Iconography

The term iconography comes from the Greek eikon - image and graphos - writing. It is the study of subjects and their symbols in art. The study of art objects has long depended on the determination of the conventional language of subjects and of symbolic meanings in images. An image can have a literal or primary significance. For example, the image below is a depiction of a young woman holding child. But this image has a secondary or iconographic significance: it is not just a young woman but it is the Virgin Mary, holding the Christ Child on her hip, an allegory for the incarnation of God. The meaning of the image depends on both of these layers of significance, and it derives importance from the fact that both layers are discernible to the people for whom it was made. Medieval art is often highly symbolic, and medieval viewers frequently read several layers of symbolic meaning into images. The Bible and theological interpretations of it served as the source of much of the iconography of the middle ages, and the stories within it were extremely familiar to people. It is the pervasiveness of these stories that allowed for the complex symbolism in much medieval art.


For Further Reading:
Lash, Willem. "Iconography and iconology," The Dictionary of Art 15 (Hungary to
Iran). New York: Macmillan and Grove, 1996, 89-98.

Grabar, Oleg. Christian Iconography: A Study of its Origins. Princeton: Princeton University Press: 1968.

Panofsky, Erwin. "Introductory" to Studies in Iconology: Humanistic Themes in the Art of the Renaissance. New York: Harper & Row, 1939, 3-31.