panofsky, iconography, and semiotics

Panofsky, Iconography, and SemioticsAuthor(s): Christine HasenmuellerSource: The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism, Vol. 36, No. 3, Critical Interpretation(Spring, 1978), pp. 289-301Published by: Wiley on behalf of The American Society for AestheticsStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/430439 .Accessed: 29/09/2013 19:21

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CHRISTINE HASENMUELLER

Panofsky, Iconography, and Semiotics

THERE HAS BEEN little active experimenta- tion with extending the methods and concepts of structuralism and semiology to the subject matter of art history. Reluctance has 'stemmed from several factors: implicit acceptance of history as a mode of explanation, the tendency among art historians to distinguish investigations of form from in- terpretations of content or meaning, and the fact that art history- almost by definition - accords a special place in civilization to art, especially to Western art of the classical tradition. The classical bias built into the terminology and methods of the discipline is diametrically opposed to the structuralist assumption of the essential equiva- lence of

"primitive" and "civilized" thinking. Finally, art history in the United States has been characterized by a strong value on concrete data and conclusions and a corre- sponding suspicion of attempts to deduce intangibles.1

Nevertheless, in recent years, there have been some interesting attempts to discern parallels between structuralism and art history.2 The work of Erwin Panofsky, especially, has been considered "semiotic" in character. Argan recently found it so clearly so that he labelled Panofsky the "Saussure" of art history.3 Two works have attracted most of the inquiry into Panofsky's work as an incipient "semiotic": Gothic Architecture and Scholasticism and

"Iconography and Iconology: An Introduction to the Study of Renaissance Art." 4 The latter essay is a detailed attempt to discern strata of mean-

CIRISTINE HASENMUELLER is associate professor in the department of fine arts at Vanderbilt University.

ing, elucidate interpretive processes that constitute various levels of understanding, and present a taxonomy to specify relationships between meaning in art and a "history of meaning." For a generation it has stood as the primary statement of the "iconological method" in art history, and as the stand- ard definition of the concepts iconography and iconology. Within art history, Panof- sky's work has been appreciated chiefly at face value as an authoritative definition of concepts and methods. There has been little systematic attempt to assess the implications of his contributions to implicit notions of "meaning," and to "history" as a mode of ordering information about art.

Most attempts to analyze Panofsky's work from the perspective of semiotics proceed from a wish to establish a foundation in extant art historical studies of meaning for a semiotic of art.5 They inevitably emphasize the correspondences between Panofsky's thinking and the conceptual vocabulary of semiology, and minimize - or ignore - the fact that his concepts are highly integrated with the art historical theory of which they are a part.

Panofsky's concepts iconography and iconology certainly subsume brilliant definitions that clarify practice, and bear striking resemblances to some ideas typical of semiology. But to assess whether Panofsky's system is, as Argan suggested, a "semiotic of art" we must begin with an examination of the logic of the essay itself and of its place in a largely implicit and still obscure body of art historical theory. Comparison of the resulting redefinitions with recent explica- tions of the notions of

"sign" and "symbol"


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will reveal fundamental distinctions between Panofsky's method and semiology. The comparison has broad implications for both fields. The very proposal of a "semiotic of art" has a "cathartic" effect- to use Barthes's term - for historians, forcing re- assessment of the role of history in explain- ing art.6 Conversely, the test of adapting semiological concepts and methods to painting underlines some limitations on semiology deriving from long association of its conceptual language with linguistic and literary material. It poses, from another angle, Sperber's question as to whether the notion of sign is adequate to all forms of meaning.7

Panofsky distinguished three levels of meaning in Renaissance art.8 He presented them through an analogy with three phrases of the interpretation of an instance of communicative behavior - a man tipping his hat. Primary or natural meaning, the first phase, he subdivided into recognition of factual meaning, and empathetic apprehension of expressional meaning. Identifi- cation of visual data with objects known from experience was factual, while sensitiv- ity to psychological nuances of these facts consisted in understanding of expressional meaning.

