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The Reading Images Project |
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The Reading Images Project |
Iconography: precedents
One of the central methods by which art historians draw meaning from a work of art is via comparison. The goal is to determine the ways in which a given artist might reflect his culture and the ways in which he is distinctive. How are similar subjects, figures, and ideas represented in his predecessors and contemporaries? Do spaces that serve the same purpose (e.g., altars, tombs, libraries) share any similarities of content? What might an audience at a given place or time be expected to know to understand the message the artist is providing?
The relation of pagan "famous men" to Christian precepts
| Since Early
Christianity theologians had identified pagan "famous men" as
prefigurations of Christian virtues, and Italian Renaissance writers and
thinkers saw moral lessons in stories dealing with pre-Christian themes.(31)
Thus pagan figures and narratives could be included in decorations that
otherwise concerned religious ideas, to more clearly inform viewers about
the messages that works were intended to convey. |
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Luca Signorelli, Cappella Nuova, Orvieto Cathedral, 1499 |
In Luca
Signorelli's fresco cycle
of the Last Judgment at Orvieto Cathedral (left), religious narratives illustrating
the end of the world stand above figures from the pagan world, such as Hercules,
Orpheus, Aeneas, Perseus, and Meleager. As exemplars of moral behavior,
these figures instruct viewers, just as do their Christian counterparts,
in the path to salvation. They broaden the scope of the cycle by demonstrating
different ways that human beings have wrestled with death, and they offer
a variety of personality types through which the spectators can consider
their own search for a life after death. |
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