Iconography versus Iconology in Erwin Panofskys method

Erwin Panofskys attempt to structure elements of art theory previously accessible on empirical
bases is essential to the point of reaching austerity. Dissecting responses fuelled by intuition

22/11/2010-19:40:41 <AR202-5-FY_10a1_0920169_37EA4F08897F9B5D1B6FBBCBEB9876DC54052C65>

rather than historical accuracy to the work of art, the project materialised in Iconography and
Iconology: An Introduction to the Study of Renaissance Art is primarily methodological, and it
results in layers of meaning, progressive analysis and rigorous studies of the newly delimited
concepts a taxonomy which draws connections between the meaning in art and a history of
meaning.1 The method unfolds in a preliminary (pre-iconographical) and two main stages of
analytical development (the operations of research2), iconography and iconology, focusing on
their structural differences, only to return to them and coherently link what has been isolated,
correct what has been left incomplete and condense everything into one organic and indivisible
process.3
The essay begins by defining iconography as a branch of art history, instantly infusing the text
with an idea of structure, referring to a specialised area of expertise. The introduction states a
particular intention: to delimit the form (which becomes, from an iconological perspective, a
variety of the image4) from the subject matter or meaning; the emphasis on the two types of
approach, the formalist and the iconographical one, signalises the need for an efficient
separation between the empirically extended, biased by cultural content, grasp of form
(Wolfflins method in particular, defined as largely an analysis of motifs and combinations of
1

Christine Hasenmueller, Panofsky, Iconography, and Semiotics Source, The Journal of Aesthetics and Art
Criticism, Vol. 36, No. 3, Critical Interpretation (Spring, 1978), pp. 289-301, Blackwell Publishing on behalf of The
American Society for Aesthetics, http://www.jstor.org/stable/430439, Accessed: 04/11/2010, p289
2
Erwin Panofsky, Iconography and Iconology: An Introduction to the Study of Renaissance Art in Meaning in the
visual arts, Chicago, University of Chicago Press, 1982, c1955, p39
3
ibid., p39
4
Giulio Carlo Argan and Rebecca West, Ideology and Iconology, Critical Inquiry, Vol. 2, No. 2 (Winter, 1975), pp.
297-305, The University of Chicago Press, http://www.jstor.org/stable/1342905, Accessed: 04/11/2010, p304

motifs (compositions)5), and the literary network of meanings underlying a work of art
especially considering the spirit on an age which required all disciplines including the humanist
to function similarly to their scientific models.6 More than just applying corrective principles to
the previous theoretical and analytical endeavours and thus opening a debate aimed at
demonstrating the crucial importance of a system when studying works of art (in general and

22/11/2010-19:40:41 <AR202-5-FY_10a1_0920169_37EA4F08897F9B5D1B6FBBCBEB9876DC54052C65>

particular), Panofsky deduces that a new layer of understanding (iconology reminiscent of

Warburgs critical iconology7) is to necessarily complement iconography and extend the
intertextuality of the latter in the realm of a comprehensive cultural process.
The basic example on which Panofsky builds distinctions between the contents form and its
meaning is an event related to gestural conventions: a gentleman lifting his hat to greet an
acquaintance; by using a social sign manifested visually, the text suggests that a correct formal
approach means no more recognition than perceiving the rearrangement of a certain
configuration (consisting in patterns of colour, lines and volumes). Any form of attaching labels
to these changes involves a previous familiarity with the subject and is therefore transferred into
the universe of subject matter, whether it implies either identifying objects and events (the
factual meaning) or acknowledging the correspondent emotional responses (the expressional
meaning). These basic layers, translated into a theoretical language of art, outline the
configurative cells of analysis, the artistic motifs recognised as representing the world of
experience;8 still presupposing a descriptive approach (enriched by unconscious recognition),
they are identified as the pre-iconographical stage of Panofskys method a preliminary which,
by including the concept of pseudo-formal analysis, incorporates the corrective principle for
the previous formalistic attempts (Wolfflins in particular).