Recognition of the act as a greeting presupposed a shared cultural context, and a second phase of interpretation that Panof- sky labelled secondary or conventional. While he considered both these strata of meaning to be phenomenal, he recognized a difference between the two at the level of interpretive processes. Where primary meaning was sensible, Panofsky defined secondary meaning as intelligible.9 Clearly the intelligent interpretation of conventional meaning based on shared knowledge of the systematic association of the gesture with its message implies a notion of meaning that is in a general way "semiotic." Although Pa- nofsky did not use the concept "sign," he set up, at this point in his argument, a thoroughly parallel association of a "signify- ing" gesture and a "signified" message of greeting.

The third level, which Panofsky called intrinsic meaning, is somewhat different, and its relationship to semiotic notions of

meaning are nowhere near so obvious. Panofsky set it apart from the first two levels of meaning, by stating that intrinsic meaning was "essential" where natural and conventional meaning were "phenomenal." A social act like tipping a hat conveyed, in Panofsky's view, fragments of information about the character and philosophical orientation of the actor. Though these atti- tudes were not reconstructable on this evidence, they were nevertheless indicated "symptomatically."

Three analogous levels of meaning in art become the objects of pre-iconographic, iconographic, and iconological interpretation. Pre-iconograpiLic description was the recognition of "pure forms." In the hat example, primary meaning meant direct association of a new visual experience with memory; with art there was an additional step in recognition of the motif in art as a representation of the world of experience.10 In effect, then, pre-iconographic description consisted in acceptance of form in art as a carrier of primary or natural meaning.

Iconography was the intellectual interpretation of secondary or conventional subject matter analogous to the second level of interpretation of social acts. Recognition that form may refer to "themes and concepts" as well as visual experiences presupposed both a correct pre-iconographic description and knowledge of the literary sources. Panofsky's definition of image as a conventional association of motif and literary content is easily seen as parallel to the concept "sign." An image was defined by its explicit duality: it constituted the point of intersection between reference in art to nature and reference to literature. It is very difficult to decide what kind of linguistic signa are most closely paralleled by this relationship. Not only are there many alternative taxonomies for the linguistic phenomena, but even within one taxonomy, the fit of categories to the "signifier/ signified" relationship Panofsky described is ambiguous. Edmund Leach, for instance, labels as signs those signa in which signifier/ signified are related as the part to the whole." Certainly to the extent that naturalistic representations for Panofsky "mean"

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by becoming an extension - part - of the naturalistic phenomena represented, they approximate this designation. However, association of signifier/signified by planned resemblance, as in a map or portrait, Leach assigned to icons, which in turn are a va- riety of symbol - and as such, contrasted to signs. Panofsky's concepts do not admit of a consistent and unambiguous "transla- tion" into Leach's or other specific semiotic terminology.

Significantly, Panofsky included only certain aspects of the capacity of elements in art to refer to external ideas in his definition of image. It follows that only certain operations of the interpretation of these references consist in iconography. Interpre- tation of images is concerned with conscious shaping of references to "themes and concepts"- further defined as "stories and allegories." Iconography is, then, the analysis of systematic associations of motif and literary content.

Panofsky defined the third phase, iconology, as: "ascertaining those underlying principles which reveal the basic attitude of a nation, a period, a class, a religious or philosophical persuasion- unconsciously quali- fied by one personality and condensed in one work." 12 It involved a level of meaning analogous to the "essential" meaning of social acts. These

"underlying principles" cannot be reconstructed on the basis of their partial manifestation in a single work, but nevertheless are presumably analyzable.

