What Word Is Used for the Study of Art

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

Branch of fine art history

Iconography, as a branch of fine art history, studies the identification, clarification and interpretation of the content of images: the subjects depicted, the particular compositions and details used to practise so, and other elements that are distinct from artistic style. The word iconography comes from the Greek εἰκών ("paradigm") and γράφειν ("to write" or to draw).

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

In art history, "an iconography" may likewise mean a particular delineation of a subject in terms of the content of the epitome, such equally the number of figures used, their placing and gestures. The term is likewise used in many academic fields other than art history, for example semiotics and media studies, 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 betwixt iconology and iconography,^{[1] [ii]} although the definitions, and so the distinction fabricated, varies. When referring to movies, genres are immediately recognizable through their iconography, motifs that become associated with a specific genre through repetition.^[3]

Iconography as a field of study [edit]

Foundations of iconography [edit]

Early on Western writers who took special notation of the content of images include Giorgio Vasari, whose Ragionamenti, interpreting the paintings in the Palazzo Vecchio in Florence, reassuringly demonstrates that such works were hard to empathise even for well-informed contemporaries. Lesser known, though it had informed poets, painters and sculptors for over ii centuries afterward its 1593 publication, was Cesare Ripa'southward emblem book Iconologia.^[4] Gian Pietro Bellori, a 17th-century biographer of artists of his own time, describes and analyses, not always correctly, many works. Lessing's written report (1796) of the classical figure Amor with an inverted torch was an early attempt to use a study of a type of prototype to explain the civilisation information technology originated in, rather than the other way circular.^[five]

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

Twentieth-century iconography [edit]

In the early-twentieth century Germany, Aby Warburg (1866–1929) and his followers Fritz Saxl (1890–1948) and Erwin Panofsky (1892–1968) elaborated the practise of identification and classification of motifs in images to using iconography as a means to understanding significant.^[7] Panofsky codification 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 field matter or meaning of works of fine art, equally opposed to course,"^[7] although the stardom he and other scholars drew between item definitions of "iconography" (put simply, the identification of visual content) and "iconology" (the assay of the meaning of that content), has not been generally accepted, though it is nevertheless used by some writers.^[8]

In the The states, to which Panofsky immigrated in 1931, students such as Frederick Hartt, and Meyer Schapiro continued nether his influence in the discipline.^[7] In an influential commodity of 1942, Introduction to an "Iconography of Mediaeval Architecture",^[nine] Richard Krautheimer, a specialist on early medieval churches and some other German émigré, extended iconographical assay to architectural forms.

The period from 1940 tin can be seen as one where iconography was peculiarly prominent in art history.^[ten] Whereas most iconographical scholarship remains highly dense and specialized, some analyses began to attract a much wider audition, for example Panofsky's theory (now generally out of favour with specialists) that the writing on the rear wall in the Arnolfini Portrait by Jan van Eyck turned the painting into the record of a matrimony contract. Holbein'southward The Ambassadors has been the subject of books for a general market with new theories as to its iconography,^[eleven] and the best-sellers of Dan Dark-brown include theories, disowned past most art historians, on the iconography of works by Leonardo da Vinci.

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

With the arrival of computing, the Iconclass system, a highly complex style of classifying the content of images, with 28,000 classification types, and 14,000 keywords, was developed in kingdom of the netherlands as a standard nomenclature for recording collections, with the idea of assembling huge databases that volition allow the retrieval of images featuring particular details, subjects or other common factors. For instance, the Iconclass code "71H7131" is for the subject of "Bathsheba (alone) with David's alphabetic character", whereas "71" is the whole "Old Testament" and "71H" the "story of David". A number of collections of dissimilar types take been classified using Iconclass, notably many types of old master impress, the collections of the Gemäldegalerie, Berlin and the German Marburger Index. These are available, commonly on-line or on DVD.^{[fourteen] [fifteen]} The organisation tin can also exist used outside pure art history, for example on sites like Flickr.^[16]

Cursory survey of iconography [edit]

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

Indian religious iconography [edit]

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

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

Christian iconography [edit]

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

Afterward the menstruation of Byzantine iconoclasm iconographical innovation was regarded as unhealthy, if not heretical, in the Eastern Church building, though it still continued at a glacial stride. More than in the West, traditional depictions were often considered to accept authentic or miraculous origins, and the task of the creative person was to copy them with as footling divergence as possible. The Eastern church too never accepted the utilize of awe-inspiring high relief or free-continuing sculpture, which it institute too reminiscent of paganism. Most mod Eastern Orthodox icons are very close to their predecessors of a thousand years ago, though development, and some shifts in meaning, take occurred – for instance, the old man wearing a fleece in conversation with Saint Joseph unremarkably seen in Orthodox Nativities seems to accept begun every bit one of the shepherds, or the prophet Isaiah, simply is now usually understood equally the "Tempter" (Satan).^[21]

