problems are solved

in that work He used the same concept further to bring

art closer to the other fields of human activity Since

the ldquoimmanent ultimate senserdquo of the work of art is

nothing else than uniformity in the way of solving basic

artistic problems it is possible to compare that imma-

nent sense with immanent senses of the other human

works in various fields Panofsky did it for instance

when in one of his later works he compared the struc-

tural principles of Gothic architecture with those of

scholastic thinking (1951)

The system elaborated by Panofsky and exemplified

by his own work in art history was the first consistent

system of an integral interpretation of a work of visual

arts based on the analysis of content In principle

Panofskys system takes into account all the elements

of the work of art since it takes as the point of depar-

ture the sensual exterior shape of the work It is

however clear that its main scope is not the inter-

pretation of form as a bearer of meaning but the

understanding and interpretation of conventional alle-

gories literary themes and symbols as symptoms of

the history of the human mind It was that method

in the history of art which programmatically fostered

a collaboration with all the other disciplines of histori-

cal studies It was therefore one of the most influential

methods not only among art historians but also among

representatives of the other branches of humanistic

studies Although there were art historians who ex-

pressed a critical attitude toward ldquoiconologyrdquo as the

new method was soon baptized its influence was over-

whelming

3 It is not only but mainly due to Panofsky that

one can venture to call ldquoiconographicalrdquo that period

of art history as a historical discipline which followed

the Second World War and to oppose it to the ldquostylis-

ticrdquo one which preceded it It does not mean of course

that no iconographic research took place in the

twenties or thirties the works of Macircle Knipping van

Marle Wilpert Saxl and of Panofsky himself would

contradict such a statement Neither is it true that

purely formal research aiming at stylistic classification

and analysis discontinued after World War II It is

evident that in the last decades (from 1940 on) icono-

graphic interests came to the fore and became domi-

nant in many countries Iconographical studies grew

so much in number and importance that they made

it possible to undertake and to publish new reference

works of iconographic character like dictionaries

written by one scholar (Guy de Tervarent Aurenham-

mer) as well as larger works based on a collaboration

of several scholars (Encyclopedias of German art of

Antiquity and Christian civilization of Byzantine art)

Interest in meaning and iconography has appeared

also among historians of political social and religious

institutions The symbolism of signs ceremonies cos-

tumes and arms was studied by such scholars as A

Alfoumlldi ldquoInsignien und Tracht der roumlmischen Kaiserrdquo

Mitteilungen des deutschen Archaumlologischen Instituts

Roumlmische Abteilung (1935) 1ff ldquoDie Geburt der

kaiserlichen Bildsymbolikrdquo museum Helveticum 9

(1952) 204ff also by A Grabar Martyrium (Paris

1943-46) by E H Kantorowicz laudes Regiae

(Berkeley and Los Angeles 1946) The Kings Two

Bodies (Princeton 1957) by H P L Orange Studies

in the Iconography of Cosmic Kingship in the Ancient

World (Oslo 1953) Art Forms and Civic Life in the

Late Roman Empire (Princeton 1965) and by P E

Schramm herrschaftszeichen und Staatssymbolik

(Stuttgart 1954-56) In their studies iconography far

transcends the borders of art and it helps to build up

a history of ideas by following their various visual

expressions

Pioneering studies by K Giehlow F Saxl and E

Panofsky enlarged iconographical interests above all

to encompass the large field of secular art whereas

they had been mainly limited to religious iconography

in the work of preceding generations of scholars The

whole complicated and hardly known large body of

meanings disguised by the cryptic language of hiero-

glyphs emblems and iconologies became one of the

main topics of study

This established a collaboration between historians

of art and literature Mario Prazs admirable study of

emblems and his bibliography of emblem books

(1939-47) belongs now to the foundations of studies

in that field Publications by W S Heckscher and

A K Wirth by R S Clements E F von Monroy and

538

H M von Erffa E de Jongh and H Miedema and

several other scholars have elucidated the structure

and meaning of emblems and have shown their tre-

mendous influence on art even in its most monumental

and dignified forms An uninterrupted flow of reprints

of emblem books which brought within the reach of

modern students inaccessible volumes of sixteenth- and

seventeenth-century emblem writers were crowned by

the monumental undertaking of Arthur Henkel and

Albrecht Schoumlne who compiled an excellent volume

including almost all the texts and images needed for

the study of emblemsmdashEmblemata Handbuch zur

Sinnbildkunst des XVI und XVII Jahrhunderts

(Stuttgart 1967) Research was under way on hiero-

glyphs (Erik Iversen) and on the imprese (the late

Robert Klein) as well as on iconologies and allegories

These studies have disclosed meanings of the art of

the Renaissance of mannerism and of the baroque not

understood by nineteenth-century scholars

E Panofsky deciphered extremely farfetched and

individualistic programs of decoration of such famous

ensembles as the Camera di San Paolo by Correggio

in Parma the Gallery of Franccedilois I at Fontainebleau

Edgar Wind Andreacute Chastel and other scholars inter-

preted Raphaels decorations in the Popes apartments

Michelangelos art furnished material to detailed com-

prehensive studies by Panofsky Ch de Tolnay H von

Einem and Pope-Hennessy in which the share of

Neo-Platonic thinking in the ideological background

of the celebrated works of Michelangelo was discussed

Innumerable studies have been devoted to Titians

mythological paintings J R Martin presented expla-

nations of the Carracci frescoes in the Camerino Far-

nese and in the great gallery of the Palazzo Farnese

Bruegel considered in the nineteenth century as a drocircle

painter of peasant life has been shown by de Tolnay

Stridbeck and others to be an allegorist expressing a

skeptical humanistic outlook J S Held and W

Stechow contributed several articles to the under-

standing of mythological and allegorical contents in

Flemish and Dutch art of the sixteenth and seventeenth

centuries Rembrandts iconography was put into new

light by the two above-mentioned scholars as well as

by H M Rotermund H van de Waal J G van Gelder

H von Einem and Ch Tuumlmpel The intricate symbol-

ism and subject matter of historical and mythological

pictures by Nicolas Poussin were elucidated by such

masters of iconographic research as E H Gombrich

W Friedlaumlnder E Panofsky and above all by A Blunt

who in his monograph on Poussin presented a new

deep synthetic view of the ideas expressed by that

artists works Goyas individualistic secret symbolism

was also studied with the help of emblems and the

allegorical tradition Berninis works received iconolo

gical treatment by R Wittkower and H Kauffmann

All of this research does not mean that there was a

lack of interest in religious iconography M Schapiro

A Katzenellenbogen H Bober F Wormald and V

Elbern among others have contributed considerably

to deepen our understanding of the not completely

explained motifs and prominent works of medieval art

Panofsky has also shed a new light on several problems

of sepulchral iconography studies by such scholars as

R Berliner G von der Osten L Kalinowski S

Ringbom and T Dobrzeniecki contributed to late

medieval iconography in a new way Berliner stressed

the autonomous invention of visual artists or their

patrons while according to the traditional view popu-

larized by Macircle late medieval art should have followed

strictly literary sources

The religious content of modern art especially its

allegorical form in the late baroque period has been

examined and thanks to studies by such scholars as

W Mrazek and H Bauer has become better known

and understandable A great change was introduced

by ldquoiconologyrdquo into architectural history Buildings

which were formerly interpreted from aesthetic and

functional points of view only have been shown to

present allegorical symbolical or even emblematic

ideas Publications by leading art historians (R Witt-

kower B Smith G Bandmann O von Simson and

G C Argan) have presented medieval and modern

architecture as a bearer of meaning and have essen-

tially changed the character of architectural history

The iconography of classicism and romanticism

received a thorough treatment in books by W Hof-

mann and R Rosenblum as well as in several studies

devoted to individual themes and pictures G Hersey

has for example shown how much Delacroixs decora-

tion of the library in the Palais Bourbon owed to

Giambattista Vicos ideas about history More recently

studies on ldquoSymbolismrdquo have been undertaken Vincent

van Goghs symbolic language and iconography were

the object of studies by J Seznec C Nordenfalk and

other scholars On Ceacutezannes iconography interesting

remarks have been published by M Schapiro

Along with the development of iconographic studies

the establishment of centers of documentation has

advanced The ldquoFrenchrdquo stage in the development of

iconography has not left any marked trace in this

respect It was in America thanks to C R Morey that

the famous Index of Christian Art at the Department

of Art and Archaeology of Princeton University was

founded at first limited to the early Middle Ages then

enlarged so as to include art up to the end of the

medieval period Copies of the Princeton Index are

to be found also at the Istituto Pontificio dArcheolo-

gia in Rome and in the Dumbarton Oaks Library and

539

Collection in Washington DC But that Index ends

ldquowhere art beginsrdquomdashas Panofsky used to say jokingly

The need for systematic iconographic files for modern

art was strongly felt In 1956 A Pigler published a

very useful book Barockthemen in which he listed

thousands of works of art of the baroque period ac-

cording to their subjects It was however far from

being a systematic work The first essay in establishing

a systematic iconographic index for art of any time

was done by The Netherlands Institute for Art History

at the Hague then directed by H Gerson which took

the initiative around 1950 of publishing a postcard-size

photographic index of its rich collection of photographs

of Netherlandish art ordered according to an icono-

graphic principle Once such an idea was formulated

the need for a comprehensive consistent and clear

iconographic classification was urgent H van de Waal

of Leiden University devised such a system of classifi-

cation based on decimal divisions consistent and easy

to read He based his system on experiences of ethnol-

ogy and on such elaborated systems of classification

as that devised by Stith Thompson in his Motif-Index

of Folk Literature Vols I-VI (Bloomington Ind

1932-36 rev ed 1955-58) Van de Waal has elabor-

ated a system in which the first five main sections

classify five fundamental groups of portrayable things

namely (1) The Supernatural (2) Nature (3) Man (4)

Society (5) Abstracts The last four classify specific

subjects such as (6) History (7) The Bible (8) Myths

Legends and Tales (with the exception of classical

antiquity) (9) Myths and Legends of Classical Antiq-

uity Van de Waal combines the classification in the

first and in the second group in order to classify general

as well as specific subjects Christ in his system is

described with the sign ldquo11 Drdquo (ldquo1rdquo standing for Su-

pernatural ldquo11rdquo for Christianity ldquoDrdquo for Christ) the

adult Christ = 11 D 3 since ldquoshepherdrdquo on the other

hand bears the signature 47 I 221 the adult Christ

as a shepherd can be described in this system by the

following formula 11 D 3 = 47 I 221 Van de Waal

has also provided means to describe more complex

images which he expresses by adding elements between

brackets The Annunciation with God the Father and

a winged Angel is expressed by the following formula

73 A 5 (+1 +41) ldquo1rdquo standing for God the Father

and ldquo41rdquo for a winged Angel (van de Waal 1952) This

system elaborated for many years by its inventor and

prepared for publication in many volumes has proved

most useful in the practical arrangement of the Icono-

graphical Index of the Netherlandish Art and as the

only one until now in existence it became used more

and more in spite of some ambiguities and difficulties

As an endeavor to classify ldquoall portrayablerdquo things

persons events and ideas and to create a consistent

method to describe every possible image van de Waals

system may be considered as one of the important

achievements of the ldquoiconographical stagerdquo in the

development of art history Iconographic files exist of

course in many institutions as for example in the Ikon-

ologisch Instituut of Utrecht University one of the

main centers of study in emblematics and of course

in the most venerable institution of iconographic re-

search the Warburg Institute of the London University

and in other places

4 What was the result of this ldquoiconographicrdquo turn

in the development of the history of art One thing

is certain that this discipline by necessity has come

closer to other humanistic disciplines Since the

ldquointrinsicrdquo meaningmdashin Panofskys terminologymdashof a

work of art cannot be described in terms used by the

history of art but only in terms borrowed from the

history of philosophy of religion of social structures

of science and so on the ldquoiconological methodrdquo took

for granted and provoked such a collaboration Art

history was perhaps the first or one of the first to show

new interest in investigation of meaning It was fol-

lowed by similar developments in ethnology and in

linguistics

We have mentioned above a parallel development

in Byzantine and classical studies Panofskys influence

has been considerable in the other fields of humanistic

research Since ldquoiconologyrdquo aimed at discovering ideas

expressed by a work of art it awoke in art historians

an interest in the history of ideas This general shift

of emphasis and of the direction of studies from mainly

formal ones to studies aiming at ideas underlying art

was perhaps responsible among others for the fact that

several contributions to the Journal of the History of

Ideas have been written by historians of art

It is not difficult to see that such a development

should have provoked criticism on the side of those

who care about the purity and autonomy of methods

Iconology was criticized as far as its internal coherence

and also as far as its claim to be the integral method

of the study of art are concerned (Białostocki 1962)

Studies by R Klein E Forssman G Previtali G

Kubler B Teyssegravedre C Ginzburg and G Hermeren

expressed critical opinions in one or the other respect

Iconology linked art with the rest of history but it

disrupted the links between the work of art and other

things (Kubler 1962) Concentrating on meaning

iconology neglected art as form as individual expres-

sion Iconology implied a rational relationship between

intellectual content and artistic form On the one hand

one spoke of ldquoiconological diminutionsrdquo (Kubler

1962)mdashlimitations of research to meaning only But

on the other hand the overstatements of iconology

were criticized its representatives sometimes seemed

540

to assume everything symbolized something And some

iconologists seemed to consider important in art not

that which makes art a different field of human activity

but that which connects art with other fieldsmdashwith

the history of ideas

There were of course critics who had the opposite

opinion Since the end of the eighteenth century a

direct experience of art was more and more valued

and its symbolical function considered as a burden

J G von Herder said ein Kunstwerk ist der Kunst

wegen da aber bei einem Symbole ist die Kunst

dienend (ldquoA work of art is there because of art but

with a symbol art is a servicerdquo) Similar opinions were

expressed by nineteenth-century art writers and in this

century they have been voiced by Benedetto Croce and

by other Italian opponents of contenutismo by which

they meant interest in content For such critics to put

stress on iconography was to miss the essential in art

and to focus attention on a subordinate function of art

Also among scholars who considered the function

of representation and of communication as a legitimate

and important function of art criticism was expressed

not against the principle of an iconographical or icon-

ological investigation but against overstatements in

their application The introduction of the idea of ldquodis-

guised symbolismrdquo has created a danger of course of

opening the way to fanciful interpretations The alle-

gorical and symbolical function of mythological imag-

ery in classical art is also difficult to interpret precisely

Since no literary sources give a key to an interpretation

of the iconography of the sarcophagi very divergent

theories have been expressed concerning their meaning

Some archaeologists like F Cumont (1942) believe

that mythological and allegorical imagery (Anadyo-

mene Sea-Thiasos Personifications of the Seasons) is

to be read symbolically The Sea-Thiasos for instance

is to be interpreted as a symbol of the journey of the

souls of the deceased to the islands of the blessed

Others like A D Nock (1946) do not find enough

evidence to accept other than a decorative function

in such imagery

The intrusion of some representatives of psychology

eg C G Jung into iconographic studies giving them

an unhistorical turn in their search for ldquoarchetypal

imagesrdquo has complicated the situation although art

historians in general understandably have not accepted

that kind of approach to symbolism (Frankfort 1958

Gombrich 1965)

The fact that iconographic interpretations sometimes

lack satisfactory proofs does not detract from the im-

portance of such investigations so long as they are

conducted according to the requirements of historical

methods and take into account the corrective princi-

ples established by Panofsky A correct acquaintance

with the way of thinking of the artist the patron or the

viewer based on a satisfactory knowledge of documen-

tary visual and literary sources an awareness of the

choice situations produced by historical developments

may enable art historians to discover the secondary

meaning of a work of art as well as its intrinsic mean-

ing It is of course possible that the art historian will

meet some works for which it will not be possible to re-

construct in a satisfactory way the world of ideas that

would account for the meaning of those works In such

cases a reliable interpretation is simply not possible

R Berliner (1945 1966) criticized the widespread

opinion according to which content of the works of

visual arts in the Middle Ages had to be checked

against the literary sources considered as the only

medium in which ideological innovations were per-

mitted Berliner pleaded for assuming a considerable

ldquofreedomrdquo in the medieval artist and he considered

iconographic innovation possible even when no writ-

ten evidence could be found Meyer Schapiro (1947)

presented proofs that sometimes purely aesthetic rea-

sons decided the character of the work of art even as

early as the Romanesque period

We can only touch on some specific discussions going

on in the field of iconographic research But iconogra-

phic research is far from being a closed system and

the relative share of iconographic and stylistic criticism

in the work of art historians is always a matter of

discussion It is certain that the ldquoiconographicrdquo period

in the study of art has enlarged in a considerable way

the understanding of the art of the past and that it

has connected art history in a way unknown before

with the other historical disciplines and above all others

with the history of ideas

BIBLIOGRAPHY

L B Alberti On Painting ed J Spencer (New Haven

1956 revised ed 1966) E Auerbach ldquoFigurardquo (1944) trans

and published in Scenes From the Drama of European Liter-

ature (New York 1959) pp 11-76 K Bauch ldquoImagordquo

(1960) Studien zur Kunstgeschichte (Berlin 1967) pp 1-20

G P Bellori Descrizione delle imagini dipinte da Raffaello

(Rome 1695 ed used is 1751) R Berliner ldquoThe Free-

dom of Medieval Artrdquo Gazette des Beaux-Arts 628 (1945)

263-88 idem ldquoBemerkungen zu einigen Darstellungen des

Erloumlsers als Schmerzensmannrdquo Das Muumlnster 9 (1956)

97-117x J Białostocki ldquoIconografia e Iconologiardquo Enciclo-

pedia Universale dellArte (1962) Vol VII cols 163-75

trans as Encyclopedia of World Art (1966) Vol VII cols

769-85 lists almost all important older contributions to this

field idem ldquoRomantische Ikonographierdquo Stil und Ikonog-

raphie (Dresden 1966) pp 156-81 idem ldquoKompozycja

emblematyczna epitafioacutew ślaskich XVI wiekurdquo (ldquoEmblem-

atic Composition of Silesian Epitaphs of the Sixteenth Cen-

turyrdquo) Ze studioacutew nad Sztuka XVI wieku na Řlasku

(Wrocław 1968) pp 77-93 idem ldquoEsilio Privatordquo Bulletin

du Museacutee National de Varsovie 10 (1969) 95-101 J

541

Chydenius The Theory of Medieval Symbolism (Helsingfors

1960) Series of the Societas Scientiarum Fennica Com-

mentationes Humanarum Litterarum 27 2 R J Clements

Picta Poesis (Rome 1960) F Creuzer Symbolik und

Mythologie der Alten Voumllker (Leipzig and Darmstadt 1810

revised ed 1819) F Cumont Recherches sur le symbolisme

funeacuteraire des Romains (Paris 1942) L Eitner ldquoThe Open

Window and the Storm-Tossed Boatrdquo Art Bulletin 37

(1955) 281-90 H Frankfort ldquoThe Archetype in Analytical

Psychology and the History of Religionrdquo Journal of the

Warburg and Courtauld Institutes 21 (1958) 166-78

K Garas ldquoAllegorie und Geschichte in der Venezianischen

Malerei des 18 Jahrhundertsrdquo in proceedings of the XXI

International Congress of the History of Art Bonn Stil und

Uumlberlieferung in der Kunst des Abendlandes (Berlin 1967)

3 280-83 K Giehlow ldquoDie Hieroglyphenkunde des

Humanismus in der Allegorie der Renaissancerdquo Jahrbuch

der Kunsthistorischen Sammlungen des Allerhochsten

Kaiserhauses 32 (1915) 1-232 C Gilbert ldquoOn Subject and

Not-Subject in Italian Renaissance Picturesrdquo Art Bulletin

34 (1952) 202-16 C Ginzburg ldquoDa A Warburg a E H

Gombrich Note su un problema di metodordquo Studi medi-

evali series 3 7 (1966) 1015-65 E H Gombrich ldquoIcones

Symbolicae The Visual Image in Neo-Platonic Thoughtrdquo

Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes 11 (1948)

163-92 idem ldquoThe Use of Art for the Study of Symbolsrdquo

American Psychologist 20 (1965) A Grabar Liconoclasme

byzantin Dossier archeacuteologique (Paris 1957) idem Chris-

tian Iconography A Study of Its Origins (Princeton 1969)

S J Gudlaugsson De Comedianten bij Jan Steen en zijn

tijdgenooten (s-Gravenhage 1945) W S Heckscher ldquoThe

Genesis of Iconologyrdquo Stl und Uumlberlieferung in der Kunst

des Abendlandes Akten des XXI Internationalen Kon-

gresses fuumlr Kunstgeschichte (Berlin 1967) 3 239-62 G

Hermereacuten Representation and Meaning in the Visual Arts

A Study in the Methodology of Iconography and Iconology

Lund Studies in Philosophy Vol I (Lund 1969) R Hinks

Myth and Allegory in Ancient Art (London 1939) W

Hofmann Das Irdische Paradies (Munich 1960) G J

Hoogewerff ldquoLIconologie et son importance pour leacutetude

systeacutematique de lart chreacutetienrdquo Rivista dArcheologia Cris-

tiana 8 (1931) 53-82 E de Jongh Zinne- en minnebeelden

in de schilderkunst van de zeventiende eeuw (mdash1967) idem

ldquoErotica in Vogelperspectief De dubbelzinnigheid van een

reeks 17de eeuwse genrevoorstellingenrdquo Simiolus 3

(1968-69) 22-72 L Kalinowski ldquoTreści ideowe i estetyczne

Drzwi Gnieźnieńskichrdquo (ldquoIdeological and Aesthetic Content

of the Gniezno Bronze Doorsrdquo) in Drzwi Gnieźnieńskie ed

M Walicki (Wroclaw 1959) 2 7-160 H Keller Tizians

Poesie fuumlr Koumlnig Philip II von Spanien (Wiesbaden 1969)

R Klein ldquoLa theacuteorie de lexpression figureacutee dans les traiteacutes

italiens sur les imprese 1555-1612rdquo Bibliothegraveque dHu-

manisme et Renaissance 19 (1957) 320-41 republished with

the other relevant studies in la forme et lintelligible (Paris

1969) R Klibansky E Panofsky F Saxl Saturn and Melan-

choly (London 1964) J B Knipping Ikonografie van de

Contra-Reformatie in de Nederlanden (Hilversum 1939-40)

G Kubler The Shape of Time (New Haven and London

1962) R W Lee ldquoUt pictura poesisrdquo Art Bulletin 22

(1940) 197-269 E Macircle Lart religieux du XIIIe siegravecle en

France (Paris 1898) English ed used (New York 1958)

idem Lart religieux de la fin du Moyen-Age en France

(Paris 1908) idem Lart religieux du XIIe siegravecle en France

(Paris 1922) idem Lart religieux apregraves le Concile de Trente

(Paris 1932) J Maurin Białostocka Lessing i sztuki plas-

tyczne (ldquoLessing and the visual artsrdquo) (Wroclaw Warszawa

Krakoacutew 1969) E F von Monroy Embleme und Emblem-

buumlcher in den Niederlanden 1560-1630 ed H M von Erffa

(Utrecht 1964) J Montagu ldquoThe Painted Enigma and

French Seventeenth Century Artrdquo Journal of the Warburg

and Courtauld Institutes 31 (1968) 307-35 W Mrazek

Ikonologie der barocken Deckenmalerei (Vienna 1953)

Uumlsterreichische Akademie der Wissenschaften Philo-

sophisch-historische Klasse Sitzungsberichte 2283 A D

Nock ldquoSarcophagi and Symbolismrdquo American Journal of

Archaeology 50 (1946) 166ff D Panofsky and E Panofsky

ldquoThe Iconography of the Galeacuterie Franccedilois Ier at Fontaine-

bleaurdquo Gazette des Beaux-Arts 652 (1958) 113-90

E Panofsky ldquoUumlber das Verhaumlltnis der Kunstgeschichte zur

Kunsttheorierdquo Zeitschrift fuumlr Aesthetik und allgemeine

Kunstwissenschaft 18 (1925) 129-61 idem Studies in

Iconology (New York 1939) idem ed Abbot Suger (Prince-

ton 1946) idem Gothic Architecture and Scholasticism

(Latrobe Pa 1951) idem Early Netherlandish Painting

(Cambridge Mass 1953) idem Meaning in the Visual Arts

(Garden City N Y 1955) idem Renaissance and Renas-

cences in Western Art (Stockholm 1960) idem Tomb Sculp-

ture (New York 1964) E Panofsky and F Saxl ldquoClassical

Mythology in Medieval Artrdquo Metropolitan Museum Studies

4 (1932-33) 228-80 M Praz Studies in Seventeenth Cen-

tury Imagery (London 1939-47 2nd ed Rome 1964) S

Ringbom ldquoDevotional Images and Imaginative Devotions

Notes on the Place of Art in Late Medieval Private Pietyrdquo

Gazette des Beaux-Arts 6 73 (1969) 159-70 Joseph Sauer

Symbolik des Kirchengebaumludes und seiner Ausstattung in

der Auffassung des Mittelalters 2nd ed (Freiburg i B

1924) F Saxl ldquoFruumlhes Christentum und spaumltes Heidentum

in ihren kuumlnstlerischen Ausdrucksformenrdquo Wiener Jahrbuch

fuumlr Kunstgeschichte 2 (1923) 63-121 M Schapiro ldquoThe

Ruthwell Crossrdquo Art Bulletin 26 (1944) 232-45 idem ldquoOn

the Aesthetic Attitude in Romanesque Artrdquo in Art and

Thought issued in Honour of Ananda Coomaraswamy

(London 1947) 139-50 J Seznec The Survival of the Pagan

Gods (New York 1953) O G von Simson The Gothic

Cathedral (New York 1956) R E Spear ldquoThe Literary

Source of Poussins Realm of Florardquo The Burlington Maga-

zine 107 (1965) 563-69 L Volkmann Bilderschriften der

Renaissance (Leipzig 1923) Hans van de Waal Drie

eeuwen vaderlandsche geschieduitbeelding 1500-1800 (s-

Gravenhage 1952) idem ldquoSome Principles of a General

Iconographical Classificationrdquo in Actes du XVIIe Congregraves

International dHistoire de lArt Amsterdam 1952 (La Haye

1955) 601-06 E Wind ldquoCharity the Case History of a

Patternrdquo Journal of the Warburg Institute 1 (1937) 322ff

JAN BIAŁOSTOCKI

[See also Allegory Baroque Classicism Criticism Enlight-

enment Motif Myth Naturalism in Art Neo-Platonism

Renaissance Humanism Romanticism Symbolism Tem-

perance Ut pictura poesis]

studies were inaugurated in North America Focused

on earlier medieval art these studies developed at

Princeton University

A new direction characteristic of iconographic

studies in the twentieth century has been given to

them by the international school of art historical re-

search inaugurated by the Hamburg scholar Aby

Warburg At the International Congress for the History

of Art at Rome in 1912 he presented a sensational

astrological interpretation of the frescoes painted by

Francesco Cossa and his collaborators in Palazzo

Schifanoja at Ferrara Warburg solved the secret of

those representations which had puzzled the ingenuity

of several former students interpreting them as images

of zodiacal signs and their decans But he did not limit

536

his contribution to the presentation of his results He

wanted to stress the importance of his approach and

of the method of study which later became connected

with his name He said

I hope that through the method used by me for explication

of the frescoes at the Palazzo Schifanoja of Ferrara I have

proved that an iconological analysis which does not allow

itself to be diverted by the rules of frontier police from

considering antiquity Middle Ages and modern times as

interconnected periods nor from analyzing the most liberal

and the most applied works of art as equally important

documents of expression that this method endeavoring as

it does to throw light upon one dark spot clears up at

the same time great interconnected developments

(Warburg 1912 Heckscher 1967)

Warburgs influence on the history of art was very

great although he himself did not write much It was

mainly the posthumous impact of his ideas promul-

gated as they were by Fritz Saxl which contributed

to the specific direction of studies concentrated in the

library Warburg founded in Hamburg and which Saxl

succeeded in transplanting during the Nazi era to

London where it became the Warburg Institute of the

University of London While the object of study of the

nineteenth-century iconographers was mainly religious

art in its relation to religious literary sources and lit-

urgy for Warburg the study of images was a study

of their relations to religion to poetry to myth to

science and to social and political life Art was for

him closely connected with the polyphonic structure

of historical life

Warburgs ideas had a great importance for the most

influential theory of iconographic interpretation in our

century that elaborated by Erwin Panofsky In Ham-

burg where Warburg Saxl and Panofsky were active

in the twenties Ernst Cassirer built up his philosophy

of symbolic forms which constituted an additional

background for Panofskys system being derived as

his own methodology was from the traditions of

Kantian philosophy Around 1930 Panofskys ideas

ripened into a system which found formulation in his

book herkules am Scheidewege (1930) and later in a

theoretical article of 1932 G J Hoogewerff was how-

ever the first to propose the word ldquoiconologyrdquo as a

name for the method of an analysis of content in a

work of art (Warburg spoke of iconological analysis)

In 1931 he proposed distinguishing between iconogra-

phy as a descriptive science aiming at the identifica-

tion of themes and ldquoiconologyrdquo aiming at the under-

standing ldquoof symbolic dogmatic or mystical meaning

which is expressed (or hidden) in figurative formsrdquo He

stressed that ldquoiconologyrdquo deals with works of art with-

out classifying them according to the technique used

or to the achieved perfection taking into account only

their meaning Hoogewerff saw the last aim of iconol-

ogy in finding out the cultural and ideological back-

ground expressed by works of art and the cultural and

social significance which can be attributed to certain

forms and to means of expression in the same time

Hoogewerffs part in the expansion of iconology was

limited because he did not endorse his methodical

proposals with examples of historical interpretations

Erwin Panofsky with whose name iconology has

been connected ever since not only developed its

theoretical foundations but contributed by his practi-

cal work in art history to the main triumph of iconol-

ogy after the Second World War The most influential

book by Panofsky has been Studies in Iconology (1939)

in which his masterly presentation of the method was

connected with its equally excellent exemplification

2 Panofsky considers the interpretation of a work

of art as falling on three levels On the first level the

object of interpretation is the primary or natural sub-

ject matter The function of interpretation is called

ldquopre-iconographical descriptionrdquo In order to be able

to arrive at a correct interpretation on that level the

interpreter must have a practical experience (ldquofamili-

arity with objects and eventsrdquo) common to everybody

at least in one cultural sphere However he has to

control his observations by a ldquocorrective knowledge

of the history of stylerdquo (ldquoinsight into the manner in

which under varying historical conditions objects and

events were expressed by formsrdquo) On the second level

the function of interpretation is called ldquoiconographical

analysisrdquo its object is the ldquosecondary or conventional

subject matterrdquo constituting the world of images his-

tories and allegories The interpreters equipment in

this case is obviously the knowledge of literary sources

giving him a ldquofamiliarity with specific themes and

conceptsrdquo The interpreter has to control his observa-

tions by ldquothe insight into the manner in which under

varying historical conditions specific themes or con-

cepts were expressed by objects and eventsrdquo On the

third level the function of interpreting is called ldquoicon-

ographical analysis in a deeper senserdquo (1939) or ldquoicon-

ological analysisrdquo (1955) Its object is the ldquointrinsic

meaning or contentrdquo of a work of art The interpreters

equipment on that level should be a ldquofamiliarity with

the essential tendencies of the human mindrdquo and he

has to control his interpretation by the ldquoinsight into

the manner in which under varying historical condi-

tions essential tendencies of the human mind were

expressed by specific themes and conceptsrdquo Thus

taking all the time into account what Panofsky calls

the history of tradition the interpreter has to aim at

understanding the work of art its ldquoprimaryrdquo as well

as ldquosecondary subject matterrdquo as symptoms of some

fundamental tendency of the human mind typical of

537

a place a time a civilization and of an individual

responsible for the creation of the work ldquoIconologyrdquomdash

for Panofskymdashldquois a method of interpretation which

arises from synthesis rather than analysisrdquo Trying to

find the intrinsic meaning of a work of art

The art historian will have to check what he thinks is the

intrinsic meaning of the work or group of works against

what he thinks is the intrinsic meaning of as many other

documents of civilization historically related to that work

or group of works as he can master It is in the search

for intrinsic meaning or content that the various humanistic

disciplines meet on a common plane instead of serving as

handmaidens to each other

(Panofsky [1955] p 39)

The concept of intrinsic meaning of a work of art

was elaborated by Panofsky much earlier (1925) when

he interpreted in his own way the concept of Kunst-

wollen introduced by A Riegl to research in art

Panofsky understood this ldquoartistic volitionrdquo as an im-

manent ultimate meaning of a work of art which is

manifested in the way basic artistic problems are solved

in that work He used the same concept further to bring

art closer to the other fields of human activity Since

the ldquoimmanent ultimate senserdquo of the work of art is

nothing else than uniformity in the way of solving basic

artistic problems it is possible to compare that imma-

nent sense with immanent senses of the other human

works in various fields Panofsky did it for instance

when in one of his later works he compared the struc-

tural principles of Gothic architecture with those of

scholastic thinking (1951)

The system elaborated by Panofsky and exemplified

by his own work in art history was the first consistent

system of an integral interpretation of a work of visual

arts based on the analysis of content In principle

Panofskys system takes into account all the elements

of the work of art since it takes as the point of depar-

ture the sensual exterior shape of the work It is

however clear that its main scope is not the inter-

pretation of form as a bearer of meaning but the

understanding and interpretation of conventional alle-

gories literary themes and symbols as symptoms of

the history of the human mind It was that method

in the history of art which programmatically fostered

a collaboration with all the other disciplines of histori-

cal studies It was therefore one of the most influential

methods not only among art historians but also among

representatives of the other branches of humanistic

studies Although there were art historians who ex-

pressed a critical attitude toward ldquoiconologyrdquo as the

new method was soon baptized its influence was over-

whelming

3 It is not only but mainly due to Panofsky that

one can venture to call ldquoiconographicalrdquo that period

of art history as a historical discipline which followed

the Second World War and to oppose it to the ldquostylis-

ticrdquo one which preceded it It does not mean of course

that no iconographic research took place in the

twenties or thirties the works of Macircle Knipping van

Marle Wilpert Saxl and of Panofsky himself would

contradict such a statement Neither is it true that

purely formal research aiming at stylistic classification

and analysis discontinued after World War II It is

evident that in the last decades (from 1940 on) icono-

graphic interests came to the fore and became domi-

nant in many countries Iconographical studies grew

so much in number and importance that they made

it possible to undertake and to publish new reference

works of iconographic character like dictionaries

written by one scholar (Guy de Tervarent Aurenham-

mer) as well as larger works based on a collaboration

of several scholars (Encyclopedias of German art of

Antiquity and Christian civilization of Byzantine art)