The principles that are the ultimate object of iconology played a role in every step of the creative process - even such factors as choice of media. They presumably affected representation of nature and influenced iconography. The data are thus not discrete. Panofsky drew fundamental distinctions, however, between the methods of iconology and the methods appropriate to more concrete levels of meaning. He viewed iconography and pre-iconographic interpretation as descriptive processes, and iconology, by contrast, as a matter of synthesis. There is a certain defensiveness detectable at this point in his argument: Panofsky was deeply aware of the contrast between the

"descriptive and classificatory" character he ascribed

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to the first two levels of his analysis, and the inherently interpretive and subjective character of analysis that went beyond this. He alluded to the "danger" that iconology would behave like astrology, i.e., become hopelessly unscientific, and apologetically remarked that the faculty needed for iconological insight might best be described by "the rather discredited term 'synthetic intuition.' "13 He well knew the difficulties of verifying the conclusions of investigation that transcended empirical data, and of de- fending them in an age when humanistic studies felt increasingly compelled to model themselves on the sciences.

The terminology Panofsky used in distinguishing iconology from iconography indirectly supports the analogy between iconography and general characteristics of signs. In stating that iconology was interpretation that went beyond the articulate he implied that the subject of iconography was articulate.14 Panofsky was quite explicit about the unconscious character of intrinsic meaning: by contrast, the object of iconography was consciously used conventional codes. Finally, Panofsky identified the object of iconology with what Cassirer called "symbolical values." 15 He contrasted, then, meaning which was articulate, conscious, and decodable through literary keys to meaning that was essential, unconscious, and accessible only to subjective understanding.

The systematic, conventional meaning ar- ticulated in images behaves much like the messages conveyed through the conscious use of language as a code. And the notion image has many characteristics of typical definitions of the concept "sign." The problem lies, however, not in assimilating iconography to the comparatively concrete levels of semiological investigation, but in assessing the relationship between iconology and extensions of the linguistic model to a more abstract interpretation of "deep" meaning. The development of semiological methods in the literatures has led to wide agreement that there is a high degree of continuity of the data and methods applicable between relatively concrete levels of sign function and what might be called, to bor- row Panofsky's term, "essential" meaning.


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Panofsky himself, as we have seen, drew several kinds of distinctions between these levels of analysis. The question must be, then, whether his distinctions are substan- tive. First, can the notion of "sign" usefully be extended from iconography to Panofsky's levels 1 and 3; second, did Panofsky intend such a continuity? The first question concerns the limits of a "semiotic of art." The second concerns the relationship between Panofsky's conceptual vocabulary and that of semiotics. Panofsky indeed tried to establish a continuity of his own among his three levels. The epistemological problems he encountered are significant not only for the interpretation of his work, but for any attempt to forge a "semiotic of art." Exami- nation of the object and methods of each phase of the investigation will provide a basis for deciding whether it consists in a sequence of discrete procedures or parts of a unified - and essentially semiological- inquiry.

The notion of pre-iconographic meaning presupposed a substratum of naturalism in painting. Panofsky restricted his consideration to Renaissance art, where representation of nature is the normal modality of artistic communication. Correct pre- iconographical description was the foundation of understanding: the work of art becomes "sensible" as an indirect part of the nature that it represents.

Where the artist and the interpreter are not part of the same cultural/historical group, representational conventions are not part of a shared tacit knowledge: it is necessary for the interpreter to understand and bracket characteristics of representation typical of the time and place a work of art was made in order for this

"identity" between the representation and nature to occur.16 Panofsky stated that pre-iconographic description must be guided by the "corrective principle" of the history of style. This cautionary procedure indicates two significant assumptions that underlie the argument. At this level, motifs "mean" nature. And, meaning is "decoded" by recognizing the systematic relationship between motifs and nature so that the latter may be included in our interpretation of the former.

"Style" was seen, by implication, as a changing set of representational conventions that mediate the relationship between motif and nature. To be sure, Panofsky broadly allowed at a later point in his argument, that iconological meaning may infuse all aspects of a work of art, including style. But style remained primarily a factor that conditions interpretation rather than a locus of meaning.

"Iconographic meaning" was systematic and arbitrary. Its interpretation involved the

"decoding" of images - units much like signs; iconography is, in effect, the analysis of a particular "sign-function" within the spectrum of artistic meaning. It is concerned with the meaning of conventional vocabularies of images defined by their reference to literary sources. The effect is to support a concept of the "meaning" of art that may be satisfactorily stated by establishing the source of the artistic image in literature. As was the case with pre-iconographic meaning, form in art was seen to signify through reference to a range of phenomena outside the work of art. Just as form was "sensible" as the indirect reflection of visual data of the lived world, it is "intelligible" as a reformu- lation of literary content.

