How to Analysis a Painting With Panofsky’s Iconological Method
Erwin Panofsky (1892-1968) was a German-Jewish art historian, who’s works on iconography marks a high point for the modern academic study of not just conventional art but, intellectual history in general. Born in Hanover, Germany, Panofsky spent the majority of his academic life in the United States, due to the rise of the Nazi regime.
Iconography is that branch of the history of art which concerns itself with the subject matter or meaning of works of art, as opposed to their form. Let us then try to define the distinction between subject matter or meaning on the one hand, and form on the other. When an acquaintance greets me on the street by removing his hat, what I see from a formal point of view is nothing but the change of certain details within a configuration forming part of the general pattern of colour, lines and volumes which constitutes my world of vision. When I identify, as I automatically do, this configuration as an object (gentleman), and the change of detail as an event (hat-removing), I have already overstepped the limits of purely formal perception and entered the first sphere of subject matter or meaning. The meaning thus perceived is of an elementary and easily understandable nature, and we shall call it the factual meaning; it is apprehended by simply identifying certain visible forms with certain objects known to me from practical experience, and by identifying the change in their relations with certain actions or events.
The meaning thus discovered may be called the intrinsic meaning or content; it is essential where the two other kinds of meaning, the primary or natural and the secondary or conventional, are phenomenal. It may be defined as a unifying principle which underlies and explains both the visible event and its intelligible significance, and which determines even the form in which the visible event takes shape. This intrinsic meaning or content is, of course, as much above the sphere of conscious volitions as the expressional meaning is beneath this sphere.
Transferring the results of this analysis from every-day life to a work of art, we can distinguish in its subject matter or meaning the same three strata:
According to Erwin Panofsky there are three levels of analysing an image.
Erwin Panofsky's Iconological Method.
On the first level, when we first look at an image, we look to extract factual and expressive information. Panofsky calls this level the 'Primary' or 'Natural' level. He calls this the "what you see is what you get" stage. We do not need any particular insight to figure out what is happening in the image.
The primary analysis is where the user starts, and where the interpretation of meaning is gathered through the familiar content. Visuals are determined and defined by factual descriptions of what the user sees. Thusly the visuals take on expressional connotations that derive from the context of the visual. Users can immediately bring meaning to an image by associating it with their own personal, practical, and lived experiences.
Subdivided into FACTUAL and EXPRESSIONAL. It is apprehended by identifying pure forms, that is: certain configurations of line and colour, or certain peculiarly shaped lumps of bronze or stone, as representations of natural objects such as human beings, animals, plants, houses, tools and so forth; by identifying their mutual relations as events; and by perceiving such expressional qualities as the mournful character of a pose or gesture, or the homelike and peaceful atmosphere of an interior. The world of pure forms thus recognised as carriers of primary or natural meanings may be called the world of artistic motifs. An enumeration of these motifs would be a pre-iconographical description of the work of art.
The second level, also known as the secondary or conventional level, is where iconology begins. It is where we start to draw inferences (connotation). At this stage we need to understand what the conventions mean in the image. This is where we bring our existing literary, cultural or artistic knowledge to the forefront.
It is apprehended by realising that a male figure with a knife represents St. Bartholomew, that a female figure with a peach in her hand is a personification of Veracity, that a group of figures seated at a dinner table in a certain arrangement and in certain poses represents the Last Supper, or that two figures fighting each other in a certain manner represent the Combat of Vice and Virtue. In doing this we connect. artistic motifs and combinations of artistic motifs (compositions) with themes or concepts. Motifs thus recognised as carriers of a secondary or conventional meaning may be called images, and combinations of images are what the ancient theorists of art called ‘invenzioni;’ we are wont to call them stories and allegories. The identification of such images, stories and allegories is the domain of iconography in the narrower sense of the word. In fact, when we loosely speak of ‘subject matter as opposed to form’ we chiefly mean the sphere of secondary or conventional subject matter, viz. the world of specific themes or concepts manifested in images, stories and allegories, as opposed to the sphere of primary or natural subject matter manifested in artistic motifs. ‘Formal analysis’ in Wölfflin's sense is largely an analysis of motifs and combinations of motifs (compositions); for a formal analysis in the strict sense of the word would even have to avoid such expressions as ‘man,’ ‘horse,’ or ‘column,’ let alone such evaluations as ‘the ugly triangle between the legs of Michelangelo's David’ or ‘the admirable clarification of the joints in a human body.’ It is obvious that a correct iconographical analysis in the narrower sense presupposes a correct identification of the motifs. If the knife that enables us to identify a St. Bartholomew is not a knife but a corkscrew, the figure is not a St. Bartholomew. Furthermore, it is important to note that the statement ‘this figure is an image of St. Bartholomew’ implies the conscious intention of the artist to represent St. Bartholomew, while the expressional qualities of the figure may well be unintentional.
