In every living art the conventions and symbols, as well as their meanings, change with the passage of time and the growth of ideas many disappear, while others become almost unintelligible to a later generation and can be recovered only by intensive study. An example is the still life vanitas vanitatum of the Middle Ages, a reminder of the transitory quality of earthly pleasure symbolized by a skull, candle, and hourglass (or, in later versions, a watch).
Some attributes are more difficult to understand, and their obscurity has led scholars to consult other images or literary sources in order to interpret the motif more satisfactorily.Ĭertain themes characteristic of a specific philosophy have been commonly represented during an era, and an iconography has been developed to express them. This wheel is a familiar attribute that serves to identify her and that at the same time signifies a miracle connected with her martyrdom. Catherine of Alexandria is traditionally portrayed in the presence of a wheel.
The importance of identifying motifs is central to iconographical interpretation. As used today, therefore, the term is necessarily qualified to indicate the field of iconographic study under discussion-e.g., the iconography of the various Egyptian deities, the iconography of Roman imperial portraits, early Christian iconography, Buddhist or Hindu iconography, Byzantine iconography, Gothic iconography.Īs a method of scholarly research the science of iconography strives also to recover and express the thought from which a given convention of representation has arisen, particularly when the convention has assumed the value of a symbol. With the rise of the systematic investigation of art from prehistoric ages to modern times, it became apparent that each major phase or epoch in which figural representations occur had created and developed in varying degrees of richness and elaboration an iconography of its own. But it came shortly to be applied more specifically to the history and classification of Christian images and symbols of all sorts, in whatever medium they happened to be rendered originally or in whatever way they were reproduced for study. the term was confined to the study of engravings, which were then the standard mode of illustrating books on art and on antiquities in general. The Meaning and Significance of Iconography The church will be his last work.Iconography (īˌkŏnŏgˈrəfē) or iconology, in art history, the study and interpretation of figural representations, either individual or symbolic, religious or secular more broadly, the art of representation by pictures or images, which may or may not have a symbolic as well as an apparent or superficial meaning. Iconographer George Filippakis with sketches of the remaining works on the ceiling of the Dormition of the Virgin Mary Greek Orthodox Church. The dome of the Dormition of the Virgin Mary Greek Orthodox was done earlier by iconographer George Filippakis. Iconographer George Filippakis works on the ceiling of the Dormition of the Virgin Mary Greek Orthodox Church on Monday.
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