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

From the Romanesque period sculpture on churches became increasingly important in Western art, and probably partly because of the lack of Byzantine models, became the location of much iconographic innovation, along with the illuminated manuscript, which had already taken a decisively unlike direction from Byzantine equivalents, nether the influence of Insular art and other factors. Developments in theology and devotional practice produced innovations similar the subject of the Coronation of the Virgin and the Supposition, Both associated with 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 almost art was commissioned, often specified what they wanted shown in great item.

The theory of typology, past which the meaning of most events of the Old Testament was understood as a "blazon" or pre-figuring of an consequence in the life of, or aspect of, Christ or Mary was often reflected in art, and in the later Center Ages came to boss the selection of Old Attestation 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 take hold of men's souls?

Whereas in the Romanesque and Gothic periods the neat majority of religious art was intended to convey often complex religious letters as conspicuously 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 past modern iconographical inquiry in works of Robert Campin such as the Mérode Altarpiece, and of Jan van Eyck such every bit the Madonna of Chancellor Rolin and the Washington Annunciation lie in pocket-sized details of what are on first viewing very conventional representations. When Italian painting developed a gustatory modality for enigma, considerably later on, information technology near often showed in secular compositions influenced by Renaissance Neo-Platonism.

From the 15th century religious painting gradually freed itself from the habit of following before compositional models, and by the 16th century ambitious artists were expected to discover novel compositions for each subject, and directly borrowings from earlier artists are more oft of the poses of individual figures than of whole compositions. The Reformation shortly restricted most Protestant religious painting to Biblical scenes conceived along the lines of history painting, and afterwards some decades the Catholic Quango 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 [edit]

Secular painting became far more than common in the West from the Renaissance, and developed its own traditions and conventions of iconography, in history painting, which includes mythologies, portraits, genre scenes, and even landscapes, non to mention modern media and genres similar photography, cinema, political cartoons, comic books and anime.

Renaissance mythological painting was in theory reviving the iconography of its Classical Artifact, but in practice themes like Leda and the Swan adult on largely original lines, and for different purposes. Personal iconographies, where works appear to have significant meanings individual to, and peradventure only accessible by, the artist, go back at to the lowest degree equally far as Hieronymous Bosch, merely have become increasingly significant with artists similar Goya, William Blake, Gauguin, Picasso, Frida Kahlo and Joseph Beuys.

Iconography in disciplines other than fine art history [edit]

Iconography, often of aspects of popular culture, is a business organization of other academic disciplines including Semiotics, Anthropology, Sociology, Media Studies, Communication Studies, and Cultural Studies. These analyses in turn have affected conventional art history, specially concepts such equally signs in semiotics. Discussing imagery equally iconography in this mode implies a critical "reading" of imagery that frequently attempts to explore social and cultural values. Iconography is also used inside film studies to describe the visual language of cinema, particularly within the field of genre criticism.^[22] In the historic period of Internet, the new global history of the visual product of Humanity (Histiconologia^[23]) includes History of Fine art and history of all kind of images or medias.

Gimmicky iconography research often draws on theories of visual framing to address such diverse problems as the iconography of climatic change created by unlike stakeholders,^[24] the iconography that international organizations create about natural disasters,^[25] the iconography of epidemics disseminated in the press,^[26] and the iconography of suffering found in social media.^[27]

An iconography report in communication science analyzed stock photos used in press reporting to depict the social issue of child sexual abuse.^[28] Based on a sample of Northward=ane,437 child sexual abuse (CSA) online printing 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. criminal offense contexts, two. course of the law-breaking and people involved, and 3. consequences of the crime for the people involved (e.yard., image motif: perpetrator in handcuffs).