Interest in meaning and iconography has appeared

also among historians of political social and religious

institutions The symbolism of signs ceremonies cos-

tumes and arms was studied by such scholars as A

Alfoumlldi ldquoInsignien und Tracht der roumlmischen Kaiserrdquo

Mitteilungen des deutschen Archaumlologischen Instituts

Roumlmische Abteilung (1935) 1ff ldquoDie Geburt der

kaiserlichen Bildsymbolikrdquo museum Helveticum 9

(1952) 204ff also by A Grabar Martyrium (Paris

1943-46) by E H Kantorowicz laudes Regiae

(Berkeley and Los Angeles 1946) The Kings Two

Bodies (Princeton 1957) by H P L Orange Studies

in the Iconography of Cosmic Kingship in the Ancient

World (Oslo 1953) Art Forms and Civic Life in the

Late Roman Empire (Princeton 1965) and by P E

Schramm herrschaftszeichen und Staatssymbolik

(Stuttgart 1954-56) In their studies iconography far

transcends the borders of art and it helps to build up

a history of ideas by following their various visual

expressions

Pioneering studies by K Giehlow F Saxl and E

Panofsky enlarged iconographical interests above all

to encompass the large field of secular art whereas

they had been mainly limited to religious iconography

in the work of preceding generations of scholars The

whole complicated and hardly known large body of

meanings disguised by the cryptic language of hiero-

glyphs emblems and iconologies became one of the

main topics of study

This established a collaboration between historians

of art and literature Mario Prazs admirable study of

emblems and his bibliography of emblem books

(1939-47) belongs now to the foundations of studies

in that field Publications by W S Heckscher and

A K Wirth by R S Clements E F von Monroy and

538

H M von Erffa E de Jongh and H Miedema and

several other scholars have elucidated the structure

and meaning of emblems and have shown their tre-

mendous influence on art even in its most monumental

and dignified forms An uninterrupted flow of reprints

of emblem books which brought within the reach of

modern students inaccessible volumes of sixteenth- and

seventeenth-century emblem writers were crowned by

the monumental undertaking of Arthur Henkel and

Albrecht Schoumlne who compiled an excellent volume

including almost all the texts and images needed for

the study of emblemsmdashEmblemata Handbuch zur

Sinnbildkunst des XVI und XVII Jahrhunderts

(Stuttgart 1967) Research was under way on hiero-

glyphs (Erik Iversen) and on the imprese (the late

Robert Klein) as well as on iconologies and allegories

These studies have disclosed meanings of the art of

the Renaissance of mannerism and of the baroque not

understood by nineteenth-century scholars

E Panofsky deciphered extremely farfetched and

individualistic programs of decoration of such famous

ensembles as the Camera di San Paolo by Correggio

in Parma the Gallery of Franccedilois I at Fontainebleau

Edgar Wind Andreacute Chastel and other scholars inter-

preted Raphaels decorations in the Popes apartments

Michelangelos art furnished material to detailed com-

prehensive studies by Panofsky Ch de Tolnay H von

Einem and Pope-Hennessy in which the share of

Neo-Platonic thinking in the ideological background

of the celebrated works of Michelangelo was discussed

Innumerable studies have been devoted to Titians

mythological paintings J R Martin presented expla-

nations of the Carracci frescoes in the Camerino Far-

nese and in the great gallery of the Palazzo Farnese

Bruegel considered in the nineteenth century as a drocircle

painter of peasant life has been shown by de Tolnay

Stridbeck and others to be an allegorist expressing a

skeptical humanistic outlook J S Held and W

Stechow contributed several articles to the under-

standing of mythological and allegorical contents in

Flemish and Dutch art of the sixteenth and seventeenth

centuries Rembrandts iconography was put into new

light by the two above-mentioned scholars as well as

by H M Rotermund H van de Waal J G van Gelder

H von Einem and Ch Tuumlmpel The intricate symbol-

ism and subject matter of historical and mythological

pictures by Nicolas Poussin were elucidated by such

masters of iconographic research as E H Gombrich

W Friedlaumlnder E Panofsky and above all by A Blunt

who in his monograph on Poussin presented a new

deep synthetic view of the ideas expressed by that

artists works Goyas individualistic secret symbolism

was also studied with the help of emblems and the

allegorical tradition Berninis works received iconolo

gical treatment by R Wittkower and H Kauffmann

All of this research does not mean that there was a

lack of interest in religious iconography M Schapiro

A Katzenellenbogen H Bober F Wormald and V

Elbern among others have contributed considerably

to deepen our understanding of the not completely

explained motifs and prominent works of medieval art

Panofsky has also shed a new light on several problems

of sepulchral iconography studies by such scholars as

R Berliner G von der Osten L Kalinowski S

Ringbom and T Dobrzeniecki contributed to late

medieval iconography in a new way Berliner stressed

the autonomous invention of visual artists or their

patrons while according to the traditional view popu-

larized by Macircle late medieval art should have followed

strictly literary sources

The religious content of modern art especially its

allegorical form in the late baroque period has been

examined and thanks to studies by such scholars as

W Mrazek and H Bauer has become better known

and understandable A great change was introduced

by ldquoiconologyrdquo into architectural history Buildings

which were formerly interpreted from aesthetic and

functional points of view only have been shown to

present allegorical symbolical or even emblematic

ideas Publications by leading art historians (R Witt-

kower B Smith G Bandmann O von Simson and

G C Argan) have presented medieval and modern

architecture as a bearer of meaning and have essen-

tially changed the character of architectural history

The iconography of classicism and romanticism

received a thorough treatment in books by W Hof-

mann and R Rosenblum as well as in several studies

devoted to individual themes and pictures G Hersey

has for example shown how much Delacroixs decora-

tion of the library in the Palais Bourbon owed to

Giambattista Vicos ideas about history More recently

studies on ldquoSymbolismrdquo have been undertaken Vincent

van Goghs symbolic language and iconography were

the object of studies by J Seznec C Nordenfalk and

other scholars On Ceacutezannes iconography interesting

remarks have been published by M Schapiro

Along with the development of iconographic studies

the establishment of centers of documentation has

advanced The ldquoFrenchrdquo stage in the development of

iconography has not left any marked trace in this

respect It was in America thanks to C R Morey that

the famous Index of Christian Art at the Department

of Art and Archaeology of Princeton University was

founded at first limited to the early Middle Ages then

enlarged so as to include art up to the end of the

medieval period Copies of the Princeton Index are

to be found also at the Istituto Pontificio dArcheolo-

gia in Rome and in the Dumbarton Oaks Library and

539

Collection in Washington DC But that Index ends

ldquowhere art beginsrdquomdashas Panofsky used to say jokingly

The need for systematic iconographic files for modern

art was strongly felt In 1956 A Pigler published a

very useful book Barockthemen in which he listed

thousands of works of art of the baroque period ac-

cording to their subjects It was however far from

being a systematic work The first essay in establishing

a systematic iconographic index for art of any time

was done by The Netherlands Institute for Art History

at the Hague then directed by H Gerson which took

the initiative around 1950 of publishing a postcard-size

photographic index of its rich collection of photographs

of Netherlandish art ordered according to an icono-

graphic principle Once such an idea was formulated

the need for a comprehensive consistent and clear

iconographic classification was urgent H van de Waal

of Leiden University devised such a system of classifi-

cation based on decimal divisions consistent and easy

to read He based his system on experiences of ethnol-

ogy and on such elaborated systems of classification

as that devised by Stith Thompson in his Motif-Index

of Folk Literature Vols I-VI (Bloomington Ind

1932-36 rev ed 1955-58) Van de Waal has elabor-

ated a system in which the first five main sections

classify five fundamental groups of portrayable things

namely (1) The Supernatural (2) Nature (3) Man (4)

Society (5) Abstracts The last four classify specific

subjects such as (6) History (7) The Bible (8) Myths

Legends and Tales (with the exception of classical

antiquity) (9) Myths and Legends of Classical Antiq-

uity Van de Waal combines the classification in the

first and in the second group in order to classify general

as well as specific subjects Christ in his system is

described with the sign ldquo11 Drdquo (ldquo1rdquo standing for Su-

pernatural ldquo11rdquo for Christianity ldquoDrdquo for Christ) the

adult Christ = 11 D 3 since ldquoshepherdrdquo on the other

hand bears the signature 47 I 221 the adult Christ

as a shepherd can be described in this system by the

following formula 11 D 3 = 47 I 221 Van de Waal

has also provided means to describe more complex

images which he expresses by adding elements between

brackets The Annunciation with God the Father and

a winged Angel is expressed by the following formula

73 A 5 (+1 +41) ldquo1rdquo standing for God the Father

and ldquo41rdquo for a winged Angel (van de Waal 1952) This

system elaborated for many years by its inventor and

prepared for publication in many volumes has proved

most useful in the practical arrangement of the Icono-

graphical Index of the Netherlandish Art and as the

only one until now in existence it became used more

and more in spite of some ambiguities and difficulties

As an endeavor to classify ldquoall portrayablerdquo things

persons events and ideas and to create a consistent

method to describe every possible image van de Waals

system may be considered as one of the important

achievements of the ldquoiconographical stagerdquo in the

development of art history Iconographic files exist of

course in many institutions as for example in the Ikon-

ologisch Instituut of Utrecht University one of the

main centers of study in emblematics and of course

in the most venerable institution of iconographic re-

search the Warburg Institute of the London University

and in other places

4 What was the result of this ldquoiconographicrdquo turn

in the development of the history of art One thing

is certain that this discipline by necessity has come

closer to other humanistic disciplines Since the

ldquointrinsicrdquo meaningmdashin Panofskys terminologymdashof a

work of art cannot be described in terms used by the

history of art but only in terms borrowed from the

history of philosophy of religion of social structures

of science and so on the ldquoiconological methodrdquo took

for granted and provoked such a collaboration Art

history was perhaps the first or one of the first to show

new interest in investigation of meaning It was fol-

lowed by similar developments in ethnology and in

linguistics

We have mentioned above a parallel development

in Byzantine and classical studies Panofskys influence

has been considerable in the other fields of humanistic

research Since ldquoiconologyrdquo aimed at discovering ideas

expressed by a work of art it awoke in art historians

an interest in the history of ideas This general shift

of emphasis and of the direction of studies from mainly

formal ones to studies aiming at ideas underlying art

was perhaps responsible among others for the fact that

several contributions to the Journal of the History of

Ideas have been written by historians of art

It is not difficult to see that such a development

should have provoked criticism on the side of those

who care about the purity and autonomy of methods

Iconology was criticized as far as its internal coherence

and also as far as its claim to be the integral method

of the study of art are concerned (Białostocki 1962)

Studies by R Klein E Forssman G Previtali G

Kubler B Teyssegravedre C Ginzburg and G Hermeren

expressed critical opinions in one or the other respect

Iconology linked art with the rest of history but it

disrupted the links between the work of art and other

things (Kubler 1962) Concentrating on meaning

iconology neglected art as form as individual expres-

sion Iconology implied a rational relationship between

intellectual content and artistic form On the one hand

one spoke of ldquoiconological diminutionsrdquo (Kubler

1962)mdashlimitations of research to meaning only But

on the other hand the overstatements of iconology

were criticized its representatives sometimes seemed

540

to assume everything symbolized something And some

iconologists seemed to consider important in art not

that which makes art a different field of human activity

but that which connects art with other fieldsmdashwith

the history of ideas

There were of course critics who had the opposite

opinion Since the end of the eighteenth century a

direct experience of art was more and more valued

and its symbolical function considered as a burden

J G von Herder said ein Kunstwerk ist der Kunst

wegen da aber bei einem Symbole ist die Kunst

dienend (ldquoA work of art is there because of art but

with a symbol art is a servicerdquo) Similar opinions were

expressed by nineteenth-century art writers and in this

century they have been voiced by Benedetto Croce and

by other Italian opponents of contenutismo by which

they meant interest in content For such critics to put

stress on iconography was to miss the essential in art

and to focus attention on a subordinate function of art

Also among scholars who considered the function

of representation and of communication as a legitimate

and important function of art criticism was expressed

not against the principle of an iconographical or icon-

ological investigation but against overstatements in

their application The introduction of the idea of ldquodis-

guised symbolismrdquo has created a danger of course of

opening the way to fanciful interpretations The alle-

gorical and symbolical function of mythological imag-

ery in classical art is also difficult to interpret precisely

Since no literary sources give a key to an interpretation

of the iconography of the sarcophagi very divergent

theories have been expressed concerning their meaning

Some archaeologists like F Cumont (1942) believe

that mythological and allegorical imagery (Anadyo-

mene Sea-Thiasos Personifications of the Seasons) is

to be read symbolically The Sea-Thiasos for instance

is to be interpreted as a symbol of the journey of the

souls of the deceased to the islands of the blessed

Others like A D Nock (1946) do not find enough

evidence to accept other than a decorative function

in such imagery

The intrusion of some representatives of psychology

eg C G Jung into iconographic studies giving them

an unhistorical turn in their search for ldquoarchetypal

imagesrdquo has complicated the situation although art

historians in general understandably have not accepted

that kind of approach to symbolism (Frankfort 1958

Gombrich 1965)

The fact that iconographic interpretations sometimes

lack satisfactory proofs does not detract from the im-

portance of such investigations so long as they are

conducted according to the requirements of historical

methods and take into account the corrective princi-

ples established by Panofsky A correct acquaintance

with the way of thinking of the artist the patron or the

viewer based on a satisfactory knowledge of documen-

tary visual and literary sources an awareness of the

choice situations produced by historical developments

may enable art historians to discover the secondary

meaning of a work of art as well as its intrinsic mean-

ing It is of course possible that the art historian will

meet some works for which it will not be possible to re-

construct in a satisfactory way the world of ideas that

would account for the meaning of those works In such

cases a reliable interpretation is simply not possible

R Berliner (1945 1966) criticized the widespread

opinion according to which content of the works of

visual arts in the Middle Ages had to be checked

against the literary sources considered as the only

medium in which ideological innovations were per-

mitted Berliner pleaded for assuming a considerable

ldquofreedomrdquo in the medieval artist and he considered

iconographic innovation possible even when no writ-

ten evidence could be found Meyer Schapiro (1947)

presented proofs that sometimes purely aesthetic rea-

sons decided the character of the work of art even as

early as the Romanesque period

We can only touch on some specific discussions going

on in the field of iconographic research But iconogra-

phic research is far from being a closed system and

the relative share of iconographic and stylistic criticism

in the work of art historians is always a matter of

discussion It is certain that the ldquoiconographicrdquo period

in the study of art has enlarged in a considerable way

the understanding of the art of the past and that it

has connected art history in a way unknown before

with the other historical disciplines and above all others

with the history of ideas

BIBLIOGRAPHY

L B Alberti On Painting ed J Spencer (New Haven

1956 revised ed 1966) E Auerbach ldquoFigurardquo (1944) trans

and published in Scenes From the Drama of European Liter-

ature (New York 1959) pp 11-76 K Bauch ldquoImagordquo

(1960) Studien zur Kunstgeschichte (Berlin 1967) pp 1-20

G P Bellori Descrizione delle imagini dipinte da Raffaello

(Rome 1695 ed used is 1751) R Berliner ldquoThe Free-

dom of Medieval Artrdquo Gazette des Beaux-Arts 628 (1945)

263-88 idem ldquoBemerkungen zu einigen Darstellungen des

Erloumlsers als Schmerzensmannrdquo Das Muumlnster 9 (1956)

97-117x J Białostocki ldquoIconografia e Iconologiardquo Enciclo-

pedia Universale dellArte (1962) Vol VII cols 163-75

trans as Encyclopedia of World Art (1966) Vol VII cols

769-85 lists almost all important older contributions to this

field idem ldquoRomantische Ikonographierdquo Stil und Ikonog-

raphie (Dresden 1966) pp 156-81 idem ldquoKompozycja

emblematyczna epitafioacutew ślaskich XVI wiekurdquo (ldquoEmblem-

atic Composition of Silesian Epitaphs of the Sixteenth Cen-

turyrdquo) Ze studioacutew nad Sztuka XVI wieku na Řlasku

(Wrocław 1968) pp 77-93 idem ldquoEsilio Privatordquo Bulletin

du Museacutee National de Varsovie 10 (1969) 95-101 J

541

Chydenius The Theory of Medieval Symbolism (Helsingfors

1960) Series of the Societas Scientiarum Fennica Com-

mentationes Humanarum Litterarum 27 2 R J Clements

Picta Poesis (Rome 1960) F Creuzer Symbolik und

Mythologie der Alten Voumllker (Leipzig and Darmstadt 1810

revised ed 1819) F Cumont Recherches sur le symbolisme

funeacuteraire des Romains (Paris 1942) L Eitner ldquoThe Open

Window and the Storm-Tossed Boatrdquo Art Bulletin 37

(1955) 281-90 H Frankfort ldquoThe Archetype in Analytical

Psychology and the History of Religionrdquo Journal of the

Warburg and Courtauld Institutes 21 (1958) 166-78

K Garas ldquoAllegorie und Geschichte in der Venezianischen

Malerei des 18 Jahrhundertsrdquo in proceedings of the XXI

International Congress of the History of Art Bonn Stil und

Uumlberlieferung in der Kunst des Abendlandes (Berlin 1967)

3 280-83 K Giehlow ldquoDie Hieroglyphenkunde des

Humanismus in der Allegorie der Renaissancerdquo Jahrbuch

der Kunsthistorischen Sammlungen des Allerhochsten

Kaiserhauses 32 (1915) 1-232 C Gilbert ldquoOn Subject and

Not-Subject in Italian Renaissance Picturesrdquo Art Bulletin

34 (1952) 202-16 C Ginzburg ldquoDa A Warburg a E H

Gombrich Note su un problema di metodordquo Studi medi-

evali series 3 7 (1966) 1015-65 E H Gombrich ldquoIcones

Symbolicae The Visual Image in Neo-Platonic Thoughtrdquo

Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes 11 (1948)

163-92 idem ldquoThe Use of Art for the Study of Symbolsrdquo

American Psychologist 20 (1965) A Grabar Liconoclasme

byzantin Dossier archeacuteologique (Paris 1957) idem Chris-

tian Iconography A Study of Its Origins (Princeton 1969)

S J Gudlaugsson De Comedianten bij Jan Steen en zijn

tijdgenooten (s-Gravenhage 1945) W S Heckscher ldquoThe

Genesis of Iconologyrdquo Stl und Uumlberlieferung in der Kunst

des Abendlandes Akten des XXI Internationalen Kon-

gresses fuumlr Kunstgeschichte (Berlin 1967) 3 239-62 G

Hermereacuten Representation and Meaning in the Visual Arts

A Study in the Methodology of Iconography and Iconology

Lund Studies in Philosophy Vol I (Lund 1969) R Hinks

Myth and Allegory in Ancient Art (London 1939) W

Hofmann Das Irdische Paradies (Munich 1960) G J

Hoogewerff ldquoLIconologie et son importance pour leacutetude

systeacutematique de lart chreacutetienrdquo Rivista dArcheologia Cris-

tiana 8 (1931) 53-82 E de Jongh Zinne- en minnebeelden

in de schilderkunst van de zeventiende eeuw (mdash1967) idem

ldquoErotica in Vogelperspectief De dubbelzinnigheid van een

reeks 17de eeuwse genrevoorstellingenrdquo Simiolus 3

(1968-69) 22-72 L Kalinowski ldquoTreści ideowe i estetyczne

Drzwi Gnieźnieńskichrdquo (ldquoIdeological and Aesthetic Content

of the Gniezno Bronze Doorsrdquo) in Drzwi Gnieźnieńskie ed

M Walicki (Wroclaw 1959) 2 7-160 H Keller Tizians

Poesie fuumlr Koumlnig Philip II von Spanien (Wiesbaden 1969)

R Klein ldquoLa theacuteorie de lexpression figureacutee dans les traiteacutes

italiens sur les imprese 1555-1612rdquo Bibliothegraveque dHu-

manisme et Renaissance 19 (1957) 320-41 republished with

the other relevant studies in la forme et lintelligible (Paris

1969) R Klibansky E Panofsky F Saxl Saturn and Melan-

choly (London 1964) J B Knipping Ikonografie van de

Contra-Reformatie in de Nederlanden (Hilversum 1939-40)

G Kubler The Shape of Time (New Haven and London

1962) R W Lee ldquoUt pictura poesisrdquo Art Bulletin 22

(1940) 197-269 E Macircle Lart religieux du XIIIe siegravecle en

France (Paris 1898) English ed used (New York 1958)

idem Lart religieux de la fin du Moyen-Age en France

(Paris 1908) idem Lart religieux du XIIe siegravecle en France

(Paris 1922) idem Lart religieux apregraves le Concile de Trente

(Paris 1932) J Maurin Białostocka Lessing i sztuki plas-

tyczne (ldquoLessing and the visual artsrdquo) (Wroclaw Warszawa

Krakoacutew 1969) E F von Monroy Embleme und Emblem-

buumlcher in den Niederlanden 1560-1630 ed H M von Erffa

(Utrecht 1964) J Montagu ldquoThe Painted Enigma and

French Seventeenth Century Artrdquo Journal of the Warburg

and Courtauld Institutes 31 (1968) 307-35 W Mrazek

Ikonologie der barocken Deckenmalerei (Vienna 1953)

Uumlsterreichische Akademie der Wissenschaften Philo-

sophisch-historische Klasse Sitzungsberichte 2283 A D

Nock ldquoSarcophagi and Symbolismrdquo American Journal of

Archaeology 50 (1946) 166ff D Panofsky and E Panofsky

ldquoThe Iconography of the Galeacuterie Franccedilois Ier at Fontaine-

bleaurdquo Gazette des Beaux-Arts 652 (1958) 113-90

E Panofsky ldquoUumlber das Verhaumlltnis der Kunstgeschichte zur

Kunsttheorierdquo Zeitschrift fuumlr Aesthetik und allgemeine

Kunstwissenschaft 18 (1925) 129-61 idem Studies in

Iconology (New York 1939) idem ed Abbot Suger (Prince-

ton 1946) idem Gothic Architecture and Scholasticism

(Latrobe Pa 1951) idem Early Netherlandish Painting

(Cambridge Mass 1953) idem Meaning in the Visual Arts

(Garden City N Y 1955) idem Renaissance and Renas-

cences in Western Art (Stockholm 1960) idem Tomb Sculp-

ture (New York 1964) E Panofsky and F Saxl ldquoClassical

Mythology in Medieval Artrdquo Metropolitan Museum Studies

4 (1932-33) 228-80 M Praz Studies in Seventeenth Cen-

tury Imagery (London 1939-47 2nd ed Rome 1964) S

Ringbom ldquoDevotional Images and Imaginative Devotions

Notes on the Place of Art in Late Medieval Private Pietyrdquo

Gazette des Beaux-Arts 6 73 (1969) 159-70 Joseph Sauer

Symbolik des Kirchengebaumludes und seiner Ausstattung in

der Auffassung des Mittelalters 2nd ed (Freiburg i B

1924) F Saxl ldquoFruumlhes Christentum und spaumltes Heidentum

in ihren kuumlnstlerischen Ausdrucksformenrdquo Wiener Jahrbuch

fuumlr Kunstgeschichte 2 (1923) 63-121 M Schapiro ldquoThe

Ruthwell Crossrdquo Art Bulletin 26 (1944) 232-45 idem ldquoOn

the Aesthetic Attitude in Romanesque Artrdquo in Art and

Thought issued in Honour of Ananda Coomaraswamy

(London 1947) 139-50 J Seznec The Survival of the Pagan

Gods (New York 1953) O G von Simson The Gothic

Cathedral (New York 1956) R E Spear ldquoThe Literary

Source of Poussins Realm of Florardquo The Burlington Maga-

zine 107 (1965) 563-69 L Volkmann Bilderschriften der

Renaissance (Leipzig 1923) Hans van de Waal Drie

eeuwen vaderlandsche geschieduitbeelding 1500-1800 (s-

Gravenhage 1952) idem ldquoSome Principles of a General

Iconographical Classificationrdquo in Actes du XVIIe Congregraves

International dHistoire de lArt Amsterdam 1952 (La Haye

1955) 601-06 E Wind ldquoCharity the Case History of a

Patternrdquo Journal of the Warburg Institute 1 (1937) 322ff

JAN BIAŁOSTOCKI

[See also Allegory Baroque Classicism Criticism Enlight-

enment Motif Myth Naturalism in Art Neo-Platonism

Renaissance Humanism Romanticism Symbolism Tem-

perance Ut pictura poesis]

art in its relation to religious literary sources and lit-

urgy for Warburg the study of images was a study

of their relations to religion to poetry to myth to

science and to social and political life Art was for

him closely connected with the polyphonic structure

of historical life

Warburgs ideas had a great importance for the most

influential theory of iconographic interpretation in our

century that elaborated by Erwin Panofsky In Ham-

burg where Warburg Saxl and Panofsky were active

in the twenties Ernst Cassirer built up his philosophy

of symbolic forms which constituted an additional

background for Panofskys system being derived as

his own methodology was from the traditions of

Kantian philosophy Around 1930 Panofskys ideas

ripened into a system which found formulation in his

book herkules am Scheidewege (1930) and later in a

theoretical article of 1932 G J Hoogewerff was how-

ever the first to propose the word ldquoiconologyrdquo as a

name for the method of an analysis of content in a

work of art (Warburg spoke of iconological analysis)

In 1931 he proposed distinguishing between iconogra-

phy as a descriptive science aiming at the identifica-

tion of themes and ldquoiconologyrdquo aiming at the under-

standing ldquoof symbolic dogmatic or mystical meaning

which is expressed (or hidden) in figurative formsrdquo He

stressed that ldquoiconologyrdquo deals with works of art with-

out classifying them according to the technique used

or to the achieved perfection taking into account only

their meaning Hoogewerff saw the last aim of iconol-

ogy in finding out the cultural and ideological back-

ground expressed by works of art and the cultural and

social significance which can be attributed to certain

forms and to means of expression in the same time

Hoogewerffs part in the expansion of iconology was

limited because he did not endorse his methodical

proposals with examples of historical interpretations

Erwin Panofsky with whose name iconology has

been connected ever since not only developed its

theoretical foundations but contributed by his practi-

cal work in art history to the main triumph of iconol-

ogy after the Second World War The most influential

book by Panofsky has been Studies in Iconology (1939)

in which his masterly presentation of the method was

connected with its equally excellent exemplification

2 Panofsky considers the interpretation of a work

of art as falling on three levels On the first level the

object of interpretation is the primary or natural sub-

ject matter The function of interpretation is called

ldquopre-iconographical descriptionrdquo In order to be able

to arrive at a correct interpretation on that level the

interpreter must have a practical experience (ldquofamili-

arity with objects and eventsrdquo) common to everybody

at least in one cultural sphere However he has to

control his observations by a ldquocorrective knowledge

of the history of stylerdquo (ldquoinsight into the manner in

which under varying historical conditions objects and

events were expressed by formsrdquo) On the second level

the function of interpretation is called ldquoiconographical

analysisrdquo its object is the ldquosecondary or conventional

subject matterrdquo constituting the world of images his-

tories and allegories The interpreters equipment in

this case is obviously the knowledge of literary sources

giving him a ldquofamiliarity with specific themes and

conceptsrdquo The interpreter has to control his observa-

tions by ldquothe insight into the manner in which under

varying historical conditions specific themes or con-

cepts were expressed by objects and eventsrdquo On the

third level the function of interpreting is called ldquoicon-

ographical analysis in a deeper senserdquo (1939) or ldquoicon-

ological analysisrdquo (1955) Its object is the ldquointrinsic

meaning or contentrdquo of a work of art The interpreters

equipment on that level should be a ldquofamiliarity with

the essential tendencies of the human mindrdquo and he

has to control his interpretation by the ldquoinsight into

the manner in which under varying historical condi-

tions essential tendencies of the human mind were

expressed by specific themes and conceptsrdquo Thus

taking all the time into account what Panofsky calls

the history of tradition the interpreter has to aim at

understanding the work of art its ldquoprimaryrdquo as well

as ldquosecondary subject matterrdquo as symptoms of some

fundamental tendency of the human mind typical of

537

a place a time a civilization and of an individual

responsible for the creation of the work ldquoIconologyrdquomdash

for Panofskymdashldquois a method of interpretation which

arises from synthesis rather than analysisrdquo Trying to

find the intrinsic meaning of a work of art

The art historian will have to check what he thinks is the

intrinsic meaning of the work or group of works against

what he thinks is the intrinsic meaning of as many other

documents of civilization historically related to that work

or group of works as he can master It is in the search

for intrinsic meaning or content that the various humanistic

disciplines meet on a common plane instead of serving as

handmaidens to each other

(Panofsky [1955] p 39)

The concept of intrinsic meaning of a work of art

was elaborated by Panofsky much earlier (1925) when

he interpreted in his own way the concept of Kunst-

wollen introduced by A Riegl to research in art

Panofsky understood this ldquoartistic volitionrdquo as an im-

manent ultimate meaning of a work of art which is

manifested in the way basic artistic problems are solved

in that work He used the same concept further to bring

art closer to the other fields of human activity Since

the ldquoimmanent ultimate senserdquo of the work of art is

nothing else than uniformity in the way of solving basic

artistic problems it is possible to compare that imma-

nent sense with immanent senses of the other human

works in various fields Panofsky did it for instance

when in one of his later works he compared the struc-

tural principles of Gothic architecture with those of

scholastic thinking (1951)

The system elaborated by Panofsky and exemplified

by his own work in art history was the first consistent

system of an integral interpretation of a work of visual

arts based on the analysis of content In principle

Panofskys system takes into account all the elements

of the work of art since it takes as the point of depar-

ture the sensual exterior shape of the work It is

however clear that its main scope is not the inter-

pretation of form as a bearer of meaning but the

understanding and interpretation of conventional alle-

gories literary themes and symbols as symptoms of

the history of the human mind It was that method

in the history of art which programmatically fostered

a collaboration with all the other disciplines of histori-

cal studies It was therefore one of the most influential

methods not only among art historians but also among

representatives of the other branches of humanistic

studies Although there were art historians who ex-

pressed a critical attitude toward ldquoiconologyrdquo as the

new method was soon baptized its influence was over-

whelming

3 It is not only but mainly due to Panofsky that

one can venture to call ldquoiconographicalrdquo that period

of art history as a historical discipline which followed

the Second World War and to oppose it to the ldquostylis-

ticrdquo one which preceded it It does not mean of course

that no iconographic research took place in the

twenties or thirties the works of Macircle Knipping van

Marle Wilpert Saxl and of Panofsky himself would

contradict such a statement Neither is it true that

purely formal research aiming at stylistic classification

and analysis discontinued after World War II It is

evident that in the last decades (from 1940 on) icono-

graphic interests came to the fore and became domi-

nant in many countries Iconographical studies grew

so much in number and importance that they made

it possible to undertake and to publish new reference

works of iconographic character like dictionaries

written by one scholar (Guy de Tervarent Aurenham-

mer) as well as larger works based on a collaboration

of several scholars (Encyclopedias of German art of

Antiquity and Christian civilization of Byzantine art)

Interest in meaning and iconography has appeared

also among historians of political social and religious

institutions The symbolism of signs ceremonies cos-

tumes and arms was studied by such scholars as A

Alfoumlldi ldquoInsignien und Tracht der roumlmischen Kaiserrdquo

Mitteilungen des deutschen Archaumlologischen Instituts

Roumlmische Abteilung (1935) 1ff ldquoDie Geburt der

kaiserlichen Bildsymbolikrdquo museum Helveticum 9

(1952) 204ff also by A Grabar Martyrium (Paris

1943-46) by E H Kantorowicz laudes Regiae

(Berkeley and Los Angeles 1946) The Kings Two

Bodies (Princeton 1957) by H P L Orange Studies

in the Iconography of Cosmic Kingship in the Ancient

World (Oslo 1953) Art Forms and Civic Life in the

Late Roman Empire (Princeton 1965) and by P E

Schramm herrschaftszeichen und Staatssymbolik

(Stuttgart 1954-56) In their studies iconography far

transcends the borders of art and it helps to build up

a history of ideas by following their various visual

expressions

Pioneering studies by K Giehlow F Saxl and E

Panofsky enlarged iconographical interests above all

to encompass the large field of secular art whereas

they had been mainly limited to religious iconography

in the work of preceding generations of scholars The

whole complicated and hardly known large body of

meanings disguised by the cryptic language of hiero-

glyphs emblems and iconologies became one of the

main topics of study

This established a collaboration between historians

of art and literature Mario Prazs admirable study of

emblems and his bibliography of emblem books

(1939-47) belongs now to the foundations of studies

in that field Publications by W S Heckscher and

A K Wirth by R S Clements E F von Monroy and

538

H M von Erffa E de Jongh and H Miedema and

several other scholars have elucidated the structure

and meaning of emblems and have shown their tre-

mendous influence on art even in its most monumental

and dignified forms An uninterrupted flow of reprints

of emblem books which brought within the reach of

modern students inaccessible volumes of sixteenth- and

seventeenth-century emblem writers were crowned by

the monumental undertaking of Arthur Henkel and

Albrecht Schoumlne who compiled an excellent volume

including almost all the texts and images needed for

the study of emblemsmdashEmblemata Handbuch zur

Sinnbildkunst des XVI und XVII Jahrhunderts

(Stuttgart 1967) Research was under way on hiero-

glyphs (Erik Iversen) and on the imprese (the late

Robert Klein) as well as on iconologies and allegories

These studies have disclosed meanings of the art of

the Renaissance of mannerism and of the baroque not

understood by nineteenth-century scholars

E Panofsky deciphered extremely farfetched and

individualistic programs of decoration of such famous

ensembles as the Camera di San Paolo by Correggio

in Parma the Gallery of Franccedilois I at Fontainebleau

Edgar Wind Andreacute Chastel and other scholars inter-

preted Raphaels decorations in the Popes apartments

Michelangelos art furnished material to detailed com-

prehensive studies by Panofsky Ch de Tolnay H von

Einem and Pope-Hennessy in which the share of

Neo-Platonic thinking in the ideological background

of the celebrated works of Michelangelo was discussed

Innumerable studies have been devoted to Titians

mythological paintings J R Martin presented expla-

nations of the Carracci frescoes in the Camerino Far-

nese and in the great gallery of the Palazzo Farnese

Bruegel considered in the nineteenth century as a drocircle

painter of peasant life has been shown by de Tolnay

Stridbeck and others to be an allegorist expressing a

skeptical humanistic outlook J S Held and W

Stechow contributed several articles to the under-

standing of mythological and allegorical contents in

Flemish and Dutch art of the sixteenth and seventeenth

centuries Rembrandts iconography was put into new

light by the two above-mentioned scholars as well as

by H M Rotermund H van de Waal J G van Gelder

H von Einem and Ch Tuumlmpel The intricate symbol-

ism and subject matter of historical and mythological

pictures by Nicolas Poussin were elucidated by such

masters of iconographic research as E H Gombrich

W Friedlaumlnder E Panofsky and above all by A Blunt

who in his monograph on Poussin presented a new

deep synthetic view of the ideas expressed by that

artists works Goyas individualistic secret symbolism

was also studied with the help of emblems and the

allegorical tradition Berninis works received iconolo

gical treatment by R Wittkower and H Kauffmann

All of this research does not mean that there was a

lack of interest in religious iconography M Schapiro

A Katzenellenbogen H Bober F Wormald and V

Elbern among others have contributed considerably

to deepen our understanding of the not completely

explained motifs and prominent works of medieval art

Panofsky has also shed a new light on several problems

of sepulchral iconography studies by such scholars as

R Berliner G von der Osten L Kalinowski S

Ringbom and T Dobrzeniecki contributed to late

medieval iconography in a new way Berliner stressed

the autonomous invention of visual artists or their

patrons while according to the traditional view popu-

larized by Macircle late medieval art should have followed

strictly literary sources

The religious content of modern art especially its

allegorical form in the late baroque period has been

examined and thanks to studies by such scholars as

W Mrazek and H Bauer has become better known

and understandable A great change was introduced

by ldquoiconologyrdquo into architectural history Buildings

which were formerly interpreted from aesthetic and

functional points of view only have been shown to

present allegorical symbolical or even emblematic

ideas Publications by leading art historians (R Witt-

kower B Smith G Bandmann O von Simson and

G C Argan) have presented medieval and modern

architecture as a bearer of meaning and have essen-

tially changed the character of architectural history

The iconography of classicism and romanticism

received a thorough treatment in books by W Hof-

mann and R Rosenblum as well as in several studies

devoted to individual themes and pictures G Hersey

has for example shown how much Delacroixs decora-

tion of the library in the Palais Bourbon owed to

Giambattista Vicos ideas about history More recently

studies on ldquoSymbolismrdquo have been undertaken Vincent

van Goghs symbolic language and iconography were

the object of studies by J Seznec C Nordenfalk and

other scholars On Ceacutezannes iconography interesting

remarks have been published by M Schapiro

Along with the development of iconographic studies

the establishment of centers of documentation has

advanced The ldquoFrenchrdquo stage in the development of

iconography has not left any marked trace in this

respect It was in America thanks to C R Morey that

the famous Index of Christian Art at the Department

of Art and Archaeology of Princeton University was

founded at first limited to the early Middle Ages then

enlarged so as to include art up to the end of the

medieval period Copies of the Princeton Index are

to be found also at the Istituto Pontificio dArcheolo-

gia in Rome and in the Dumbarton Oaks Library and

539

Collection in Washington DC But that Index ends

ldquowhere art beginsrdquomdashas Panofsky used to say jokingly

The need for systematic iconographic files for modern

art was strongly felt In 1956 A Pigler published a

very useful book Barockthemen in which he listed

thousands of works of art of the baroque period ac-

cording to their subjects It was however far from

being a systematic work The first essay in establishing

a systematic iconographic index for art of any time

was done by The Netherlands Institute for Art History

at the Hague then directed by H Gerson which took

the initiative around 1950 of publishing a postcard-size

photographic index of its rich collection of photographs

of Netherlandish art ordered according to an icono-

graphic principle Once such an idea was formulated

the need for a comprehensive consistent and clear

iconographic classification was urgent H van de Waal

of Leiden University devised such a system of classifi-

cation based on decimal divisions consistent and easy

to read He based his system on experiences of ethnol-

ogy and on such elaborated systems of classification

as that devised by Stith Thompson in his Motif-Index

of Folk Literature Vols I-VI (Bloomington Ind

1932-36 rev ed 1955-58) Van de Waal has elabor-

ated a system in which the first five main sections

classify five fundamental groups of portrayable things

namely (1) The Supernatural (2) Nature (3) Man (4)

Society (5) Abstracts The last four classify specific

subjects such as (6) History (7) The Bible (8) Myths

Legends and Tales (with the exception of classical

antiquity) (9) Myths and Legends of Classical Antiq-

uity Van de Waal combines the classification in the

first and in the second group in order to classify general

as well as specific subjects Christ in his system is

described with the sign ldquo11 Drdquo (ldquo1rdquo standing for Su-

pernatural ldquo11rdquo for Christianity ldquoDrdquo for Christ) the

adult Christ = 11 D 3 since ldquoshepherdrdquo on the other

hand bears the signature 47 I 221 the adult Christ

as a shepherd can be described in this system by the

following formula 11 D 3 = 47 I 221 Van de Waal

has also provided means to describe more complex

images which he expresses by adding elements between

brackets The Annunciation with God the Father and

a winged Angel is expressed by the following formula

73 A 5 (+1 +41) ldquo1rdquo standing for God the Father

and ldquo41rdquo for a winged Angel (van de Waal 1952) This

system elaborated for many years by its inventor and

prepared for publication in many volumes has proved

most useful in the practical arrangement of the Icono-

graphical Index of the Netherlandish Art and as the

only one until now in existence it became used more

and more in spite of some ambiguities and difficulties

As an endeavor to classify ldquoall portrayablerdquo things

persons events and ideas and to create a consistent

method to describe every possible image van de Waals

system may be considered as one of the important

achievements of the ldquoiconographical stagerdquo in the

development of art history Iconographic files exist of

course in many institutions as for example in the Ikon-

ologisch Instituut of Utrecht University one of the

main centers of study in emblematics and of course

in the most venerable institution of iconographic re-

search the Warburg Institute of the London University

and in other places

4 What was the result of this ldquoiconographicrdquo turn

in the development of the history of art One thing

is certain that this discipline by necessity has come

closer to other humanistic disciplines Since the

ldquointrinsicrdquo meaningmdashin Panofskys terminologymdashof a

work of art cannot be described in terms used by the

history of art but only in terms borrowed from the

history of philosophy of religion of social structures

of science and so on the ldquoiconological methodrdquo took

for granted and provoked such a collaboration Art

history was perhaps the first or one of the first to show

new interest in investigation of meaning It was fol-

lowed by similar developments in ethnology and in

linguistics

We have mentioned above a parallel development

in Byzantine and classical studies Panofskys influence

has been considerable in the other fields of humanistic

research Since ldquoiconologyrdquo aimed at discovering ideas

expressed by a work of art it awoke in art historians

an interest in the history of ideas This general shift

of emphasis and of the direction of studies from mainly

formal ones to studies aiming at ideas underlying art

was perhaps responsible among others for the fact that

several contributions to the Journal of the History of

Ideas have been written by historians of art

It is not difficult to see that such a development

should have provoked criticism on the side of those

who care about the purity and autonomy of methods

Iconology was criticized as far as its internal coherence

and also as far as its claim to be the integral method

of the study of art are concerned (Białostocki 1962)