Panofsky, p30
Hasenmueller, p291
7
Silvia Ferretti (trans. by Richard Pierce), Cassirer, Panofsky, and Warburg: symbol, art, and history, New Haven,
Yale University Press, c1989, p50
8
Hasenmueller, p290
6

The factual and the expressional, as immediate and simultaneous responses to a given sign (in
this case, a work of art), constitute the primary (natural) meaning, which has a sensible quality,
addressing the faculty of perception whilst excluding any further conscious contribution at
least in a culturally compatible context, where identifying objects and events is not problematic.
Despite the fact that natural meaning provides the data for a further analytical process, the first

22/11/2010-19:40:41 <AR202-5-FY_10a1_0920169_37EA4F08897F9B5D1B6FBBCBEB9876DC54052C65>

substantial and semi-conscious stage is the iconographical one, which comprises of secondary
subject matters cultural conventions attached to the perceived material. When compared to
the primary meaning, which is sensible, the conventional one appears as intelligible, due to the
awareness it involves and thus to the process of actively accessing mental content.
Simultaneously, secondary subject matter, along with the primary one, becomes phenomenal
when considered in relation to the intrinsic meaning, the stage approached by iconology
essential in the sense of constancy, of being independent of exterior factors but based on
literary sources and tradition as opposed to innate elements of cultural background. In this
sense, the intrinsic meaning is situated on a higher level than the conscious refining of data and
subconscious emotional response functioning in a similar way to the super-ego, in Freudian
terms.
The secondary subject matter becomes accessible by joining individual or combined artistic
motifs with the relevant themes (concepts); the units of meaning resulted from this juxtaposition
are images, which subsequently composed produce either stories or, in the case of conveying
abstract ideas in culturally recognisable forms, personifications and symbols allegories. In this
sense, the articulated meaning conveyed by images acts similarly to the consciously formulated
messages codified by means of language.9 Iconography would therefore open a virtually
endless realm of possibilities and references, only some of which are adequate in every case;
by indiscriminately listing all these options, iconography not only marks the intertextual

ibid., p291

character of every work of art, but it also signalises the irrelevance of a purely formalistic
exercise when it comes to analysing a certain piece. On itself, this stage attempts an exhaustive
identification of potential images based on the correct interpretation of motifs (which would
perhaps be as easy to recognise as words, as long as the language is familiar), but
nevertheless contains in itself the necessity of a critical awareness of context.

22/11/2010-19:40:41 <AR202-5-FY_10a1_0920169_37EA4F08897F9B5D1B6FBBCBEB9876DC54052C65>

Opposed, yet complementary to this iconographical analysis is a comprehensive operation

which validates the entire method whilst crystallising previous intentions to systematise the
study of cultural history (Burckhardts historical views, Warburgs iconology, Cassirers historical
and philosophical analysis10) the iconological one. A synthesis of identification and
interpretation, iconology is the theoretical approach which results in revealing the intrinsic
meaning. Whilst the secondary subject matter is relevant as a stage of a process, thus in a
linear structure, the intrinsic one is circular describing a circulus methodicus which returns to
the previous operations in order to decode their results in a new light (the circular flow of
interpretation11). The components obtained as part of the visual analysis deconstruction (forms,
motifs, images, stories and allegories) reconnect, as incorporated into the extensive notion of
context the underlying principle which provides the historian with a deeper understanding of
the realities contemporary to a specific work of art: social and cultural aspects, mentalities,
religious and philosophical views, and so on. As this encyclopaedic knowledge unfolds, much
similar to the iconographical listing of possible references, a restriction must intervene: the
context has to be limited to a metonymy, one artist (author of a cultural text in general) and,
particularly, one work of art a specific mind-world relation generating the internal
coordination12 of the work of art. Consequently, the context is refined through the lenses of a
personal Weltanshauung, which even if partially shared with other artists of the period, still

10

Feretti, p229
Michael Ann Holly, Panofsky and the foundations of art history, Ithaca, N.Y., Cornell University Press, 1984, p41
12
Michael Podro, The critical historians of art, New Haven, Yale University Press, 1982, p202
11

retains the intrinsic specificity of each text essential for a historian whose attempt is to
recreate the creative process and its atmosphere. The symptoms of this underlying principle
also function in a reversed manner, by surpassing the individual and extending to the more
general context, to the symbolical values of Ernst Cassirers terminology.

