Undergraduate Course: Iconography and Iconology: Critical Approaches to Interpretation and Visual Analysis in Medieval and Renaissance Works o (HIAR10133)
Course Outline
| School | Edinburgh College of Art |
College | College of Humanities and Social Science |
| Credit level (Normal year taken) | SCQF Level 10 (Year 4 Undergraduate) |
Availability | Not available to visiting students |
| SCQF Credits | 20 |
ECTS Credits | 10 |
| Summary | This course will operate a case-study approach, with each seminar driven by the critical analysis of works of key art historians in the field of iconographical and iconological studies, including Aby Warburg, Erwin Panofksy, Edgar Wind, Ernst Gombrich, Jonathan Alexander, Michael Baxandall, and Salvatore Settis. Class discussions will be framed around pertinent medieval and Renaissance art works that have formed the focus of these scholars¿ outputs, such as Giorgione¿s Tempesta, Jan van Eyck¿s Arnolfini Portrait, the Limbourgs¿ Très Riches Heures du Duc de Berry, Albrecht Dürer¿s Melencolia I, and Raphael¿s Stanza della Segnatura. The course will also draw upon a selection of other works of art relevant to the methodological approaches and key concerns (political, historical/contextual, gendered, etc.), and this in both the classroom and the art gallery setting. By embedding the course within the wider field of visual analysis ¿ such as the contributions of the likes of John Berger and Roland Barthes ¿ the outcome will be a firm grasp of the issues involved in unpacking the ¿messaging¿ inherent to imaging systems, as well as a close critical handling of a selection of the most significant approaches within art history. |
| Course description |
1: ¿Reading Images¿? An introduction to iconography and iconology
2: The need for interpretation: iconology and the medieval image
3: The mode of interpretation: Erwin Panofsky and Albrecht Dürer¿s Melencolia I
4: The content of interpretation: Aby Warburg, Edgar Wind and Humanist Mythologies
5: Interpretation in context: Ernst Gombrich and Raphael¿s Stanza della Segnatura
6: Testing interpretation: selected art works in the National Gallery of Scotland
7: The limits of interpretation: Michael Baxandall, the ¿Period Eye¿ and cultural conditions
8: The interpretative mystery: Salvatore Settis and Giorgione¿s Tempesta
9: The problem of interpretation: Jan van Eyck¿s Arnolfini Portrait
10: Conclusions? Interpreting iconology in the expanded field
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Course Delivery Information
| Not being delivered |
Learning Outcomes
On completion of this course, the student will be able to:
- On successful completion of the course, students will be able to:
1. Explain the context, function and use of the key art works under consideration.
- 2. Discuss the selected theoretical approaches in terms of their usefulness for the selected case-studies.
- 3. Distinguish between the various iconographical and iconological theoretical approaches in a holistic manner and describe the interactions between the different scholarly approaches under consideration.
- 4. Engage critically and analytically with a wide range of sources, both textual (English-language) and visual.
- 5. Make connections between iconological approaches to the history of art within the expanded field (art history, history, social and political history, gendered) in order to engage with the notion of interpreting ¿meaning¿.
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Reading List
Select bibliography:
BARTHES, Roland and HEATH, Stephen (ed. and trans), Image Music Text (London: Fontana Press, 1977)
BAXANDALL, Michael, Painting and Experience in Fifteenth Century Italy (Oxford/New York: Oxford University Press, 1974, c.1972)
BERGER, John, Ways of Seeing (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1972)
BRYSON, Norman, HOLLY, Michael Ann, MOXEY, Keith (eds.), Visual Theory. Painting and Interpretation (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1991)
GOMBRICH, Ernst, Gombrich on the Renaissance, Vol. 2: Symbolic Images (London: Phaidon, 1972)
GOMBRICH, Ernst, Symbolic Images: Studies in the Art of the Renaissance (3rd edition. Oxford: Phaidon, 1985)
HATT, Michael and KLONK, Charlotte, Art History: A Critical Introduction to its Methods (Manchester/New York: Manchester University Press, 2006)
MITCHELL, W.J.T. Mitchell, Iconology; Image, Text, Ideology (Chicago/London: University of Chicago Press: University of Chicago Press, c.1986)
MOXEY, Keith and HOLLY, Michael Ann (eds.), Meanings and Methods in Art History (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1998)
PANOFKSY Erwin, Meaning in the Visual Arts (Garden City/New York: Doubleday, 1955. See also later editions)
PANOFSKY, Erwin, Studies in Iconology: Humanistic Themes in the Art of the Renaissance (First published 1939, new edition Boulder/Oxford: Westview Press, 1972). See especially Chapter 1, 'Introductory', which was also published in Panofsky's Meaning in the Visual Arts.
PODRO, Michael, The Critical Historians of Art (New Haven/London: Yale University Press, 1982)
SETTIS, Salvatore (trans. BIANCHINI, Ellen), Giorgione¿s Tempest: Interpreting the Hidden Subject (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1990)
WARBURG, Aby, The Renewal of Pagan Antiquity (Los Angeles: Getty Research Institute, 1999)
WIND, Edgar, Pagan Mysteries in the Renaissance (London: Faber, 1958, 1968. Also New York/Toronto: W.W. Norton/G.J.McLeod, c.1968/c.1958; Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1980)
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Additional Information
| Graduate Attributes and Skills |
Advanced visual skills, communication skills (written and oral), research skills, analytical and interpretative skills, logical thought processes, ability to assess and evaluate sources, study independently and to deadlines |
| Additional Class Delivery Information |
1 x 2 hour Seminar per week |
| Keywords | Iconography, iconology, medieval, Renaissance, critical analysis, methodological approaches, politic |
Contacts
| Course organiser | Miss Irene Mariani
Tel:
Email: Irene.Mariani@ed.ac.uk |
Course secretary | Mrs Sue Cavanagh
Tel: (0131 6)51 1460
Email: Sue.Cavanagh@ed.ac.uk |
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