Iconography

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(Redirected from
Christian iconography
)
This article is about iconography in art history. For religious painting in Eastern Christianity, see Icon.
Not to be confused with Iconograph or Iconology.
Holbein's The Ambassadors (1533) is a complex work whose iconography remains the subject of debate.

Iconography, as a branch of

artistic style. The word iconography comes from the Greek
εἰκών ("image") and γράφειν ("to write" or to draw).

A secondary meaning (based on a non-standard translation of the Greek and Russian equivalent terms) is the production or study of the religious images, called "

Orthodox Christian
tradition. This usage is mostly found in works translated from languages such as Greek or Russian, with the correct term being "icon painting".

In art history, "an iconography" may also mean a particular depiction of a subject in terms of the content of the image, such as the number of figures used, their placing and gestures. The term is also used in many academic fields other than art history, for example semiotics, media studies, and archaeology,[1] and in general usage, for the content of images, the typical depiction in images of a subject, and related senses. Sometimes distinctions have been made between iconology and iconography,[2][3] although the definitions, and so the distinction made, varies. When referring to movies, genres are immediately recognizable through their iconography, motifs that become associated with a specific genre through repetition.[4]

Scholarship

Foundations

Early Western writers who took special note of the content of images include

Gian Pietro Bellori, a 17th-century biographer of artists of his own time, describes and analyses, not always correctly, many works. Lessing's study (1796) of the classical figure Amor with an inverted torch was an early attempt to use a study of a type of image to explain the culture it originated in, rather than the other way round.[6]

A painting with complex iconography: Hans Memling's so-called Seven Joys of the Virgin – in fact this is a later title for a Life of the Virgin cycle on a single panel. Altogether 25 scenes, not all involving the Virgin, are depicted. 1480, Alte Pinakothek, Munich.[7]

Iconography as an academic art historical discipline developed in the nineteenth-century in the works of scholars such as

aesthetic approach of the time.[8] These early contributions paved the way for encyclopedias
, manuals, and other publications useful in identifying the content of art. Mâle's l'Art religieux du XIIIe siècle en France (originally 1899, with revised editions) translated into English as The Gothic Image, Religious Art in France of the Thirteenth Century has remained continuously in print.

Twentieth-century

In the early-twentieth century Germany, Aby Warburg (1866–1929) and his followers Fritz Saxl (1890–1948) and Erwin Panofsky (1892–1968) elaborated the practice of identification and classification of motifs in images to using iconography as a means to understanding meaning.[8] Panofsky codified an influential approach to iconography in his 1939 Studies in Iconology, where he defined it as "the branch of the history of art which concerns itself with the subject matter or meaning of works of art, as opposed to form,"[8] although the distinction he and other scholars drew between particular definitions of "iconography" (put simply, the identification of visual content) and "iconology" (the analysis of the meaning of that content), has not been generally accepted, though it is still used by some writers.[9]

In the United States, to which Panofsky immigrated in 1931, students such as Frederick Hartt, and Meyer Schapiro continued under his influence in the discipline.[8] In an influential article of 1942, Introduction to an "Iconography of Mediaeval Architecture",[10] Richard Krautheimer, a specialist on early medieval churches and another German émigré, extended iconographical analysis to architectural forms.

The period from 1940 can be seen as one where iconography was especially prominent in art history.

best-sellers of Dan Brown include theories, disowned by most art historians, on the iconography of works by Leonardo da Vinci
.

Technological advances allowed the building-up of huge collections of photographs, with an iconographic arrangement or index, which include those of the Warburg Institute and the Index of Medieval Art[13] (formerly Index of Christian Art) at Princeton (which has made a specialism of iconography since its early days in America).[14] These are now being digitised and made available online, usually on a restricted basis.

With the arrival of computing, the

Marburger Index. These are available, usually on-line or on DVD.[15][16] The system can also be used outside pure art history, for example on sites like Flickr.[17]

Brief survey of iconography

Guhyasamaja Akshobhyavajra
.

Abrahamic
faiths, and often contain highly complex iconography, which reflects centuries of accumulated tradition. Secular Western iconography later drew upon these themes.

Indian religious iconography

Central to the iconography and

Mahabhuta and letters and bija syllables from sacred alphabetic scripts are other features. Under the influence of tantra art developed esoteric meanings, accessible only to initiates; this is an especially strong feature of Tibetan art. The art of Indian Religions esp. Hindus in its numerous sectoral divisions is governed by sacred texts called the Aagama which describes the ratio and proportion of the icon, called taalmaana as well as mood of the central figure in a context. For example, Narasimha an incarnation of Vishnu
though considered a wrathful deity but in few contexts is depicted in pacified mood.

Although iconic depictions of, or concentrating on, a single figure are the dominant type of

miniature paintings of the lives of Krishna and Rama
.

Christian iconography

Main article:
Eastern Orthodox iconography, and Marian art in the Catholic Church

canonical Gospel narratives were plugged with matter from the apocryphal gospels. Eventually, the Church would succeed in weeding most of these out, but some remain, like the ox and ass in the Nativity of Christ
.

Madonna and Child
.

After the

Eastern Orthodox icons are very close to their predecessors of a thousand years ago, though development, and some shifts in meaning, have occurred – for example, the old man wearing a fleece in conversation with Saint Joseph usually seen in Orthodox Nativities seems to have begun as one of the shepherds, or the prophet Isaiah, but is now usually understood as the "Tempter" (Satan).[22]

In both East and West, numerous iconic types of

identifying individual
figures of saints by a standard appearance and symbolic objects held by them; in the East, they were more likely to identified by text labels.