The "meaning" and "referents" of art are closely related, but not necessarily identical. If they are equated, as often happens in practice - and there is little in Panofsky's definitions to discourage this inference - then art becomes, willy-nilly, a fundamentally lexical phenomenon. Motifs and images might seem "sign-like" in terms of their relationships to external units of meaning. But the "sign system" thus defined is secondary and incomplete. It is a "lexicon" without its own "syntax." Either its "systematic" character is a mere reflection of the patterns formed by its referents, or its capacity to generate independent statements is outside the interpretive power of Panofsky's analysis.

To return to the basic analogy: iconography was compared to our recognition of the tipping of a man's hat as a greeting. In the same way, Panofsky suggested, we recognize that a picture of thirteen men seated around a table represents the Last Supper.17

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The two interpretive acts are certainly parallel in that a greater degree of culturally shared knowledge is necessary to conclude that the tipped hat conveys greeting, and that the picture refers to a particular supper than to recognize the visual data as resulting from, respectively, a man's gesture and a representation of thirteen men eating. The kind of knowledge that allows our recognition of the Last Supper differs, however, from that which allows interpretation of the greeting in three important ways.

First, acts and situations are distinguish- alle from representations of acts and situations by the fact of representation alone. Interpretation of the latter must consider not only the parallels between representation and represented, but also the differences of structure and function. Panofsky's essay did not emphasize this, but an extension of his example makes the point clear. Our interpretation of a representation of gestures of greeting - such as the gestures of the men with their hats in Courbet's The Encounter - is doubtless parallel to our interpretation of the observed acts themselves.18 That is, our recognition that the picture shows men making gestures of greeting is based on our ability to recognize ac- tual gestures as greetings. The representation, however, is not a greeting -and does not function like or "mean" the same thing as the greetings depicted.19 Even where art directly represents communicative acts, then, the meaning effects of representation and represented are related but not congru- ent. The conclusion that the representation "means" what is represented- or means the same thing as what is represented - is mani- festly unsatisfactory. Ironically it is the meaning expressed by representing-perhaps the dimension of meaning most intrinsic to art -that is minimized or excluded if Panofsky's analogy is taken too literally.

Second, where the meaning of the conventional gesture is generic, the meaning of the majority of conventional themes in painting depends on their specific association with literary events. A distinction drawn in Leach's taxonomy of communication events is helpful. The relationship between the gesture of tipping a hat and its

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meaning is that of a sign: the message bearing entity has a fixed, conventional, denota- tive association with its message.20 The relationship between a representation of the Last Supper and its referent is specific- singular. The relationship of message bearing entity and message approximates the "separately defined denotation" that characterizes Leach's definition of a symbol. He follows Mulder and Hervey in defining symbols as "signa dependent on a separate (occasional) definition for their correct interpretation." 21

Both signs and symbols in Leach's terminology, are signa - that is, they are variants of a general type of "communication dyad" composed of a message-bearing entity (compare: "signifier") and a message (compare: "signified") associated by arbitrary human choice. Both sign and symbol share the general characteristics often associated with the term "sign" when that term is used in its more general sense. There is no barrier, then, to considering Leach's signs and symbols as proper objects of semiotics broadly defined as the "science of signs." Leach's very definition of symbol does not, as Sperber's does, pose the question of the validity of semiotic investigation of the symbolic.22 However, the distinctions Leach draws between the two kinds of signa do suggest some limitations on semiotic analysis of symbols. He emphasizes that "sign relationships are mainly metonymic, while symbol relationships are arbitrary assertions of similarity and therefore mainly metaphoric...." 23 Signs are always part of sets and convey information only when com- bined with others of this set or context. The meaningfulness of signs, therefore, is a function of their patterned contiguity to other signs of the same set. The metonymic (or syntagmatic, to use the parallel term pre- ferred by Levi-Strauss and de Saussure) relationships of sequences of signs both identify the set and actualize the meaning potential of individual signs. Symbols, by contrast, relate two elements (message-bearing entity and message) drawn from differing realms, and associated uniquely.24 Meaning is not dependent on patterned relationships to other symbols of the same kind. Symbolic re-


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lationships thus are mainly metaphoric (or in de Saussure's parallel term, paradigmatic).