Studies by R Klein E Forssman G Previtali G

Kubler B Teyssegravedre C Ginzburg and G Hermeren

expressed critical opinions in one or the other respect

Iconology linked art with the rest of history but it

disrupted the links between the work of art and other

things (Kubler 1962) Concentrating on meaning

iconology neglected art as form as individual expres-

sion Iconology implied a rational relationship between

intellectual content and artistic form On the one hand

one spoke of ldquoiconological diminutionsrdquo (Kubler

1962)mdashlimitations of research to meaning only But

on the other hand the overstatements of iconology

were criticized its representatives sometimes seemed

540

to assume everything symbolized something And some

iconologists seemed to consider important in art not

that which makes art a different field of human activity

but that which connects art with other fieldsmdashwith

the history of ideas

There were of course critics who had the opposite

opinion Since the end of the eighteenth century a

direct experience of art was more and more valued

and its symbolical function considered as a burden

J G von Herder said ein Kunstwerk ist der Kunst

wegen da aber bei einem Symbole ist die Kunst

dienend (ldquoA work of art is there because of art but

with a symbol art is a servicerdquo) Similar opinions were

expressed by nineteenth-century art writers and in this

century they have been voiced by Benedetto Croce and

by other Italian opponents of contenutismo by which

they meant interest in content For such critics to put

stress on iconography was to miss the essential in art

and to focus attention on a subordinate function of art

Also among scholars who considered the function

of representation and of communication as a legitimate

and important function of art criticism was expressed

not against the principle of an iconographical or icon-

ological investigation but against overstatements in

their application The introduction of the idea of ldquodis-

guised symbolismrdquo has created a danger of course of

opening the way to fanciful interpretations The alle-

gorical and symbolical function of mythological imag-

ery in classical art is also difficult to interpret precisely

Since no literary sources give a key to an interpretation

of the iconography of the sarcophagi very divergent

theories have been expressed concerning their meaning

Some archaeologists like F Cumont (1942) believe

that mythological and allegorical imagery (Anadyo-

mene Sea-Thiasos Personifications of the Seasons) is

to be read symbolically The Sea-Thiasos for instance

is to be interpreted as a symbol of the journey of the

souls of the deceased to the islands of the blessed

Others like A D Nock (1946) do not find enough

evidence to accept other than a decorative function

in such imagery

The intrusion of some representatives of psychology

eg C G Jung into iconographic studies giving them

an unhistorical turn in their search for ldquoarchetypal

imagesrdquo has complicated the situation although art

historians in general understandably have not accepted

that kind of approach to symbolism (Frankfort 1958

Gombrich 1965)

The fact that iconographic interpretations sometimes

lack satisfactory proofs does not detract from the im-

portance of such investigations so long as they are

conducted according to the requirements of historical

methods and take into account the corrective princi-

ples established by Panofsky A correct acquaintance

with the way of thinking of the artist the patron or the

viewer based on a satisfactory knowledge of documen-

tary visual and literary sources an awareness of the

choice situations produced by historical developments

may enable art historians to discover the secondary

meaning of a work of art as well as its intrinsic mean-

ing It is of course possible that the art historian will

meet some works for which it will not be possible to re-

construct in a satisfactory way the world of ideas that

would account for the meaning of those works In such

cases a reliable interpretation is simply not possible

R Berliner (1945 1966) criticized the widespread

opinion according to which content of the works of

visual arts in the Middle Ages had to be checked

against the literary sources considered as the only

medium in which ideological innovations were per-

mitted Berliner pleaded for assuming a considerable

ldquofreedomrdquo in the medieval artist and he considered

iconographic innovation possible even when no writ-

ten evidence could be found Meyer Schapiro (1947)

presented proofs that sometimes purely aesthetic rea-

sons decided the character of the work of art even as

early as the Romanesque period

We can only touch on some specific discussions going

on in the field of iconographic research But iconogra-

phic research is far from being a closed system and

the relative share of iconographic and stylistic criticism

in the work of art historians is always a matter of

discussion It is certain that the ldquoiconographicrdquo period

in the study of art has enlarged in a considerable way

the understanding of the art of the past and that it

has connected art history in a way unknown before

with the other historical disciplines and above all others

with the history of ideas

BIBLIOGRAPHY

L B Alberti On Painting ed J Spencer (New Haven

1956 revised ed 1966) E Auerbach ldquoFigurardquo (1944) trans

and published in Scenes From the Drama of European Liter-

ature (New York 1959) pp 11-76 K Bauch ldquoImagordquo

(1960) Studien zur Kunstgeschichte (Berlin 1967) pp 1-20

G P Bellori Descrizione delle imagini dipinte da Raffaello

(Rome 1695 ed used is 1751) R Berliner ldquoThe Free-

dom of Medieval Artrdquo Gazette des Beaux-Arts 628 (1945)

263-88 idem ldquoBemerkungen zu einigen Darstellungen des

Erloumlsers als Schmerzensmannrdquo Das Muumlnster 9 (1956)

97-117x J Białostocki ldquoIconografia e Iconologiardquo Enciclo-

pedia Universale dellArte (1962) Vol VII cols 163-75

trans as Encyclopedia of World Art (1966) Vol VII cols

769-85 lists almost all important older contributions to this

field idem ldquoRomantische Ikonographierdquo Stil und Ikonog-

raphie (Dresden 1966) pp 156-81 idem ldquoKompozycja

emblematyczna epitafioacutew ślaskich XVI wiekurdquo (ldquoEmblem-

atic Composition of Silesian Epitaphs of the Sixteenth Cen-

turyrdquo) Ze studioacutew nad Sztuka XVI wieku na Řlasku

(Wrocław 1968) pp 77-93 idem ldquoEsilio Privatordquo Bulletin

du Museacutee National de Varsovie 10 (1969) 95-101 J

541

Chydenius The Theory of Medieval Symbolism (Helsingfors

1960) Series of the Societas Scientiarum Fennica Com-

mentationes Humanarum Litterarum 27 2 R J Clements

Picta Poesis (Rome 1960) F Creuzer Symbolik und

Mythologie der Alten Voumllker (Leipzig and Darmstadt 1810

revised ed 1819) F Cumont Recherches sur le symbolisme

funeacuteraire des Romains (Paris 1942) L Eitner ldquoThe Open

Window and the Storm-Tossed Boatrdquo Art Bulletin 37

(1955) 281-90 H Frankfort ldquoThe Archetype in Analytical

Psychology and the History of Religionrdquo Journal of the

Warburg and Courtauld Institutes 21 (1958) 166-78

K Garas ldquoAllegorie und Geschichte in der Venezianischen

Malerei des 18 Jahrhundertsrdquo in proceedings of the XXI

International Congress of the History of Art Bonn Stil und

Uumlberlieferung in der Kunst des Abendlandes (Berlin 1967)

3 280-83 K Giehlow ldquoDie Hieroglyphenkunde des

Humanismus in der Allegorie der Renaissancerdquo Jahrbuch

der Kunsthistorischen Sammlungen des Allerhochsten

Kaiserhauses 32 (1915) 1-232 C Gilbert ldquoOn Subject and

Not-Subject in Italian Renaissance Picturesrdquo Art Bulletin

34 (1952) 202-16 C Ginzburg ldquoDa A Warburg a E H

Gombrich Note su un problema di metodordquo Studi medi-

evali series 3 7 (1966) 1015-65 E H Gombrich ldquoIcones

Symbolicae The Visual Image in Neo-Platonic Thoughtrdquo

Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes 11 (1948)

163-92 idem ldquoThe Use of Art for the Study of Symbolsrdquo

American Psychologist 20 (1965) A Grabar Liconoclasme

byzantin Dossier archeacuteologique (Paris 1957) idem Chris-

tian Iconography A Study of Its Origins (Princeton 1969)

S J Gudlaugsson De Comedianten bij Jan Steen en zijn

tijdgenooten (s-Gravenhage 1945) W S Heckscher ldquoThe

Genesis of Iconologyrdquo Stl und Uumlberlieferung in der Kunst

des Abendlandes Akten des XXI Internationalen Kon-

gresses fuumlr Kunstgeschichte (Berlin 1967) 3 239-62 G

Hermereacuten Representation and Meaning in the Visual Arts

A Study in the Methodology of Iconography and Iconology

Lund Studies in Philosophy Vol I (Lund 1969) R Hinks

Myth and Allegory in Ancient Art (London 1939) W

Hofmann Das Irdische Paradies (Munich 1960) G J

Hoogewerff ldquoLIconologie et son importance pour leacutetude

systeacutematique de lart chreacutetienrdquo Rivista dArcheologia Cris-

tiana 8 (1931) 53-82 E de Jongh Zinne- en minnebeelden

in de schilderkunst van de zeventiende eeuw (mdash1967) idem

ldquoErotica in Vogelperspectief De dubbelzinnigheid van een

reeks 17de eeuwse genrevoorstellingenrdquo Simiolus 3

(1968-69) 22-72 L Kalinowski ldquoTreści ideowe i estetyczne

Drzwi Gnieźnieńskichrdquo (ldquoIdeological and Aesthetic Content

of the Gniezno Bronze Doorsrdquo) in Drzwi Gnieźnieńskie ed

M Walicki (Wroclaw 1959) 2 7-160 H Keller Tizians

Poesie fuumlr Koumlnig Philip II von Spanien (Wiesbaden 1969)

R Klein ldquoLa theacuteorie de lexpression figureacutee dans les traiteacutes

italiens sur les imprese 1555-1612rdquo Bibliothegraveque dHu-

manisme et Renaissance 19 (1957) 320-41 republished with

the other relevant studies in la forme et lintelligible (Paris

1969) R Klibansky E Panofsky F Saxl Saturn and Melan-

choly (London 1964) J B Knipping Ikonografie van de

Contra-Reformatie in de Nederlanden (Hilversum 1939-40)

G Kubler The Shape of Time (New Haven and London

1962) R W Lee ldquoUt pictura poesisrdquo Art Bulletin 22

(1940) 197-269 E Macircle Lart religieux du XIIIe siegravecle en

France (Paris 1898) English ed used (New York 1958)

idem Lart religieux de la fin du Moyen-Age en France

(Paris 1908) idem Lart religieux du XIIe siegravecle en France

(Paris 1922) idem Lart religieux apregraves le Concile de Trente

(Paris 1932) J Maurin Białostocka Lessing i sztuki plas-

tyczne (ldquoLessing and the visual artsrdquo) (Wroclaw Warszawa

Krakoacutew 1969) E F von Monroy Embleme und Emblem-

buumlcher in den Niederlanden 1560-1630 ed H M von Erffa

(Utrecht 1964) J Montagu ldquoThe Painted Enigma and

French Seventeenth Century Artrdquo Journal of the Warburg

and Courtauld Institutes 31 (1968) 307-35 W Mrazek

Ikonologie der barocken Deckenmalerei (Vienna 1953)

Uumlsterreichische Akademie der Wissenschaften Philo-

sophisch-historische Klasse Sitzungsberichte 2283 A D

Nock ldquoSarcophagi and Symbolismrdquo American Journal of

Archaeology 50 (1946) 166ff D Panofsky and E Panofsky

ldquoThe Iconography of the Galeacuterie Franccedilois Ier at Fontaine-

bleaurdquo Gazette des Beaux-Arts 652 (1958) 113-90

E Panofsky ldquoUumlber das Verhaumlltnis der Kunstgeschichte zur

Kunsttheorierdquo Zeitschrift fuumlr Aesthetik und allgemeine

Kunstwissenschaft 18 (1925) 129-61 idem Studies in

Iconology (New York 1939) idem ed Abbot Suger (Prince-

ton 1946) idem Gothic Architecture and Scholasticism

(Latrobe Pa 1951) idem Early Netherlandish Painting

(Cambridge Mass 1953) idem Meaning in the Visual Arts

(Garden City N Y 1955) idem Renaissance and Renas-

cences in Western Art (Stockholm 1960) idem Tomb Sculp-

ture (New York 1964) E Panofsky and F Saxl ldquoClassical

Mythology in Medieval Artrdquo Metropolitan Museum Studies

4 (1932-33) 228-80 M Praz Studies in Seventeenth Cen-

tury Imagery (London 1939-47 2nd ed Rome 1964) S

Ringbom ldquoDevotional Images and Imaginative Devotions

Notes on the Place of Art in Late Medieval Private Pietyrdquo

Gazette des Beaux-Arts 6 73 (1969) 159-70 Joseph Sauer

Symbolik des Kirchengebaumludes und seiner Ausstattung in

der Auffassung des Mittelalters 2nd ed (Freiburg i B

1924) F Saxl ldquoFruumlhes Christentum und spaumltes Heidentum

in ihren kuumlnstlerischen Ausdrucksformenrdquo Wiener Jahrbuch

fuumlr Kunstgeschichte 2 (1923) 63-121 M Schapiro ldquoThe

Ruthwell Crossrdquo Art Bulletin 26 (1944) 232-45 idem ldquoOn

the Aesthetic Attitude in Romanesque Artrdquo in Art and

Thought issued in Honour of Ananda Coomaraswamy

(London 1947) 139-50 J Seznec The Survival of the Pagan

Gods (New York 1953) O G von Simson The Gothic

Cathedral (New York 1956) R E Spear ldquoThe Literary

Source of Poussins Realm of Florardquo The Burlington Maga-

zine 107 (1965) 563-69 L Volkmann Bilderschriften der

Renaissance (Leipzig 1923) Hans van de Waal Drie

eeuwen vaderlandsche geschieduitbeelding 1500-1800 (s-

Gravenhage 1952) idem ldquoSome Principles of a General

Iconographical Classificationrdquo in Actes du XVIIe Congregraves

International dHistoire de lArt Amsterdam 1952 (La Haye

1955) 601-06 E Wind ldquoCharity the Case History of a

Patternrdquo Journal of the Warburg Institute 1 (1937) 322ff

JAN BIAŁOSTOCKI

[See also Allegory Baroque Classicism Criticism Enlight-

enment Motif Myth Naturalism in Art Neo-Platonism

Renaissance Humanism Romanticism Symbolism Tem-

perance Ut pictura poesis]

object of interpretation is the primary or natural sub-

ject matter The function of interpretation is called

ldquopre-iconographical descriptionrdquo In order to be able

to arrive at a correct interpretation on that level the

interpreter must have a practical experience (ldquofamili-

arity with objects and eventsrdquo) common to everybody

at least in one cultural sphere However he has to

control his observations by a ldquocorrective knowledge

of the history of stylerdquo (ldquoinsight into the manner in

which under varying historical conditions objects and

events were expressed by formsrdquo) On the second level

the function of interpretation is called ldquoiconographical

analysisrdquo its object is the ldquosecondary or conventional

subject matterrdquo constituting the world of images his-

tories and allegories The interpreters equipment in

this case is obviously the knowledge of literary sources

giving him a ldquofamiliarity with specific themes and

conceptsrdquo The interpreter has to control his observa-

tions by ldquothe insight into the manner in which under

varying historical conditions specific themes or con-

cepts were expressed by objects and eventsrdquo On the

third level the function of interpreting is called ldquoicon-

ographical analysis in a deeper senserdquo (1939) or ldquoicon-

ological analysisrdquo (1955) Its object is the ldquointrinsic

meaning or contentrdquo of a work of art The interpreters

equipment on that level should be a ldquofamiliarity with

the essential tendencies of the human mindrdquo and he

has to control his interpretation by the ldquoinsight into

the manner in which under varying historical condi-

tions essential tendencies of the human mind were

expressed by specific themes and conceptsrdquo Thus

taking all the time into account what Panofsky calls

the history of tradition the interpreter has to aim at

understanding the work of art its ldquoprimaryrdquo as well

as ldquosecondary subject matterrdquo as symptoms of some

fundamental tendency of the human mind typical of

537

a place a time a civilization and of an individual

responsible for the creation of the work ldquoIconologyrdquomdash

for Panofskymdashldquois a method of interpretation which

arises from synthesis rather than analysisrdquo Trying to

find the intrinsic meaning of a work of art

The art historian will have to check what he thinks is the

intrinsic meaning of the work or group of works against

what he thinks is the intrinsic meaning of as many other

documents of civilization historically related to that work

or group of works as he can master It is in the search

for intrinsic meaning or content that the various humanistic

disciplines meet on a common plane instead of serving as

handmaidens to each other

(Panofsky [1955] p 39)

The concept of intrinsic meaning of a work of art

was elaborated by Panofsky much earlier (1925) when

he interpreted in his own way the concept of Kunst-

wollen introduced by A Riegl to research in art

Panofsky understood this ldquoartistic volitionrdquo as an im-

manent ultimate meaning of a work of art which is

manifested in the way basic artistic problems are solved

in that work He used the same concept further to bring

art closer to the other fields of human activity Since

the ldquoimmanent ultimate senserdquo of the work of art is

nothing else than uniformity in the way of solving basic

artistic problems it is possible to compare that imma-

nent sense with immanent senses of the other human

works in various fields Panofsky did it for instance

when in one of his later works he compared the struc-

tural principles of Gothic architecture with those of

scholastic thinking (1951)

The system elaborated by Panofsky and exemplified

by his own work in art history was the first consistent

system of an integral interpretation of a work of visual

arts based on the analysis of content In principle

Panofskys system takes into account all the elements

of the work of art since it takes as the point of depar-

ture the sensual exterior shape of the work It is

however clear that its main scope is not the inter-

pretation of form as a bearer of meaning but the

understanding and interpretation of conventional alle-

gories literary themes and symbols as symptoms of

the history of the human mind It was that method

in the history of art which programmatically fostered

a collaboration with all the other disciplines of histori-

cal studies It was therefore one of the most influential

methods not only among art historians but also among

representatives of the other branches of humanistic

studies Although there were art historians who ex-

pressed a critical attitude toward ldquoiconologyrdquo as the

new method was soon baptized its influence was over-

whelming

3 It is not only but mainly due to Panofsky that

one can venture to call ldquoiconographicalrdquo that period

of art history as a historical discipline which followed

the Second World War and to oppose it to the ldquostylis-

ticrdquo one which preceded it It does not mean of course

that no iconographic research took place in the

twenties or thirties the works of Macircle Knipping van

Marle Wilpert Saxl and of Panofsky himself would

contradict such a statement Neither is it true that

purely formal research aiming at stylistic classification

and analysis discontinued after World War II It is

evident that in the last decades (from 1940 on) icono-

graphic interests came to the fore and became domi-

nant in many countries Iconographical studies grew

so much in number and importance that they made

it possible to undertake and to publish new reference

works of iconographic character like dictionaries

written by one scholar (Guy de Tervarent Aurenham-

mer) as well as larger works based on a collaboration

of several scholars (Encyclopedias of German art of

Antiquity and Christian civilization of Byzantine art)

Interest in meaning and iconography has appeared

also among historians of political social and religious

institutions The symbolism of signs ceremonies cos-

tumes and arms was studied by such scholars as A

Alfoumlldi ldquoInsignien und Tracht der roumlmischen Kaiserrdquo

Mitteilungen des deutschen Archaumlologischen Instituts

Roumlmische Abteilung (1935) 1ff ldquoDie Geburt der

kaiserlichen Bildsymbolikrdquo museum Helveticum 9

(1952) 204ff also by A Grabar Martyrium (Paris

1943-46) by E H Kantorowicz laudes Regiae

(Berkeley and Los Angeles 1946) The Kings Two

Bodies (Princeton 1957) by H P L Orange Studies

in the Iconography of Cosmic Kingship in the Ancient

World (Oslo 1953) Art Forms and Civic Life in the

Late Roman Empire (Princeton 1965) and by P E

Schramm herrschaftszeichen und Staatssymbolik

(Stuttgart 1954-56) In their studies iconography far

transcends the borders of art and it helps to build up

a history of ideas by following their various visual

expressions

Pioneering studies by K Giehlow F Saxl and E

Panofsky enlarged iconographical interests above all

to encompass the large field of secular art whereas

they had been mainly limited to religious iconography

in the work of preceding generations of scholars The

whole complicated and hardly known large body of

meanings disguised by the cryptic language of hiero-

glyphs emblems and iconologies became one of the

main topics of study

This established a collaboration between historians

of art and literature Mario Prazs admirable study of

emblems and his bibliography of emblem books

(1939-47) belongs now to the foundations of studies

in that field Publications by W S Heckscher and

A K Wirth by R S Clements E F von Monroy and

538

H M von Erffa E de Jongh and H Miedema and

several other scholars have elucidated the structure

and meaning of emblems and have shown their tre-

mendous influence on art even in its most monumental

and dignified forms An uninterrupted flow of reprints

of emblem books which brought within the reach of

modern students inaccessible volumes of sixteenth- and

seventeenth-century emblem writers were crowned by

the monumental undertaking of Arthur Henkel and

Albrecht Schoumlne who compiled an excellent volume

including almost all the texts and images needed for

the study of emblemsmdashEmblemata Handbuch zur

Sinnbildkunst des XVI und XVII Jahrhunderts

(Stuttgart 1967) Research was under way on hiero-

glyphs (Erik Iversen) and on the imprese (the late

Robert Klein) as well as on iconologies and allegories

These studies have disclosed meanings of the art of

the Renaissance of mannerism and of the baroque not

understood by nineteenth-century scholars

E Panofsky deciphered extremely farfetched and

individualistic programs of decoration of such famous

ensembles as the Camera di San Paolo by Correggio

in Parma the Gallery of Franccedilois I at Fontainebleau

Edgar Wind Andreacute Chastel and other scholars inter-

preted Raphaels decorations in the Popes apartments

Michelangelos art furnished material to detailed com-

prehensive studies by Panofsky Ch de Tolnay H von

Einem and Pope-Hennessy in which the share of

Neo-Platonic thinking in the ideological background

of the celebrated works of Michelangelo was discussed

Innumerable studies have been devoted to Titians

mythological paintings J R Martin presented expla-

nations of the Carracci frescoes in the Camerino Far-

nese and in the great gallery of the Palazzo Farnese

Bruegel considered in the nineteenth century as a drocircle

painter of peasant life has been shown by de Tolnay

Stridbeck and others to be an allegorist expressing a

skeptical humanistic outlook J S Held and W

Stechow contributed several articles to the under-

standing of mythological and allegorical contents in

Flemish and Dutch art of the sixteenth and seventeenth

centuries Rembrandts iconography was put into new

light by the two above-mentioned scholars as well as

by H M Rotermund H van de Waal J G van Gelder

H von Einem and Ch Tuumlmpel The intricate symbol-

ism and subject matter of historical and mythological

pictures by Nicolas Poussin were elucidated by such

masters of iconographic research as E H Gombrich

W Friedlaumlnder E Panofsky and above all by A Blunt

who in his monograph on Poussin presented a new

deep synthetic view of the ideas expressed by that

artists works Goyas individualistic secret symbolism

was also studied with the help of emblems and the

allegorical tradition Berninis works received iconolo

gical treatment by R Wittkower and H Kauffmann

All of this research does not mean that there was a

lack of interest in religious iconography M Schapiro

A Katzenellenbogen H Bober F Wormald and V

Elbern among others have contributed considerably

to deepen our understanding of the not completely

explained motifs and prominent works of medieval art

Panofsky has also shed a new light on several problems

of sepulchral iconography studies by such scholars as

R Berliner G von der Osten L Kalinowski S

Ringbom and T Dobrzeniecki contributed to late

medieval iconography in a new way Berliner stressed

the autonomous invention of visual artists or their

patrons while according to the traditional view popu-

larized by Macircle late medieval art should have followed

strictly literary sources

The religious content of modern art especially its

allegorical form in the late baroque period has been

examined and thanks to studies by such scholars as

W Mrazek and H Bauer has become better known

and understandable A great change was introduced

by ldquoiconologyrdquo into architectural history Buildings

which were formerly interpreted from aesthetic and

functional points of view only have been shown to

present allegorical symbolical or even emblematic

ideas Publications by leading art historians (R Witt-

kower B Smith G Bandmann O von Simson and

G C Argan) have presented medieval and modern

architecture as a bearer of meaning and have essen-

tially changed the character of architectural history

The iconography of classicism and romanticism

received a thorough treatment in books by W Hof-

mann and R Rosenblum as well as in several studies

devoted to individual themes and pictures G Hersey

has for example shown how much Delacroixs decora-

tion of the library in the Palais Bourbon owed to

Giambattista Vicos ideas about history More recently

studies on ldquoSymbolismrdquo have been undertaken Vincent

van Goghs symbolic language and iconography were

the object of studies by J Seznec C Nordenfalk and

other scholars On Ceacutezannes iconography interesting

remarks have been published by M Schapiro

Along with the development of iconographic studies

the establishment of centers of documentation has

advanced The ldquoFrenchrdquo stage in the development of

iconography has not left any marked trace in this

respect It was in America thanks to C R Morey that

the famous Index of Christian Art at the Department

of Art and Archaeology of Princeton University was

founded at first limited to the early Middle Ages then

enlarged so as to include art up to the end of the

medieval period Copies of the Princeton Index are

to be found also at the Istituto Pontificio dArcheolo-

gia in Rome and in the Dumbarton Oaks Library and

539

Collection in Washington DC But that Index ends

ldquowhere art beginsrdquomdashas Panofsky used to say jokingly

The need for systematic iconographic files for modern

art was strongly felt In 1956 A Pigler published a

very useful book Barockthemen in which he listed

thousands of works of art of the baroque period ac-

cording to their subjects It was however far from

being a systematic work The first essay in establishing

a systematic iconographic index for art of any time

was done by The Netherlands Institute for Art History

at the Hague then directed by H Gerson which took

the initiative around 1950 of publishing a postcard-size

photographic index of its rich collection of photographs

of Netherlandish art ordered according to an icono-

graphic principle Once such an idea was formulated

the need for a comprehensive consistent and clear

iconographic classification was urgent H van de Waal

of Leiden University devised such a system of classifi-

cation based on decimal divisions consistent and easy

to read He based his system on experiences of ethnol-

ogy and on such elaborated systems of classification

as that devised by Stith Thompson in his Motif-Index

of Folk Literature Vols I-VI (Bloomington Ind

1932-36 rev ed 1955-58) Van de Waal has elabor-

ated a system in which the first five main sections

classify five fundamental groups of portrayable things

namely (1) The Supernatural (2) Nature (3) Man (4)

Society (5) Abstracts The last four classify specific

subjects such as (6) History (7) The Bible (8) Myths

Legends and Tales (with the exception of classical

antiquity) (9) Myths and Legends of Classical Antiq-

uity Van de Waal combines the classification in the

first and in the second group in order to classify general

as well as specific subjects Christ in his system is

described with the sign ldquo11 Drdquo (ldquo1rdquo standing for Su-

pernatural ldquo11rdquo for Christianity ldquoDrdquo for Christ) the

adult Christ = 11 D 3 since ldquoshepherdrdquo on the other

hand bears the signature 47 I 221 the adult Christ

as a shepherd can be described in this system by the

following formula 11 D 3 = 47 I 221 Van de Waal

has also provided means to describe more complex

images which he expresses by adding elements between

brackets The Annunciation with God the Father and

a winged Angel is expressed by the following formula

73 A 5 (+1 +41) ldquo1rdquo standing for God the Father

and ldquo41rdquo for a winged Angel (van de Waal 1952) This

system elaborated for many years by its inventor and

prepared for publication in many volumes has proved

most useful in the practical arrangement of the Icono-

graphical Index of the Netherlandish Art and as the

only one until now in existence it became used more

and more in spite of some ambiguities and difficulties

As an endeavor to classify ldquoall portrayablerdquo things

persons events and ideas and to create a consistent

method to describe every possible image van de Waals

system may be considered as one of the important

achievements of the ldquoiconographical stagerdquo in the

development of art history Iconographic files exist of

course in many institutions as for example in the Ikon-

ologisch Instituut of Utrecht University one of the

main centers of study in emblematics and of course

in the most venerable institution of iconographic re-

search the Warburg Institute of the London University

and in other places

4 What was the result of this ldquoiconographicrdquo turn

in the development of the history of art One thing

is certain that this discipline by necessity has come

closer to other humanistic disciplines Since the

ldquointrinsicrdquo meaningmdashin Panofskys terminologymdashof a

work of art cannot be described in terms used by the

history of art but only in terms borrowed from the

history of philosophy of religion of social structures

of science and so on the ldquoiconological methodrdquo took

for granted and provoked such a collaboration Art

history was perhaps the first or one of the first to show

new interest in investigation of meaning It was fol-

lowed by similar developments in ethnology and in

linguistics

We have mentioned above a parallel development

in Byzantine and classical studies Panofskys influence

has been considerable in the other fields of humanistic

research Since ldquoiconologyrdquo aimed at discovering ideas

expressed by a work of art it awoke in art historians

an interest in the history of ideas This general shift

of emphasis and of the direction of studies from mainly

formal ones to studies aiming at ideas underlying art

was perhaps responsible among others for the fact that

several contributions to the Journal of the History of

Ideas have been written by historians of art

It is not difficult to see that such a development

should have provoked criticism on the side of those

who care about the purity and autonomy of methods

Iconology was criticized as far as its internal coherence

and also as far as its claim to be the integral method

of the study of art are concerned (Białostocki 1962)

Studies by R Klein E Forssman G Previtali G

Kubler B Teyssegravedre C Ginzburg and G Hermeren

expressed critical opinions in one or the other respect

Iconology linked art with the rest of history but it

disrupted the links between the work of art and other

things (Kubler 1962) Concentrating on meaning

iconology neglected art as form as individual expres-

sion Iconology implied a rational relationship between

intellectual content and artistic form On the one hand

one spoke of ldquoiconological diminutionsrdquo (Kubler

1962)mdashlimitations of research to meaning only But

on the other hand the overstatements of iconology

were criticized its representatives sometimes seemed

540

to assume everything symbolized something And some

iconologists seemed to consider important in art not

that which makes art a different field of human activity

but that which connects art with other fieldsmdashwith

the history of ideas

There were of course critics who had the opposite

opinion Since the end of the eighteenth century a

direct experience of art was more and more valued

and its symbolical function considered as a burden

J G von Herder said ein Kunstwerk ist der Kunst

wegen da aber bei einem Symbole ist die Kunst

dienend (ldquoA work of art is there because of art but

with a symbol art is a servicerdquo) Similar opinions were

expressed by nineteenth-century art writers and in this

century they have been voiced by Benedetto Croce and

by other Italian opponents of contenutismo by which

they meant interest in content For such critics to put

stress on iconography was to miss the essential in art

and to focus attention on a subordinate function of art

Also among scholars who considered the function

of representation and of communication as a legitimate

and important function of art criticism was expressed

not against the principle of an iconographical or icon-

ological investigation but against overstatements in

their application The introduction of the idea of ldquodis-

guised symbolismrdquo has created a danger of course of

opening the way to fanciful interpretations The alle-

gorical and symbolical function of mythological imag-

ery in classical art is also difficult to interpret precisely

Since no literary sources give a key to an interpretation

of the iconography of the sarcophagi very divergent

theories have been expressed concerning their meaning

Some archaeologists like F Cumont (1942) believe

that mythological and allegorical imagery (Anadyo-

mene Sea-Thiasos Personifications of the Seasons) is

to be read symbolically The Sea-Thiasos for instance

is to be interpreted as a symbol of the journey of the

souls of the deceased to the islands of the blessed

Others like A D Nock (1946) do not find enough

evidence to accept other than a decorative function

in such imagery

The intrusion of some representatives of psychology

eg C G Jung into iconographic studies giving them

an unhistorical turn in their search for ldquoarchetypal

imagesrdquo has complicated the situation although art

historians in general understandably have not accepted

that kind of approach to symbolism (Frankfort 1958

Gombrich 1965)

The fact that iconographic interpretations sometimes

lack satisfactory proofs does not detract from the im-

portance of such investigations so long as they are

conducted according to the requirements of historical

methods and take into account the corrective princi-

ples established by Panofsky A correct acquaintance

with the way of thinking of the artist the patron or the

viewer based on a satisfactory knowledge of documen-

tary visual and literary sources an awareness of the

choice situations produced by historical developments

may enable art historians to discover the secondary

meaning of a work of art as well as its intrinsic mean-

ing It is of course possible that the art historian will

meet some works for which it will not be possible to re-

construct in a satisfactory way the world of ideas that

would account for the meaning of those works In such

cases a reliable interpretation is simply not possible

R Berliner (1945 1966) criticized the widespread

opinion according to which content of the works of

visual arts in the Middle Ages had to be checked

against the literary sources considered as the only

medium in which ideological innovations were per-

mitted Berliner pleaded for assuming a considerable

ldquofreedomrdquo in the medieval artist and he considered

iconographic innovation possible even when no writ-

ten evidence could be found Meyer Schapiro (1947)

presented proofs that sometimes purely aesthetic rea-

sons decided the character of the work of art even as

early as the Romanesque period

We can only touch on some specific discussions going

on in the field of iconographic research But iconogra-

phic research is far from being a closed system and

the relative share of iconographic and stylistic criticism

in the work of art historians is always a matter of

discussion It is certain that the ldquoiconographicrdquo period

in the study of art has enlarged in a considerable way

the understanding of the art of the past and that it

has connected art history in a way unknown before

with the other historical disciplines and above all others

with the history of ideas

BIBLIOGRAPHY

L B Alberti On Painting ed J Spencer (New Haven

1956 revised ed 1966) E Auerbach ldquoFigurardquo (1944) trans

and published in Scenes From the Drama of European Liter-

ature (New York 1959) pp 11-76 K Bauch ldquoImagordquo

(1960) Studien zur Kunstgeschichte (Berlin 1967) pp 1-20

G P Bellori Descrizione delle imagini dipinte da Raffaello

(Rome 1695 ed used is 1751) R Berliner ldquoThe Free-

dom of Medieval Artrdquo Gazette des Beaux-Arts 628 (1945)

263-88 idem ldquoBemerkungen zu einigen Darstellungen des

Erloumlsers als Schmerzensmannrdquo Das Muumlnster 9 (1956)

97-117x J Białostocki ldquoIconografia e Iconologiardquo Enciclo-

pedia Universale dellArte (1962) Vol VII cols 163-75

trans as Encyclopedia of World Art (1966) Vol VII cols

769-85 lists almost all important older contributions to this

field idem ldquoRomantische Ikonographierdquo Stil und Ikonog-

raphie (Dresden 1966) pp 156-81 idem ldquoKompozycja

emblematyczna epitafioacutew ślaskich XVI wiekurdquo (ldquoEmblem-

atic Composition of Silesian Epitaphs of the Sixteenth Cen-

turyrdquo) Ze studioacutew nad Sztuka XVI wieku na Řlasku

(Wrocław 1968) pp 77-93 idem ldquoEsilio Privatordquo Bulletin

du Museacutee National de Varsovie 10 (1969) 95-101 J

541

Chydenius The Theory of Medieval Symbolism (Helsingfors

1960) Series of the Societas Scientiarum Fennica Com-

mentationes Humanarum Litterarum 27 2 R J Clements

Picta Poesis (Rome 1960) F Creuzer Symbolik und

Mythologie der Alten Voumllker (Leipzig and Darmstadt 1810

revised ed 1819) F Cumont Recherches sur le symbolisme

funeacuteraire des Romains (Paris 1942) L Eitner ldquoThe Open

Window and the Storm-Tossed Boatrdquo Art Bulletin 37

(1955) 281-90 H Frankfort ldquoThe Archetype in Analytical

Psychology and the History of Religionrdquo Journal of the

Warburg and Courtauld Institutes 21 (1958) 166-78

K Garas ldquoAllegorie und Geschichte in der Venezianischen

Malerei des 18 Jahrhundertsrdquo in proceedings of the XXI

International Congress of the History of Art Bonn Stil und

Uumlberlieferung in der Kunst des Abendlandes (Berlin 1967)

3 280-83 K Giehlow ldquoDie Hieroglyphenkunde des

Humanismus in der Allegorie der Renaissancerdquo Jahrbuch

der Kunsthistorischen Sammlungen des Allerhochsten

Kaiserhauses 32 (1915) 1-232 C Gilbert ldquoOn Subject and

Not-Subject in Italian Renaissance Picturesrdquo Art Bulletin

34 (1952) 202-16 C Ginzburg ldquoDa A Warburg a E H

Gombrich Note su un problema di metodordquo Studi medi-

evali series 3 7 (1966) 1015-65 E H Gombrich ldquoIcones

Symbolicae The Visual Image in Neo-Platonic Thoughtrdquo

Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes 11 (1948)

163-92 idem ldquoThe Use of Art for the Study of Symbolsrdquo

American Psychologist 20 (1965) A Grabar Liconoclasme

byzantin Dossier archeacuteologique (Paris 1957) idem Chris-

tian Iconography A Study of Its Origins (Princeton 1969)

S J Gudlaugsson De Comedianten bij Jan Steen en zijn

tijdgenooten (s-Gravenhage 1945) W S Heckscher ldquoThe

Genesis of Iconologyrdquo Stl und Uumlberlieferung in der Kunst

des Abendlandes Akten des XXI Internationalen Kon-

gresses fuumlr Kunstgeschichte (Berlin 1967) 3 239-62 G

Hermereacuten Representation and Meaning in the Visual Arts

A Study in the Methodology of Iconography and Iconology

Lund Studies in Philosophy Vol I (Lund 1969) R Hinks

Myth and Allegory in Ancient Art (London 1939) W

Hofmann Das Irdische Paradies (Munich 1960) G J

Hoogewerff ldquoLIconologie et son importance pour leacutetude

systeacutematique de lart chreacutetienrdquo Rivista dArcheologia Cris-

tiana 8 (1931) 53-82 E de Jongh Zinne- en minnebeelden

in de schilderkunst van de zeventiende eeuw (mdash1967) idem

ldquoErotica in Vogelperspectief De dubbelzinnigheid van een

reeks 17de eeuwse genrevoorstellingenrdquo Simiolus 3

(1968-69) 22-72 L Kalinowski ldquoTreści ideowe i estetyczne

Drzwi Gnieźnieńskichrdquo (ldquoIdeological and Aesthetic Content

of the Gniezno Bronze Doorsrdquo) in Drzwi Gnieźnieńskie ed

M Walicki (Wroclaw 1959) 2 7-160 H Keller Tizians

Poesie fuumlr Koumlnig Philip II von Spanien (Wiesbaden 1969)

R Klein ldquoLa theacuteorie de lexpression figureacutee dans les traiteacutes

italiens sur les imprese 1555-1612rdquo Bibliothegraveque dHu-

manisme et Renaissance 19 (1957) 320-41 republished with

the other relevant studies in la forme et lintelligible (Paris

1969) R Klibansky E Panofsky F Saxl Saturn and Melan-

choly (London 1964) J B Knipping Ikonografie van de

Contra-Reformatie in de Nederlanden (Hilversum 1939-40)