From the

Franciscans
, as were many other developments. Most painters remained content to copy and slightly modify the works of others, and it is clear that the clergy, by whom or for whose churches most art was commissioned, often specified what they wanted shown in great detail.

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

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

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

From the 15th century religious painting gradually freed itself from the habit of following earlier compositional models, and by the 16th century ambitious artists were expected to find novel compositions for each subject, and direct borrowings from earlier artists are more often of the poses of individual figures than of whole compositions. The

Protestant religious painting to Biblical scenes conceived along the lines of history painting, and after some decades the Catholic Council of Trent
reined in somewhat the freedom of Catholic artists.

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

Secular Western iconography

Secular painting became far more common in the West from the Renaissance, and developed its own traditions and conventions of iconography, in

mythologies, portraits, genre scenes, and even landscapes, not to mention modern media and genres like photography, cinema, political cartoons, comic books and anime
.

Renaissance mythological painting was in theory reviving the iconography of its

Picasso, Frida Kahlo, and Joseph Beuys
.

Iconography in disciplines other than art history

Iconography, often of aspects of

Cultural Studies. These analyses in turn have affected conventional art history, especially concepts such as signs in semiotics. Discussing imagery as iconography in this way implies a critical "reading" of imagery that often attempts to explore social and cultural values. Iconography is also used within film studies to describe the visual language of cinema, particularly within the field of genre criticism.[23] In the age of Internet, the new global history of the visual production of Humanity (Histiconologia[24]
) includes History of Art and history of all kind of images or medias.

Contemporary iconography research often draws on theories of visual framing to address such diverse issues as the iconography of climate change created by different stakeholders,[25] the iconography that international organizations create about natural disasters,[26] the iconography of epidemics disseminated in the press,[27] and the iconography of suffering found in social media.[28]

An iconography study in communication science analyzed stock photos used in press reporting to depict the social issue of child sexual abuse.[29] Based on a sample of N=1,437 child sexual abuse (CSA) online press articles that included 419 stock photos, a CSA iconography (i.e. a set of typical image motifs for a topic) was revealed that relate to criminal reporting: The CSA iconography visualizes 1. crime contexts, 2. course of the crime and people involved, and 3. consequences of the crime for the people involved (e.g., image motif: perpetrator in handcuffs).

Articles with iconographical analysis of individual works

Examples

See also

References

Citations

  1. ISBN 978-1-4073-6071-3
    .
  2. ^ Oxford Bibliographies: Paul Taylor, "Iconology and Iconography"
  3. ^ Erwin Panofsky, Studies in Iconology: Humanistic Themes in the Art of the Renaissance. Oxford 1939.
  4. ^ Giannetti, Louis (2008). Understanding Movies. Toronto: Person Prentice Hall. p. 52.
  5. ^ Ripa's full title, rarely used, was Iconologia overo Descrittione Dell’imagini Universali cavate dall’Antichità et da altri luoghi; English Translations and Adaptations of Cesare Ripa's Iconologia: From the 17th to the 19th Century by Hans-Joachim Zimmermann
  6. ^ a b Białostocki:535
  7. ISBN 3-87490-701-5
  8. ^ a b c d e W. Eugene Kleinbauer and Thomas P. Slavens, Research Guide to the History of Western Art, Sources of information in the humanities, no. 2. Chicago: American Library Association (1982): 60-72.
  9. ISBN 1-85669-417-8
  10. ^ Richard Krautheimer, Introduction to an "Iconography of Mediaeval Architecture", Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes, Vol. 5. (1942), pp. 1-33.Online text Archived April 8, 2008, at the Wayback Machine
  11. ^ Białostocki:537
  12. ^ Most recently: North, John (September, 2004). The Ambassador's Secret: Holbein and the World of the Renaissance. Orion Books
  13. ^ Index of Medieval Art website
  14. ^ Białostocki:538-39
  15. ^ "Iconclass website". Iconclass.nl. Retrieved 2014-03-31.
  16. ^ Illuminated manuscripts from the Dutch royal Library, browsable by ICONCLASS classification Archived 2008-02-20 at the Wayback Machine and Ross Publishing - examples of databases for sale
  17. ^ website Iconclass for Flickr
  18. ^ Freeman, Evan. "The life of Christ in medieval and Renaissance art – Smarthistory". Smarthistory – art history. Retrieved March 2, 2022.
  19. ^ Taylor, Justin (July 18, 2013). "All the Known Audio of C.S. Lewis Speaking". The Gospel Coalition. Retrieved March 2, 2022.
  20. ^ Kitzinger, Ernst, "The Cult of Images in the Age before Iconoclasm", Dumbarton Oaks Papers, Vol. 8, (1954), pp. 83–150, Dumbarton Oaks, Trustees for Harvard University, JSTOR
  21. ISSN 0043-4388
    . Retrieved March 2, 2022.
  22. ^ Schiller:66
  23. ^ Cook and Bernink (1999, 138-140).
  24. ISBN 978-2-84736-362-3
  25. OCLC 1226584969
    .
  26. S2CID 219010604
    .
  27. OCLC 904372902
    .
  28. OCLC 902846595
    .
  29. S2CID 242216019
    .

Sources

External links

Look up iconography in Wiktionary, the free dictionary.
Wikimedia Commons has media related to Iconography.
Library resources about
Iconography
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