Thus iconology

operates not only by studying the objective (a certain historical context) by means of the

22/11/2010-19:40:41 <AR202-5-FY_10a1_0920169_37EA4F08897F9B5D1B6FBBCBEB9876DC54052C65>

subjective (a certain artistic vision) and the whole by means of a part, but also by discovering
the personal shaped by exterior reality: the symbolical values are a document of the artists
personality13 which may reveal unconscious cultural and spiritual attitudes (the iconological
themes remind of Jungs collective unconscious14) and unintentional elements in general.
Whilst attempting to evoke a historical moment, iconology also indicates the analogies between
consciously retained forms and unconscious contents (indicated by elements like perspective
and proportional systems).15 Even if iconology intends to offer the perspective of knowledge
only distance could provide, it does not assume that the historian is a tabula rasa entity, an
abstraction lacking human identity. It merely consists in reviving the Hegelian project of an
absolute point of view (an a priori system) from which to consider the past, whilst demonstrating
that historians do more than just projecting or being a product of their own age.16
Similarly to explaining iconography by means of negatively defining formal analysis, Panofsky
describes the iconological algorithm primarily in contrast to features employed by secondary
meanings. The distinctions depart from the two suffixes attached to the same root: -graphy,
derived from the Greek graphein (to write) and logy, derived from logos (in the sense of
thought or reason); the structural differences between concepts are suggested in the
composed word itself. Iconography has the characteristics of a database which collects facts
about the date and provenance of a work of art, formal aspects related to style, manner, the
13

Panofsky, p31
Argan & West, p303
15
ibid., p298
16
Podro, p178
14

materialisation of themes by means of artistic motifs and so on; mainly belonging to the realm of
archival and bibliographic study, the iconographical approach is also concerned with collecting
and classifying cultural commonplaces, stereotypical motifs which undoubtedly are carriers of
well established meanings (a particular sign-function17) and its task is not to question their
validity. The unquestionable evidence, in Panofskys terms, which is furthermore collected and

22/11/2010-19:40:41 <AR202-5-FY_10a1_0920169_37EA4F08897F9B5D1B6FBBCBEB9876DC54052C65>

mechanically ordered and classified, is provided by iconology as a result of a comprehensive

contextual investigation; therefore, the final output of an iconographical operation cannot by
obtained unless within a hermeneutical circle, where the part can be understood only in relation
to the whole and vice versa, the linear stages are reversed and each alters the result of its
precedents they constitute cycles rather than sequences.18 The striking distinction between
iconography and iconology lies, nevertheless, in the demands they subject the historian to:
whilst the former does not require any intellectual contribution except establishing and labelling
categories, the latter implies a capacity of synthesis and a substantial vocation not only for
recognising patterns and interpreting history and culture, but also for becoming aware of ones
own identity and positioning within history. Whilst iconography is concerned with a coded form
of meaning, iconology crystallises significance as resulted from conceptual ordering.19
The standard definition for iconology is iconography turned interpretative;20 utilising the same
material in the sense of literary sources, the two stages are so intimately interlinked that it
becomes difficult and artificial to attempt a definitive separation of this interplay. Whilst both
comprise of essential, intelligible content and focus on cultural documents in a retrospective
approach which excludes the direct, sensible interaction with the analysed period (Panofskys
method focuses on an art which balances naturalism and idealism21 in extensive narratives of

17

Hasenmueller, p292
ibid., p297
19
ibid., p298
20
Panofsky, p32
21
Hasenmueller, p299 n8
18

literary subjects, that is to say Italian Renaissance and the painting of the Netherlands in the
fifteenth century, not on abstract modernism), iconology does not imply an actual text-support;22
it innovates by means of integrating the historical data into a creative and intuitive intellectual
understanding of the significant narratives of culture, and by rediscovering the humanism of an
age.23 Iconology surpasses the articulate of iconography24 and does not constitute the basis of

