Iconography

Iconography is, firstly, the totality of images, symbols and motifs present in a work of art and, secondly, the branch of art history that studies their origin, meaning and evolution. Iconographic analysis asks not 'how is it depicted?' but 'what is depicted and what does it mean?': it identifies figures, subjects and their attributes, decodes symbolism and traces the established ways of representing particular themes throughout history. For example, keys point to Saint Peter, and a lily to the Annunciation and purity. As a scholarly discipline iconography took shape in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, and its most influential theoretical model was proposed by the German and American scholar Erwin Panofsky. He distinguished three levels of analysis: pre-iconographic description (recognizing forms and objects), iconographic analysis proper (identifying subjects and symbols) and iconological interpretation (revealing the deeper cultural, philosophical and worldview meaning of an age). Iconography is especially important for understanding religious, mythological and allegorical art, as well as the Eastern Christian icon, where the canonical images of Christ, the Mother of God and the saints follow strict traditional schemes charged with deep theological meaning.