G Kubler The Shape of Time (New Haven and London

1962) R W Lee ldquoUt pictura poesisrdquo Art Bulletin 22

(1940) 197-269 E Macircle Lart religieux du XIIIe siegravecle en

France (Paris 1898) English ed used (New York 1958)

idem Lart religieux de la fin du Moyen-Age en France

(Paris 1908) idem Lart religieux du XIIe siegravecle en France

(Paris 1922) idem Lart religieux apregraves le Concile de Trente

(Paris 1932) J Maurin Białostocka Lessing i sztuki plas-

tyczne (ldquoLessing and the visual artsrdquo) (Wroclaw Warszawa

Krakoacutew 1969) E F von Monroy Embleme und Emblem-

buumlcher in den Niederlanden 1560-1630 ed H M von Erffa

(Utrecht 1964) J Montagu ldquoThe Painted Enigma and

French Seventeenth Century Artrdquo Journal of the Warburg

and Courtauld Institutes 31 (1968) 307-35 W Mrazek

Ikonologie der barocken Deckenmalerei (Vienna 1953)

Uumlsterreichische Akademie der Wissenschaften Philo-

sophisch-historische Klasse Sitzungsberichte 2283 A D

Nock ldquoSarcophagi and Symbolismrdquo American Journal of

Archaeology 50 (1946) 166ff D Panofsky and E Panofsky

ldquoThe Iconography of the Galeacuterie Franccedilois Ier at Fontaine-

bleaurdquo Gazette des Beaux-Arts 652 (1958) 113-90

E Panofsky ldquoUumlber das Verhaumlltnis der Kunstgeschichte zur

Kunsttheorierdquo Zeitschrift fuumlr Aesthetik und allgemeine

Kunstwissenschaft 18 (1925) 129-61 idem Studies in

Iconology (New York 1939) idem ed Abbot Suger (Prince-

ton 1946) idem Gothic Architecture and Scholasticism

(Latrobe Pa 1951) idem Early Netherlandish Painting

(Cambridge Mass 1953) idem Meaning in the Visual Arts

(Garden City N Y 1955) idem Renaissance and Renas-

cences in Western Art (Stockholm 1960) idem Tomb Sculp-

ture (New York 1964) E Panofsky and F Saxl ldquoClassical

Mythology in Medieval Artrdquo Metropolitan Museum Studies

4 (1932-33) 228-80 M Praz Studies in Seventeenth Cen-

tury Imagery (London 1939-47 2nd ed Rome 1964) S

Ringbom ldquoDevotional Images and Imaginative Devotions

Notes on the Place of Art in Late Medieval Private Pietyrdquo

Gazette des Beaux-Arts 6 73 (1969) 159-70 Joseph Sauer

Symbolik des Kirchengebaumludes und seiner Ausstattung in

der Auffassung des Mittelalters 2nd ed (Freiburg i B

1924) F Saxl ldquoFruumlhes Christentum und spaumltes Heidentum

in ihren kuumlnstlerischen Ausdrucksformenrdquo Wiener Jahrbuch

fuumlr Kunstgeschichte 2 (1923) 63-121 M Schapiro ldquoThe

Ruthwell Crossrdquo Art Bulletin 26 (1944) 232-45 idem ldquoOn

the Aesthetic Attitude in Romanesque Artrdquo in Art and

Thought issued in Honour of Ananda Coomaraswamy

(London 1947) 139-50 J Seznec The Survival of the Pagan

Gods (New York 1953) O G von Simson The Gothic

Cathedral (New York 1956) R E Spear ldquoThe Literary

Source of Poussins Realm of Florardquo The Burlington Maga-

zine 107 (1965) 563-69 L Volkmann Bilderschriften der

Renaissance (Leipzig 1923) Hans van de Waal Drie

eeuwen vaderlandsche geschieduitbeelding 1500-1800 (s-

Gravenhage 1952) idem ldquoSome Principles of a General

Iconographical Classificationrdquo in Actes du XVIIe Congregraves

International dHistoire de lArt Amsterdam 1952 (La Haye

1955) 601-06 E Wind ldquoCharity the Case History of a

Patternrdquo Journal of the Warburg Institute 1 (1937) 322ff

JAN BIAŁOSTOCKI

[See also Allegory Baroque Classicism Criticism Enlight-

enment Motif Myth Naturalism in Art Neo-Platonism

Renaissance Humanism Romanticism Symbolism Tem-

perance Ut pictura poesis]

or group of works as he can master It is in the search

for intrinsic meaning or content that the various humanistic

disciplines meet on a common plane instead of serving as

handmaidens to each other

(Panofsky [1955] p 39)

The concept of intrinsic meaning of a work of art

was elaborated by Panofsky much earlier (1925) when

he interpreted in his own way the concept of Kunst-

wollen introduced by A Riegl to research in art

Panofsky understood this ldquoartistic volitionrdquo as an im-

manent ultimate meaning of a work of art which is

manifested in the way basic artistic problems are solved

in that work He used the same concept further to bring

art closer to the other fields of human activity Since

the ldquoimmanent ultimate senserdquo of the work of art is

nothing else than uniformity in the way of solving basic

artistic problems it is possible to compare that imma-

nent sense with immanent senses of the other human

works in various fields Panofsky did it for instance

when in one of his later works he compared the struc-

tural principles of Gothic architecture with those of

scholastic thinking (1951)

The system elaborated by Panofsky and exemplified

by his own work in art history was the first consistent

system of an integral interpretation of a work of visual

arts based on the analysis of content In principle

Panofskys system takes into account all the elements

of the work of art since it takes as the point of depar-

ture the sensual exterior shape of the work It is

however clear that its main scope is not the inter-

pretation of form as a bearer of meaning but the

understanding and interpretation of conventional alle-

gories literary themes and symbols as symptoms of

the history of the human mind It was that method

in the history of art which programmatically fostered

a collaboration with all the other disciplines of histori-

cal studies It was therefore one of the most influential

methods not only among art historians but also among

representatives of the other branches of humanistic

studies Although there were art historians who ex-

pressed a critical attitude toward ldquoiconologyrdquo as the

new method was soon baptized its influence was over-

whelming

3 It is not only but mainly due to Panofsky that

one can venture to call ldquoiconographicalrdquo that period

of art history as a historical discipline which followed

the Second World War and to oppose it to the ldquostylis-

ticrdquo one which preceded it It does not mean of course

that no iconographic research took place in the

twenties or thirties the works of Macircle Knipping van

Marle Wilpert Saxl and of Panofsky himself would

contradict such a statement Neither is it true that

purely formal research aiming at stylistic classification

and analysis discontinued after World War II It is

evident that in the last decades (from 1940 on) icono-

graphic interests came to the fore and became domi-

nant in many countries Iconographical studies grew

so much in number and importance that they made

it possible to undertake and to publish new reference

works of iconographic character like dictionaries

written by one scholar (Guy de Tervarent Aurenham-

mer) as well as larger works based on a collaboration

of several scholars (Encyclopedias of German art of

Antiquity and Christian civilization of Byzantine art)

Interest in meaning and iconography has appeared

also among historians of political social and religious

institutions The symbolism of signs ceremonies cos-

tumes and arms was studied by such scholars as A

Alfoumlldi ldquoInsignien und Tracht der roumlmischen Kaiserrdquo

Mitteilungen des deutschen Archaumlologischen Instituts

Roumlmische Abteilung (1935) 1ff ldquoDie Geburt der

kaiserlichen Bildsymbolikrdquo museum Helveticum 9

(1952) 204ff also by A Grabar Martyrium (Paris

1943-46) by E H Kantorowicz laudes Regiae

(Berkeley and Los Angeles 1946) The Kings Two

Bodies (Princeton 1957) by H P L Orange Studies

in the Iconography of Cosmic Kingship in the Ancient

World (Oslo 1953) Art Forms and Civic Life in the

Late Roman Empire (Princeton 1965) and by P E

Schramm herrschaftszeichen und Staatssymbolik

(Stuttgart 1954-56) In their studies iconography far

transcends the borders of art and it helps to build up

a history of ideas by following their various visual

expressions

Pioneering studies by K Giehlow F Saxl and E

Panofsky enlarged iconographical interests above all

to encompass the large field of secular art whereas

they had been mainly limited to religious iconography

in the work of preceding generations of scholars The

whole complicated and hardly known large body of

meanings disguised by the cryptic language of hiero-

glyphs emblems and iconologies became one of the

main topics of study

This established a collaboration between historians

of art and literature Mario Prazs admirable study of

emblems and his bibliography of emblem books

(1939-47) belongs now to the foundations of studies

in that field Publications by W S Heckscher and

A K Wirth by R S Clements E F von Monroy and

538

H M von Erffa E de Jongh and H Miedema and

several other scholars have elucidated the structure

and meaning of emblems and have shown their tre-

mendous influence on art even in its most monumental

and dignified forms An uninterrupted flow of reprints

of emblem books which brought within the reach of

modern students inaccessible volumes of sixteenth- and

seventeenth-century emblem writers were crowned by

the monumental undertaking of Arthur Henkel and

Albrecht Schoumlne who compiled an excellent volume

including almost all the texts and images needed for

the study of emblemsmdashEmblemata Handbuch zur

Sinnbildkunst des XVI und XVII Jahrhunderts

(Stuttgart 1967) Research was under way on hiero-

glyphs (Erik Iversen) and on the imprese (the late

Robert Klein) as well as on iconologies and allegories

These studies have disclosed meanings of the art of

the Renaissance of mannerism and of the baroque not

understood by nineteenth-century scholars

E Panofsky deciphered extremely farfetched and

individualistic programs of decoration of such famous

ensembles as the Camera di San Paolo by Correggio

in Parma the Gallery of Franccedilois I at Fontainebleau

Edgar Wind Andreacute Chastel and other scholars inter-

preted Raphaels decorations in the Popes apartments

Michelangelos art furnished material to detailed com-

prehensive studies by Panofsky Ch de Tolnay H von

Einem and Pope-Hennessy in which the share of

Neo-Platonic thinking in the ideological background

of the celebrated works of Michelangelo was discussed

Innumerable studies have been devoted to Titians

mythological paintings J R Martin presented expla-

nations of the Carracci frescoes in the Camerino Far-

nese and in the great gallery of the Palazzo Farnese

Bruegel considered in the nineteenth century as a drocircle

painter of peasant life has been shown by de Tolnay

Stridbeck and others to be an allegorist expressing a

skeptical humanistic outlook J S Held and W

Stechow contributed several articles to the under-

standing of mythological and allegorical contents in

Flemish and Dutch art of the sixteenth and seventeenth

centuries Rembrandts iconography was put into new

light by the two above-mentioned scholars as well as

by H M Rotermund H van de Waal J G van Gelder

H von Einem and Ch Tuumlmpel The intricate symbol-

ism and subject matter of historical and mythological

pictures by Nicolas Poussin were elucidated by such

masters of iconographic research as E H Gombrich

W Friedlaumlnder E Panofsky and above all by A Blunt

who in his monograph on Poussin presented a new

deep synthetic view of the ideas expressed by that

artists works Goyas individualistic secret symbolism

was also studied with the help of emblems and the

allegorical tradition Berninis works received iconolo

gical treatment by R Wittkower and H Kauffmann

All of this research does not mean that there was a

lack of interest in religious iconography M Schapiro

A Katzenellenbogen H Bober F Wormald and V

Elbern among others have contributed considerably

to deepen our understanding of the not completely

explained motifs and prominent works of medieval art

Panofsky has also shed a new light on several problems

of sepulchral iconography studies by such scholars as

R Berliner G von der Osten L Kalinowski S

Ringbom and T Dobrzeniecki contributed to late

medieval iconography in a new way Berliner stressed

the autonomous invention of visual artists or their

patrons while according to the traditional view popu-

larized by Macircle late medieval art should have followed

strictly literary sources

The religious content of modern art especially its

allegorical form in the late baroque period has been

examined and thanks to studies by such scholars as

W Mrazek and H Bauer has become better known

and understandable A great change was introduced

by ldquoiconologyrdquo into architectural history Buildings

which were formerly interpreted from aesthetic and

functional points of view only have been shown to

present allegorical symbolical or even emblematic

ideas Publications by leading art historians (R Witt-

kower B Smith G Bandmann O von Simson and

G C Argan) have presented medieval and modern

architecture as a bearer of meaning and have essen-

tially changed the character of architectural history

The iconography of classicism and romanticism

received a thorough treatment in books by W Hof-

mann and R Rosenblum as well as in several studies

devoted to individual themes and pictures G Hersey

has for example shown how much Delacroixs decora-

tion of the library in the Palais Bourbon owed to

Giambattista Vicos ideas about history More recently

studies on ldquoSymbolismrdquo have been undertaken Vincent

van Goghs symbolic language and iconography were

the object of studies by J Seznec C Nordenfalk and

other scholars On Ceacutezannes iconography interesting

remarks have been published by M Schapiro

Along with the development of iconographic studies

the establishment of centers of documentation has

advanced The ldquoFrenchrdquo stage in the development of

iconography has not left any marked trace in this

respect It was in America thanks to C R Morey that

the famous Index of Christian Art at the Department

of Art and Archaeology of Princeton University was

founded at first limited to the early Middle Ages then

enlarged so as to include art up to the end of the

medieval period Copies of the Princeton Index are

to be found also at the Istituto Pontificio dArcheolo-

gia in Rome and in the Dumbarton Oaks Library and

539

Collection in Washington DC But that Index ends

ldquowhere art beginsrdquomdashas Panofsky used to say jokingly

The need for systematic iconographic files for modern

art was strongly felt In 1956 A Pigler published a

very useful book Barockthemen in which he listed

thousands of works of art of the baroque period ac-

cording to their subjects It was however far from

being a systematic work The first essay in establishing

a systematic iconographic index for art of any time

was done by The Netherlands Institute for Art History

at the Hague then directed by H Gerson which took

the initiative around 1950 of publishing a postcard-size

photographic index of its rich collection of photographs

of Netherlandish art ordered according to an icono-

graphic principle Once such an idea was formulated

the need for a comprehensive consistent and clear

iconographic classification was urgent H van de Waal

of Leiden University devised such a system of classifi-

cation based on decimal divisions consistent and easy

to read He based his system on experiences of ethnol-

ogy and on such elaborated systems of classification

as that devised by Stith Thompson in his Motif-Index

of Folk Literature Vols I-VI (Bloomington Ind

1932-36 rev ed 1955-58) Van de Waal has elabor-

ated a system in which the first five main sections

classify five fundamental groups of portrayable things

namely (1) The Supernatural (2) Nature (3) Man (4)

Society (5) Abstracts The last four classify specific

subjects such as (6) History (7) The Bible (8) Myths

Legends and Tales (with the exception of classical

antiquity) (9) Myths and Legends of Classical Antiq-

uity Van de Waal combines the classification in the

first and in the second group in order to classify general

as well as specific subjects Christ in his system is

described with the sign ldquo11 Drdquo (ldquo1rdquo standing for Su-

pernatural ldquo11rdquo for Christianity ldquoDrdquo for Christ) the

adult Christ = 11 D 3 since ldquoshepherdrdquo on the other

hand bears the signature 47 I 221 the adult Christ

as a shepherd can be described in this system by the

following formula 11 D 3 = 47 I 221 Van de Waal

has also provided means to describe more complex

images which he expresses by adding elements between

brackets The Annunciation with God the Father and

a winged Angel is expressed by the following formula

73 A 5 (+1 +41) ldquo1rdquo standing for God the Father

and ldquo41rdquo for a winged Angel (van de Waal 1952) This

system elaborated for many years by its inventor and

prepared for publication in many volumes has proved

most useful in the practical arrangement of the Icono-

graphical Index of the Netherlandish Art and as the

only one until now in existence it became used more

and more in spite of some ambiguities and difficulties

As an endeavor to classify ldquoall portrayablerdquo things

persons events and ideas and to create a consistent

method to describe every possible image van de Waals

system may be considered as one of the important

achievements of the ldquoiconographical stagerdquo in the

development of art history Iconographic files exist of

course in many institutions as for example in the Ikon-

ologisch Instituut of Utrecht University one of the

main centers of study in emblematics and of course

in the most venerable institution of iconographic re-

search the Warburg Institute of the London University

and in other places

4 What was the result of this ldquoiconographicrdquo turn

in the development of the history of art One thing

is certain that this discipline by necessity has come

closer to other humanistic disciplines Since the

ldquointrinsicrdquo meaningmdashin Panofskys terminologymdashof a

work of art cannot be described in terms used by the

history of art but only in terms borrowed from the

history of philosophy of religion of social structures

of science and so on the ldquoiconological methodrdquo took

for granted and provoked such a collaboration Art

history was perhaps the first or one of the first to show

new interest in investigation of meaning It was fol-

lowed by similar developments in ethnology and in

linguistics

We have mentioned above a parallel development

in Byzantine and classical studies Panofskys influence

has been considerable in the other fields of humanistic

research Since ldquoiconologyrdquo aimed at discovering ideas

expressed by a work of art it awoke in art historians

an interest in the history of ideas This general shift

of emphasis and of the direction of studies from mainly

formal ones to studies aiming at ideas underlying art

was perhaps responsible among others for the fact that

several contributions to the Journal of the History of

Ideas have been written by historians of art

It is not difficult to see that such a development

should have provoked criticism on the side of those

who care about the purity and autonomy of methods

Iconology was criticized as far as its internal coherence

and also as far as its claim to be the integral method

of the study of art are concerned (Białostocki 1962)

Studies by R Klein E Forssman G Previtali G

Kubler B Teyssegravedre C Ginzburg and G Hermeren

expressed critical opinions in one or the other respect

Iconology linked art with the rest of history but it

disrupted the links between the work of art and other

things (Kubler 1962) Concentrating on meaning

iconology neglected art as form as individual expres-

sion Iconology implied a rational relationship between

intellectual content and artistic form On the one hand

one spoke of ldquoiconological diminutionsrdquo (Kubler

1962)mdashlimitations of research to meaning only But

on the other hand the overstatements of iconology

were criticized its representatives sometimes seemed

540

to assume everything symbolized something And some

iconologists seemed to consider important in art not

that which makes art a different field of human activity

but that which connects art with other fieldsmdashwith

the history of ideas

There were of course critics who had the opposite

opinion Since the end of the eighteenth century a

direct experience of art was more and more valued

and its symbolical function considered as a burden

J G von Herder said ein Kunstwerk ist der Kunst

wegen da aber bei einem Symbole ist die Kunst

dienend (ldquoA work of art is there because of art but

with a symbol art is a servicerdquo) Similar opinions were

expressed by nineteenth-century art writers and in this

century they have been voiced by Benedetto Croce and

by other Italian opponents of contenutismo by which

they meant interest in content For such critics to put

stress on iconography was to miss the essential in art

and to focus attention on a subordinate function of art

Also among scholars who considered the function

of representation and of communication as a legitimate

and important function of art criticism was expressed

not against the principle of an iconographical or icon-

ological investigation but against overstatements in

their application The introduction of the idea of ldquodis-

guised symbolismrdquo has created a danger of course of

opening the way to fanciful interpretations The alle-

gorical and symbolical function of mythological imag-

ery in classical art is also difficult to interpret precisely

Since no literary sources give a key to an interpretation

of the iconography of the sarcophagi very divergent

theories have been expressed concerning their meaning

Some archaeologists like F Cumont (1942) believe

that mythological and allegorical imagery (Anadyo-

mene Sea-Thiasos Personifications of the Seasons) is

to be read symbolically The Sea-Thiasos for instance

is to be interpreted as a symbol of the journey of the

souls of the deceased to the islands of the blessed

Others like A D Nock (1946) do not find enough

evidence to accept other than a decorative function

in such imagery

The intrusion of some representatives of psychology

eg C G Jung into iconographic studies giving them

an unhistorical turn in their search for ldquoarchetypal

imagesrdquo has complicated the situation although art

historians in general understandably have not accepted

that kind of approach to symbolism (Frankfort 1958

Gombrich 1965)

The fact that iconographic interpretations sometimes

lack satisfactory proofs does not detract from the im-

portance of such investigations so long as they are

conducted according to the requirements of historical

methods and take into account the corrective princi-

ples established by Panofsky A correct acquaintance

with the way of thinking of the artist the patron or the

viewer based on a satisfactory knowledge of documen-

tary visual and literary sources an awareness of the

choice situations produced by historical developments

may enable art historians to discover the secondary

meaning of a work of art as well as its intrinsic mean-

ing It is of course possible that the art historian will

meet some works for which it will not be possible to re-

construct in a satisfactory way the world of ideas that

would account for the meaning of those works In such

cases a reliable interpretation is simply not possible

R Berliner (1945 1966) criticized the widespread

opinion according to which content of the works of

visual arts in the Middle Ages had to be checked

against the literary sources considered as the only

medium in which ideological innovations were per-

mitted Berliner pleaded for assuming a considerable

ldquofreedomrdquo in the medieval artist and he considered

iconographic innovation possible even when no writ-

ten evidence could be found Meyer Schapiro (1947)

presented proofs that sometimes purely aesthetic rea-

sons decided the character of the work of art even as

early as the Romanesque period

We can only touch on some specific discussions going

on in the field of iconographic research But iconogra-

phic research is far from being a closed system and

the relative share of iconographic and stylistic criticism

in the work of art historians is always a matter of

discussion It is certain that the ldquoiconographicrdquo period

in the study of art has enlarged in a considerable way

the understanding of the art of the past and that it

has connected art history in a way unknown before

with the other historical disciplines and above all others

with the history of ideas

BIBLIOGRAPHY

L B Alberti On Painting ed J Spencer (New Haven

1956 revised ed 1966) E Auerbach ldquoFigurardquo (1944) trans

and published in Scenes From the Drama of European Liter-

ature (New York 1959) pp 11-76 K Bauch ldquoImagordquo

(1960) Studien zur Kunstgeschichte (Berlin 1967) pp 1-20

G P Bellori Descrizione delle imagini dipinte da Raffaello

(Rome 1695 ed used is 1751) R Berliner ldquoThe Free-

dom of Medieval Artrdquo Gazette des Beaux-Arts 628 (1945)

263-88 idem ldquoBemerkungen zu einigen Darstellungen des

Erloumlsers als Schmerzensmannrdquo Das Muumlnster 9 (1956)

97-117x J Białostocki ldquoIconografia e Iconologiardquo Enciclo-

pedia Universale dellArte (1962) Vol VII cols 163-75

trans as Encyclopedia of World Art (1966) Vol VII cols

769-85 lists almost all important older contributions to this

field idem ldquoRomantische Ikonographierdquo Stil und Ikonog-

raphie (Dresden 1966) pp 156-81 idem ldquoKompozycja

emblematyczna epitafioacutew ślaskich XVI wiekurdquo (ldquoEmblem-

atic Composition of Silesian Epitaphs of the Sixteenth Cen-

turyrdquo) Ze studioacutew nad Sztuka XVI wieku na Řlasku

(Wrocław 1968) pp 77-93 idem ldquoEsilio Privatordquo Bulletin

du Museacutee National de Varsovie 10 (1969) 95-101 J

541

Chydenius The Theory of Medieval Symbolism (Helsingfors

1960) Series of the Societas Scientiarum Fennica Com-

mentationes Humanarum Litterarum 27 2 R J Clements

Picta Poesis (Rome 1960) F Creuzer Symbolik und

Mythologie der Alten Voumllker (Leipzig and Darmstadt 1810

revised ed 1819) F Cumont Recherches sur le symbolisme

funeacuteraire des Romains (Paris 1942) L Eitner ldquoThe Open

Window and the Storm-Tossed Boatrdquo Art Bulletin 37

(1955) 281-90 H Frankfort ldquoThe Archetype in Analytical

Psychology and the History of Religionrdquo Journal of the

Warburg and Courtauld Institutes 21 (1958) 166-78

K Garas ldquoAllegorie und Geschichte in der Venezianischen

Malerei des 18 Jahrhundertsrdquo in proceedings of the XXI

International Congress of the History of Art Bonn Stil und

Uumlberlieferung in der Kunst des Abendlandes (Berlin 1967)

3 280-83 K Giehlow ldquoDie Hieroglyphenkunde des

Humanismus in der Allegorie der Renaissancerdquo Jahrbuch

der Kunsthistorischen Sammlungen des Allerhochsten

Kaiserhauses 32 (1915) 1-232 C Gilbert ldquoOn Subject and

Not-Subject in Italian Renaissance Picturesrdquo Art Bulletin

34 (1952) 202-16 C Ginzburg ldquoDa A Warburg a E H

Gombrich Note su un problema di metodordquo Studi medi-

evali series 3 7 (1966) 1015-65 E H Gombrich ldquoIcones

Symbolicae The Visual Image in Neo-Platonic Thoughtrdquo

Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes 11 (1948)

163-92 idem ldquoThe Use of Art for the Study of Symbolsrdquo

American Psychologist 20 (1965) A Grabar Liconoclasme

byzantin Dossier archeacuteologique (Paris 1957) idem Chris-

tian Iconography A Study of Its Origins (Princeton 1969)

S J Gudlaugsson De Comedianten bij Jan Steen en zijn

tijdgenooten (s-Gravenhage 1945) W S Heckscher ldquoThe

Genesis of Iconologyrdquo Stl und Uumlberlieferung in der Kunst

des Abendlandes Akten des XXI Internationalen Kon-

gresses fuumlr Kunstgeschichte (Berlin 1967) 3 239-62 G

Hermereacuten Representation and Meaning in the Visual Arts

A Study in the Methodology of Iconography and Iconology

Lund Studies in Philosophy Vol I (Lund 1969) R Hinks

Myth and Allegory in Ancient Art (London 1939) W

Hofmann Das Irdische Paradies (Munich 1960) G J

Hoogewerff ldquoLIconologie et son importance pour leacutetude

systeacutematique de lart chreacutetienrdquo Rivista dArcheologia Cris-

tiana 8 (1931) 53-82 E de Jongh Zinne- en minnebeelden

in de schilderkunst van de zeventiende eeuw (mdash1967) idem

ldquoErotica in Vogelperspectief De dubbelzinnigheid van een

reeks 17de eeuwse genrevoorstellingenrdquo Simiolus 3

(1968-69) 22-72 L Kalinowski ldquoTreści ideowe i estetyczne

Drzwi Gnieźnieńskichrdquo (ldquoIdeological and Aesthetic Content

of the Gniezno Bronze Doorsrdquo) in Drzwi Gnieźnieńskie ed

M Walicki (Wroclaw 1959) 2 7-160 H Keller Tizians

Poesie fuumlr Koumlnig Philip II von Spanien (Wiesbaden 1969)

R Klein ldquoLa theacuteorie de lexpression figureacutee dans les traiteacutes

italiens sur les imprese 1555-1612rdquo Bibliothegraveque dHu-

manisme et Renaissance 19 (1957) 320-41 republished with

the other relevant studies in la forme et lintelligible (Paris

1969) R Klibansky E Panofsky F Saxl Saturn and Melan-

choly (London 1964) J B Knipping Ikonografie van de

Contra-Reformatie in de Nederlanden (Hilversum 1939-40)

G Kubler The Shape of Time (New Haven and London

1962) R W Lee ldquoUt pictura poesisrdquo Art Bulletin 22

(1940) 197-269 E Macircle Lart religieux du XIIIe siegravecle en

France (Paris 1898) English ed used (New York 1958)

idem Lart religieux de la fin du Moyen-Age en France

(Paris 1908) idem Lart religieux du XIIe siegravecle en France

(Paris 1922) idem Lart religieux apregraves le Concile de Trente

(Paris 1932) J Maurin Białostocka Lessing i sztuki plas-

tyczne (ldquoLessing and the visual artsrdquo) (Wroclaw Warszawa

Krakoacutew 1969) E F von Monroy Embleme und Emblem-

buumlcher in den Niederlanden 1560-1630 ed H M von Erffa

(Utrecht 1964) J Montagu ldquoThe Painted Enigma and

French Seventeenth Century Artrdquo Journal of the Warburg

and Courtauld Institutes 31 (1968) 307-35 W Mrazek

Ikonologie der barocken Deckenmalerei (Vienna 1953)

Uumlsterreichische Akademie der Wissenschaften Philo-

sophisch-historische Klasse Sitzungsberichte 2283 A D

Nock ldquoSarcophagi and Symbolismrdquo American Journal of

Archaeology 50 (1946) 166ff D Panofsky and E Panofsky

ldquoThe Iconography of the Galeacuterie Franccedilois Ier at Fontaine-

bleaurdquo Gazette des Beaux-Arts 652 (1958) 113-90

E Panofsky ldquoUumlber das Verhaumlltnis der Kunstgeschichte zur

Kunsttheorierdquo Zeitschrift fuumlr Aesthetik und allgemeine

Kunstwissenschaft 18 (1925) 129-61 idem Studies in

Iconology (New York 1939) idem ed Abbot Suger (Prince-

ton 1946) idem Gothic Architecture and Scholasticism

(Latrobe Pa 1951) idem Early Netherlandish Painting

(Cambridge Mass 1953) idem Meaning in the Visual Arts

(Garden City N Y 1955) idem Renaissance and Renas-

cences in Western Art (Stockholm 1960) idem Tomb Sculp-

ture (New York 1964) E Panofsky and F Saxl ldquoClassical

Mythology in Medieval Artrdquo Metropolitan Museum Studies

4 (1932-33) 228-80 M Praz Studies in Seventeenth Cen-

tury Imagery (London 1939-47 2nd ed Rome 1964) S

Ringbom ldquoDevotional Images and Imaginative Devotions

Notes on the Place of Art in Late Medieval Private Pietyrdquo

Gazette des Beaux-Arts 6 73 (1969) 159-70 Joseph Sauer

Symbolik des Kirchengebaumludes und seiner Ausstattung in

der Auffassung des Mittelalters 2nd ed (Freiburg i B

1924) F Saxl ldquoFruumlhes Christentum und spaumltes Heidentum

in ihren kuumlnstlerischen Ausdrucksformenrdquo Wiener Jahrbuch

fuumlr Kunstgeschichte 2 (1923) 63-121 M Schapiro ldquoThe

Ruthwell Crossrdquo Art Bulletin 26 (1944) 232-45 idem ldquoOn

the Aesthetic Attitude in Romanesque Artrdquo in Art and

Thought issued in Honour of Ananda Coomaraswamy

(London 1947) 139-50 J Seznec The Survival of the Pagan

Gods (New York 1953) O G von Simson The Gothic

Cathedral (New York 1956) R E Spear ldquoThe Literary

Source of Poussins Realm of Florardquo The Burlington Maga-

zine 107 (1965) 563-69 L Volkmann Bilderschriften der

Renaissance (Leipzig 1923) Hans van de Waal Drie

eeuwen vaderlandsche geschieduitbeelding 1500-1800 (s-

Gravenhage 1952) idem ldquoSome Principles of a General

Iconographical Classificationrdquo in Actes du XVIIe Congregraves

International dHistoire de lArt Amsterdam 1952 (La Haye

1955) 601-06 E Wind ldquoCharity the Case History of a

Patternrdquo Journal of the Warburg Institute 1 (1937) 322ff

JAN BIAŁOSTOCKI

[See also Allegory Baroque Classicism Criticism Enlight-

enment Motif Myth Naturalism in Art Neo-Platonism

Renaissance Humanism Romanticism Symbolism Tem-

perance Ut pictura poesis]

the Second World War and to oppose it to the ldquostylis-

ticrdquo one which preceded it It does not mean of course

that no iconographic research took place in the

twenties or thirties the works of Macircle Knipping van

Marle Wilpert Saxl and of Panofsky himself would

contradict such a statement Neither is it true that

purely formal research aiming at stylistic classification

and analysis discontinued after World War II It is

evident that in the last decades (from 1940 on) icono-

graphic interests came to the fore and became domi-

nant in many countries Iconographical studies grew

so much in number and importance that they made

it possible to undertake and to publish new reference

works of iconographic character like dictionaries

written by one scholar (Guy de Tervarent Aurenham-

mer) as well as larger works based on a collaboration

of several scholars (Encyclopedias of German art of

Antiquity and Christian civilization of Byzantine art)

Interest in meaning and iconography has appeared

also among historians of political social and religious

institutions The symbolism of signs ceremonies cos-

tumes and arms was studied by such scholars as A

Alfoumlldi ldquoInsignien und Tracht der roumlmischen Kaiserrdquo

Mitteilungen des deutschen Archaumlologischen Instituts

Roumlmische Abteilung (1935) 1ff ldquoDie Geburt der

kaiserlichen Bildsymbolikrdquo museum Helveticum 9

(1952) 204ff also by A Grabar Martyrium (Paris

1943-46) by E H Kantorowicz laudes Regiae

(Berkeley and Los Angeles 1946) The Kings Two

Bodies (Princeton 1957) by H P L Orange Studies

in the Iconography of Cosmic Kingship in the Ancient

World (Oslo 1953) Art Forms and Civic Life in the

Late Roman Empire (Princeton 1965) and by P E

Schramm herrschaftszeichen und Staatssymbolik

(Stuttgart 1954-56) In their studies iconography far

transcends the borders of art and it helps to build up

a history of ideas by following their various visual

expressions

Pioneering studies by K Giehlow F Saxl and E

Panofsky enlarged iconographical interests above all

to encompass the large field of secular art whereas

they had been mainly limited to religious iconography

in the work of preceding generations of scholars The

whole complicated and hardly known large body of

meanings disguised by the cryptic language of hiero-

glyphs emblems and iconologies became one of the

main topics of study

This established a collaboration between historians

of art and literature Mario Prazs admirable study of

emblems and his bibliography of emblem books

(1939-47) belongs now to the foundations of studies

in that field Publications by W S Heckscher and

A K Wirth by R S Clements E F von Monroy and

538

H M von Erffa E de Jongh and H Miedema and

several other scholars have elucidated the structure

and meaning of emblems and have shown their tre-

mendous influence on art even in its most monumental

and dignified forms An uninterrupted flow of reprints

of emblem books which brought within the reach of

modern students inaccessible volumes of sixteenth- and

seventeenth-century emblem writers were crowned by

the monumental undertaking of Arthur Henkel and

Albrecht Schoumlne who compiled an excellent volume

including almost all the texts and images needed for

the study of emblemsmdashEmblemata Handbuch zur

Sinnbildkunst des XVI und XVII Jahrhunderts

(Stuttgart 1967) Research was under way on hiero-

glyphs (Erik Iversen) and on the imprese (the late

Robert Klein) as well as on iconologies and allegories

These studies have disclosed meanings of the art of

the Renaissance of mannerism and of the baroque not

understood by nineteenth-century scholars

E Panofsky deciphered extremely farfetched and

individualistic programs of decoration of such famous

ensembles as the Camera di San Paolo by Correggio

in Parma the Gallery of Franccedilois I at Fontainebleau

Edgar Wind Andreacute Chastel and other scholars inter-

preted Raphaels decorations in the Popes apartments

Michelangelos art furnished material to detailed com-

prehensive studies by Panofsky Ch de Tolnay H von

Einem and Pope-Hennessy in which the share of

Neo-Platonic thinking in the ideological background

of the celebrated works of Michelangelo was discussed

Innumerable studies have been devoted to Titians

mythological paintings J R Martin presented expla-

nations of the Carracci frescoes in the Camerino Far-

nese and in the great gallery of the Palazzo Farnese

Bruegel considered in the nineteenth century as a drocircle

painter of peasant life has been shown by de Tolnay

Stridbeck and others to be an allegorist expressing a

skeptical humanistic outlook J S Held and W

Stechow contributed several articles to the under-

standing of mythological and allegorical contents in

Flemish and Dutch art of the sixteenth and seventeenth

centuries Rembrandts iconography was put into new

light by the two above-mentioned scholars as well as

by H M Rotermund H van de Waal J G van Gelder

H von Einem and Ch Tuumlmpel The intricate symbol-

ism and subject matter of historical and mythological

pictures by Nicolas Poussin were elucidated by such

masters of iconographic research as E H Gombrich

W Friedlaumlnder E Panofsky and above all by A Blunt

who in his monograph on Poussin presented a new

deep synthetic view of the ideas expressed by that

artists works Goyas individualistic secret symbolism

was also studied with the help of emblems and the

allegorical tradition Berninis works received iconolo

gical treatment by R Wittkower and H Kauffmann

All of this research does not mean that there was a

lack of interest in religious iconography M Schapiro

A Katzenellenbogen H Bober F Wormald and V

Elbern among others have contributed considerably

to deepen our understanding of the not completely

explained motifs and prominent works of medieval art

Panofsky has also shed a new light on several problems

of sepulchral iconography studies by such scholars as

R Berliner G von der Osten L Kalinowski S

Ringbom and T Dobrzeniecki contributed to late

medieval iconography in a new way Berliner stressed

the autonomous invention of visual artists or their

patrons while according to the traditional view popu-

larized by Macircle late medieval art should have followed

strictly literary sources

The religious content of modern art especially its

allegorical form in the late baroque period has been

examined and thanks to studies by such scholars as

W Mrazek and H Bauer has become better known

and understandable A great change was introduced

by ldquoiconologyrdquo into architectural history Buildings

which were formerly interpreted from aesthetic and

functional points of view only have been shown to

present allegorical symbolical or even emblematic

ideas Publications by leading art historians (R Witt-

kower B Smith G Bandmann O von Simson and

G C Argan) have presented medieval and modern

architecture as a bearer of meaning and have essen-

tially changed the character of architectural history

The iconography of classicism and romanticism

received a thorough treatment in books by W Hof-

mann and R Rosenblum as well as in several studies

devoted to individual themes and pictures G Hersey

has for example shown how much Delacroixs decora-

tion of the library in the Palais Bourbon owed to

Giambattista Vicos ideas about history More recently

studies on ldquoSymbolismrdquo have been undertaken Vincent

van Goghs symbolic language and iconography were

the object of studies by J Seznec C Nordenfalk and

other scholars On Ceacutezannes iconography interesting

remarks have been published by M Schapiro

Along with the development of iconographic studies

the establishment of centers of documentation has

advanced The ldquoFrenchrdquo stage in the development of

iconography has not left any marked trace in this

respect It was in America thanks to C R Morey that

the famous Index of Christian Art at the Department

of Art and Archaeology of Princeton University was

founded at first limited to the early Middle Ages then

enlarged so as to include art up to the end of the

medieval period Copies of the Princeton Index are

to be found also at the Istituto Pontificio dArcheolo-

gia in Rome and in the Dumbarton Oaks Library and

539

Collection in Washington DC But that Index ends

ldquowhere art beginsrdquomdashas Panofsky used to say jokingly

The need for systematic iconographic files for modern

art was strongly felt In 1956 A Pigler published a

very useful book Barockthemen in which he listed

thousands of works of art of the baroque period ac-

cording to their subjects It was however far from

being a systematic work The first essay in establishing

a systematic iconographic index for art of any time

was done by The Netherlands Institute for Art History

at the Hague then directed by H Gerson which took

the initiative around 1950 of publishing a postcard-size

photographic index of its rich collection of photographs

of Netherlandish art ordered according to an icono-

graphic principle Once such an idea was formulated

the need for a comprehensive consistent and clear

iconographic classification was urgent H van de Waal

of Leiden University devised such a system of classifi-

cation based on decimal divisions consistent and easy

to read He based his system on experiences of ethnol-

ogy and on such elaborated systems of classification

as that devised by Stith Thompson in his Motif-Index

of Folk Literature Vols I-VI (Bloomington Ind

1932-36 rev ed 1955-58) Van de Waal has elabor-

ated a system in which the first five main sections

classify five fundamental groups of portrayable things

namely (1) The Supernatural (2) Nature (3) Man (4)