Leach makes it clear that the same entities may be defined as signs or as symbols depend- ing on context or function, and that signs and symbols normally occur in combination. Still, the distinction is significant for the method of interpretation applied. The uniqueness of symbols means that they cannot be "decoded" simply by identifying the "code" (set of signs) and bringing to bear knowledge of the lexicon and syntactic structure adequate to "read" the statement in question. Symbols typically occur in con- trastive relationships, but do not require the context of a patterned metonymy (e.g., a syntax) in order to convey meaning. Sym- bolic meaning depends on metaphoric asser- tion of identity between signifier and signified: interpretation depends on specification of this identity.

Leach's enterprise bears comparison to Panofsky's. He adapted some structuralist assumptions (e.g., that behavior may be understood as fundamentally communicative), and a terminology from semiotics to the description and analysis of behavior. Panofsky viewed art as fundamentally communicative, and attempted to forge a method for the analysis of levels of meaning conveyed by artistic form. He arrived at a set of concepts that approximate, in limited ways, the conceptual vocabulary of semiotics. In both cases, the ultimate object of understanding is non-verbal, and the model for understanding it rests at key points on methods for analysis of verbal materials. Both face, in very different ways, the problem of co-ordinating verbal and non-verbal modes of expressing meaning.

Secondary or conventional meaning - the object of iconography - has much in com- mon with Leach's notion of the symbol. The linkage between motif and convention- ally recognized referent in the image is essentially that of meaning-bearing entity and message in Leach's symbol. This is most clear in the method by which images are to be understood. The image associates a motif, which is an element from the "context" of representation of nature, with a theme or story drawn from the "context" of

literature. The result is a unit of a "metaphoric" character. Significantly, it is to be deciphered not by looking at its place in the patterned relationships of similar units in the work of art, but by discovering the particular basis of the association of the two elements.

A third distinction between iconography and interpretation of a gesture of greeting lies in the fact that Panofsky specifically identified iconography as the description of "themes and concepts transmitted through literary sources." 25 In distinguishing iconography from iconology, he obliquely ad- mitted the epistemological advantages of this "literariness." There was to be, lamen- tably, no "text" for iconology.26 Without such concrete evidence, the investigator was thrown back upon "synthetic intuition." In practice, the explication of "meaning" in art is often equated to the correct identification of the "texts" of images. Iconography thus concerned identification of paradigmatic relationships between art and literature. Patterned relationships among images -metonymy- were not systematically considered.

The conviction that iconographical meaning is fundamentally literary is paradoxical with regard to the question of the "proto- semiotic" character of Panofsky's investigation. On one hand, support of identity between art and literature may be read as license to extend semiological investigations of literature to art. One might hope to arrive at a "semiotic of art" by the device of annexing art to literature. On the other hand, such an extreme extension of the principle of "ut pictura poesis" would ob- viate a specific "semiotic of art." The extent of efforts to explain away some problemati- cal differences between art and literature, however, tends to suggest that a fundamental identity between art and literature is widely assumed. Painting presents its com- ponents simultaneously rather than sequen- tially. This is awkward for models adapted to description of narrative - semiological and otherwise! There is, however, a con- siderable literature that tends to minimize this characteristic of painting and rational- ize modes of analysis that are based on time

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sequence. The fact that motifs in painting refer to episodes in literature itself invites consideration of painting as a partial or secondary reflection of a temporal art. Much Western painting of the later Middle Ages and Renaissance clearly attempts to suggest the episodic sequence of literature through inclusion of references to more than one phase in an action or by juxta- position of separate representations of se- quential episodes. Another widespread view attempts to infuse sequentiality into painting by specifying the order in which formal arrangement dictates that the eye shall experience images. It is widely supposed that the formal order of painting often, presumably by the artist's design, directs the move- ment of the eye to create a sequence of im- pressions. Ideas like these have eased the approach from semiology of narrative to semiology of the literary aspects of art. The result has been concentration on these aspects of art and correspondent slowness to define a semiology of purely visual elements.