Articles with iconographical analysis of individual works [edit]

A not-exhaustive list:

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

Run into also [edit]

• Manga iconography
• Saint symbolism

References [edit]

Citations [edit]

1. ^ Oxford Bibliographies: Paul Taylor, "Iconology and Iconography"
2. ^ Erwin Panofsky, Studies in Iconology: Humanistic Themes in the Art of the Renaissance. Oxford 1939.
3. ^ Giannetti, Louis (2008). Understanding Movies. Toronto: Person Prentice Hall. p. 52.
4. ^ Ripa's total 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 past Hans-Joachim Zimmermann
5. ^ ^{a b} Białostocki:535
6. ^ Alte Pinakotek, Munich; (Summary Catalogue – various authors), pp. 348-51, 1986, Edition Lipp, ISBN 3-87490-701-5
7. ^ ^{a b c d e} W. Eugene Kleinbauer and Thomas P. Slavens, Research Guide to the History of Western Fine art, Sources of data in the humanities, no. 2. Chicago: American Library Clan (1982): lx-72.
8. ^ For instance by Anne D'Alleva in her Methods and Theories of Art History, pp. 20-28, 2005, Laurence King Publishing, ISBN i-85669-417-8
9. ^ Richard Krautheimer, Introduction to an "Iconography of Mediaeval Architecture", Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes, Vol. 5. (1942), pp. one-33.Online text Archived April 8, 2008, at the Wayback Automobile
10. ^ Białostocki:537
11. ^ Almost recently: North, John (September, 2004). The Ambassador's Secret: Holbein and the World of the Renaissance. Orion Books
12. ^ Index of Medieval Art website
13. ^ Białostocki:538-39
14. ^ "Iconclass website". Iconclass.nl. Retrieved 2014-03-31 .
15. ^ Illuminated manuscripts from the Dutch royal Library, browsable by ICONCLASS classification Archived 2008-02-20 at the Wayback Machine and Ross Publishing - examples of databases for auction
16. ^ website Iconclass for Flickr
17. ^ Freeman, Dr. Evan. "The life of Christ in medieval and Renaissance fine art – Smarthistory". Smarthistory – art history . Retrieved March two, 2022.
18. ^ Taylor, Justin (July eighteen, 2013). "All the Known Audio of C.South. Lewis Speaking". The Gospel Coalition . Retrieved March 2, 2022.
19. ^ Kitzinger, Ernst, "The Cult of Images in the Age before Iconoclasm", Dumbarton Oaks Papers, Vol. viii, (1954), pp. 83–150, Dumbarton Oaks, Trustees for Harvard University, JSTOR
20. ^ "The Early Church on the Aniconic Spectrum". The Westminster Theological Journal. 83 (1): 35–47. ISSN 0043-4388. Retrieved March ii, 2022.
21. ^ Schiller:66
22. ^ Cook and Bernink (1999, 138-140).
23. ^ The first Earth Dictionary of Images: Laurent Gervereau (ed.), "Dictionnaire mondial des images", Paris, Nouveau monde, 2006, 1120p, ISBN 978-2-84736-185-eight. (with 275 specialists from all continents, all specialities, all periods from Prehistory to nowadays); Laurent Gervereau, "Images, une histoire mondiale", Paris, Nouveau monde, 2008, 272p., ISBN 978-2-84736-362-3
24. ^ Wozniak, Antal (2020). "Stakeholders Visual Representations of Climatic change". In Holmes, David C.; Richardson, Lucy Thou. (eds.). Research Handbook on Communicating Climatic change. Cheltenham, Gloucestershire: Edward Elgar Publishing. pp. 131–143. ISBN978-1-78990-040-8. OCLC 1226584969.
25. ^ Revet, Sandrine (2020). "Disaster Iconography: Victims, Rescue Workers, and Hazards". Disasterland. The Sciences Po Series in International Relations and Political Economy. Cham: Palgrave Macmillan. pp. 53–80. doi:10.1007/978-3-030-41582-2_3. ISBN978-iii-030-41581-5. OCLC 1153066230. S2CID 219010604.
26. ^ King, Nicholas B. (2015). "Mediating Panic: The Iconography of New Infectious Threats, 1936-2009". In Peckham, Robert (ed.). Empires of Panic: Epidemics and Colonial Anxieties. Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Printing. pp. 181–203. ISBN978-988-8208-44-9. OCLC 904372902.
27. ^ Johansson, Anna; Sternudd, Hans T. (2015). "Iconography of Suffering in Social Media: Images of Sitting Girls". In Anderson, R. (ed.). World Suffering and Quality of Life. Social Indicators Research Series. Vol. 56. Dordrecht: Springer. pp. 341–355. doi:10.1007/978-94-017-9670-5_26. ISBN978-94-017-9670-5. OCLC 902846595.
28. ^ Döring, Nicola; Walter, Roberto (2021). "Ikonografien des sexuellen Kindesmissbrauchs: Symbolbilder in Presseartikeln und Präventionsmaterialien". Studies in Communication and Media. x (three): 362–405. doi:x.5771/2192-4007-2021-3-362. ISSN 2192-4007. S2CID 242216019.

Sources [edit]

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

External links [edit]

Look up iconography in Wiktionary, the free dictionary.

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

smithevendtond.blogspot.com

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

Share this post