Society (5) Abstracts The last four classify specific

subjects such as (6) History (7) The Bible (8) Myths

Legends and Tales (with the exception of classical

antiquity) (9) Myths and Legends of Classical Antiq-

uity Van de Waal combines the classification in the

first and in the second group in order to classify general

as well as specific subjects Christ in his system is

described with the sign ldquo11 Drdquo (ldquo1rdquo standing for Su-

pernatural ldquo11rdquo for Christianity ldquoDrdquo for Christ) the

adult Christ = 11 D 3 since ldquoshepherdrdquo on the other

hand bears the signature 47 I 221 the adult Christ

as a shepherd can be described in this system by the

following formula 11 D 3 = 47 I 221 Van de Waal

has also provided means to describe more complex

images which he expresses by adding elements between

brackets The Annunciation with God the Father and

a winged Angel is expressed by the following formula

73 A 5 (+1 +41) ldquo1rdquo standing for God the Father

and ldquo41rdquo for a winged Angel (van de Waal 1952) This

system elaborated for many years by its inventor and

prepared for publication in many volumes has proved

most useful in the practical arrangement of the Icono-

graphical Index of the Netherlandish Art and as the

only one until now in existence it became used more

and more in spite of some ambiguities and difficulties

As an endeavor to classify ldquoall portrayablerdquo things

persons events and ideas and to create a consistent

method to describe every possible image van de Waals

system may be considered as one of the important

achievements of the ldquoiconographical stagerdquo in the

development of art history Iconographic files exist of

course in many institutions as for example in the Ikon-

ologisch Instituut of Utrecht University one of the

main centers of study in emblematics and of course

in the most venerable institution of iconographic re-

search the Warburg Institute of the London University

and in other places

4 What was the result of this ldquoiconographicrdquo turn

in the development of the history of art One thing

is certain that this discipline by necessity has come

closer to other humanistic disciplines Since the

ldquointrinsicrdquo meaningmdashin Panofskys terminologymdashof a

work of art cannot be described in terms used by the

history of art but only in terms borrowed from the

history of philosophy of religion of social structures

of science and so on the ldquoiconological methodrdquo took

for granted and provoked such a collaboration Art

history was perhaps the first or one of the first to show

new interest in investigation of meaning It was fol-

lowed by similar developments in ethnology and in

linguistics

We have mentioned above a parallel development

in Byzantine and classical studies Panofskys influence

has been considerable in the other fields of humanistic

research Since ldquoiconologyrdquo aimed at discovering ideas

expressed by a work of art it awoke in art historians

an interest in the history of ideas This general shift

of emphasis and of the direction of studies from mainly

formal ones to studies aiming at ideas underlying art

was perhaps responsible among others for the fact that

several contributions to the Journal of the History of

Ideas have been written by historians of art

It is not difficult to see that such a development

should have provoked criticism on the side of those

who care about the purity and autonomy of methods

Iconology was criticized as far as its internal coherence

and also as far as its claim to be the integral method

of the study of art are concerned (Białostocki 1962)

Studies by R Klein E Forssman G Previtali G

Kubler B Teyssegravedre C Ginzburg and G Hermeren

expressed critical opinions in one or the other respect

Iconology linked art with the rest of history but it

disrupted the links between the work of art and other

things (Kubler 1962) Concentrating on meaning

iconology neglected art as form as individual expres-

sion Iconology implied a rational relationship between

intellectual content and artistic form On the one hand

one spoke of ldquoiconological diminutionsrdquo (Kubler

1962)mdashlimitations of research to meaning only But

on the other hand the overstatements of iconology

were criticized its representatives sometimes seemed

540

to assume everything symbolized something And some

iconologists seemed to consider important in art not

that which makes art a different field of human activity

but that which connects art with other fieldsmdashwith

the history of ideas

There were of course critics who had the opposite

opinion Since the end of the eighteenth century a

direct experience of art was more and more valued

and its symbolical function considered as a burden

J G von Herder said ein Kunstwerk ist der Kunst

wegen da aber bei einem Symbole ist die Kunst

dienend (ldquoA work of art is there because of art but

with a symbol art is a servicerdquo) Similar opinions were

expressed by nineteenth-century art writers and in this

century they have been voiced by Benedetto Croce and

by other Italian opponents of contenutismo by which

they meant interest in content For such critics to put

stress on iconography was to miss the essential in art

and to focus attention on a subordinate function of art

Also among scholars who considered the function

of representation and of communication as a legitimate

and important function of art criticism was expressed

not against the principle of an iconographical or icon-

ological investigation but against overstatements in

their application The introduction of the idea of ldquodis-

guised symbolismrdquo has created a danger of course of

opening the way to fanciful interpretations The alle-

gorical and symbolical function of mythological imag-

ery in classical art is also difficult to interpret precisely

Since no literary sources give a key to an interpretation

of the iconography of the sarcophagi very divergent

theories have been expressed concerning their meaning

Some archaeologists like F Cumont (1942) believe

that mythological and allegorical imagery (Anadyo-

mene Sea-Thiasos Personifications of the Seasons) is

to be read symbolically The Sea-Thiasos for instance

is to be interpreted as a symbol of the journey of the

souls of the deceased to the islands of the blessed

Others like A D Nock (1946) do not find enough

evidence to accept other than a decorative function

in such imagery

The intrusion of some representatives of psychology

eg C G Jung into iconographic studies giving them

an unhistorical turn in their search for ldquoarchetypal

imagesrdquo has complicated the situation although art

historians in general understandably have not accepted

that kind of approach to symbolism (Frankfort 1958

Gombrich 1965)

The fact that iconographic interpretations sometimes

lack satisfactory proofs does not detract from the im-

portance of such investigations so long as they are

conducted according to the requirements of historical

methods and take into account the corrective princi-

ples established by Panofsky A correct acquaintance

with the way of thinking of the artist the patron or the

viewer based on a satisfactory knowledge of documen-

tary visual and literary sources an awareness of the

choice situations produced by historical developments

may enable art historians to discover the secondary

meaning of a work of art as well as its intrinsic mean-

ing It is of course possible that the art historian will

meet some works for which it will not be possible to re-

construct in a satisfactory way the world of ideas that

would account for the meaning of those works In such

cases a reliable interpretation is simply not possible

R Berliner (1945 1966) criticized the widespread

opinion according to which content of the works of

visual arts in the Middle Ages had to be checked

against the literary sources considered as the only

medium in which ideological innovations were per-

mitted Berliner pleaded for assuming a considerable

ldquofreedomrdquo in the medieval artist and he considered

iconographic innovation possible even when no writ-

ten evidence could be found Meyer Schapiro (1947)

presented proofs that sometimes purely aesthetic rea-

sons decided the character of the work of art even as

early as the Romanesque period

We can only touch on some specific discussions going

on in the field of iconographic research But iconogra-

phic research is far from being a closed system and

the relative share of iconographic and stylistic criticism

in the work of art historians is always a matter of

discussion It is certain that the ldquoiconographicrdquo period

in the study of art has enlarged in a considerable way

the understanding of the art of the past and that it

has connected art history in a way unknown before

with the other historical disciplines and above all others

with the history of ideas

BIBLIOGRAPHY

L B Alberti On Painting ed J Spencer (New Haven

1956 revised ed 1966) E Auerbach ldquoFigurardquo (1944) trans

and published in Scenes From the Drama of European Liter-

ature (New York 1959) pp 11-76 K Bauch ldquoImagordquo

(1960) Studien zur Kunstgeschichte (Berlin 1967) pp 1-20

G P Bellori Descrizione delle imagini dipinte da Raffaello

(Rome 1695 ed used is 1751) R Berliner ldquoThe Free-

dom of Medieval Artrdquo Gazette des Beaux-Arts 628 (1945)

263-88 idem ldquoBemerkungen zu einigen Darstellungen des

Erloumlsers als Schmerzensmannrdquo Das Muumlnster 9 (1956)

97-117x J Białostocki ldquoIconografia e Iconologiardquo Enciclo-

pedia Universale dellArte (1962) Vol VII cols 163-75

trans as Encyclopedia of World Art (1966) Vol VII cols

769-85 lists almost all important older contributions to this

field idem ldquoRomantische Ikonographierdquo Stil und Ikonog-

raphie (Dresden 1966) pp 156-81 idem ldquoKompozycja

emblematyczna epitafioacutew ślaskich XVI wiekurdquo (ldquoEmblem-

atic Composition of Silesian Epitaphs of the Sixteenth Cen-

turyrdquo) Ze studioacutew nad Sztuka XVI wieku na Řlasku

(Wrocław 1968) pp 77-93 idem ldquoEsilio Privatordquo Bulletin

du Museacutee National de Varsovie 10 (1969) 95-101 J

541

Chydenius The Theory of Medieval Symbolism (Helsingfors

1960) Series of the Societas Scientiarum Fennica Com-

mentationes Humanarum Litterarum 27 2 R J Clements

Picta Poesis (Rome 1960) F Creuzer Symbolik und

Mythologie der Alten Voumllker (Leipzig and Darmstadt 1810

revised ed 1819) F Cumont Recherches sur le symbolisme

funeacuteraire des Romains (Paris 1942) L Eitner ldquoThe Open

Window and the Storm-Tossed Boatrdquo Art Bulletin 37

(1955) 281-90 H Frankfort ldquoThe Archetype in Analytical

Psychology and the History of Religionrdquo Journal of the

Warburg and Courtauld Institutes 21 (1958) 166-78

K Garas ldquoAllegorie und Geschichte in der Venezianischen

Malerei des 18 Jahrhundertsrdquo in proceedings of the XXI

International Congress of the History of Art Bonn Stil und

Uumlberlieferung in der Kunst des Abendlandes (Berlin 1967)

3 280-83 K Giehlow ldquoDie Hieroglyphenkunde des

Humanismus in der Allegorie der Renaissancerdquo Jahrbuch

der Kunsthistorischen Sammlungen des Allerhochsten

Kaiserhauses 32 (1915) 1-232 C Gilbert ldquoOn Subject and

Not-Subject in Italian Renaissance Picturesrdquo Art Bulletin

34 (1952) 202-16 C Ginzburg ldquoDa A Warburg a E H

Gombrich Note su un problema di metodordquo Studi medi-

evali series 3 7 (1966) 1015-65 E H Gombrich ldquoIcones

Symbolicae The Visual Image in Neo-Platonic Thoughtrdquo

Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes 11 (1948)

163-92 idem ldquoThe Use of Art for the Study of Symbolsrdquo

American Psychologist 20 (1965) A Grabar Liconoclasme

byzantin Dossier archeacuteologique (Paris 1957) idem Chris-

tian Iconography A Study of Its Origins (Princeton 1969)

S J Gudlaugsson De Comedianten bij Jan Steen en zijn

tijdgenooten (s-Gravenhage 1945) W S Heckscher ldquoThe

Genesis of Iconologyrdquo Stl und Uumlberlieferung in der Kunst

des Abendlandes Akten des XXI Internationalen Kon-

gresses fuumlr Kunstgeschichte (Berlin 1967) 3 239-62 G

Hermereacuten Representation and Meaning in the Visual Arts

A Study in the Methodology of Iconography and Iconology

Lund Studies in Philosophy Vol I (Lund 1969) R Hinks

Myth and Allegory in Ancient Art (London 1939) W

Hofmann Das Irdische Paradies (Munich 1960) G J

Hoogewerff ldquoLIconologie et son importance pour leacutetude

systeacutematique de lart chreacutetienrdquo Rivista dArcheologia Cris-

tiana 8 (1931) 53-82 E de Jongh Zinne- en minnebeelden

in de schilderkunst van de zeventiende eeuw (mdash1967) idem

ldquoErotica in Vogelperspectief De dubbelzinnigheid van een

reeks 17de eeuwse genrevoorstellingenrdquo Simiolus 3

(1968-69) 22-72 L Kalinowski ldquoTreści ideowe i estetyczne

Drzwi Gnieźnieńskichrdquo (ldquoIdeological and Aesthetic Content

of the Gniezno Bronze Doorsrdquo) in Drzwi Gnieźnieńskie ed

M Walicki (Wroclaw 1959) 2 7-160 H Keller Tizians

Poesie fuumlr Koumlnig Philip II von Spanien (Wiesbaden 1969)

R Klein ldquoLa theacuteorie de lexpression figureacutee dans les traiteacutes

italiens sur les imprese 1555-1612rdquo Bibliothegraveque dHu-

manisme et Renaissance 19 (1957) 320-41 republished with

the other relevant studies in la forme et lintelligible (Paris

1969) R Klibansky E Panofsky F Saxl Saturn and Melan-

choly (London 1964) J B Knipping Ikonografie van de

Contra-Reformatie in de Nederlanden (Hilversum 1939-40)

G Kubler The Shape of Time (New Haven and London

1962) R W Lee ldquoUt pictura poesisrdquo Art Bulletin 22

(1940) 197-269 E Macircle Lart religieux du XIIIe siegravecle en

France (Paris 1898) English ed used (New York 1958)

idem Lart religieux de la fin du Moyen-Age en France

(Paris 1908) idem Lart religieux du XIIe siegravecle en France

(Paris 1922) idem Lart religieux apregraves le Concile de Trente

(Paris 1932) J Maurin Białostocka Lessing i sztuki plas-

tyczne (ldquoLessing and the visual artsrdquo) (Wroclaw Warszawa

Krakoacutew 1969) E F von Monroy Embleme und Emblem-

buumlcher in den Niederlanden 1560-1630 ed H M von Erffa

(Utrecht 1964) J Montagu ldquoThe Painted Enigma and

French Seventeenth Century Artrdquo Journal of the Warburg

and Courtauld Institutes 31 (1968) 307-35 W Mrazek

Ikonologie der barocken Deckenmalerei (Vienna 1953)

Uumlsterreichische Akademie der Wissenschaften Philo-

sophisch-historische Klasse Sitzungsberichte 2283 A D

Nock ldquoSarcophagi and Symbolismrdquo American Journal of

Archaeology 50 (1946) 166ff D Panofsky and E Panofsky

ldquoThe Iconography of the Galeacuterie Franccedilois Ier at Fontaine-

bleaurdquo Gazette des Beaux-Arts 652 (1958) 113-90

E Panofsky ldquoUumlber das Verhaumlltnis der Kunstgeschichte zur

Kunsttheorierdquo Zeitschrift fuumlr Aesthetik und allgemeine

Kunstwissenschaft 18 (1925) 129-61 idem Studies in

Iconology (New York 1939) idem ed Abbot Suger (Prince-

ton 1946) idem Gothic Architecture and Scholasticism

(Latrobe Pa 1951) idem Early Netherlandish Painting

(Cambridge Mass 1953) idem Meaning in the Visual Arts

(Garden City N Y 1955) idem Renaissance and Renas-

cences in Western Art (Stockholm 1960) idem Tomb Sculp-

ture (New York 1964) E Panofsky and F Saxl ldquoClassical

Mythology in Medieval Artrdquo Metropolitan Museum Studies

4 (1932-33) 228-80 M Praz Studies in Seventeenth Cen-

tury Imagery (London 1939-47 2nd ed Rome 1964) S

Ringbom ldquoDevotional Images and Imaginative Devotions

Notes on the Place of Art in Late Medieval Private Pietyrdquo

Gazette des Beaux-Arts 6 73 (1969) 159-70 Joseph Sauer

Symbolik des Kirchengebaumludes und seiner Ausstattung in

der Auffassung des Mittelalters 2nd ed (Freiburg i B

1924) F Saxl ldquoFruumlhes Christentum und spaumltes Heidentum

in ihren kuumlnstlerischen Ausdrucksformenrdquo Wiener Jahrbuch

fuumlr Kunstgeschichte 2 (1923) 63-121 M Schapiro ldquoThe

Ruthwell Crossrdquo Art Bulletin 26 (1944) 232-45 idem ldquoOn

the Aesthetic Attitude in Romanesque Artrdquo in Art and

Thought issued in Honour of Ananda Coomaraswamy

(London 1947) 139-50 J Seznec The Survival of the Pagan

Gods (New York 1953) O G von Simson The Gothic

Cathedral (New York 1956) R E Spear ldquoThe Literary

Source of Poussins Realm of Florardquo The Burlington Maga-

zine 107 (1965) 563-69 L Volkmann Bilderschriften der

Renaissance (Leipzig 1923) Hans van de Waal Drie

eeuwen vaderlandsche geschieduitbeelding 1500-1800 (s-

Gravenhage 1952) idem ldquoSome Principles of a General

Iconographical Classificationrdquo in Actes du XVIIe Congregraves

International dHistoire de lArt Amsterdam 1952 (La Haye

1955) 601-06 E Wind ldquoCharity the Case History of a

Patternrdquo Journal of the Warburg Institute 1 (1937) 322ff

JAN BIAŁOSTOCKI

[See also Allegory Baroque Classicism Criticism Enlight-

enment Motif Myth Naturalism in Art Neo-Platonism

Renaissance Humanism Romanticism Symbolism Tem-

perance Ut pictura poesis]

This established a collaboration between historians

of art and literature Mario Prazs admirable study of

emblems and his bibliography of emblem books

(1939-47) belongs now to the foundations of studies

in that field Publications by W S Heckscher and

A K Wirth by R S Clements E F von Monroy and

538

H M von Erffa E de Jongh and H Miedema and

several other scholars have elucidated the structure

and meaning of emblems and have shown their tre-

mendous influence on art even in its most monumental

and dignified forms An uninterrupted flow of reprints

of emblem books which brought within the reach of

modern students inaccessible volumes of sixteenth- and

seventeenth-century emblem writers were crowned by

the monumental undertaking of Arthur Henkel and

Albrecht Schoumlne who compiled an excellent volume

including almost all the texts and images needed for

the study of emblemsmdashEmblemata Handbuch zur

Sinnbildkunst des XVI und XVII Jahrhunderts

(Stuttgart 1967) Research was under way on hiero-

glyphs (Erik Iversen) and on the imprese (the late

Robert Klein) as well as on iconologies and allegories

These studies have disclosed meanings of the art of

the Renaissance of mannerism and of the baroque not

understood by nineteenth-century scholars

E Panofsky deciphered extremely farfetched and

individualistic programs of decoration of such famous

ensembles as the Camera di San Paolo by Correggio

in Parma the Gallery of Franccedilois I at Fontainebleau

Edgar Wind Andreacute Chastel and other scholars inter-

preted Raphaels decorations in the Popes apartments

Michelangelos art furnished material to detailed com-

prehensive studies by Panofsky Ch de Tolnay H von

Einem and Pope-Hennessy in which the share of

Neo-Platonic thinking in the ideological background

of the celebrated works of Michelangelo was discussed

Innumerable studies have been devoted to Titians

mythological paintings J R Martin presented expla-

nations of the Carracci frescoes in the Camerino Far-

nese and in the great gallery of the Palazzo Farnese

Bruegel considered in the nineteenth century as a drocircle

painter of peasant life has been shown by de Tolnay

Stridbeck and others to be an allegorist expressing a

skeptical humanistic outlook J S Held and W

Stechow contributed several articles to the under-

standing of mythological and allegorical contents in

Flemish and Dutch art of the sixteenth and seventeenth

centuries Rembrandts iconography was put into new

light by the two above-mentioned scholars as well as

by H M Rotermund H van de Waal J G van Gelder

H von Einem and Ch Tuumlmpel The intricate symbol-

ism and subject matter of historical and mythological

pictures by Nicolas Poussin were elucidated by such

masters of iconographic research as E H Gombrich

W Friedlaumlnder E Panofsky and above all by A Blunt

who in his monograph on Poussin presented a new

deep synthetic view of the ideas expressed by that

artists works Goyas individualistic secret symbolism

was also studied with the help of emblems and the

allegorical tradition Berninis works received iconolo

gical treatment by R Wittkower and H Kauffmann

All of this research does not mean that there was a

lack of interest in religious iconography M Schapiro

A Katzenellenbogen H Bober F Wormald and V

Elbern among others have contributed considerably

to deepen our understanding of the not completely

explained motifs and prominent works of medieval art

Panofsky has also shed a new light on several problems

of sepulchral iconography studies by such scholars as

R Berliner G von der Osten L Kalinowski S

Ringbom and T Dobrzeniecki contributed to late

medieval iconography in a new way Berliner stressed

the autonomous invention of visual artists or their

patrons while according to the traditional view popu-

larized by Macircle late medieval art should have followed

strictly literary sources

The religious content of modern art especially its

allegorical form in the late baroque period has been

examined and thanks to studies by such scholars as

W Mrazek and H Bauer has become better known

and understandable A great change was introduced

by ldquoiconologyrdquo into architectural history Buildings

which were formerly interpreted from aesthetic and

functional points of view only have been shown to

present allegorical symbolical or even emblematic

ideas Publications by leading art historians (R Witt-

kower B Smith G Bandmann O von Simson and

G C Argan) have presented medieval and modern

architecture as a bearer of meaning and have essen-

tially changed the character of architectural history

The iconography of classicism and romanticism

received a thorough treatment in books by W Hof-

mann and R Rosenblum as well as in several studies

devoted to individual themes and pictures G Hersey

has for example shown how much Delacroixs decora-

tion of the library in the Palais Bourbon owed to

Giambattista Vicos ideas about history More recently

studies on ldquoSymbolismrdquo have been undertaken Vincent

van Goghs symbolic language and iconography were

the object of studies by J Seznec C Nordenfalk and

other scholars On Ceacutezannes iconography interesting

remarks have been published by M Schapiro

Along with the development of iconographic studies

the establishment of centers of documentation has

advanced The ldquoFrenchrdquo stage in the development of

iconography has not left any marked trace in this

respect It was in America thanks to C R Morey that

the famous Index of Christian Art at the Department

of Art and Archaeology of Princeton University was

founded at first limited to the early Middle Ages then

enlarged so as to include art up to the end of the

medieval period Copies of the Princeton Index are

to be found also at the Istituto Pontificio dArcheolo-

gia in Rome and in the Dumbarton Oaks Library and

539

Collection in Washington DC But that Index ends

ldquowhere art beginsrdquomdashas Panofsky used to say jokingly

The need for systematic iconographic files for modern

art was strongly felt In 1956 A Pigler published a

very useful book Barockthemen in which he listed

thousands of works of art of the baroque period ac-

cording to their subjects It was however far from

being a systematic work The first essay in establishing

a systematic iconographic index for art of any time

was done by The Netherlands Institute for Art History

at the Hague then directed by H Gerson which took

the initiative around 1950 of publishing a postcard-size

photographic index of its rich collection of photographs

of Netherlandish art ordered according to an icono-

graphic principle Once such an idea was formulated

the need for a comprehensive consistent and clear

iconographic classification was urgent H van de Waal

of Leiden University devised such a system of classifi-

cation based on decimal divisions consistent and easy

to read He based his system on experiences of ethnol-

ogy and on such elaborated systems of classification

as that devised by Stith Thompson in his Motif-Index

of Folk Literature Vols I-VI (Bloomington Ind

1932-36 rev ed 1955-58) Van de Waal has elabor-

ated a system in which the first five main sections

classify five fundamental groups of portrayable things

namely (1) The Supernatural (2) Nature (3) Man (4)

Society (5) Abstracts The last four classify specific

subjects such as (6) History (7) The Bible (8) Myths

Legends and Tales (with the exception of classical

antiquity) (9) Myths and Legends of Classical Antiq-

uity Van de Waal combines the classification in the

first and in the second group in order to classify general

as well as specific subjects Christ in his system is

described with the sign ldquo11 Drdquo (ldquo1rdquo standing for Su-

pernatural ldquo11rdquo for Christianity ldquoDrdquo for Christ) the

adult Christ = 11 D 3 since ldquoshepherdrdquo on the other

hand bears the signature 47 I 221 the adult Christ

as a shepherd can be described in this system by the

following formula 11 D 3 = 47 I 221 Van de Waal

has also provided means to describe more complex

images which he expresses by adding elements between

brackets The Annunciation with God the Father and

a winged Angel is expressed by the following formula

73 A 5 (+1 +41) ldquo1rdquo standing for God the Father

and ldquo41rdquo for a winged Angel (van de Waal 1952) This

system elaborated for many years by its inventor and

prepared for publication in many volumes has proved

most useful in the practical arrangement of the Icono-

graphical Index of the Netherlandish Art and as the

only one until now in existence it became used more

and more in spite of some ambiguities and difficulties

As an endeavor to classify ldquoall portrayablerdquo things

persons events and ideas and to create a consistent

method to describe every possible image van de Waals

system may be considered as one of the important

achievements of the ldquoiconographical stagerdquo in the

development of art history Iconographic files exist of

course in many institutions as for example in the Ikon-

ologisch Instituut of Utrecht University one of the

main centers of study in emblematics and of course

in the most venerable institution of iconographic re-

search the Warburg Institute of the London University

and in other places

4 What was the result of this ldquoiconographicrdquo turn

in the development of the history of art One thing

is certain that this discipline by necessity has come

closer to other humanistic disciplines Since the

ldquointrinsicrdquo meaningmdashin Panofskys terminologymdashof a

work of art cannot be described in terms used by the

history of art but only in terms borrowed from the

history of philosophy of religion of social structures

of science and so on the ldquoiconological methodrdquo took

for granted and provoked such a collaboration Art

history was perhaps the first or one of the first to show

new interest in investigation of meaning It was fol-

lowed by similar developments in ethnology and in

linguistics

We have mentioned above a parallel development

in Byzantine and classical studies Panofskys influence

has been considerable in the other fields of humanistic

research Since ldquoiconologyrdquo aimed at discovering ideas

expressed by a work of art it awoke in art historians

an interest in the history of ideas This general shift

of emphasis and of the direction of studies from mainly

formal ones to studies aiming at ideas underlying art

was perhaps responsible among others for the fact that

several contributions to the Journal of the History of

Ideas have been written by historians of art

It is not difficult to see that such a development

should have provoked criticism on the side of those

who care about the purity and autonomy of methods

Iconology was criticized as far as its internal coherence

and also as far as its claim to be the integral method

of the study of art are concerned (Białostocki 1962)

Studies by R Klein E Forssman G Previtali G

Kubler B Teyssegravedre C Ginzburg and G Hermeren

expressed critical opinions in one or the other respect

Iconology linked art with the rest of history but it

disrupted the links between the work of art and other

things (Kubler 1962) Concentrating on meaning

iconology neglected art as form as individual expres-

sion Iconology implied a rational relationship between

intellectual content and artistic form On the one hand

one spoke of ldquoiconological diminutionsrdquo (Kubler

1962)mdashlimitations of research to meaning only But

on the other hand the overstatements of iconology

were criticized its representatives sometimes seemed

540

to assume everything symbolized something And some

iconologists seemed to consider important in art not

that which makes art a different field of human activity

but that which connects art with other fieldsmdashwith

the history of ideas

There were of course critics who had the opposite

opinion Since the end of the eighteenth century a

direct experience of art was more and more valued

and its symbolical function considered as a burden

J G von Herder said ein Kunstwerk ist der Kunst

wegen da aber bei einem Symbole ist die Kunst

dienend (ldquoA work of art is there because of art but

with a symbol art is a servicerdquo) Similar opinions were

expressed by nineteenth-century art writers and in this

century they have been voiced by Benedetto Croce and

by other Italian opponents of contenutismo by which

they meant interest in content For such critics to put

stress on iconography was to miss the essential in art

and to focus attention on a subordinate function of art

Also among scholars who considered the function

of representation and of communication as a legitimate

and important function of art criticism was expressed

not against the principle of an iconographical or icon-

ological investigation but against overstatements in

their application The introduction of the idea of ldquodis-

guised symbolismrdquo has created a danger of course of

opening the way to fanciful interpretations The alle-

gorical and symbolical function of mythological imag-

ery in classical art is also difficult to interpret precisely

Since no literary sources give a key to an interpretation

of the iconography of the sarcophagi very divergent

theories have been expressed concerning their meaning

Some archaeologists like F Cumont (1942) believe

that mythological and allegorical imagery (Anadyo-

mene Sea-Thiasos Personifications of the Seasons) is

to be read symbolically The Sea-Thiasos for instance

is to be interpreted as a symbol of the journey of the

souls of the deceased to the islands of the blessed

Others like A D Nock (1946) do not find enough

evidence to accept other than a decorative function

in such imagery

The intrusion of some representatives of psychology

eg C G Jung into iconographic studies giving them

an unhistorical turn in their search for ldquoarchetypal

imagesrdquo has complicated the situation although art

historians in general understandably have not accepted

that kind of approach to symbolism (Frankfort 1958

Gombrich 1965)

The fact that iconographic interpretations sometimes

lack satisfactory proofs does not detract from the im-

portance of such investigations so long as they are

conducted according to the requirements of historical

methods and take into account the corrective princi-

ples established by Panofsky A correct acquaintance

with the way of thinking of the artist the patron or the

viewer based on a satisfactory knowledge of documen-

tary visual and literary sources an awareness of the

choice situations produced by historical developments

may enable art historians to discover the secondary

meaning of a work of art as well as its intrinsic mean-

ing It is of course possible that the art historian will

meet some works for which it will not be possible to re-

construct in a satisfactory way the world of ideas that

would account for the meaning of those works In such

cases a reliable interpretation is simply not possible

R Berliner (1945 1966) criticized the widespread

opinion according to which content of the works of

visual arts in the Middle Ages had to be checked

against the literary sources considered as the only

medium in which ideological innovations were per-

mitted Berliner pleaded for assuming a considerable

ldquofreedomrdquo in the medieval artist and he considered

iconographic innovation possible even when no writ-

ten evidence could be found Meyer Schapiro (1947)

presented proofs that sometimes purely aesthetic rea-

sons decided the character of the work of art even as

early as the Romanesque period

We can only touch on some specific discussions going

on in the field of iconographic research But iconogra-

phic research is far from being a closed system and

the relative share of iconographic and stylistic criticism

in the work of art historians is always a matter of

discussion It is certain that the ldquoiconographicrdquo period

in the study of art has enlarged in a considerable way

the understanding of the art of the past and that it

has connected art history in a way unknown before

with the other historical disciplines and above all others

with the history of ideas

BIBLIOGRAPHY

L B Alberti On Painting ed J Spencer (New Haven

1956 revised ed 1966) E Auerbach ldquoFigurardquo (1944) trans

and published in Scenes From the Drama of European Liter-

ature (New York 1959) pp 11-76 K Bauch ldquoImagordquo

(1960) Studien zur Kunstgeschichte (Berlin 1967) pp 1-20

G P Bellori Descrizione delle imagini dipinte da Raffaello

(Rome 1695 ed used is 1751) R Berliner ldquoThe Free-

dom of Medieval Artrdquo Gazette des Beaux-Arts 628 (1945)

263-88 idem ldquoBemerkungen zu einigen Darstellungen des

Erloumlsers als Schmerzensmannrdquo Das Muumlnster 9 (1956)

97-117x J Białostocki ldquoIconografia e Iconologiardquo Enciclo-

pedia Universale dellArte (1962) Vol VII cols 163-75

trans as Encyclopedia of World Art (1966) Vol VII cols

769-85 lists almost all important older contributions to this

field idem ldquoRomantische Ikonographierdquo Stil und Ikonog-

raphie (Dresden 1966) pp 156-81 idem ldquoKompozycja

emblematyczna epitafioacutew ślaskich XVI wiekurdquo (ldquoEmblem-

atic Composition of Silesian Epitaphs of the Sixteenth Cen-

turyrdquo) Ze studioacutew nad Sztuka XVI wieku na Řlasku

(Wrocław 1968) pp 77-93 idem ldquoEsilio Privatordquo Bulletin

du Museacutee National de Varsovie 10 (1969) 95-101 J

541

Chydenius The Theory of Medieval Symbolism (Helsingfors

1960) Series of the Societas Scientiarum Fennica Com-

mentationes Humanarum Litterarum 27 2 R J Clements

Picta Poesis (Rome 1960) F Creuzer Symbolik und

Mythologie der Alten Voumllker (Leipzig and Darmstadt 1810

revised ed 1819) F Cumont Recherches sur le symbolisme

funeacuteraire des Romains (Paris 1942) L Eitner ldquoThe Open

Window and the Storm-Tossed Boatrdquo Art Bulletin 37

(1955) 281-90 H Frankfort ldquoThe Archetype in Analytical

Psychology and the History of Religionrdquo Journal of the

Warburg and Courtauld Institutes 21 (1958) 166-78

K Garas ldquoAllegorie und Geschichte in der Venezianischen

Malerei des 18 Jahrhundertsrdquo in proceedings of the XXI

International Congress of the History of Art Bonn Stil und

Uumlberlieferung in der Kunst des Abendlandes (Berlin 1967)

3 280-83 K Giehlow ldquoDie Hieroglyphenkunde des

Humanismus in der Allegorie der Renaissancerdquo Jahrbuch

der Kunsthistorischen Sammlungen des Allerhochsten

Kaiserhauses 32 (1915) 1-232 C Gilbert ldquoOn Subject and

Not-Subject in Italian Renaissance Picturesrdquo Art Bulletin

34 (1952) 202-16 C Ginzburg ldquoDa A Warburg a E H

Gombrich Note su un problema di metodordquo Studi medi-

evali series 3 7 (1966) 1015-65 E H Gombrich ldquoIcones

Symbolicae The Visual Image in Neo-Platonic Thoughtrdquo

Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes 11 (1948)

163-92 idem ldquoThe Use of Art for the Study of Symbolsrdquo

American Psychologist 20 (1965) A Grabar Liconoclasme

byzantin Dossier archeacuteologique (Paris 1957) idem Chris-

tian Iconography A Study of Its Origins (Princeton 1969)

S J Gudlaugsson De Comedianten bij Jan Steen en zijn

tijdgenooten (s-Gravenhage 1945) W S Heckscher ldquoThe

Genesis of Iconologyrdquo Stl und Uumlberlieferung in der Kunst

des Abendlandes Akten des XXI Internationalen Kon-

gresses fuumlr Kunstgeschichte (Berlin 1967) 3 239-62 G

Hermereacuten Representation and Meaning in the Visual Arts

A Study in the Methodology of Iconography and Iconology

Lund Studies in Philosophy Vol I (Lund 1969) R Hinks

Myth and Allegory in Ancient Art (London 1939) W

Hofmann Das Irdische Paradies (Munich 1960) G J

Hoogewerff ldquoLIconologie et son importance pour leacutetude

systeacutematique de lart chreacutetienrdquo Rivista dArcheologia Cris-

tiana 8 (1931) 53-82 E de Jongh Zinne- en minnebeelden

in de schilderkunst van de zeventiende eeuw (mdash1967) idem

ldquoErotica in Vogelperspectief De dubbelzinnigheid van een

reeks 17de eeuwse genrevoorstellingenrdquo Simiolus 3

(1968-69) 22-72 L Kalinowski ldquoTreści ideowe i estetyczne

Drzwi Gnieźnieńskichrdquo (ldquoIdeological and Aesthetic Content

of the Gniezno Bronze Doorsrdquo) in Drzwi Gnieźnieńskie ed

M Walicki (Wroclaw 1959) 2 7-160 H Keller Tizians

Poesie fuumlr Koumlnig Philip II von Spanien (Wiesbaden 1969)

R Klein ldquoLa theacuteorie de lexpression figureacutee dans les traiteacutes

italiens sur les imprese 1555-1612rdquo Bibliothegraveque dHu-

manisme et Renaissance 19 (1957) 320-41 republished with

the other relevant studies in la forme et lintelligible (Paris

1969) R Klibansky E Panofsky F Saxl Saturn and Melan-

choly (London 1964) J B Knipping Ikonografie van de

Contra-Reformatie in de Nederlanden (Hilversum 1939-40)

G Kubler The Shape of Time (New Haven and London

1962) R W Lee ldquoUt pictura poesisrdquo Art Bulletin 22

(1940) 197-269 E Macircle Lart religieux du XIIIe siegravecle en

France (Paris 1898) English ed used (New York 1958)

idem Lart religieux de la fin du Moyen-Age en France

(Paris 1908) idem Lart religieux du XIIe siegravecle en France

(Paris 1922) idem Lart religieux apregraves le Concile de Trente

(Paris 1932) J Maurin Białostocka Lessing i sztuki plas-

tyczne (ldquoLessing and the visual artsrdquo) (Wroclaw Warszawa

Krakoacutew 1969) E F von Monroy Embleme und Emblem-

buumlcher in den Niederlanden 1560-1630 ed H M von Erffa

(Utrecht 1964) J Montagu ldquoThe Painted Enigma and

French Seventeenth Century Artrdquo Journal of the Warburg

and Courtauld Institutes 31 (1968) 307-35 W Mrazek

Ikonologie der barocken Deckenmalerei (Vienna 1953)