Additional factors have reinforced this iconographic focus on the literary aspects of art. The attempt to discover literary sources is document-oriented, and therefore con- forms to preference for quasi-empirical problems and methods. And, where the question of the particular meaning of a given work of art is a fundamentally synchronic issue, the meaning of isolated elements is adaptable to diachronic answers. Panofsky noted that images in art have their own history, often digressing from the history of the literary imagery upon which they are ultimately based.27 This history of images or "types" considered in isolation is parallel to etymology. It is a limited form of diachronic investigation that elaborates a lexicon without encountering the problems of interpreting the function of those elements in relation to each other. Such a "history" has the advantage of avoiding dependence on highly subjective interpreta- tions, but its conclusions are strictly limited in scale. Much iconography, in practice, poses questions that are "etymological" rather than interpretive of meaning.

The apparent simplicity of "metonymic" (syntagmatic) structures formed by images

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ally them with the units Leach called symbols.28 The reasons for Panofsky's de- emphasis of these relations, however, are best sought in the implicit theory of art history. Relationships among forms in art are traditionally conceived as an element of style, constrained by the exigencies of representation where this is relevant. The tendency not to assign the relationships among images a major role in the expression of meaning may reflect the assumption that these relationships are controlled by factors external to problems of iconographic meaning, and are, to that degree, "meaning neutral."

If illusionistic painting is a representation of the appearance of nature in accordance with certain stylistic conventions, then most of the configuration of motifs is "dic- tated" by the order of nature, the optical conditions of its apprehension, and the technical conventions of its representation. Often it is just those formal relationships that seem to contradict what might be ex- pected from a "naturalistic" representation that are recognized as significant. Typically it is details that seem anomalous that elicit explanation in terms of the artist's symbolic intent - or his technical limitations.

Iconography, then, has a generally "semiotic" character, but there are two problems with considering iconography a "semiotic of art." First, the semiotic functions ascribed to the units in question are very limited. Images are parallel to the signa Leach called symbols. They are uniquely defined, and patterned relationship with like units is of relatively small importance in interpretation. Models from semiotics which emphasize patterned metonymy may not be applicable. Second, iconography is concerned with only a narrow dimension of the meaning of art. Much of its appeal as a method is based on the epistemological advantages of this limitation to literary content.

As a stratum of the meaning of art, iconology is a paradox. Panofsky made it dependent upon and continuous with the first two levels, yet contrasted the nature of the meaning at stake and the method needed to discover it with the objects and


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methods of the previous phases of analysis. It is both correspondent to the other two categories and a way of begging the question of categories.

The distinction between iconography and iconology is largely methodological. Panof- sky considered iconography, like ethnogra- phy and other studies characterized by the suffix, to be fundamentally descriptive.29 The method proposed responds to a value on objectivity, and the concept "iconographic meaning" may even be seen as secondary to the method and the criteria that define it. Iconology, by contrast, is Panof- sky's name for analysis of meaning that transcends the limits of this kind of investigation. It is iconography stripped of the "restrictions" he found especially evident in America, and taken out of the narrow isolation imposed by these methodological criteria.30

The cautions Panofsky set forth for iconology reveal his awareness of the criticism to which it would be subject. He stated the danger that it might become like astrology rather than like scientific pursuits designed by the "ology" suffix denoting analysis rather than mere description. He profoundly recognized that not all of that which humanists wish to understand is in- vestigatable in accordance with the "scientific" criteria of investigation and verifiabil- ity that tend to be readily accepted in our intellectual climate. Where iconography is restricted to that which is "knowable" given certain criteria of method, iconology is defined by the intuitive capacity of the mind to pose and attempt to solve problems that defy these limits.