22/11/2010-19:40:41 <AR202-5-FY_10a1_0920169_37EA4F08897F9B5D1B6FBBCBEB9876DC54052C65>

analysis in the same way iconography delivers unrefined data (though it fundaments the
process of re-creating25 the historical object), but it is not the final stage of the process it
merely shifts the direction, identifying paradigmatic relationships between art and literature26
and indicating the previous stages require decoding in the light of the newly discovered
meanings and rules of correlation much in the sense of Umberto Ecos theory of literary
reception, which implies that a readers previously acquired meanings and field of further
expectations continuously changes with every read word.27
The circularity imposed by iconology does not follow the same patterns as the initial linear
approach, carrying the necessity for a corrective principle contained in the contextual framework
newly established. Once placed within the analytical horizon of reception and cultural study, a
work of art (along with its constituents) ceases to be a text suspended in space and time thus
the stages which provided the preliminary data have to also be corrected. The basic preiconographical description, which is considered highly unlikely to render errors, is subjected to a
corrective principle labelled history of style, which studies the formal aspect of objects and
events in a particular context; this device is concerned with rectifying an analysis biased by
contemporary approaches: we are reading what we see according to the manner in which

22

ibid., p294
Ann Holly, p33
24
Hasenmueller, p291
25
Panofsky, quoted by Argan & West, p300
26
Hasenmueller, p294
27
Umberto Eco, The role of the reader: explorations in the semiotics of texts, Bloomington, Indiana University
Press, c1979
23

objects and events are expressed by forms under varying historical conditions.28 In this sense,
it can be considered that the pre-iconographical corrective principle is of an iconographical
order, as well as the iconographical rectification belongs to the realm of iconology: a history of
types which allows for an intellectual contribution in an exclusively statistic approach. Whilst
based on the fundamental cells of meaning (the objects and events which constitute artistic

22/11/2010-19:40:41 <AR202-5-FY_10a1_0920169_37EA4F08897F9B5D1B6FBBCBEB9876DC54052C65>

motifs), this typology is also concerned with how their rearrangements (in order to construct
themes) depend on the correspondent historical conditions. The source of the necessary
familiarity is literature (in the sense of written cultural documents) or oral tradition either way,
even if it still requires factual knowledge to a certain degree, it also extends the purely statistical
to a perhaps more intellectual implication.
A corrective principle for iconology would be the history of cultural symptoms or symbols, in
the sense of Cassirers terminology; built upon the thematic (conceptual) structural level, its
project is to confer a neutral character to the investigative process. The intellectual contribution
and synthetic intuition in the iconological study is necessary, but it is correct only as long as it
is not altered by the interpreters psychology and Weltanshauung state which Panofsky
considers as attainable when using documents bearing witness to the political, poetical,
religious, philosophical and social tendencies of the personality, period or country under
investigation.29 Thus the subjective intuition is to be corrected and completed by the historical
insight, intimately related to tradition and, ultimately, by an act of imagination.30 Abstract and
virtually inaccessible requirement, the history of cultural symptoms implies the same demands
as Matthew Arnolds concept of disinterestedness, which emphasises that knowledge should be
concerned with abandoning the sphere of practical life and [seeing] the object as in itself it

28

Panofsky, p35
ibid., p39
30
Ann Holly, p191
29

really is31 rather than with critical and thus subjective endeavours. Nevertheless, its significance
lies in the fact it forces reassessment of the role of history in explaining art.32
Essentially, Panofsky demonstrates that the intellect is still another sector or segment of the
image,33 position which supports Lacans view of the unconscious structured as a language.34
Iconology advocates in favour of a collaborative humanistic project, in which different disciplines