Uumlsterreichische Akademie der Wissenschaften Philo-

sophisch-historische Klasse Sitzungsberichte 2283 A D

Nock ldquoSarcophagi and Symbolismrdquo American Journal of

Archaeology 50 (1946) 166ff D Panofsky and E Panofsky

ldquoThe Iconography of the Galeacuterie Franccedilois Ier at Fontaine-

bleaurdquo Gazette des Beaux-Arts 652 (1958) 113-90

E Panofsky ldquoUumlber das Verhaumlltnis der Kunstgeschichte zur

Kunsttheorierdquo Zeitschrift fuumlr Aesthetik und allgemeine

Kunstwissenschaft 18 (1925) 129-61 idem Studies in

Iconology (New York 1939) idem ed Abbot Suger (Prince-

ton 1946) idem Gothic Architecture and Scholasticism

(Latrobe Pa 1951) idem Early Netherlandish Painting

(Cambridge Mass 1953) idem Meaning in the Visual Arts

(Garden City N Y 1955) idem Renaissance and Renas-

cences in Western Art (Stockholm 1960) idem Tomb Sculp-

ture (New York 1964) E Panofsky and F Saxl ldquoClassical

Mythology in Medieval Artrdquo Metropolitan Museum Studies

4 (1932-33) 228-80 M Praz Studies in Seventeenth Cen-

tury Imagery (London 1939-47 2nd ed Rome 1964) S

Ringbom ldquoDevotional Images and Imaginative Devotions

Notes on the Place of Art in Late Medieval Private Pietyrdquo

Gazette des Beaux-Arts 6 73 (1969) 159-70 Joseph Sauer

Symbolik des Kirchengebaumludes und seiner Ausstattung in

der Auffassung des Mittelalters 2nd ed (Freiburg i B

1924) F Saxl ldquoFruumlhes Christentum und spaumltes Heidentum

in ihren kuumlnstlerischen Ausdrucksformenrdquo Wiener Jahrbuch

fuumlr Kunstgeschichte 2 (1923) 63-121 M Schapiro ldquoThe

Ruthwell Crossrdquo Art Bulletin 26 (1944) 232-45 idem ldquoOn

the Aesthetic Attitude in Romanesque Artrdquo in Art and

Thought issued in Honour of Ananda Coomaraswamy

(London 1947) 139-50 J Seznec The Survival of the Pagan

Gods (New York 1953) O G von Simson The Gothic

Cathedral (New York 1956) R E Spear ldquoThe Literary

Source of Poussins Realm of Florardquo The Burlington Maga-

zine 107 (1965) 563-69 L Volkmann Bilderschriften der

Renaissance (Leipzig 1923) Hans van de Waal Drie

eeuwen vaderlandsche geschieduitbeelding 1500-1800 (s-

Gravenhage 1952) idem ldquoSome Principles of a General

Iconographical Classificationrdquo in Actes du XVIIe Congregraves

International dHistoire de lArt Amsterdam 1952 (La Haye

1955) 601-06 E Wind ldquoCharity the Case History of a

Patternrdquo Journal of the Warburg Institute 1 (1937) 322ff

JAN BIAŁOSTOCKI

[See also Allegory Baroque Classicism Criticism Enlight-

enment Motif Myth Naturalism in Art Neo-Platonism

Renaissance Humanism Romanticism Symbolism Tem-

perance Ut pictura poesis]

standing of mythological and allegorical contents in

Flemish and Dutch art of the sixteenth and seventeenth

centuries Rembrandts iconography was put into new

light by the two above-mentioned scholars as well as

by H M Rotermund H van de Waal J G van Gelder

H von Einem and Ch Tuumlmpel The intricate symbol-

ism and subject matter of historical and mythological

pictures by Nicolas Poussin were elucidated by such

masters of iconographic research as E H Gombrich

W Friedlaumlnder E Panofsky and above all by A Blunt

who in his monograph on Poussin presented a new

deep synthetic view of the ideas expressed by that

artists works Goyas individualistic secret symbolism

was also studied with the help of emblems and the

allegorical tradition Berninis works received iconolo

gical treatment by R Wittkower and H Kauffmann

All of this research does not mean that there was a

lack of interest in religious iconography M Schapiro

A Katzenellenbogen H Bober F Wormald and V

Elbern among others have contributed considerably

to deepen our understanding of the not completely

explained motifs and prominent works of medieval art

Panofsky has also shed a new light on several problems

of sepulchral iconography studies by such scholars as

R Berliner G von der Osten L Kalinowski S

Ringbom and T Dobrzeniecki contributed to late

medieval iconography in a new way Berliner stressed

the autonomous invention of visual artists or their

patrons while according to the traditional view popu-

larized by Macircle late medieval art should have followed

strictly literary sources

The religious content of modern art especially its

allegorical form in the late baroque period has been

examined and thanks to studies by such scholars as

W Mrazek and H Bauer has become better known

and understandable A great change was introduced

by ldquoiconologyrdquo into architectural history Buildings

which were formerly interpreted from aesthetic and

functional points of view only have been shown to

present allegorical symbolical or even emblematic

ideas Publications by leading art historians (R Witt-

kower B Smith G Bandmann O von Simson and

G C Argan) have presented medieval and modern

architecture as a bearer of meaning and have essen-

tially changed the character of architectural history

The iconography of classicism and romanticism

received a thorough treatment in books by W Hof-

mann and R Rosenblum as well as in several studies

devoted to individual themes and pictures G Hersey

has for example shown how much Delacroixs decora-

tion of the library in the Palais Bourbon owed to

Giambattista Vicos ideas about history More recently

studies on ldquoSymbolismrdquo have been undertaken Vincent

van Goghs symbolic language and iconography were

the object of studies by J Seznec C Nordenfalk and

other scholars On Ceacutezannes iconography interesting

remarks have been published by M Schapiro

Along with the development of iconographic studies

the establishment of centers of documentation has

advanced The ldquoFrenchrdquo stage in the development of

iconography has not left any marked trace in this

respect It was in America thanks to C R Morey that

the famous Index of Christian Art at the Department

of Art and Archaeology of Princeton University was

founded at first limited to the early Middle Ages then

enlarged so as to include art up to the end of the

medieval period Copies of the Princeton Index are

to be found also at the Istituto Pontificio dArcheolo-

gia in Rome and in the Dumbarton Oaks Library and

539

Collection in Washington DC But that Index ends

ldquowhere art beginsrdquomdashas Panofsky used to say jokingly

The need for systematic iconographic files for modern

art was strongly felt In 1956 A Pigler published a

very useful book Barockthemen in which he listed

thousands of works of art of the baroque period ac-

cording to their subjects It was however far from

being a systematic work The first essay in establishing

a systematic iconographic index for art of any time

was done by The Netherlands Institute for Art History

at the Hague then directed by H Gerson which took

the initiative around 1950 of publishing a postcard-size

photographic index of its rich collection of photographs

of Netherlandish art ordered according to an icono-

graphic principle Once such an idea was formulated

the need for a comprehensive consistent and clear

iconographic classification was urgent H van de Waal

of Leiden University devised such a system of classifi-

cation based on decimal divisions consistent and easy

to read He based his system on experiences of ethnol-

ogy and on such elaborated systems of classification

as that devised by Stith Thompson in his Motif-Index

of Folk Literature Vols I-VI (Bloomington Ind

1932-36 rev ed 1955-58) Van de Waal has elabor-

ated a system in which the first five main sections

classify five fundamental groups of portrayable things

namely (1) The Supernatural (2) Nature (3) Man (4)

Society (5) Abstracts The last four classify specific

subjects such as (6) History (7) The Bible (8) Myths

Legends and Tales (with the exception of classical

antiquity) (9) Myths and Legends of Classical Antiq-

uity Van de Waal combines the classification in the

first and in the second group in order to classify general

as well as specific subjects Christ in his system is

described with the sign ldquo11 Drdquo (ldquo1rdquo standing for Su-

pernatural ldquo11rdquo for Christianity ldquoDrdquo for Christ) the

adult Christ = 11 D 3 since ldquoshepherdrdquo on the other

hand bears the signature 47 I 221 the adult Christ

as a shepherd can be described in this system by the

following formula 11 D 3 = 47 I 221 Van de Waal

has also provided means to describe more complex

images which he expresses by adding elements between

brackets The Annunciation with God the Father and

a winged Angel is expressed by the following formula

73 A 5 (+1 +41) ldquo1rdquo standing for God the Father

and ldquo41rdquo for a winged Angel (van de Waal 1952) This

system elaborated for many years by its inventor and

prepared for publication in many volumes has proved

most useful in the practical arrangement of the Icono-

graphical Index of the Netherlandish Art and as the

only one until now in existence it became used more

and more in spite of some ambiguities and difficulties

As an endeavor to classify ldquoall portrayablerdquo things

persons events and ideas and to create a consistent

method to describe every possible image van de Waals

system may be considered as one of the important

achievements of the ldquoiconographical stagerdquo in the

development of art history Iconographic files exist of

course in many institutions as for example in the Ikon-

ologisch Instituut of Utrecht University one of the

main centers of study in emblematics and of course

in the most venerable institution of iconographic re-

search the Warburg Institute of the London University

and in other places

4 What was the result of this ldquoiconographicrdquo turn

in the development of the history of art One thing

is certain that this discipline by necessity has come

closer to other humanistic disciplines Since the

ldquointrinsicrdquo meaningmdashin Panofskys terminologymdashof a

work of art cannot be described in terms used by the

history of art but only in terms borrowed from the

history of philosophy of religion of social structures

of science and so on the ldquoiconological methodrdquo took

for granted and provoked such a collaboration Art

history was perhaps the first or one of the first to show

new interest in investigation of meaning It was fol-

lowed by similar developments in ethnology and in

linguistics

We have mentioned above a parallel development

in Byzantine and classical studies Panofskys influence

has been considerable in the other fields of humanistic

research Since ldquoiconologyrdquo aimed at discovering ideas

expressed by a work of art it awoke in art historians

an interest in the history of ideas This general shift

of emphasis and of the direction of studies from mainly

formal ones to studies aiming at ideas underlying art

was perhaps responsible among others for the fact that

several contributions to the Journal of the History of

Ideas have been written by historians of art

It is not difficult to see that such a development

should have provoked criticism on the side of those

who care about the purity and autonomy of methods

Iconology was criticized as far as its internal coherence

and also as far as its claim to be the integral method

of the study of art are concerned (Białostocki 1962)

Studies by R Klein E Forssman G Previtali G

Kubler B Teyssegravedre C Ginzburg and G Hermeren

expressed critical opinions in one or the other respect

Iconology linked art with the rest of history but it

disrupted the links between the work of art and other

things (Kubler 1962) Concentrating on meaning

iconology neglected art as form as individual expres-

sion Iconology implied a rational relationship between

intellectual content and artistic form On the one hand

one spoke of ldquoiconological diminutionsrdquo (Kubler

1962)mdashlimitations of research to meaning only But

on the other hand the overstatements of iconology

were criticized its representatives sometimes seemed

540

to assume everything symbolized something And some

iconologists seemed to consider important in art not

that which makes art a different field of human activity

but that which connects art with other fieldsmdashwith

the history of ideas

There were of course critics who had the opposite

opinion Since the end of the eighteenth century a

direct experience of art was more and more valued

and its symbolical function considered as a burden

J G von Herder said ein Kunstwerk ist der Kunst

wegen da aber bei einem Symbole ist die Kunst

dienend (ldquoA work of art is there because of art but

with a symbol art is a servicerdquo) Similar opinions were

expressed by nineteenth-century art writers and in this

century they have been voiced by Benedetto Croce and

by other Italian opponents of contenutismo by which

they meant interest in content For such critics to put

stress on iconography was to miss the essential in art

and to focus attention on a subordinate function of art

Also among scholars who considered the function

of representation and of communication as a legitimate

and important function of art criticism was expressed

not against the principle of an iconographical or icon-

ological investigation but against overstatements in

their application The introduction of the idea of ldquodis-

guised symbolismrdquo has created a danger of course of

opening the way to fanciful interpretations The alle-

gorical and symbolical function of mythological imag-

ery in classical art is also difficult to interpret precisely

Since no literary sources give a key to an interpretation

of the iconography of the sarcophagi very divergent

theories have been expressed concerning their meaning

Some archaeologists like F Cumont (1942) believe

that mythological and allegorical imagery (Anadyo-

mene Sea-Thiasos Personifications of the Seasons) is

to be read symbolically The Sea-Thiasos for instance

is to be interpreted as a symbol of the journey of the

souls of the deceased to the islands of the blessed

Others like A D Nock (1946) do not find enough

evidence to accept other than a decorative function

in such imagery

The intrusion of some representatives of psychology

eg C G Jung into iconographic studies giving them

an unhistorical turn in their search for ldquoarchetypal

imagesrdquo has complicated the situation although art

historians in general understandably have not accepted

that kind of approach to symbolism (Frankfort 1958

Gombrich 1965)

The fact that iconographic interpretations sometimes

lack satisfactory proofs does not detract from the im-

portance of such investigations so long as they are

conducted according to the requirements of historical

methods and take into account the corrective princi-

ples established by Panofsky A correct acquaintance

with the way of thinking of the artist the patron or the

viewer based on a satisfactory knowledge of documen-

tary visual and literary sources an awareness of the

choice situations produced by historical developments

may enable art historians to discover the secondary

meaning of a work of art as well as its intrinsic mean-

ing It is of course possible that the art historian will

meet some works for which it will not be possible to re-

construct in a satisfactory way the world of ideas that

would account for the meaning of those works In such

cases a reliable interpretation is simply not possible

R Berliner (1945 1966) criticized the widespread

opinion according to which content of the works of

visual arts in the Middle Ages had to be checked

against the literary sources considered as the only

medium in which ideological innovations were per-

mitted Berliner pleaded for assuming a considerable

ldquofreedomrdquo in the medieval artist and he considered

iconographic innovation possible even when no writ-

ten evidence could be found Meyer Schapiro (1947)

presented proofs that sometimes purely aesthetic rea-

sons decided the character of the work of art even as

early as the Romanesque period

We can only touch on some specific discussions going

on in the field of iconographic research But iconogra-

phic research is far from being a closed system and

the relative share of iconographic and stylistic criticism

in the work of art historians is always a matter of

discussion It is certain that the ldquoiconographicrdquo period

in the study of art has enlarged in a considerable way

the understanding of the art of the past and that it

has connected art history in a way unknown before

with the other historical disciplines and above all others

with the history of ideas

BIBLIOGRAPHY

L B Alberti On Painting ed J Spencer (New Haven

1956 revised ed 1966) E Auerbach ldquoFigurardquo (1944) trans

and published in Scenes From the Drama of European Liter-

ature (New York 1959) pp 11-76 K Bauch ldquoImagordquo

(1960) Studien zur Kunstgeschichte (Berlin 1967) pp 1-20

G P Bellori Descrizione delle imagini dipinte da Raffaello

(Rome 1695 ed used is 1751) R Berliner ldquoThe Free-

dom of Medieval Artrdquo Gazette des Beaux-Arts 628 (1945)

263-88 idem ldquoBemerkungen zu einigen Darstellungen des

Erloumlsers als Schmerzensmannrdquo Das Muumlnster 9 (1956)

97-117x J Białostocki ldquoIconografia e Iconologiardquo Enciclo-

pedia Universale dellArte (1962) Vol VII cols 163-75

trans as Encyclopedia of World Art (1966) Vol VII cols

769-85 lists almost all important older contributions to this

field idem ldquoRomantische Ikonographierdquo Stil und Ikonog-

raphie (Dresden 1966) pp 156-81 idem ldquoKompozycja

emblematyczna epitafioacutew ślaskich XVI wiekurdquo (ldquoEmblem-

atic Composition of Silesian Epitaphs of the Sixteenth Cen-

turyrdquo) Ze studioacutew nad Sztuka XVI wieku na Řlasku

(Wrocław 1968) pp 77-93 idem ldquoEsilio Privatordquo Bulletin

du Museacutee National de Varsovie 10 (1969) 95-101 J

541

Chydenius The Theory of Medieval Symbolism (Helsingfors

1960) Series of the Societas Scientiarum Fennica Com-

mentationes Humanarum Litterarum 27 2 R J Clements

Picta Poesis (Rome 1960) F Creuzer Symbolik und

Mythologie der Alten Voumllker (Leipzig and Darmstadt 1810

revised ed 1819) F Cumont Recherches sur le symbolisme

funeacuteraire des Romains (Paris 1942) L Eitner ldquoThe Open

Window and the Storm-Tossed Boatrdquo Art Bulletin 37

(1955) 281-90 H Frankfort ldquoThe Archetype in Analytical

Psychology and the History of Religionrdquo Journal of the

Warburg and Courtauld Institutes 21 (1958) 166-78

K Garas ldquoAllegorie und Geschichte in der Venezianischen

Malerei des 18 Jahrhundertsrdquo in proceedings of the XXI

International Congress of the History of Art Bonn Stil und

Uumlberlieferung in der Kunst des Abendlandes (Berlin 1967)

3 280-83 K Giehlow ldquoDie Hieroglyphenkunde des

Humanismus in der Allegorie der Renaissancerdquo Jahrbuch

der Kunsthistorischen Sammlungen des Allerhochsten

Kaiserhauses 32 (1915) 1-232 C Gilbert ldquoOn Subject and

Not-Subject in Italian Renaissance Picturesrdquo Art Bulletin

34 (1952) 202-16 C Ginzburg ldquoDa A Warburg a E H

Gombrich Note su un problema di metodordquo Studi medi-

evali series 3 7 (1966) 1015-65 E H Gombrich ldquoIcones

Symbolicae The Visual Image in Neo-Platonic Thoughtrdquo

Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes 11 (1948)

163-92 idem ldquoThe Use of Art for the Study of Symbolsrdquo

American Psychologist 20 (1965) A Grabar Liconoclasme

byzantin Dossier archeacuteologique (Paris 1957) idem Chris-

tian Iconography A Study of Its Origins (Princeton 1969)

S J Gudlaugsson De Comedianten bij Jan Steen en zijn

tijdgenooten (s-Gravenhage 1945) W S Heckscher ldquoThe

Genesis of Iconologyrdquo Stl und Uumlberlieferung in der Kunst

des Abendlandes Akten des XXI Internationalen Kon-

gresses fuumlr Kunstgeschichte (Berlin 1967) 3 239-62 G

Hermereacuten Representation and Meaning in the Visual Arts

A Study in the Methodology of Iconography and Iconology

Lund Studies in Philosophy Vol I (Lund 1969) R Hinks

Myth and Allegory in Ancient Art (London 1939) W

Hofmann Das Irdische Paradies (Munich 1960) G J

Hoogewerff ldquoLIconologie et son importance pour leacutetude

systeacutematique de lart chreacutetienrdquo Rivista dArcheologia Cris-

tiana 8 (1931) 53-82 E de Jongh Zinne- en minnebeelden

in de schilderkunst van de zeventiende eeuw (mdash1967) idem

ldquoErotica in Vogelperspectief De dubbelzinnigheid van een

reeks 17de eeuwse genrevoorstellingenrdquo Simiolus 3

(1968-69) 22-72 L Kalinowski ldquoTreści ideowe i estetyczne

Drzwi Gnieźnieńskichrdquo (ldquoIdeological and Aesthetic Content

of the Gniezno Bronze Doorsrdquo) in Drzwi Gnieźnieńskie ed

M Walicki (Wroclaw 1959) 2 7-160 H Keller Tizians

Poesie fuumlr Koumlnig Philip II von Spanien (Wiesbaden 1969)

R Klein ldquoLa theacuteorie de lexpression figureacutee dans les traiteacutes

italiens sur les imprese 1555-1612rdquo Bibliothegraveque dHu-

manisme et Renaissance 19 (1957) 320-41 republished with

the other relevant studies in la forme et lintelligible (Paris

1969) R Klibansky E Panofsky F Saxl Saturn and Melan-

choly (London 1964) J B Knipping Ikonografie van de

Contra-Reformatie in de Nederlanden (Hilversum 1939-40)

G Kubler The Shape of Time (New Haven and London

1962) R W Lee ldquoUt pictura poesisrdquo Art Bulletin 22

(1940) 197-269 E Macircle Lart religieux du XIIIe siegravecle en

France (Paris 1898) English ed used (New York 1958)

idem Lart religieux de la fin du Moyen-Age en France

(Paris 1908) idem Lart religieux du XIIe siegravecle en France

(Paris 1922) idem Lart religieux apregraves le Concile de Trente

(Paris 1932) J Maurin Białostocka Lessing i sztuki plas-

tyczne (ldquoLessing and the visual artsrdquo) (Wroclaw Warszawa

Krakoacutew 1969) E F von Monroy Embleme und Emblem-

buumlcher in den Niederlanden 1560-1630 ed H M von Erffa

(Utrecht 1964) J Montagu ldquoThe Painted Enigma and

French Seventeenth Century Artrdquo Journal of the Warburg

and Courtauld Institutes 31 (1968) 307-35 W Mrazek

Ikonologie der barocken Deckenmalerei (Vienna 1953)

Uumlsterreichische Akademie der Wissenschaften Philo-

sophisch-historische Klasse Sitzungsberichte 2283 A D

Nock ldquoSarcophagi and Symbolismrdquo American Journal of

Archaeology 50 (1946) 166ff D Panofsky and E Panofsky

ldquoThe Iconography of the Galeacuterie Franccedilois Ier at Fontaine-

bleaurdquo Gazette des Beaux-Arts 652 (1958) 113-90

E Panofsky ldquoUumlber das Verhaumlltnis der Kunstgeschichte zur

Kunsttheorierdquo Zeitschrift fuumlr Aesthetik und allgemeine

Kunstwissenschaft 18 (1925) 129-61 idem Studies in

Iconology (New York 1939) idem ed Abbot Suger (Prince-

ton 1946) idem Gothic Architecture and Scholasticism

(Latrobe Pa 1951) idem Early Netherlandish Painting

(Cambridge Mass 1953) idem Meaning in the Visual Arts

(Garden City N Y 1955) idem Renaissance and Renas-

cences in Western Art (Stockholm 1960) idem Tomb Sculp-

ture (New York 1964) E Panofsky and F Saxl ldquoClassical

Mythology in Medieval Artrdquo Metropolitan Museum Studies

4 (1932-33) 228-80 M Praz Studies in Seventeenth Cen-

tury Imagery (London 1939-47 2nd ed Rome 1964) S

Ringbom ldquoDevotional Images and Imaginative Devotions

Notes on the Place of Art in Late Medieval Private Pietyrdquo

Gazette des Beaux-Arts 6 73 (1969) 159-70 Joseph Sauer

Symbolik des Kirchengebaumludes und seiner Ausstattung in

der Auffassung des Mittelalters 2nd ed (Freiburg i B

1924) F Saxl ldquoFruumlhes Christentum und spaumltes Heidentum

in ihren kuumlnstlerischen Ausdrucksformenrdquo Wiener Jahrbuch

fuumlr Kunstgeschichte 2 (1923) 63-121 M Schapiro ldquoThe

Ruthwell Crossrdquo Art Bulletin 26 (1944) 232-45 idem ldquoOn

the Aesthetic Attitude in Romanesque Artrdquo in Art and

Thought issued in Honour of Ananda Coomaraswamy

(London 1947) 139-50 J Seznec The Survival of the Pagan

Gods (New York 1953) O G von Simson The Gothic

Cathedral (New York 1956) R E Spear ldquoThe Literary

Source of Poussins Realm of Florardquo The Burlington Maga-

zine 107 (1965) 563-69 L Volkmann Bilderschriften der

Renaissance (Leipzig 1923) Hans van de Waal Drie

eeuwen vaderlandsche geschieduitbeelding 1500-1800 (s-

Gravenhage 1952) idem ldquoSome Principles of a General

Iconographical Classificationrdquo in Actes du XVIIe Congregraves

International dHistoire de lArt Amsterdam 1952 (La Haye

1955) 601-06 E Wind ldquoCharity the Case History of a

Patternrdquo Journal of the Warburg Institute 1 (1937) 322ff

JAN BIAŁOSTOCKI

[See also Allegory Baroque Classicism Criticism Enlight-

enment Motif Myth Naturalism in Art Neo-Platonism

Renaissance Humanism Romanticism Symbolism Tem-

perance Ut pictura poesis]

devoted to individual themes and pictures G Hersey

has for example shown how much Delacroixs decora-

tion of the library in the Palais Bourbon owed to

Giambattista Vicos ideas about history More recently

studies on ldquoSymbolismrdquo have been undertaken Vincent

van Goghs symbolic language and iconography were

the object of studies by J Seznec C Nordenfalk and

other scholars On Ceacutezannes iconography interesting

remarks have been published by M Schapiro

Along with the development of iconographic studies

the establishment of centers of documentation has

advanced The ldquoFrenchrdquo stage in the development of

iconography has not left any marked trace in this

respect It was in America thanks to C R Morey that

the famous Index of Christian Art at the Department

of Art and Archaeology of Princeton University was

founded at first limited to the early Middle Ages then

enlarged so as to include art up to the end of the

medieval period Copies of the Princeton Index are

to be found also at the Istituto Pontificio dArcheolo-

gia in Rome and in the Dumbarton Oaks Library and

539

Collection in Washington DC But that Index ends

ldquowhere art beginsrdquomdashas Panofsky used to say jokingly

The need for systematic iconographic files for modern

art was strongly felt In 1956 A Pigler published a

very useful book Barockthemen in which he listed

thousands of works of art of the baroque period ac-

cording to their subjects It was however far from

being a systematic work The first essay in establishing

a systematic iconographic index for art of any time

was done by The Netherlands Institute for Art History

at the Hague then directed by H Gerson which took

the initiative around 1950 of publishing a postcard-size

photographic index of its rich collection of photographs

of Netherlandish art ordered according to an icono-

graphic principle Once such an idea was formulated

the need for a comprehensive consistent and clear

iconographic classification was urgent H van de Waal

of Leiden University devised such a system of classifi-

cation based on decimal divisions consistent and easy

to read He based his system on experiences of ethnol-

ogy and on such elaborated systems of classification

as that devised by Stith Thompson in his Motif-Index

of Folk Literature Vols I-VI (Bloomington Ind

1932-36 rev ed 1955-58) Van de Waal has elabor-

ated a system in which the first five main sections

classify five fundamental groups of portrayable things

namely (1) The Supernatural (2) Nature (3) Man (4)

Society (5) Abstracts The last four classify specific

subjects such as (6) History (7) The Bible (8) Myths

Legends and Tales (with the exception of classical

antiquity) (9) Myths and Legends of Classical Antiq-

uity Van de Waal combines the classification in the

first and in the second group in order to classify general

as well as specific subjects Christ in his system is

described with the sign ldquo11 Drdquo (ldquo1rdquo standing for Su-

pernatural ldquo11rdquo for Christianity ldquoDrdquo for Christ) the

adult Christ = 11 D 3 since ldquoshepherdrdquo on the other

hand bears the signature 47 I 221 the adult Christ

as a shepherd can be described in this system by the

following formula 11 D 3 = 47 I 221 Van de Waal

has also provided means to describe more complex

images which he expresses by adding elements between

brackets The Annunciation with God the Father and

a winged Angel is expressed by the following formula

73 A 5 (+1 +41) ldquo1rdquo standing for God the Father

and ldquo41rdquo for a winged Angel (van de Waal 1952) This

system elaborated for many years by its inventor and

prepared for publication in many volumes has proved

most useful in the practical arrangement of the Icono-

graphical Index of the Netherlandish Art and as the

only one until now in existence it became used more

and more in spite of some ambiguities and difficulties

As an endeavor to classify ldquoall portrayablerdquo things

persons events and ideas and to create a consistent

method to describe every possible image van de Waals

system may be considered as one of the important

achievements of the ldquoiconographical stagerdquo in the

development of art history Iconographic files exist of

course in many institutions as for example in the Ikon-

ologisch Instituut of Utrecht University one of the

main centers of study in emblematics and of course

in the most venerable institution of iconographic re-

search the Warburg Institute of the London University

and in other places

4 What was the result of this ldquoiconographicrdquo turn

in the development of the history of art One thing

is certain that this discipline by necessity has come

closer to other humanistic disciplines Since the

ldquointrinsicrdquo meaningmdashin Panofskys terminologymdashof a

work of art cannot be described in terms used by the

history of art but only in terms borrowed from the

history of philosophy of religion of social structures

of science and so on the ldquoiconological methodrdquo took

for granted and provoked such a collaboration Art

history was perhaps the first or one of the first to show

new interest in investigation of meaning It was fol-

lowed by similar developments in ethnology and in

linguistics

We have mentioned above a parallel development

in Byzantine and classical studies Panofskys influence

has been considerable in the other fields of humanistic

research Since ldquoiconologyrdquo aimed at discovering ideas

expressed by a work of art it awoke in art historians

an interest in the history of ideas This general shift

of emphasis and of the direction of studies from mainly

formal ones to studies aiming at ideas underlying art

was perhaps responsible among others for the fact that

several contributions to the Journal of the History of

Ideas have been written by historians of art

It is not difficult to see that such a development

should have provoked criticism on the side of those

who care about the purity and autonomy of methods

Iconology was criticized as far as its internal coherence

and also as far as its claim to be the integral method

of the study of art are concerned (Białostocki 1962)

Studies by R Klein E Forssman G Previtali G

Kubler B Teyssegravedre C Ginzburg and G Hermeren

expressed critical opinions in one or the other respect

Iconology linked art with the rest of history but it

disrupted the links between the work of art and other

things (Kubler 1962) Concentrating on meaning

iconology neglected art as form as individual expres-

sion Iconology implied a rational relationship between

intellectual content and artistic form On the one hand

one spoke of ldquoiconological diminutionsrdquo (Kubler

1962)mdashlimitations of research to meaning only But

on the other hand the overstatements of iconology

were criticized its representatives sometimes seemed

540

to assume everything symbolized something And some

iconologists seemed to consider important in art not

that which makes art a different field of human activity

but that which connects art with other fieldsmdashwith

the history of ideas

There were of course critics who had the opposite

opinion Since the end of the eighteenth century a

direct experience of art was more and more valued

and its symbolical function considered as a burden

J G von Herder said ein Kunstwerk ist der Kunst

wegen da aber bei einem Symbole ist die Kunst

dienend (ldquoA work of art is there because of art but

with a symbol art is a servicerdquo) Similar opinions were

expressed by nineteenth-century art writers and in this

century they have been voiced by Benedetto Croce and

by other Italian opponents of contenutismo by which

they meant interest in content For such critics to put

stress on iconography was to miss the essential in art

and to focus attention on a subordinate function of art

Also among scholars who considered the function

of representation and of communication as a legitimate

and important function of art criticism was expressed

not against the principle of an iconographical or icon-

ological investigation but against overstatements in

their application The introduction of the idea of ldquodis-

guised symbolismrdquo has created a danger of course of

opening the way to fanciful interpretations The alle-

gorical and symbolical function of mythological imag-

ery in classical art is also difficult to interpret precisely

Since no literary sources give a key to an interpretation

of the iconography of the sarcophagi very divergent

theories have been expressed concerning their meaning

Some archaeologists like F Cumont (1942) believe

that mythological and allegorical imagery (Anadyo-

mene Sea-Thiasos Personifications of the Seasons) is

to be read symbolically The Sea-Thiasos for instance

is to be interpreted as a symbol of the journey of the

souls of the deceased to the islands of the blessed

Others like A D Nock (1946) do not find enough

evidence to accept other than a decorative function

in such imagery

The intrusion of some representatives of psychology

eg C G Jung into iconographic studies giving them

an unhistorical turn in their search for ldquoarchetypal

imagesrdquo has complicated the situation although art

historians in general understandably have not accepted

that kind of approach to symbolism (Frankfort 1958

Gombrich 1965)

The fact that iconographic interpretations sometimes

lack satisfactory proofs does not detract from the im-

portance of such investigations so long as they are

conducted according to the requirements of historical

methods and take into account the corrective princi-

ples established by Panofsky A correct acquaintance

with the way of thinking of the artist the patron or the

viewer based on a satisfactory knowledge of documen-

tary visual and literary sources an awareness of the

choice situations produced by historical developments

may enable art historians to discover the secondary

meaning of a work of art as well as its intrinsic mean-

ing It is of course possible that the art historian will

meet some works for which it will not be possible to re-

construct in a satisfactory way the world of ideas that

would account for the meaning of those works In such

cases a reliable interpretation is simply not possible

R Berliner (1945 1966) criticized the widespread

opinion according to which content of the works of

visual arts in the Middle Ages had to be checked

against the literary sources considered as the only

medium in which ideological innovations were per-

mitted Berliner pleaded for assuming a considerable

ldquofreedomrdquo in the medieval artist and he considered

iconographic innovation possible even when no writ-

ten evidence could be found Meyer Schapiro (1947)

presented proofs that sometimes purely aesthetic rea-

sons decided the character of the work of art even as

early as the Romanesque period

We can only touch on some specific discussions going

on in the field of iconographic research But iconogra-

phic research is far from being a closed system and

the relative share of iconographic and stylistic criticism

in the work of art historians is always a matter of

discussion It is certain that the ldquoiconographicrdquo period

in the study of art has enlarged in a considerable way

the understanding of the art of the past and that it

has connected art history in a way unknown before

with the other historical disciplines and above all others

with the history of ideas

BIBLIOGRAPHY

L B Alberti On Painting ed J Spencer (New Haven

1956 revised ed 1966) E Auerbach ldquoFigurardquo (1944) trans

and published in Scenes From the Drama of European Liter-

ature (New York 1959) pp 11-76 K Bauch ldquoImagordquo

(1960) Studien zur Kunstgeschichte (Berlin 1967) pp 1-20

G P Bellori Descrizione delle imagini dipinte da Raffaello

(Rome 1695 ed used is 1751) R Berliner ldquoThe Free-

dom of Medieval Artrdquo Gazette des Beaux-Arts 628 (1945)

263-88 idem ldquoBemerkungen zu einigen Darstellungen des

Erloumlsers als Schmerzensmannrdquo Das Muumlnster 9 (1956)

97-117x J Białostocki ldquoIconografia e Iconologiardquo Enciclo-

pedia Universale dellArte (1962) Vol VII cols 163-75

trans as Encyclopedia of World Art (1966) Vol VII cols

769-85 lists almost all important older contributions to this

field idem ldquoRomantische Ikonographierdquo Stil und Ikonog-

raphie (Dresden 1966) pp 156-81 idem ldquoKompozycja

emblematyczna epitafioacutew ślaskich XVI wiekurdquo (ldquoEmblem-

atic Composition of Silesian Epitaphs of the Sixteenth Cen-

turyrdquo) Ze studioacutew nad Sztuka XVI wieku na Řlasku

(Wrocław 1968) pp 77-93 idem ldquoEsilio Privatordquo Bulletin

du Museacutee National de Varsovie 10 (1969) 95-101 J

541

Chydenius The Theory of Medieval Symbolism (Helsingfors

1960) Series of the Societas Scientiarum Fennica Com-

mentationes Humanarum Litterarum 27 2 R J Clements

Picta Poesis (Rome 1960) F Creuzer Symbolik und

Mythologie der Alten Voumllker (Leipzig and Darmstadt 1810

revised ed 1819) F Cumont Recherches sur le symbolisme

funeacuteraire des Romains (Paris 1942) L Eitner ldquoThe Open

Window and the Storm-Tossed Boatrdquo Art Bulletin 37

(1955) 281-90 H Frankfort ldquoThe Archetype in Analytical

Psychology and the History of Religionrdquo Journal of the

Warburg and Courtauld Institutes 21 (1958) 166-78

K Garas ldquoAllegorie und Geschichte in der Venezianischen

Malerei des 18 Jahrhundertsrdquo in proceedings of the XXI

International Congress of the History of Art Bonn Stil und

Uumlberlieferung in der Kunst des Abendlandes (Berlin 1967)

3 280-83 K Giehlow ldquoDie Hieroglyphenkunde des

Humanismus in der Allegorie der Renaissancerdquo Jahrbuch

der Kunsthistorischen Sammlungen des Allerhochsten

Kaiserhauses 32 (1915) 1-232 C Gilbert ldquoOn Subject and

Not-Subject in Italian Renaissance Picturesrdquo Art Bulletin

34 (1952) 202-16 C Ginzburg ldquoDa A Warburg a E H

Gombrich Note su un problema di metodordquo Studi medi-

evali series 3 7 (1966) 1015-65 E H Gombrich ldquoIcones

Symbolicae The Visual Image in Neo-Platonic Thoughtrdquo

Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes 11 (1948)

163-92 idem ldquoThe Use of Art for the Study of Symbolsrdquo

American Psychologist 20 (1965) A Grabar Liconoclasme

byzantin Dossier archeacuteologique (Paris 1957) idem Chris-

tian Iconography A Study of Its Origins (Princeton 1969)

S J Gudlaugsson De Comedianten bij Jan Steen en zijn

tijdgenooten (s-Gravenhage 1945) W S Heckscher ldquoThe

Genesis of Iconologyrdquo Stl und Uumlberlieferung in der Kunst

des Abendlandes Akten des XXI Internationalen Kon-

gresses fuumlr Kunstgeschichte (Berlin 1967) 3 239-62 G

Hermereacuten Representation and Meaning in the Visual Arts

A Study in the Methodology of Iconography and Iconology

Lund Studies in Philosophy Vol I (Lund 1969) R Hinks

Myth and Allegory in Ancient Art (London 1939) W

Hofmann Das Irdische Paradies (Munich 1960) G J

Hoogewerff ldquoLIconologie et son importance pour leacutetude

systeacutematique de lart chreacutetienrdquo Rivista dArcheologia Cris-

tiana 8 (1931) 53-82 E de Jongh Zinne- en minnebeelden

in de schilderkunst van de zeventiende eeuw (mdash1967) idem

ldquoErotica in Vogelperspectief De dubbelzinnigheid van een

reeks 17de eeuwse genrevoorstellingenrdquo Simiolus 3

(1968-69) 22-72 L Kalinowski ldquoTreści ideowe i estetyczne

Drzwi Gnieźnieńskichrdquo (ldquoIdeological and Aesthetic Content

of the Gniezno Bronze Doorsrdquo) in Drzwi Gnieźnieńskie ed

M Walicki (Wroclaw 1959) 2 7-160 H Keller Tizians

Poesie fuumlr Koumlnig Philip II von Spanien (Wiesbaden 1969)

R Klein ldquoLa theacuteorie de lexpression figureacutee dans les traiteacutes

italiens sur les imprese 1555-1612rdquo Bibliothegraveque dHu-

manisme et Renaissance 19 (1957) 320-41 republished with

the other relevant studies in la forme et lintelligible (Paris

1969) R Klibansky E Panofsky F Saxl Saturn and Melan-

choly (London 1964) J B Knipping Ikonografie van de

Contra-Reformatie in de Nederlanden (Hilversum 1939-40)