At the third stage, the intrinsic meaning or content level, is where the deep penetration takes place. At this level we tap into philosophical and religious persuasions, cultures, class, society’s attitudes. According to Panofsky, this is the ultimate goal of iconology.
The intrinsic level, as well as being addictive, communicates things that the creator of the image or design may not have consciously been thinking about during its creation. Through what we know of the world and linking the objects or codes in the work, this level allows us to reveal the underlying “basic attitude of a nation, a period, a class, a religious, or philosophical persuasion — unconsciously qualified by one personality and condensed into one work.” (Panofsky, 1972, p. 7).
It is apprehended by ascertaining those underlying principles which reveal the basic attitude of a nation, a period, a class, a religious or philosophical persuasion--unconsciously qualified by one personality and condensed into one work. Needless to say, these principles are manifested by, and therefore throw light on, both ‘compositional methods’ and ‘iconographical significance.’ In the 14th and 15th centuries for instance (the earliest example can be dated around 1310), the traditional type of the Nativity with the Virgin Mary reclining in bed or on a couch was frequently replaced by a new one which shows the Virgin kneeling before the Child in adoration. From a compositional point of view this change means, roughly speaking, the substitution of a triangular scheme for a rectangular one; from an iconographical point of view in the narrower sense of the term, it means the introduction of a new theme textually formulated by such writers as Pseudo-Bonaven-tura and St. Bridget. But at the same time, it reveals a new emotional attitude peculiar to the later phases of the Middle Ages. A really exhaustive interpretation of the intrinsic meaning or content might even show that the technical procedures characteristic of a certain country, period, or artist, for instance Michelangelo's preference for sculpture in stone instead of in bronze, or the peculiar use of hatchings in his drawings, are symptomatic of the same basic attitude that is discernible in all the other specific qualities of his style. In thus conceiving of pure forms, motifs, images, stories and allegories as manifestations of underlying principles, we interpret all these elements as what Ernst Cassirer has called ‘symbolical’ values. As long as we limit ourselves to stating that Leonardo da Vinci's famous fresco shows a group of thirteen men around a dinner table, and that this group of men represents the Last Supper, we deal with the work of art as such, and we interpret its compositional and iconographical features as its own properties or qualifications. But when we try to understand it as a document of Leonardo's personality, or of the civilisation of the Italian High Renaissance, or of a peculiar religious attitude, we deal with the work of art as a symptom of something else which expresses itself in a countless variety of other symptoms, and we interpret its compositional and iconographical features as more particularised evidence of this ‘something else.’
The discovery and interpretation of these ‘symbolical’ values (which are generally unknown to the artist himself and may even emphatically differ from what he consciously intended to express) is the object of what we may call iconography in a deeper sense: of a method of interpretation which arises as a synthesis rather than as an analysis. And as the correct identification of the motifs is the prerequisite of a correct iconographical analysis in the narrower sense, the correct analysis of images, stories and allegories is the prerequisite of a correct iconographical interpretation in a deeper sense,--unless we deal with such works of art in which the whole sphere of secondary or conventional subject matter is eliminated, and a direct transition from motifs to content is striven for, as is the case with European landscape painting, still-life and genre; that is, on the whole, with exceptional phenomena, which mark the later, over-sophisticated phases of a long development.
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