22/11/2010-19:40:41 <AR202-5-FY_10a1_0920169_37EA4F08897F9B5D1B6FBBCBEB9876DC54052C65>

find common ground in the study of culture rather than of a specific subject analysis; by shifting
the plans, from the academic and intellectual to the individual and collective psychology, a new
field of research concerning subjects like sociology and psychoanalysis opens.35 Nevertheless,
if iconography is not the exclusive solution to decoding artistic texts (considering that the same
iconographical reading could be applied to two very different works), neither is iconology not a
key to decoding a definitive meaning of a work of art, the most elaborated stage of Panofskys
method rather indicates towards the elusive underlying cultural principles of representation.36
Whilst iconography fundaments a language and its intrinsic rules of codified association,
iconology examines the conscious and unconscious rules which originate the language and how
the visual and linguistic emergence occurs on the surface of human history37 reinventing a
project which could prevent what Ernst Cassirer signalised as the emblematic fatality of works of
art: Human works...Even if their existence continues they are in constant danger of losing their
meaning. Their reality is symbolic, not physical; and such reality never ceases to require
interpretation and reinterpretation.38

31

Matthew Arnold, The Function of Criticism at the present time in Selected Poems and Prose, London, Everyman,
1991, p189
32
Hassenmueller, p290
33
Argan & West, p297
34
Lacan, The Agency of the Letter in the Unconscious, in Vincent B. Leitch (ed.), The Norton Anthology of Theory
and Criticism (second edition), New York, W. W. Norton & Co., c2010, p1169
35
Argan & West, p304
36
Ann Holly, p14-15
37
ibid., p44
38
Ernst Cassirer, An Essay on Man, quoted by Ann Holly, p192

Bibliography
Michael Ann Holly, Panofsky and the foundations of art history, Ithaca, N.Y., Cornell University
Press, 1984
Giulio Carlo Argan and Rebecca West, Ideology and Iconology, Critical Inquiry, Vol. 2, No. 2

22/11/2010-19:40:41 <AR202-5-FY_10a1_0920169_37EA4F08897F9B5D1B6FBBCBEB9876DC54052C65>

(Winter,

1975),

pp.

297-305,

The

University

of

Chicago

Press,

http://www.jstor.org/stable/1342905, Accessed: 04/11/2010

Matthew Arnold, The Function of Criticism at the present time in Selected Poems and Prose,
London, Everyman, 1991
Umberto Eco, The role of the reader: explorations in the semiotics of texts, Bloomington,
Indiana University Press, c1979
Silvia Ferretti (trans. by Richard Pierce), Cassirer, Panofsky, and Warburg: symbol, art, and
history, New Haven, Yale University Press, c1989
Christine Hasenmueller, Panofsky, Iconography, and Semiotics Source, The Journal of
Aesthetics and Art Criticism, Vol. 36, No. 3, Critical Interpretation (Spring, 1978), pp. 289-301,
Blackwell

Publishing

on

behalf

of

The

American

Society

for

Aesthetics,

http://www.jstor.org/stable/430439, Accessed: 04/11/2010

Jacques Lacan, The Agency of the Letter in the Unconscious, in Vincent B. Leitch (ed.), The
Norton Anthology of Theory and Criticism (second edition), New York, W. W. Norton & Co.,
c2010
Irving Lavin (ed.), Meaning in the visual arts: views from the outside: a centennial
commemoration of Erwin Panofsky (1892-1968), Princeton, Institute for Advanced study, 1995
Erwin Panofsky, Iconography and Iconology: An Introduction to the Study of Renaissance Art,
in Meaning in the visual arts, Chicago, University of Chicago Press, 1982, c1955
10

Michael Podro, The critical historians of art, New Haven, Yale University Press, 1982
Donald Preziosi (ed.), The art of art history: a critical anthology, Oxford, Oxford University
Press, 2009
Paul Smith and Carolyn Wilde (eds.), A companion to art theory, Oxford, Blackwell, 2002

22/11/2010-19:40:41 <AR202-5-FY_10a1_0920169_37EA4F08897F9B5D1B6FBBCBEB9876DC54052C65>

Irving L. Zupnick, The Iconology of Style (Or Wlfflin Reconsidered), The Journal of Aesthetics
and Art Criticism, Vol. 19, No. 3 (Spring, 1961), pp. 263-273, Blackwell Publishing on behalf of
The American Society for Aesthetics, http://www.jstor.org/stable/428069, Accessed: 04/11/2010

11