G Kubler The Shape of Time (New Haven and London

1962) R W Lee ldquoUt pictura poesisrdquo Art Bulletin 22

(1940) 197-269 E Macircle Lart religieux du XIIIe siegravecle en

France (Paris 1898) English ed used (New York 1958)

idem Lart religieux de la fin du Moyen-Age en France

(Paris 1908) idem Lart religieux du XIIe siegravecle en France

(Paris 1922) idem Lart religieux apregraves le Concile de Trente

(Paris 1932) J Maurin Białostocka Lessing i sztuki plas-

tyczne (ldquoLessing and the visual artsrdquo) (Wroclaw Warszawa

Krakoacutew 1969) E F von Monroy Embleme und Emblem-

buumlcher in den Niederlanden 1560-1630 ed H M von Erffa

(Utrecht 1964) J Montagu ldquoThe Painted Enigma and

French Seventeenth Century Artrdquo Journal of the Warburg

and Courtauld Institutes 31 (1968) 307-35 W Mrazek

Ikonologie der barocken Deckenmalerei (Vienna 1953)

Uumlsterreichische Akademie der Wissenschaften Philo-

sophisch-historische Klasse Sitzungsberichte 2283 A D

Nock ldquoSarcophagi and Symbolismrdquo American Journal of

Archaeology 50 (1946) 166ff D Panofsky and E Panofsky

ldquoThe Iconography of the Galeacuterie Franccedilois Ier at Fontaine-

bleaurdquo Gazette des Beaux-Arts 652 (1958) 113-90

E Panofsky ldquoUumlber das Verhaumlltnis der Kunstgeschichte zur

Kunsttheorierdquo Zeitschrift fuumlr Aesthetik und allgemeine

Kunstwissenschaft 18 (1925) 129-61 idem Studies in

Iconology (New York 1939) idem ed Abbot Suger (Prince-

ton 1946) idem Gothic Architecture and Scholasticism

(Latrobe Pa 1951) idem Early Netherlandish Painting

(Cambridge Mass 1953) idem Meaning in the Visual Arts

(Garden City N Y 1955) idem Renaissance and Renas-

cences in Western Art (Stockholm 1960) idem Tomb Sculp-

ture (New York 1964) E Panofsky and F Saxl ldquoClassical

Mythology in Medieval Artrdquo Metropolitan Museum Studies

4 (1932-33) 228-80 M Praz Studies in Seventeenth Cen-

tury Imagery (London 1939-47 2nd ed Rome 1964) S

Ringbom ldquoDevotional Images and Imaginative Devotions

Notes on the Place of Art in Late Medieval Private Pietyrdquo

Gazette des Beaux-Arts 6 73 (1969) 159-70 Joseph Sauer

Symbolik des Kirchengebaumludes und seiner Ausstattung in

der Auffassung des Mittelalters 2nd ed (Freiburg i B

1924) F Saxl ldquoFruumlhes Christentum und spaumltes Heidentum

in ihren kuumlnstlerischen Ausdrucksformenrdquo Wiener Jahrbuch

fuumlr Kunstgeschichte 2 (1923) 63-121 M Schapiro ldquoThe

Ruthwell Crossrdquo Art Bulletin 26 (1944) 232-45 idem ldquoOn

the Aesthetic Attitude in Romanesque Artrdquo in Art and

Thought issued in Honour of Ananda Coomaraswamy

(London 1947) 139-50 J Seznec The Survival of the Pagan

Gods (New York 1953) O G von Simson The Gothic

Cathedral (New York 1956) R E Spear ldquoThe Literary

Source of Poussins Realm of Florardquo The Burlington Maga-

zine 107 (1965) 563-69 L Volkmann Bilderschriften der

Renaissance (Leipzig 1923) Hans van de Waal Drie

eeuwen vaderlandsche geschieduitbeelding 1500-1800 (s-

Gravenhage 1952) idem ldquoSome Principles of a General

Iconographical Classificationrdquo in Actes du XVIIe Congregraves

International dHistoire de lArt Amsterdam 1952 (La Haye

1955) 601-06 E Wind ldquoCharity the Case History of a

Patternrdquo Journal of the Warburg Institute 1 (1937) 322ff

JAN BIAŁOSTOCKI

[See also Allegory Baroque Classicism Criticism Enlight-

enment Motif Myth Naturalism in Art Neo-Platonism

Renaissance Humanism Romanticism Symbolism Tem-

perance Ut pictura poesis]

ated a system in which the first five main sections

classify five fundamental groups of portrayable things

namely (1) The Supernatural (2) Nature (3) Man (4)

Society (5) Abstracts The last four classify specific

subjects such as (6) History (7) The Bible (8) Myths

Legends and Tales (with the exception of classical

antiquity) (9) Myths and Legends of Classical Antiq-

uity Van de Waal combines the classification in the

first and in the second group in order to classify general

as well as specific subjects Christ in his system is

described with the sign ldquo11 Drdquo (ldquo1rdquo standing for Su-

pernatural ldquo11rdquo for Christianity ldquoDrdquo for Christ) the

adult Christ = 11 D 3 since ldquoshepherdrdquo on the other

hand bears the signature 47 I 221 the adult Christ

as a shepherd can be described in this system by the

following formula 11 D 3 = 47 I 221 Van de Waal

has also provided means to describe more complex

images which he expresses by adding elements between

brackets The Annunciation with God the Father and

a winged Angel is expressed by the following formula

73 A 5 (+1 +41) ldquo1rdquo standing for God the Father

and ldquo41rdquo for a winged Angel (van de Waal 1952) This

system elaborated for many years by its inventor and

prepared for publication in many volumes has proved

most useful in the practical arrangement of the Icono-

graphical Index of the Netherlandish Art and as the

only one until now in existence it became used more

and more in spite of some ambiguities and difficulties

As an endeavor to classify ldquoall portrayablerdquo things

persons events and ideas and to create a consistent

method to describe every possible image van de Waals

system may be considered as one of the important

achievements of the ldquoiconographical stagerdquo in the

development of art history Iconographic files exist of

course in many institutions as for example in the Ikon-

ologisch Instituut of Utrecht University one of the

main centers of study in emblematics and of course

in the most venerable institution of iconographic re-

search the Warburg Institute of the London University

and in other places

4 What was the result of this ldquoiconographicrdquo turn

in the development of the history of art One thing

is certain that this discipline by necessity has come

closer to other humanistic disciplines Since the

ldquointrinsicrdquo meaningmdashin Panofskys terminologymdashof a

work of art cannot be described in terms used by the

history of art but only in terms borrowed from the

history of philosophy of religion of social structures

of science and so on the ldquoiconological methodrdquo took

for granted and provoked such a collaboration Art

history was perhaps the first or one of the first to show

new interest in investigation of meaning It was fol-

lowed by similar developments in ethnology and in

linguistics

We have mentioned above a parallel development

in Byzantine and classical studies Panofskys influence

has been considerable in the other fields of humanistic

research Since ldquoiconologyrdquo aimed at discovering ideas

expressed by a work of art it awoke in art historians

an interest in the history of ideas This general shift

of emphasis and of the direction of studies from mainly

formal ones to studies aiming at ideas underlying art

was perhaps responsible among others for the fact that

several contributions to the Journal of the History of

Ideas have been written by historians of art

It is not difficult to see that such a development

should have provoked criticism on the side of those

who care about the purity and autonomy of methods

Iconology was criticized as far as its internal coherence

and also as far as its claim to be the integral method

of the study of art are concerned (Białostocki 1962)

Studies by R Klein E Forssman G Previtali G

Kubler B Teyssegravedre C Ginzburg and G Hermeren

expressed critical opinions in one or the other respect

Iconology linked art with the rest of history but it

disrupted the links between the work of art and other

things (Kubler 1962) Concentrating on meaning

iconology neglected art as form as individual expres-

sion Iconology implied a rational relationship between

intellectual content and artistic form On the one hand

one spoke of ldquoiconological diminutionsrdquo (Kubler

1962)mdashlimitations of research to meaning only But

on the other hand the overstatements of iconology

were criticized its representatives sometimes seemed

540

to assume everything symbolized something And some

iconologists seemed to consider important in art not

that which makes art a different field of human activity

but that which connects art with other fieldsmdashwith

the history of ideas

There were of course critics who had the opposite

opinion Since the end of the eighteenth century a

direct experience of art was more and more valued

and its symbolical function considered as a burden

J G von Herder said ein Kunstwerk ist der Kunst

wegen da aber bei einem Symbole ist die Kunst

dienend (ldquoA work of art is there because of art but

with a symbol art is a servicerdquo) Similar opinions were

expressed by nineteenth-century art writers and in this

century they have been voiced by Benedetto Croce and

by other Italian opponents of contenutismo by which

they meant interest in content For such critics to put

stress on iconography was to miss the essential in art

and to focus attention on a subordinate function of art

Also among scholars who considered the function

of representation and of communication as a legitimate

and important function of art criticism was expressed

not against the principle of an iconographical or icon-

ological investigation but against overstatements in

their application The introduction of the idea of ldquodis-

guised symbolismrdquo has created a danger of course of

opening the way to fanciful interpretations The alle-

gorical and symbolical function of mythological imag-

ery in classical art is also difficult to interpret precisely

Since no literary sources give a key to an interpretation

of the iconography of the sarcophagi very divergent

theories have been expressed concerning their meaning

Some archaeologists like F Cumont (1942) believe

that mythological and allegorical imagery (Anadyo-

mene Sea-Thiasos Personifications of the Seasons) is

to be read symbolically The Sea-Thiasos for instance

is to be interpreted as a symbol of the journey of the

souls of the deceased to the islands of the blessed

Others like A D Nock (1946) do not find enough

evidence to accept other than a decorative function

in such imagery

The intrusion of some representatives of psychology

eg C G Jung into iconographic studies giving them

an unhistorical turn in their search for ldquoarchetypal

imagesrdquo has complicated the situation although art

historians in general understandably have not accepted

that kind of approach to symbolism (Frankfort 1958

Gombrich 1965)

The fact that iconographic interpretations sometimes

lack satisfactory proofs does not detract from the im-

portance of such investigations so long as they are

conducted according to the requirements of historical

methods and take into account the corrective princi-

ples established by Panofsky A correct acquaintance

with the way of thinking of the artist the patron or the

viewer based on a satisfactory knowledge of documen-

tary visual and literary sources an awareness of the

choice situations produced by historical developments

may enable art historians to discover the secondary

meaning of a work of art as well as its intrinsic mean-

ing It is of course possible that the art historian will

meet some works for which it will not be possible to re-

construct in a satisfactory way the world of ideas that

would account for the meaning of those works In such

cases a reliable interpretation is simply not possible

R Berliner (1945 1966) criticized the widespread

opinion according to which content of the works of

visual arts in the Middle Ages had to be checked

against the literary sources considered as the only

medium in which ideological innovations were per-

mitted Berliner pleaded for assuming a considerable

ldquofreedomrdquo in the medieval artist and he considered

iconographic innovation possible even when no writ-

ten evidence could be found Meyer Schapiro (1947)

presented proofs that sometimes purely aesthetic rea-

sons decided the character of the work of art even as

early as the Romanesque period

We can only touch on some specific discussions going

on in the field of iconographic research But iconogra-

phic research is far from being a closed system and

the relative share of iconographic and stylistic criticism

in the work of art historians is always a matter of

discussion It is certain that the ldquoiconographicrdquo period

in the study of art has enlarged in a considerable way

the understanding of the art of the past and that it

has connected art history in a way unknown before

with the other historical disciplines and above all others

with the history of ideas

BIBLIOGRAPHY

L B Alberti On Painting ed J Spencer (New Haven

1956 revised ed 1966) E Auerbach ldquoFigurardquo (1944) trans

and published in Scenes From the Drama of European Liter-

ature (New York 1959) pp 11-76 K Bauch ldquoImagordquo

(1960) Studien zur Kunstgeschichte (Berlin 1967) pp 1-20

G P Bellori Descrizione delle imagini dipinte da Raffaello

(Rome 1695 ed used is 1751) R Berliner ldquoThe Free-

dom of Medieval Artrdquo Gazette des Beaux-Arts 628 (1945)

263-88 idem ldquoBemerkungen zu einigen Darstellungen des

Erloumlsers als Schmerzensmannrdquo Das Muumlnster 9 (1956)

97-117x J Białostocki ldquoIconografia e Iconologiardquo Enciclo-

pedia Universale dellArte (1962) Vol VII cols 163-75

trans as Encyclopedia of World Art (1966) Vol VII cols

769-85 lists almost all important older contributions to this

field idem ldquoRomantische Ikonographierdquo Stil und Ikonog-

raphie (Dresden 1966) pp 156-81 idem ldquoKompozycja

emblematyczna epitafioacutew ślaskich XVI wiekurdquo (ldquoEmblem-

atic Composition of Silesian Epitaphs of the Sixteenth Cen-

turyrdquo) Ze studioacutew nad Sztuka XVI wieku na Řlasku

(Wrocław 1968) pp 77-93 idem ldquoEsilio Privatordquo Bulletin

du Museacutee National de Varsovie 10 (1969) 95-101 J

541

Chydenius The Theory of Medieval Symbolism (Helsingfors

1960) Series of the Societas Scientiarum Fennica Com-

mentationes Humanarum Litterarum 27 2 R J Clements

Picta Poesis (Rome 1960) F Creuzer Symbolik und

Mythologie der Alten Voumllker (Leipzig and Darmstadt 1810

revised ed 1819) F Cumont Recherches sur le symbolisme

funeacuteraire des Romains (Paris 1942) L Eitner ldquoThe Open

Window and the Storm-Tossed Boatrdquo Art Bulletin 37

(1955) 281-90 H Frankfort ldquoThe Archetype in Analytical

Psychology and the History of Religionrdquo Journal of the

Warburg and Courtauld Institutes 21 (1958) 166-78

K Garas ldquoAllegorie und Geschichte in der Venezianischen

Malerei des 18 Jahrhundertsrdquo in proceedings of the XXI

International Congress of the History of Art Bonn Stil und

Uumlberlieferung in der Kunst des Abendlandes (Berlin 1967)

3 280-83 K Giehlow ldquoDie Hieroglyphenkunde des

Humanismus in der Allegorie der Renaissancerdquo Jahrbuch

der Kunsthistorischen Sammlungen des Allerhochsten

Kaiserhauses 32 (1915) 1-232 C Gilbert ldquoOn Subject and

Not-Subject in Italian Renaissance Picturesrdquo Art Bulletin

34 (1952) 202-16 C Ginzburg ldquoDa A Warburg a E H

Gombrich Note su un problema di metodordquo Studi medi-

evali series 3 7 (1966) 1015-65 E H Gombrich ldquoIcones

Symbolicae The Visual Image in Neo-Platonic Thoughtrdquo

Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes 11 (1948)

163-92 idem ldquoThe Use of Art for the Study of Symbolsrdquo

American Psychologist 20 (1965) A Grabar Liconoclasme

byzantin Dossier archeacuteologique (Paris 1957) idem Chris-

tian Iconography A Study of Its Origins (Princeton 1969)

S J Gudlaugsson De Comedianten bij Jan Steen en zijn

tijdgenooten (s-Gravenhage 1945) W S Heckscher ldquoThe

Genesis of Iconologyrdquo Stl und Uumlberlieferung in der Kunst

des Abendlandes Akten des XXI Internationalen Kon-

gresses fuumlr Kunstgeschichte (Berlin 1967) 3 239-62 G

Hermereacuten Representation and Meaning in the Visual Arts

A Study in the Methodology of Iconography and Iconology

Lund Studies in Philosophy Vol I (Lund 1969) R Hinks

Myth and Allegory in Ancient Art (London 1939) W

Hofmann Das Irdische Paradies (Munich 1960) G J

Hoogewerff ldquoLIconologie et son importance pour leacutetude

systeacutematique de lart chreacutetienrdquo Rivista dArcheologia Cris-

tiana 8 (1931) 53-82 E de Jongh Zinne- en minnebeelden

in de schilderkunst van de zeventiende eeuw (mdash1967) idem

ldquoErotica in Vogelperspectief De dubbelzinnigheid van een

reeks 17de eeuwse genrevoorstellingenrdquo Simiolus 3

(1968-69) 22-72 L Kalinowski ldquoTreści ideowe i estetyczne

Drzwi Gnieźnieńskichrdquo (ldquoIdeological and Aesthetic Content

of the Gniezno Bronze Doorsrdquo) in Drzwi Gnieźnieńskie ed

M Walicki (Wroclaw 1959) 2 7-160 H Keller Tizians

Poesie fuumlr Koumlnig Philip II von Spanien (Wiesbaden 1969)

R Klein ldquoLa theacuteorie de lexpression figureacutee dans les traiteacutes

italiens sur les imprese 1555-1612rdquo Bibliothegraveque dHu-

manisme et Renaissance 19 (1957) 320-41 republished with

the other relevant studies in la forme et lintelligible (Paris

1969) R Klibansky E Panofsky F Saxl Saturn and Melan-

choly (London 1964) J B Knipping Ikonografie van de

Contra-Reformatie in de Nederlanden (Hilversum 1939-40)

G Kubler The Shape of Time (New Haven and London

1962) R W Lee ldquoUt pictura poesisrdquo Art Bulletin 22

(1940) 197-269 E Macircle Lart religieux du XIIIe siegravecle en

France (Paris 1898) English ed used (New York 1958)

idem Lart religieux de la fin du Moyen-Age en France

(Paris 1908) idem Lart religieux du XIIe siegravecle en France

(Paris 1922) idem Lart religieux apregraves le Concile de Trente

(Paris 1932) J Maurin Białostocka Lessing i sztuki plas-

tyczne (ldquoLessing and the visual artsrdquo) (Wroclaw Warszawa

Krakoacutew 1969) E F von Monroy Embleme und Emblem-

buumlcher in den Niederlanden 1560-1630 ed H M von Erffa

(Utrecht 1964) J Montagu ldquoThe Painted Enigma and

French Seventeenth Century Artrdquo Journal of the Warburg

and Courtauld Institutes 31 (1968) 307-35 W Mrazek

Ikonologie der barocken Deckenmalerei (Vienna 1953)

Uumlsterreichische Akademie der Wissenschaften Philo-

sophisch-historische Klasse Sitzungsberichte 2283 A D

Nock ldquoSarcophagi and Symbolismrdquo American Journal of

Archaeology 50 (1946) 166ff D Panofsky and E Panofsky

ldquoThe Iconography of the Galeacuterie Franccedilois Ier at Fontaine-

bleaurdquo Gazette des Beaux-Arts 652 (1958) 113-90

E Panofsky ldquoUumlber das Verhaumlltnis der Kunstgeschichte zur

Kunsttheorierdquo Zeitschrift fuumlr Aesthetik und allgemeine

Kunstwissenschaft 18 (1925) 129-61 idem Studies in

Iconology (New York 1939) idem ed Abbot Suger (Prince-

ton 1946) idem Gothic Architecture and Scholasticism

(Latrobe Pa 1951) idem Early Netherlandish Painting

(Cambridge Mass 1953) idem Meaning in the Visual Arts

(Garden City N Y 1955) idem Renaissance and Renas-

cences in Western Art (Stockholm 1960) idem Tomb Sculp-

ture (New York 1964) E Panofsky and F Saxl ldquoClassical

Mythology in Medieval Artrdquo Metropolitan Museum Studies

4 (1932-33) 228-80 M Praz Studies in Seventeenth Cen-

tury Imagery (London 1939-47 2nd ed Rome 1964) S

Ringbom ldquoDevotional Images and Imaginative Devotions

Notes on the Place of Art in Late Medieval Private Pietyrdquo

Gazette des Beaux-Arts 6 73 (1969) 159-70 Joseph Sauer

Symbolik des Kirchengebaumludes und seiner Ausstattung in

der Auffassung des Mittelalters 2nd ed (Freiburg i B

1924) F Saxl ldquoFruumlhes Christentum und spaumltes Heidentum

in ihren kuumlnstlerischen Ausdrucksformenrdquo Wiener Jahrbuch

fuumlr Kunstgeschichte 2 (1923) 63-121 M Schapiro ldquoThe

Ruthwell Crossrdquo Art Bulletin 26 (1944) 232-45 idem ldquoOn

the Aesthetic Attitude in Romanesque Artrdquo in Art and

Thought issued in Honour of Ananda Coomaraswamy

(London 1947) 139-50 J Seznec The Survival of the Pagan

Gods (New York 1953) O G von Simson The Gothic

Cathedral (New York 1956) R E Spear ldquoThe Literary

Source of Poussins Realm of Florardquo The Burlington Maga-

zine 107 (1965) 563-69 L Volkmann Bilderschriften der

Renaissance (Leipzig 1923) Hans van de Waal Drie

eeuwen vaderlandsche geschieduitbeelding 1500-1800 (s-

Gravenhage 1952) idem ldquoSome Principles of a General

Iconographical Classificationrdquo in Actes du XVIIe Congregraves

International dHistoire de lArt Amsterdam 1952 (La Haye

1955) 601-06 E Wind ldquoCharity the Case History of a

Patternrdquo Journal of the Warburg Institute 1 (1937) 322ff

JAN BIAŁOSTOCKI

[See also Allegory Baroque Classicism Criticism Enlight-

enment Motif Myth Naturalism in Art Neo-Platonism

Renaissance Humanism Romanticism Symbolism Tem-

perance Ut pictura poesis]

for granted and provoked such a collaboration Art

history was perhaps the first or one of the first to show

new interest in investigation of meaning It was fol-

lowed by similar developments in ethnology and in

linguistics

We have mentioned above a parallel development

in Byzantine and classical studies Panofskys influence

has been considerable in the other fields of humanistic

research Since ldquoiconologyrdquo aimed at discovering ideas

expressed by a work of art it awoke in art historians

an interest in the history of ideas This general shift

of emphasis and of the direction of studies from mainly

formal ones to studies aiming at ideas underlying art

was perhaps responsible among others for the fact that

several contributions to the Journal of the History of

Ideas have been written by historians of art

It is not difficult to see that such a development

should have provoked criticism on the side of those

who care about the purity and autonomy of methods

Iconology was criticized as far as its internal coherence

and also as far as its claim to be the integral method

of the study of art are concerned (Białostocki 1962)

Studies by R Klein E Forssman G Previtali G

Kubler B Teyssegravedre C Ginzburg and G Hermeren

expressed critical opinions in one or the other respect

Iconology linked art with the rest of history but it

disrupted the links between the work of art and other

things (Kubler 1962) Concentrating on meaning

iconology neglected art as form as individual expres-

sion Iconology implied a rational relationship between

intellectual content and artistic form On the one hand

one spoke of ldquoiconological diminutionsrdquo (Kubler

1962)mdashlimitations of research to meaning only But

on the other hand the overstatements of iconology

were criticized its representatives sometimes seemed

540

to assume everything symbolized something And some

iconologists seemed to consider important in art not

that which makes art a different field of human activity

but that which connects art with other fieldsmdashwith

the history of ideas

There were of course critics who had the opposite

opinion Since the end of the eighteenth century a

direct experience of art was more and more valued

and its symbolical function considered as a burden

J G von Herder said ein Kunstwerk ist der Kunst

wegen da aber bei einem Symbole ist die Kunst

dienend (ldquoA work of art is there because of art but

with a symbol art is a servicerdquo) Similar opinions were

expressed by nineteenth-century art writers and in this

century they have been voiced by Benedetto Croce and

by other Italian opponents of contenutismo by which

they meant interest in content For such critics to put

stress on iconography was to miss the essential in art

and to focus attention on a subordinate function of art

Also among scholars who considered the function

of representation and of communication as a legitimate

and important function of art criticism was expressed

not against the principle of an iconographical or icon-

ological investigation but against overstatements in

their application The introduction of the idea of ldquodis-

guised symbolismrdquo has created a danger of course of

opening the way to fanciful interpretations The alle-

gorical and symbolical function of mythological imag-

ery in classical art is also difficult to interpret precisely

Since no literary sources give a key to an interpretation

of the iconography of the sarcophagi very divergent

theories have been expressed concerning their meaning

Some archaeologists like F Cumont (1942) believe

that mythological and allegorical imagery (Anadyo-

mene Sea-Thiasos Personifications of the Seasons) is

to be read symbolically The Sea-Thiasos for instance

is to be interpreted as a symbol of the journey of the

souls of the deceased to the islands of the blessed

Others like A D Nock (1946) do not find enough

evidence to accept other than a decorative function

in such imagery

The intrusion of some representatives of psychology

eg C G Jung into iconographic studies giving them

an unhistorical turn in their search for ldquoarchetypal

imagesrdquo has complicated the situation although art

historians in general understandably have not accepted

that kind of approach to symbolism (Frankfort 1958

Gombrich 1965)

The fact that iconographic interpretations sometimes

lack satisfactory proofs does not detract from the im-

portance of such investigations so long as they are

conducted according to the requirements of historical

methods and take into account the corrective princi-

ples established by Panofsky A correct acquaintance

with the way of thinking of the artist the patron or the

viewer based on a satisfactory knowledge of documen-

tary visual and literary sources an awareness of the

choice situations produced by historical developments

may enable art historians to discover the secondary

meaning of a work of art as well as its intrinsic mean-

ing It is of course possible that the art historian will

meet some works for which it will not be possible to re-

construct in a satisfactory way the world of ideas that

would account for the meaning of those works In such

cases a reliable interpretation is simply not possible

R Berliner (1945 1966) criticized the widespread

opinion according to which content of the works of

visual arts in the Middle Ages had to be checked

against the literary sources considered as the only

medium in which ideological innovations were per-

mitted Berliner pleaded for assuming a considerable

ldquofreedomrdquo in the medieval artist and he considered

iconographic innovation possible even when no writ-

ten evidence could be found Meyer Schapiro (1947)

presented proofs that sometimes purely aesthetic rea-

sons decided the character of the work of art even as

early as the Romanesque period

We can only touch on some specific discussions going

on in the field of iconographic research But iconogra-

phic research is far from being a closed system and

the relative share of iconographic and stylistic criticism

in the work of art historians is always a matter of

discussion It is certain that the ldquoiconographicrdquo period

in the study of art has enlarged in a considerable way

the understanding of the art of the past and that it

has connected art history in a way unknown before

with the other historical disciplines and above all others

with the history of ideas

BIBLIOGRAPHY

L B Alberti On Painting ed J Spencer (New Haven

1956 revised ed 1966) E Auerbach ldquoFigurardquo (1944) trans

and published in Scenes From the Drama of European Liter-

ature (New York 1959) pp 11-76 K Bauch ldquoImagordquo

(1960) Studien zur Kunstgeschichte (Berlin 1967) pp 1-20

G P Bellori Descrizione delle imagini dipinte da Raffaello

(Rome 1695 ed used is 1751) R Berliner ldquoThe Free-

dom of Medieval Artrdquo Gazette des Beaux-Arts 628 (1945)

263-88 idem ldquoBemerkungen zu einigen Darstellungen des

Erloumlsers als Schmerzensmannrdquo Das Muumlnster 9 (1956)

97-117x J Białostocki ldquoIconografia e Iconologiardquo Enciclo-

pedia Universale dellArte (1962) Vol VII cols 163-75

trans as Encyclopedia of World Art (1966) Vol VII cols

769-85 lists almost all important older contributions to this

field idem ldquoRomantische Ikonographierdquo Stil und Ikonog-

raphie (Dresden 1966) pp 156-81 idem ldquoKompozycja

emblematyczna epitafioacutew ślaskich XVI wiekurdquo (ldquoEmblem-

atic Composition of Silesian Epitaphs of the Sixteenth Cen-

turyrdquo) Ze studioacutew nad Sztuka XVI wieku na Řlasku

(Wrocław 1968) pp 77-93 idem ldquoEsilio Privatordquo Bulletin

du Museacutee National de Varsovie 10 (1969) 95-101 J

541

Chydenius The Theory of Medieval Symbolism (Helsingfors

1960) Series of the Societas Scientiarum Fennica Com-

mentationes Humanarum Litterarum 27 2 R J Clements

Picta Poesis (Rome 1960) F Creuzer Symbolik und

Mythologie der Alten Voumllker (Leipzig and Darmstadt 1810

revised ed 1819) F Cumont Recherches sur le symbolisme

funeacuteraire des Romains (Paris 1942) L Eitner ldquoThe Open

Window and the Storm-Tossed Boatrdquo Art Bulletin 37

(1955) 281-90 H Frankfort ldquoThe Archetype in Analytical

Psychology and the History of Religionrdquo Journal of the

Warburg and Courtauld Institutes 21 (1958) 166-78

K Garas ldquoAllegorie und Geschichte in der Venezianischen

Malerei des 18 Jahrhundertsrdquo in proceedings of the XXI

International Congress of the History of Art Bonn Stil und

Uumlberlieferung in der Kunst des Abendlandes (Berlin 1967)

3 280-83 K Giehlow ldquoDie Hieroglyphenkunde des

Humanismus in der Allegorie der Renaissancerdquo Jahrbuch

der Kunsthistorischen Sammlungen des Allerhochsten

Kaiserhauses 32 (1915) 1-232 C Gilbert ldquoOn Subject and

Not-Subject in Italian Renaissance Picturesrdquo Art Bulletin

34 (1952) 202-16 C Ginzburg ldquoDa A Warburg a E H

Gombrich Note su un problema di metodordquo Studi medi-

evali series 3 7 (1966) 1015-65 E H Gombrich ldquoIcones

Symbolicae The Visual Image in Neo-Platonic Thoughtrdquo

Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes 11 (1948)

163-92 idem ldquoThe Use of Art for the Study of Symbolsrdquo

American Psychologist 20 (1965) A Grabar Liconoclasme

byzantin Dossier archeacuteologique (Paris 1957) idem Chris-

tian Iconography A Study of Its Origins (Princeton 1969)

S J Gudlaugsson De Comedianten bij Jan Steen en zijn

tijdgenooten (s-Gravenhage 1945) W S Heckscher ldquoThe

Genesis of Iconologyrdquo Stl und Uumlberlieferung in der Kunst

des Abendlandes Akten des XXI Internationalen Kon-

gresses fuumlr Kunstgeschichte (Berlin 1967) 3 239-62 G

Hermereacuten Representation and Meaning in the Visual Arts

A Study in the Methodology of Iconography and Iconology

Lund Studies in Philosophy Vol I (Lund 1969) R Hinks

Myth and Allegory in Ancient Art (London 1939) W

Hofmann Das Irdische Paradies (Munich 1960) G J

Hoogewerff ldquoLIconologie et son importance pour leacutetude

systeacutematique de lart chreacutetienrdquo Rivista dArcheologia Cris-

tiana 8 (1931) 53-82 E de Jongh Zinne- en minnebeelden

in de schilderkunst van de zeventiende eeuw (mdash1967) idem

ldquoErotica in Vogelperspectief De dubbelzinnigheid van een

reeks 17de eeuwse genrevoorstellingenrdquo Simiolus 3

(1968-69) 22-72 L Kalinowski ldquoTreści ideowe i estetyczne

Drzwi Gnieźnieńskichrdquo (ldquoIdeological and Aesthetic Content

of the Gniezno Bronze Doorsrdquo) in Drzwi Gnieźnieńskie ed

M Walicki (Wroclaw 1959) 2 7-160 H Keller Tizians

Poesie fuumlr Koumlnig Philip II von Spanien (Wiesbaden 1969)

R Klein ldquoLa theacuteorie de lexpression figureacutee dans les traiteacutes

italiens sur les imprese 1555-1612rdquo Bibliothegraveque dHu-

manisme et Renaissance 19 (1957) 320-41 republished with

the other relevant studies in la forme et lintelligible (Paris

1969) R Klibansky E Panofsky F Saxl Saturn and Melan-

choly (London 1964) J B Knipping Ikonografie van de

Contra-Reformatie in de Nederlanden (Hilversum 1939-40)

G Kubler The Shape of Time (New Haven and London

1962) R W Lee ldquoUt pictura poesisrdquo Art Bulletin 22

(1940) 197-269 E Macircle Lart religieux du XIIIe siegravecle en

France (Paris 1898) English ed used (New York 1958)

idem Lart religieux de la fin du Moyen-Age en France

(Paris 1908) idem Lart religieux du XIIe siegravecle en France

(Paris 1922) idem Lart religieux apregraves le Concile de Trente

(Paris 1932) J Maurin Białostocka Lessing i sztuki plas-

tyczne (ldquoLessing and the visual artsrdquo) (Wroclaw Warszawa

Krakoacutew 1969) E F von Monroy Embleme und Emblem-

buumlcher in den Niederlanden 1560-1630 ed H M von Erffa

(Utrecht 1964) J Montagu ldquoThe Painted Enigma and

French Seventeenth Century Artrdquo Journal of the Warburg

and Courtauld Institutes 31 (1968) 307-35 W Mrazek

Ikonologie der barocken Deckenmalerei (Vienna 1953)

Uumlsterreichische Akademie der Wissenschaften Philo-

sophisch-historische Klasse Sitzungsberichte 2283 A D

Nock ldquoSarcophagi and Symbolismrdquo American Journal of

Archaeology 50 (1946) 166ff D Panofsky and E Panofsky

ldquoThe Iconography of the Galeacuterie Franccedilois Ier at Fontaine-

bleaurdquo Gazette des Beaux-Arts 652 (1958) 113-90

E Panofsky ldquoUumlber das Verhaumlltnis der Kunstgeschichte zur

Kunsttheorierdquo Zeitschrift fuumlr Aesthetik und allgemeine

Kunstwissenschaft 18 (1925) 129-61 idem Studies in

Iconology (New York 1939) idem ed Abbot Suger (Prince-

ton 1946) idem Gothic Architecture and Scholasticism

(Latrobe Pa 1951) idem Early Netherlandish Painting

(Cambridge Mass 1953) idem Meaning in the Visual Arts

(Garden City N Y 1955) idem Renaissance and Renas-

cences in Western Art (Stockholm 1960) idem Tomb Sculp-

ture (New York 1964) E Panofsky and F Saxl ldquoClassical

Mythology in Medieval Artrdquo Metropolitan Museum Studies

4 (1932-33) 228-80 M Praz Studies in Seventeenth Cen-

tury Imagery (London 1939-47 2nd ed Rome 1964) S

Ringbom ldquoDevotional Images and Imaginative Devotions

Notes on the Place of Art in Late Medieval Private Pietyrdquo

Gazette des Beaux-Arts 6 73 (1969) 159-70 Joseph Sauer

Symbolik des Kirchengebaumludes und seiner Ausstattung in

der Auffassung des Mittelalters 2nd ed (Freiburg i B

1924) F Saxl ldquoFruumlhes Christentum und spaumltes Heidentum

in ihren kuumlnstlerischen Ausdrucksformenrdquo Wiener Jahrbuch

fuumlr Kunstgeschichte 2 (1923) 63-121 M Schapiro ldquoThe

Ruthwell Crossrdquo Art Bulletin 26 (1944) 232-45 idem ldquoOn

the Aesthetic Attitude in Romanesque Artrdquo in Art and

Thought issued in Honour of Ananda Coomaraswamy

(London 1947) 139-50 J Seznec The Survival of the Pagan

Gods (New York 1953) O G von Simson The Gothic

Cathedral (New York 1956) R E Spear ldquoThe Literary

Source of Poussins Realm of Florardquo The Burlington Maga-

zine 107 (1965) 563-69 L Volkmann Bilderschriften der

Renaissance (Leipzig 1923) Hans van de Waal Drie

eeuwen vaderlandsche geschieduitbeelding 1500-1800 (s-

Gravenhage 1952) idem ldquoSome Principles of a General

Iconographical Classificationrdquo in Actes du XVIIe Congregraves

International dHistoire de lArt Amsterdam 1952 (La Haye

1955) 601-06 E Wind ldquoCharity the Case History of a

Patternrdquo Journal of the Warburg Institute 1 (1937) 322ff

JAN BIAŁOSTOCKI

[See also Allegory Baroque Classicism Criticism Enlight-

enment Motif Myth Naturalism in Art Neo-Platonism

Renaissance Humanism Romanticism Symbolism Tem-

perance Ut pictura poesis]

and its symbolical function considered as a burden

J G von Herder said ein Kunstwerk ist der Kunst

wegen da aber bei einem Symbole ist die Kunst

dienend (ldquoA work of art is there because of art but

with a symbol art is a servicerdquo) Similar opinions were

expressed by nineteenth-century art writers and in this

century they have been voiced by Benedetto Croce and

by other Italian opponents of contenutismo by which

they meant interest in content For such critics to put

stress on iconography was to miss the essential in art

and to focus attention on a subordinate function of art

Also among scholars who considered the function

of representation and of communication as a legitimate

and important function of art criticism was expressed

not against the principle of an iconographical or icon-

ological investigation but against overstatements in

their application The introduction of the idea of ldquodis-

guised symbolismrdquo has created a danger of course of

opening the way to fanciful interpretations The alle-

gorical and symbolical function of mythological imag-

ery in classical art is also difficult to interpret precisely

Since no literary sources give a key to an interpretation

of the iconography of the sarcophagi very divergent

theories have been expressed concerning their meaning

Some archaeologists like F Cumont (1942) believe

that mythological and allegorical imagery (Anadyo-

mene Sea-Thiasos Personifications of the Seasons) is

to be read symbolically The Sea-Thiasos for instance

is to be interpreted as a symbol of the journey of the

souls of the deceased to the islands of the blessed

Others like A D Nock (1946) do not find enough

evidence to accept other than a decorative function

in such imagery

The intrusion of some representatives of psychology

eg C G Jung into iconographic studies giving them

an unhistorical turn in their search for ldquoarchetypal

imagesrdquo has complicated the situation although art

historians in general understandably have not accepted

that kind of approach to symbolism (Frankfort 1958

Gombrich 1965)

The fact that iconographic interpretations sometimes

lack satisfactory proofs does not detract from the im-

portance of such investigations so long as they are

conducted according to the requirements of historical

methods and take into account the corrective princi-

ples established by Panofsky A correct acquaintance

with the way of thinking of the artist the patron or the

viewer based on a satisfactory knowledge of documen-

tary visual and literary sources an awareness of the

choice situations produced by historical developments

may enable art historians to discover the secondary

meaning of a work of art as well as its intrinsic mean-

ing It is of course possible that the art historian will

meet some works for which it will not be possible to re-

construct in a satisfactory way the world of ideas that

would account for the meaning of those works In such

cases a reliable interpretation is simply not possible

R Berliner (1945 1966) criticized the widespread

opinion according to which content of the works of

visual arts in the Middle Ages had to be checked

against the literary sources considered as the only

medium in which ideological innovations were per-

mitted Berliner pleaded for assuming a considerable

ldquofreedomrdquo in the medieval artist and he considered

iconographic innovation possible even when no writ-

ten evidence could be found Meyer Schapiro (1947)

presented proofs that sometimes purely aesthetic rea-

sons decided the character of the work of art even as

early as the Romanesque period

We can only touch on some specific discussions going

on in the field of iconographic research But iconogra-

phic research is far from being a closed system and

the relative share of iconographic and stylistic criticism

in the work of art historians is always a matter of

discussion It is certain that the ldquoiconographicrdquo period

in the study of art has enlarged in a considerable way

the understanding of the art of the past and that it

has connected art history in a way unknown before

with the other historical disciplines and above all others

with the history of ideas

BIBLIOGRAPHY

L B Alberti On Painting ed J Spencer (New Haven

1956 revised ed 1966) E Auerbach ldquoFigurardquo (1944) trans

and published in Scenes From the Drama of European Liter-

ature (New York 1959) pp 11-76 K Bauch ldquoImagordquo

(1960) Studien zur Kunstgeschichte (Berlin 1967) pp 1-20

G P Bellori Descrizione delle imagini dipinte da Raffaello

(Rome 1695 ed used is 1751) R Berliner ldquoThe Free-

dom of Medieval Artrdquo Gazette des Beaux-Arts 628 (1945)

263-88 idem ldquoBemerkungen zu einigen Darstellungen des

Erloumlsers als Schmerzensmannrdquo Das Muumlnster 9 (1956)

97-117x J Białostocki ldquoIconografia e Iconologiardquo Enciclo-

pedia Universale dellArte (1962) Vol VII cols 163-75

trans as Encyclopedia of World Art (1966) Vol VII cols

769-85 lists almost all important older contributions to this

field idem ldquoRomantische Ikonographierdquo Stil und Ikonog-

raphie (Dresden 1966) pp 156-81 idem ldquoKompozycja

emblematyczna epitafioacutew ślaskich XVI wiekurdquo (ldquoEmblem-

atic Composition of Silesian Epitaphs of the Sixteenth Cen-

turyrdquo) Ze studioacutew nad Sztuka XVI wieku na Řlasku

(Wrocław 1968) pp 77-93 idem ldquoEsilio Privatordquo Bulletin

du Museacutee National de Varsovie 10 (1969) 95-101 J

541

Chydenius The Theory of Medieval Symbolism (Helsingfors

1960) Series of the Societas Scientiarum Fennica Com-

mentationes Humanarum Litterarum 27 2 R J Clements

Picta Poesis (Rome 1960) F Creuzer Symbolik und

Mythologie der Alten Voumllker (Leipzig and Darmstadt 1810

revised ed 1819) F Cumont Recherches sur le symbolisme

funeacuteraire des Romains (Paris 1942) L Eitner ldquoThe Open

Window and the Storm-Tossed Boatrdquo Art Bulletin 37

(1955) 281-90 H Frankfort ldquoThe Archetype in Analytical

Psychology and the History of Religionrdquo Journal of the

Warburg and Courtauld Institutes 21 (1958) 166-78

K Garas ldquoAllegorie und Geschichte in der Venezianischen

Malerei des 18 Jahrhundertsrdquo in proceedings of the XXI

International Congress of the History of Art Bonn Stil und

Uumlberlieferung in der Kunst des Abendlandes (Berlin 1967)

3 280-83 K Giehlow ldquoDie Hieroglyphenkunde des

Humanismus in der Allegorie der Renaissancerdquo Jahrbuch

der Kunsthistorischen Sammlungen des Allerhochsten

Kaiserhauses 32 (1915) 1-232 C Gilbert ldquoOn Subject and

Not-Subject in Italian Renaissance Picturesrdquo Art Bulletin

34 (1952) 202-16 C Ginzburg ldquoDa A Warburg a E H

Gombrich Note su un problema di metodordquo Studi medi-

evali series 3 7 (1966) 1015-65 E H Gombrich ldquoIcones

Symbolicae The Visual Image in Neo-Platonic Thoughtrdquo

Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes 11 (1948)

163-92 idem ldquoThe Use of Art for the Study of Symbolsrdquo

American Psychologist 20 (1965) A Grabar Liconoclasme

byzantin Dossier archeacuteologique (Paris 1957) idem Chris-

tian Iconography A Study of Its Origins (Princeton 1969)

S J Gudlaugsson De Comedianten bij Jan Steen en zijn

tijdgenooten (s-Gravenhage 1945) W S Heckscher ldquoThe

Genesis of Iconologyrdquo Stl und Uumlberlieferung in der Kunst

des Abendlandes Akten des XXI Internationalen Kon-

gresses fuumlr Kunstgeschichte (Berlin 1967) 3 239-62 G

Hermereacuten Representation and Meaning in the Visual Arts

A Study in the Methodology of Iconography and Iconology

Lund Studies in Philosophy Vol I (Lund 1969) R Hinks

Myth and Allegory in Ancient Art (London 1939) W

Hofmann Das Irdische Paradies (Munich 1960) G J

Hoogewerff ldquoLIconologie et son importance pour leacutetude

systeacutematique de lart chreacutetienrdquo Rivista dArcheologia Cris-

tiana 8 (1931) 53-82 E de Jongh Zinne- en minnebeelden

in de schilderkunst van de zeventiende eeuw (mdash1967) idem

ldquoErotica in Vogelperspectief De dubbelzinnigheid van een

reeks 17de eeuwse genrevoorstellingenrdquo Simiolus 3

(1968-69) 22-72 L Kalinowski ldquoTreści ideowe i estetyczne

Drzwi Gnieźnieńskichrdquo (ldquoIdeological and Aesthetic Content

of the Gniezno Bronze Doorsrdquo) in Drzwi Gnieźnieńskie ed

M Walicki (Wroclaw 1959) 2 7-160 H Keller Tizians

Poesie fuumlr Koumlnig Philip II von Spanien (Wiesbaden 1969)

R Klein ldquoLa theacuteorie de lexpression figureacutee dans les traiteacutes

italiens sur les imprese 1555-1612rdquo Bibliothegraveque dHu-

manisme et Renaissance 19 (1957) 320-41 republished with

the other relevant studies in la forme et lintelligible (Paris

1969) R Klibansky E Panofsky F Saxl Saturn and Melan-

choly (London 1964) J B Knipping Ikonografie van de

Contra-Reformatie in de Nederlanden (Hilversum 1939-40)

G Kubler The Shape of Time (New Haven and London

1962) R W Lee ldquoUt pictura poesisrdquo Art Bulletin 22

(1940) 197-269 E Macircle Lart religieux du XIIIe siegravecle en

France (Paris 1898) English ed used (New York 1958)

idem Lart religieux de la fin du Moyen-Age en France

(Paris 1908) idem Lart religieux du XIIe siegravecle en France

(Paris 1922) idem Lart religieux apregraves le Concile de Trente

(Paris 1932) J Maurin Białostocka Lessing i sztuki plas-

tyczne (ldquoLessing and the visual artsrdquo) (Wroclaw Warszawa

Krakoacutew 1969) E F von Monroy Embleme und Emblem-

buumlcher in den Niederlanden 1560-1630 ed H M von Erffa

(Utrecht 1964) J Montagu ldquoThe Painted Enigma and

French Seventeenth Century Artrdquo Journal of the Warburg

and Courtauld Institutes 31 (1968) 307-35 W Mrazek

Ikonologie der barocken Deckenmalerei (Vienna 1953)

Uumlsterreichische Akademie der Wissenschaften Philo-

sophisch-historische Klasse Sitzungsberichte 2283 A D

Nock ldquoSarcophagi and Symbolismrdquo American Journal of

Archaeology 50 (1946) 166ff D Panofsky and E Panofsky

ldquoThe Iconography of the Galeacuterie Franccedilois Ier at Fontaine-

bleaurdquo Gazette des Beaux-Arts 652 (1958) 113-90

E Panofsky ldquoUumlber das Verhaumlltnis der Kunstgeschichte zur

Kunsttheorierdquo Zeitschrift fuumlr Aesthetik und allgemeine

Kunstwissenschaft 18 (1925) 129-61 idem Studies in

Iconology (New York 1939) idem ed Abbot Suger (Prince-

ton 1946) idem Gothic Architecture and Scholasticism

(Latrobe Pa 1951) idem Early Netherlandish Painting

(Cambridge Mass 1953) idem Meaning in the Visual Arts

(Garden City N Y 1955) idem Renaissance and Renas-

cences in Western Art (Stockholm 1960) idem Tomb Sculp-

ture (New York 1964) E Panofsky and F Saxl ldquoClassical

Mythology in Medieval Artrdquo Metropolitan Museum Studies

4 (1932-33) 228-80 M Praz Studies in Seventeenth Cen-

tury Imagery (London 1939-47 2nd ed Rome 1964) S

Ringbom ldquoDevotional Images and Imaginative Devotions

Notes on the Place of Art in Late Medieval Private Pietyrdquo

Gazette des Beaux-Arts 6 73 (1969) 159-70 Joseph Sauer

Symbolik des Kirchengebaumludes und seiner Ausstattung in

der Auffassung des Mittelalters 2nd ed (Freiburg i B

1924) F Saxl ldquoFruumlhes Christentum und spaumltes Heidentum

in ihren kuumlnstlerischen Ausdrucksformenrdquo Wiener Jahrbuch

fuumlr Kunstgeschichte 2 (1923) 63-121 M Schapiro ldquoThe

Ruthwell Crossrdquo Art Bulletin 26 (1944) 232-45 idem ldquoOn

the Aesthetic Attitude in Romanesque Artrdquo in Art and

Thought issued in Honour of Ananda Coomaraswamy

(London 1947) 139-50 J Seznec The Survival of the Pagan

Gods (New York 1953) O G von Simson The Gothic

Cathedral (New York 1956) R E Spear ldquoThe Literary

Source of Poussins Realm of Florardquo The Burlington Maga-

zine 107 (1965) 563-69 L Volkmann Bilderschriften der

Renaissance (Leipzig 1923) Hans van de Waal Drie

eeuwen vaderlandsche geschieduitbeelding 1500-1800 (s-

Gravenhage 1952) idem ldquoSome Principles of a General

Iconographical Classificationrdquo in Actes du XVIIe Congregraves

International dHistoire de lArt Amsterdam 1952 (La Haye

1955) 601-06 E Wind ldquoCharity the Case History of a

Patternrdquo Journal of the Warburg Institute 1 (1937) 322ff

JAN BIAŁOSTOCKI

[See also Allegory Baroque Classicism Criticism Enlight-

enment Motif Myth Naturalism in Art Neo-Platonism

Renaissance Humanism Romanticism Symbolism Tem-

perance Ut pictura poesis]

viewer based on a satisfactory knowledge of documen-

tary visual and literary sources an awareness of the

choice situations produced by historical developments

may enable art historians to discover the secondary

meaning of a work of art as well as its intrinsic mean-

ing It is of course possible that the art historian will

meet some works for which it will not be possible to re-

construct in a satisfactory way the world of ideas that

would account for the meaning of those works In such

cases a reliable interpretation is simply not possible

R Berliner (1945 1966) criticized the widespread

opinion according to which content of the works of

visual arts in the Middle Ages had to be checked

against the literary sources considered as the only

medium in which ideological innovations were per-

mitted Berliner pleaded for assuming a considerable

ldquofreedomrdquo in the medieval artist and he considered

iconographic innovation possible even when no writ-

ten evidence could be found Meyer Schapiro (1947)

presented proofs that sometimes purely aesthetic rea-

sons decided the character of the work of art even as

early as the Romanesque period

We can only touch on some specific discussions going

on in the field of iconographic research But iconogra-

phic research is far from being a closed system and

the relative share of iconographic and stylistic criticism

in the work of art historians is always a matter of

discussion It is certain that the ldquoiconographicrdquo period

in the study of art has enlarged in a considerable way

the understanding of the art of the past and that it

has connected art history in a way unknown before

with the other historical disciplines and above all others

with the history of ideas

BIBLIOGRAPHY

L B Alberti On Painting ed J Spencer (New Haven

1956 revised ed 1966) E Auerbach ldquoFigurardquo (1944) trans

and published in Scenes From the Drama of European Liter-

ature (New York 1959) pp 11-76 K Bauch ldquoImagordquo

(1960) Studien zur Kunstgeschichte (Berlin 1967) pp 1-20

G P Bellori Descrizione delle imagini dipinte da Raffaello

(Rome 1695 ed used is 1751) R Berliner ldquoThe Free-

dom of Medieval Artrdquo Gazette des Beaux-Arts 628 (1945)

263-88 idem ldquoBemerkungen zu einigen Darstellungen des

Erloumlsers als Schmerzensmannrdquo Das Muumlnster 9 (1956)

97-117x J Białostocki ldquoIconografia e Iconologiardquo Enciclo-

pedia Universale dellArte (1962) Vol VII cols 163-75

trans as Encyclopedia of World Art (1966) Vol VII cols

769-85 lists almost all important older contributions to this

field idem ldquoRomantische Ikonographierdquo Stil und Ikonog-

raphie (Dresden 1966) pp 156-81 idem ldquoKompozycja

emblematyczna epitafioacutew ślaskich XVI wiekurdquo (ldquoEmblem-

atic Composition of Silesian Epitaphs of the Sixteenth Cen-

turyrdquo) Ze studioacutew nad Sztuka XVI wieku na Řlasku

(Wrocław 1968) pp 77-93 idem ldquoEsilio Privatordquo Bulletin

du Museacutee National de Varsovie 10 (1969) 95-101 J

541

Chydenius The Theory of Medieval Symbolism (Helsingfors

1960) Series of the Societas Scientiarum Fennica Com-

mentationes Humanarum Litterarum 27 2 R J Clements

Picta Poesis (Rome 1960) F Creuzer Symbolik und

Mythologie der Alten Voumllker (Leipzig and Darmstadt 1810

revised ed 1819) F Cumont Recherches sur le symbolisme

funeacuteraire des Romains (Paris 1942) L Eitner ldquoThe Open

Window and the Storm-Tossed Boatrdquo Art Bulletin 37

(1955) 281-90 H Frankfort ldquoThe Archetype in Analytical

Psychology and the History of Religionrdquo Journal of the

Warburg and Courtauld Institutes 21 (1958) 166-78

K Garas ldquoAllegorie und Geschichte in der Venezianischen

Malerei des 18 Jahrhundertsrdquo in proceedings of the XXI

International Congress of the History of Art Bonn Stil und

Uumlberlieferung in der Kunst des Abendlandes (Berlin 1967)

3 280-83 K Giehlow ldquoDie Hieroglyphenkunde des

Humanismus in der Allegorie der Renaissancerdquo Jahrbuch

der Kunsthistorischen Sammlungen des Allerhochsten

Kaiserhauses 32 (1915) 1-232 C Gilbert ldquoOn Subject and

Not-Subject in Italian Renaissance Picturesrdquo Art Bulletin

34 (1952) 202-16 C Ginzburg ldquoDa A Warburg a E H

Gombrich Note su un problema di metodordquo Studi medi-

evali series 3 7 (1966) 1015-65 E H Gombrich ldquoIcones

Symbolicae The Visual Image in Neo-Platonic Thoughtrdquo

Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes 11 (1948)

163-92 idem ldquoThe Use of Art for the Study of Symbolsrdquo

American Psychologist 20 (1965) A Grabar Liconoclasme

byzantin Dossier archeacuteologique (Paris 1957) idem Chris-

tian Iconography A Study of Its Origins (Princeton 1969)

S J Gudlaugsson De Comedianten bij Jan Steen en zijn

tijdgenooten (s-Gravenhage 1945) W S Heckscher ldquoThe

Genesis of Iconologyrdquo Stl und Uumlberlieferung in der Kunst

des Abendlandes Akten des XXI Internationalen Kon-

gresses fuumlr Kunstgeschichte (Berlin 1967) 3 239-62 G

Hermereacuten Representation and Meaning in the Visual Arts

A Study in the Methodology of Iconography and Iconology

Lund Studies in Philosophy Vol I (Lund 1969) R Hinks

Myth and Allegory in Ancient Art (London 1939) W

Hofmann Das Irdische Paradies (Munich 1960) G J

Hoogewerff ldquoLIconologie et son importance pour leacutetude

systeacutematique de lart chreacutetienrdquo Rivista dArcheologia Cris-

tiana 8 (1931) 53-82 E de Jongh Zinne- en minnebeelden

in de schilderkunst van de zeventiende eeuw (mdash1967) idem

ldquoErotica in Vogelperspectief De dubbelzinnigheid van een

reeks 17de eeuwse genrevoorstellingenrdquo Simiolus 3

(1968-69) 22-72 L Kalinowski ldquoTreści ideowe i estetyczne

Drzwi Gnieźnieńskichrdquo (ldquoIdeological and Aesthetic Content

of the Gniezno Bronze Doorsrdquo) in Drzwi Gnieźnieńskie ed

M Walicki (Wroclaw 1959) 2 7-160 H Keller Tizians

Poesie fuumlr Koumlnig Philip II von Spanien (Wiesbaden 1969)

R Klein ldquoLa theacuteorie de lexpression figureacutee dans les traiteacutes

italiens sur les imprese 1555-1612rdquo Bibliothegraveque dHu-

manisme et Renaissance 19 (1957) 320-41 republished with

the other relevant studies in la forme et lintelligible (Paris

1969) R Klibansky E Panofsky F Saxl Saturn and Melan-

choly (London 1964) J B Knipping Ikonografie van de

Contra-Reformatie in de Nederlanden (Hilversum 1939-40)

G Kubler The Shape of Time (New Haven and London

1962) R W Lee ldquoUt pictura poesisrdquo Art Bulletin 22

(1940) 197-269 E Macircle Lart religieux du XIIIe siegravecle en

France (Paris 1898) English ed used (New York 1958)

idem Lart religieux de la fin du Moyen-Age en France

(Paris 1908) idem Lart religieux du XIIe siegravecle en France

(Paris 1922) idem Lart religieux apregraves le Concile de Trente

(Paris 1932) J Maurin Białostocka Lessing i sztuki plas-

tyczne (ldquoLessing and the visual artsrdquo) (Wroclaw Warszawa

Krakoacutew 1969) E F von Monroy Embleme und Emblem-

buumlcher in den Niederlanden 1560-1630 ed H M von Erffa

(Utrecht 1964) J Montagu ldquoThe Painted Enigma and

French Seventeenth Century Artrdquo Journal of the Warburg

and Courtauld Institutes 31 (1968) 307-35 W Mrazek

Ikonologie der barocken Deckenmalerei (Vienna 1953)

Uumlsterreichische Akademie der Wissenschaften Philo-

sophisch-historische Klasse Sitzungsberichte 2283 A D

Nock ldquoSarcophagi and Symbolismrdquo American Journal of

Archaeology 50 (1946) 166ff D Panofsky and E Panofsky

ldquoThe Iconography of the Galeacuterie Franccedilois Ier at Fontaine-

bleaurdquo Gazette des Beaux-Arts 652 (1958) 113-90

E Panofsky ldquoUumlber das Verhaumlltnis der Kunstgeschichte zur

Kunsttheorierdquo Zeitschrift fuumlr Aesthetik und allgemeine

Kunstwissenschaft 18 (1925) 129-61 idem Studies in

Iconology (New York 1939) idem ed Abbot Suger (Prince-

ton 1946) idem Gothic Architecture and Scholasticism

(Latrobe Pa 1951) idem Early Netherlandish Painting

(Cambridge Mass 1953) idem Meaning in the Visual Arts

(Garden City N Y 1955) idem Renaissance and Renas-

cences in Western Art (Stockholm 1960) idem Tomb Sculp-

ture (New York 1964) E Panofsky and F Saxl ldquoClassical

Mythology in Medieval Artrdquo Metropolitan Museum Studies

4 (1932-33) 228-80 M Praz Studies in Seventeenth Cen-

tury Imagery (London 1939-47 2nd ed Rome 1964) S

Ringbom ldquoDevotional Images and Imaginative Devotions

Notes on the Place of Art in Late Medieval Private Pietyrdquo

Gazette des Beaux-Arts 6 73 (1969) 159-70 Joseph Sauer

Symbolik des Kirchengebaumludes und seiner Ausstattung in

der Auffassung des Mittelalters 2nd ed (Freiburg i B

1924) F Saxl ldquoFruumlhes Christentum und spaumltes Heidentum

in ihren kuumlnstlerischen Ausdrucksformenrdquo Wiener Jahrbuch

fuumlr Kunstgeschichte 2 (1923) 63-121 M Schapiro ldquoThe

Ruthwell Crossrdquo Art Bulletin 26 (1944) 232-45 idem ldquoOn

the Aesthetic Attitude in Romanesque Artrdquo in Art and

Thought issued in Honour of Ananda Coomaraswamy

(London 1947) 139-50 J Seznec The Survival of the Pagan

Gods (New York 1953) O G von Simson The Gothic

Cathedral (New York 1956) R E Spear ldquoThe Literary

Source of Poussins Realm of Florardquo The Burlington Maga-

zine 107 (1965) 563-69 L Volkmann Bilderschriften der

Renaissance (Leipzig 1923) Hans van de Waal Drie

eeuwen vaderlandsche geschieduitbeelding 1500-1800 (s-

Gravenhage 1952) idem ldquoSome Principles of a General

Iconographical Classificationrdquo in Actes du XVIIe Congregraves

International dHistoire de lArt Amsterdam 1952 (La Haye

1955) 601-06 E Wind ldquoCharity the Case History of a

Patternrdquo Journal of the Warburg Institute 1 (1937) 322ff

JAN BIAŁOSTOCKI

[See also Allegory Baroque Classicism Criticism Enlight-

enment Motif Myth Naturalism in Art Neo-Platonism

Renaissance Humanism Romanticism Symbolism Tem-

perance Ut pictura poesis]

trans as Encyclopedia of World Art (1966) Vol VII cols

769-85 lists almost all important older contributions to this

field idem ldquoRomantische Ikonographierdquo Stil und Ikonog-

raphie (Dresden 1966) pp 156-81 idem ldquoKompozycja

emblematyczna epitafioacutew ślaskich XVI wiekurdquo (ldquoEmblem-

atic Composition of Silesian Epitaphs of the Sixteenth Cen-

turyrdquo) Ze studioacutew nad Sztuka XVI wieku na Řlasku

(Wrocław 1968) pp 77-93 idem ldquoEsilio Privatordquo Bulletin

du Museacutee National de Varsovie 10 (1969) 95-101 J

541

Chydenius The Theory of Medieval Symbolism (Helsingfors

1960) Series of the Societas Scientiarum Fennica Com-

mentationes Humanarum Litterarum 27 2 R J Clements

Picta Poesis (Rome 1960) F Creuzer Symbolik und

Mythologie der Alten Voumllker (Leipzig and Darmstadt 1810

revised ed 1819) F Cumont Recherches sur le symbolisme

funeacuteraire des Romains (Paris 1942) L Eitner ldquoThe Open

Window and the Storm-Tossed Boatrdquo Art Bulletin 37

(1955) 281-90 H Frankfort ldquoThe Archetype in Analytical

Psychology and the History of Religionrdquo Journal of the

Warburg and Courtauld Institutes 21 (1958) 166-78

K Garas ldquoAllegorie und Geschichte in der Venezianischen

Malerei des 18 Jahrhundertsrdquo in proceedings of the XXI

International Congress of the History of Art Bonn Stil und

Uumlberlieferung in der Kunst des Abendlandes (Berlin 1967)

3 280-83 K Giehlow ldquoDie Hieroglyphenkunde des

Humanismus in der Allegorie der Renaissancerdquo Jahrbuch

der Kunsthistorischen Sammlungen des Allerhochsten

Kaiserhauses 32 (1915) 1-232 C Gilbert ldquoOn Subject and

Not-Subject in Italian Renaissance Picturesrdquo Art Bulletin

34 (1952) 202-16 C Ginzburg ldquoDa A Warburg a E H

Gombrich Note su un problema di metodordquo Studi medi-

evali series 3 7 (1966) 1015-65 E H Gombrich ldquoIcones

Symbolicae The Visual Image in Neo-Platonic Thoughtrdquo

Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes 11 (1948)

163-92 idem ldquoThe Use of Art for the Study of Symbolsrdquo

American Psychologist 20 (1965) A Grabar Liconoclasme

byzantin Dossier archeacuteologique (Paris 1957) idem Chris-

tian Iconography A Study of Its Origins (Princeton 1969)

S J Gudlaugsson De Comedianten bij Jan Steen en zijn

tijdgenooten (s-Gravenhage 1945) W S Heckscher ldquoThe

Genesis of Iconologyrdquo Stl und Uumlberlieferung in der Kunst

des Abendlandes Akten des XXI Internationalen Kon-

gresses fuumlr Kunstgeschichte (Berlin 1967) 3 239-62 G

Hermereacuten Representation and Meaning in the Visual Arts

A Study in the Methodology of Iconography and Iconology

Lund Studies in Philosophy Vol I (Lund 1969) R Hinks

Myth and Allegory in Ancient Art (London 1939) W

Hofmann Das Irdische Paradies (Munich 1960) G J

Hoogewerff ldquoLIconologie et son importance pour leacutetude

systeacutematique de lart chreacutetienrdquo Rivista dArcheologia Cris-

tiana 8 (1931) 53-82 E de Jongh Zinne- en minnebeelden

in de schilderkunst van de zeventiende eeuw (mdash1967) idem

ldquoErotica in Vogelperspectief De dubbelzinnigheid van een

reeks 17de eeuwse genrevoorstellingenrdquo Simiolus 3

(1968-69) 22-72 L Kalinowski ldquoTreści ideowe i estetyczne

Drzwi Gnieźnieńskichrdquo (ldquoIdeological and Aesthetic Content

of the Gniezno Bronze Doorsrdquo) in Drzwi Gnieźnieńskie ed

M Walicki (Wroclaw 1959) 2 7-160 H Keller Tizians

Poesie fuumlr Koumlnig Philip II von Spanien (Wiesbaden 1969)

R Klein ldquoLa theacuteorie de lexpression figureacutee dans les traiteacutes

italiens sur les imprese 1555-1612rdquo Bibliothegraveque dHu-

manisme et Renaissance 19 (1957) 320-41 republished with

the other relevant studies in la forme et lintelligible (Paris

1969) R Klibansky E Panofsky F Saxl Saturn and Melan-

choly (London 1964) J B Knipping Ikonografie van de

Contra-Reformatie in de Nederlanden (Hilversum 1939-40)

G Kubler The Shape of Time (New Haven and London

1962) R W Lee ldquoUt pictura poesisrdquo Art Bulletin 22

(1940) 197-269 E Macircle Lart religieux du XIIIe siegravecle en

France (Paris 1898) English ed used (New York 1958)

idem Lart religieux de la fin du Moyen-Age en France

(Paris 1908) idem Lart religieux du XIIe siegravecle en France

(Paris 1922) idem Lart religieux apregraves le Concile de Trente

(Paris 1932) J Maurin Białostocka Lessing i sztuki plas-

tyczne (ldquoLessing and the visual artsrdquo) (Wroclaw Warszawa

Krakoacutew 1969) E F von Monroy Embleme und Emblem-

buumlcher in den Niederlanden 1560-1630 ed H M von Erffa

(Utrecht 1964) J Montagu ldquoThe Painted Enigma and

French Seventeenth Century Artrdquo Journal of the Warburg

and Courtauld Institutes 31 (1968) 307-35 W Mrazek

Ikonologie der barocken Deckenmalerei (Vienna 1953)

Uumlsterreichische Akademie der Wissenschaften Philo-

sophisch-historische Klasse Sitzungsberichte 2283 A D

Nock ldquoSarcophagi and Symbolismrdquo American Journal of

Archaeology 50 (1946) 166ff D Panofsky and E Panofsky

ldquoThe Iconography of the Galeacuterie Franccedilois Ier at Fontaine-

bleaurdquo Gazette des Beaux-Arts 652 (1958) 113-90

E Panofsky ldquoUumlber das Verhaumlltnis der Kunstgeschichte zur

Kunsttheorierdquo Zeitschrift fuumlr Aesthetik und allgemeine

Kunstwissenschaft 18 (1925) 129-61 idem Studies in

Iconology (New York 1939) idem ed Abbot Suger (Prince-

ton 1946) idem Gothic Architecture and Scholasticism

(Latrobe Pa 1951) idem Early Netherlandish Painting

(Cambridge Mass 1953) idem Meaning in the Visual Arts

(Garden City N Y 1955) idem Renaissance and Renas-

cences in Western Art (Stockholm 1960) idem Tomb Sculp-

ture (New York 1964) E Panofsky and F Saxl ldquoClassical

Mythology in Medieval Artrdquo Metropolitan Museum Studies

4 (1932-33) 228-80 M Praz Studies in Seventeenth Cen-

tury Imagery (London 1939-47 2nd ed Rome 1964) S

Ringbom ldquoDevotional Images and Imaginative Devotions

Notes on the Place of Art in Late Medieval Private Pietyrdquo

Gazette des Beaux-Arts 6 73 (1969) 159-70 Joseph Sauer

Symbolik des Kirchengebaumludes und seiner Ausstattung in

der Auffassung des Mittelalters 2nd ed (Freiburg i B

1924) F Saxl ldquoFruumlhes Christentum und spaumltes Heidentum

in ihren kuumlnstlerischen Ausdrucksformenrdquo Wiener Jahrbuch

fuumlr Kunstgeschichte 2 (1923) 63-121 M Schapiro ldquoThe

Ruthwell Crossrdquo Art Bulletin 26 (1944) 232-45 idem ldquoOn

the Aesthetic Attitude in Romanesque Artrdquo in Art and

Thought issued in Honour of Ananda Coomaraswamy

(London 1947) 139-50 J Seznec The Survival of the Pagan

Gods (New York 1953) O G von Simson The Gothic

Cathedral (New York 1956) R E Spear ldquoThe Literary

Source of Poussins Realm of Florardquo The Burlington Maga-

zine 107 (1965) 563-69 L Volkmann Bilderschriften der

Renaissance (Leipzig 1923) Hans van de Waal Drie

eeuwen vaderlandsche geschieduitbeelding 1500-1800 (s-

Gravenhage 1952) idem ldquoSome Principles of a General

Iconographical Classificationrdquo in Actes du XVIIe Congregraves

International dHistoire de lArt Amsterdam 1952 (La Haye

1955) 601-06 E Wind ldquoCharity the Case History of a

Patternrdquo Journal of the Warburg Institute 1 (1937) 322ff

JAN BIAŁOSTOCKI

[See also Allegory Baroque Classicism Criticism Enlight-

enment Motif Myth Naturalism in Art Neo-Platonism

Renaissance Humanism Romanticism Symbolism Tem-

perance Ut pictura poesis]

Myth and Allegory in Ancient Art (London 1939) W

Hofmann Das Irdische Paradies (Munich 1960) G J

Hoogewerff ldquoLIconologie et son importance pour leacutetude

systeacutematique de lart chreacutetienrdquo Rivista dArcheologia Cris-

tiana 8 (1931) 53-82 E de Jongh Zinne- en minnebeelden

in de schilderkunst van de zeventiende eeuw (mdash1967) idem

ldquoErotica in Vogelperspectief De dubbelzinnigheid van een

reeks 17de eeuwse genrevoorstellingenrdquo Simiolus 3

(1968-69) 22-72 L Kalinowski ldquoTreści ideowe i estetyczne

Drzwi Gnieźnieńskichrdquo (ldquoIdeological and Aesthetic Content

of the Gniezno Bronze Doorsrdquo) in Drzwi Gnieźnieńskie ed

M Walicki (Wroclaw 1959) 2 7-160 H Keller Tizians

Poesie fuumlr Koumlnig Philip II von Spanien (Wiesbaden 1969)

R Klein ldquoLa theacuteorie de lexpression figureacutee dans les traiteacutes

italiens sur les imprese 1555-1612rdquo Bibliothegraveque dHu-

manisme et Renaissance 19 (1957) 320-41 republished with

the other relevant studies in la forme et lintelligible (Paris

1969) R Klibansky E Panofsky F Saxl Saturn and Melan-

choly (London 1964) J B Knipping Ikonografie van de

Contra-Reformatie in de Nederlanden (Hilversum 1939-40)

G Kubler The Shape of Time (New Haven and London

1962) R W Lee ldquoUt pictura poesisrdquo Art Bulletin 22

(1940) 197-269 E Macircle Lart religieux du XIIIe siegravecle en

France (Paris 1898) English ed used (New York 1958)

idem Lart religieux de la fin du Moyen-Age en France

(Paris 1908) idem Lart religieux du XIIe siegravecle en France

(Paris 1922) idem Lart religieux apregraves le Concile de Trente

(Paris 1932) J Maurin Białostocka Lessing i sztuki plas-

tyczne (ldquoLessing and the visual artsrdquo) (Wroclaw Warszawa

Krakoacutew 1969) E F von Monroy Embleme und Emblem-

buumlcher in den Niederlanden 1560-1630 ed H M von Erffa

(Utrecht 1964) J Montagu ldquoThe Painted Enigma and

French Seventeenth Century Artrdquo Journal of the Warburg

and Courtauld Institutes 31 (1968) 307-35 W Mrazek

Ikonologie der barocken Deckenmalerei (Vienna 1953)

Uumlsterreichische Akademie der Wissenschaften Philo-

sophisch-historische Klasse Sitzungsberichte 2283 A D

Nock ldquoSarcophagi and Symbolismrdquo American Journal of

Archaeology 50 (1946) 166ff D Panofsky and E Panofsky

ldquoThe Iconography of the Galeacuterie Franccedilois Ier at Fontaine-

bleaurdquo Gazette des Beaux-Arts 652 (1958) 113-90

E Panofsky ldquoUumlber das Verhaumlltnis der Kunstgeschichte zur

Kunsttheorierdquo Zeitschrift fuumlr Aesthetik und allgemeine

Kunstwissenschaft 18 (1925) 129-61 idem Studies in

Iconology (New York 1939) idem ed Abbot Suger (Prince-

ton 1946) idem Gothic Architecture and Scholasticism

(Latrobe Pa 1951) idem Early Netherlandish Painting

(Cambridge Mass 1953) idem Meaning in the Visual Arts

(Garden City N Y 1955) idem Renaissance and Renas-

cences in Western Art (Stockholm 1960) idem Tomb Sculp-

ture (New York 1964) E Panofsky and F Saxl ldquoClassical

Mythology in Medieval Artrdquo Metropolitan Museum Studies

4 (1932-33) 228-80 M Praz Studies in Seventeenth Cen-

tury Imagery (London 1939-47 2nd ed Rome 1964) S

Ringbom ldquoDevotional Images and Imaginative Devotions

Notes on the Place of Art in Late Medieval Private Pietyrdquo

Gazette des Beaux-Arts 6 73 (1969) 159-70 Joseph Sauer

Symbolik des Kirchengebaumludes und seiner Ausstattung in

der Auffassung des Mittelalters 2nd ed (Freiburg i B

1924) F Saxl ldquoFruumlhes Christentum und spaumltes Heidentum

in ihren kuumlnstlerischen Ausdrucksformenrdquo Wiener Jahrbuch

fuumlr Kunstgeschichte 2 (1923) 63-121 M Schapiro ldquoThe

Ruthwell Crossrdquo Art Bulletin 26 (1944) 232-45 idem ldquoOn

the Aesthetic Attitude in Romanesque Artrdquo in Art and

Thought issued in Honour of Ananda Coomaraswamy

(London 1947) 139-50 J Seznec The Survival of the Pagan

Gods (New York 1953) O G von Simson The Gothic

Cathedral (New York 1956) R E Spear ldquoThe Literary

Source of Poussins Realm of Florardquo The Burlington Maga-

zine 107 (1965) 563-69 L Volkmann Bilderschriften der

Renaissance (Leipzig 1923) Hans van de Waal Drie

eeuwen vaderlandsche geschieduitbeelding 1500-1800 (s-

Gravenhage 1952) idem ldquoSome Principles of a General

Iconographical Classificationrdquo in Actes du XVIIe Congregraves

International dHistoire de lArt Amsterdam 1952 (La Haye

1955) 601-06 E Wind ldquoCharity the Case History of a

Patternrdquo Journal of the Warburg Institute 1 (1937) 322ff

JAN BIAŁOSTOCKI

[See also Allegory Baroque Classicism Criticism Enlight-

enment Motif Myth Naturalism in Art Neo-Platonism

Renaissance Humanism Romanticism Symbolism Tem-

perance Ut pictura poesis]

ture (New York 1964) E Panofsky and F Saxl ldquoClassical

Mythology in Medieval Artrdquo Metropolitan Museum Studies

4 (1932-33) 228-80 M Praz Studies in Seventeenth Cen-

tury Imagery (London 1939-47 2nd ed Rome 1964) S

Ringbom ldquoDevotional Images and Imaginative Devotions

Notes on the Place of Art in Late Medieval Private Pietyrdquo

Gazette des Beaux-Arts 6 73 (1969) 159-70 Joseph Sauer

Symbolik des Kirchengebaumludes und seiner Ausstattung in

der Auffassung des Mittelalters 2nd ed (Freiburg i B

1924) F Saxl ldquoFruumlhes Christentum und spaumltes Heidentum

in ihren kuumlnstlerischen Ausdrucksformenrdquo Wiener Jahrbuch

fuumlr Kunstgeschichte 2 (1923) 63-121 M Schapiro ldquoThe

Ruthwell Crossrdquo Art Bulletin 26 (1944) 232-45 idem ldquoOn

the Aesthetic Attitude in Romanesque Artrdquo in Art and

Thought issued in Honour of Ananda Coomaraswamy

(London 1947) 139-50 J Seznec The Survival of the Pagan

Gods (New York 1953) O G von Simson The Gothic

Cathedral (New York 1956) R E Spear ldquoThe Literary

Source of Poussins Realm of Florardquo The Burlington Maga-

zine 107 (1965) 563-69 L Volkmann Bilderschriften der

Renaissance (Leipzig 1923) Hans van de Waal Drie

eeuwen vaderlandsche geschieduitbeelding 1500-1800 (s-

Gravenhage 1952) idem ldquoSome Principles of a General

Iconographical Classificationrdquo in Actes du XVIIe Congregraves

International dHistoire de lArt Amsterdam 1952 (La Haye

1955) 601-06 E Wind ldquoCharity the Case History of a

Patternrdquo Journal of the Warburg Institute 1 (1937) 322ff

JAN BIAŁOSTOCKI

[See also Allegory Baroque Classicism Criticism Enlight-

enment Motif Myth Naturalism in Art Neo-Platonism

Renaissance Humanism Romanticism Symbolism Tem-

perance Ut pictura poesis]