"Synthetic intuition," indeed, is not so much a method as a human capacity: it is not an investigative process but a dimension of mind. The object of this thinking is, correspondingly, not a delimited kind of data but "principles which underlie the choice and presentation of motifs as well as the production and interpretation of images, stories, and allegories, and which give meaning even to formal arrangements and technical procedures employed." 31 Though it is possible to assess the relationship between iconography and semiotics by

comparison of explicitly defined terms, it is not easy to specify precisely what is done in iconology, much less the relationship of this to semiology.

The parallels between iconology and semiology concern not method and concepts but assumptions. Panofsky assumed that "symbolical values" infuse cultural products including art and literature. The suggestion that iconology utilize the "corrective principle" of comparing results to the conclusions of similar analyses of literature pre- supposes their ultimate homogeneity.32

The assumption of such an underlying unity allies Panofsky with the structuralists and semio!ogists, but even more directly, with Geistesgeschichte, the school of art historical thinking out of which his ideas developed. This unity of the arts was formerly explained as the result of a determining force. Panofsky sought to transcend the difficulties of speculative, essentialist attempts to derive historical order from a single cau- sality. His insistence on the dependence of each phase of interpretation on the last mitigates the deductive character of the analysis, as does his de-emphasis of causal- ity. It is by no means easy to replace the causal "spirits" Popper called on us to re- ject with something more logically defen- sible.33 One response has been retreat into small-scale enterprises that are relatively easy to co-ordinate with more or less empirical criteria of investigation. Panofsky's great strength is shown in his refusal to retreat into narrow documentary studies - to avoid the sins of historicism by the dis- appointing expedient of avoiding the problems that led to its discredited conclusions.

The general assumption that there is meaning beyond iconography parallels semiotics. It does not follow from this alone, however, that Panofsky's approach is a semiotic - even an unfinished one. Panof- sky's reasons for defining iconology as he did stem less from hypotheses about the nature of this level of meaning than from his deep and ultimately classical humanism. He profoundly understood the power of a generally empirical epistemology to influ- ence humanistic research. The fact that he thought the humanistic character of art his-

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tory needed to be stated indicates that he felt it had been questioned and perhaps com- promised.34 He certainly appreciated the necessity to attach art historical research firmly to concrete documents and observations, and few scholars have contributed so much to this. But he also envisioned the tragic result that would follow attempts to subordinate a humalnistic concern for meaning to implicit and often naive notions of the criteria for "scientific" validity. An un- defined, uncritical popularity of the ideal of "scientific" truth could - and did - lead to avoidance of problems that were inherently inimical to concrete modes of investigation. Such curtailing of the scope of humanistic inquiry in order to accommodate it to these unspoken values could not make art history a science, but it could well sap its vitality as a humanistic discipline.

Panofsky shared with semiotics both a concern for "deep" meaning in cultural products, and a conviction that it is accessible to analysis. Are we to conclude from this that Panofsky's approach is a nascent semiotic which possesses the essentials though it perhaps lacks some refinements? Further consideration of three factors - the nature of the ultimate subject of the analysis, the role of historicity in the explanatory structure offered, and the consistency of the notion of sign will support the conclusion that the "semiotic" character of Panofsky's approach is ephemeral.

Panofsky summarized the method, object, and necessary capacities or conditions of iconology in a chart.35 Here the question of whether Weltanschauung or mind was the ultimate subject was most clearly addressed. Though the ways in which the "essential tendencies of the human mind" express themselves change under varying historical conditions, there was no implication that mind itself was conceived as mutable. More- over, the essential tendencies of mind and the patterns of expression were not the objects of knowledge in Panofsky's table but the prerequisites of iconological research. The familiarity with these essential tendencies that is the basis of synthetic intuition was not arrived at through research, but

"given": it was a capacity rather than

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a method or a conclusion. The intuitive notion of mind involved is revealed by the absence of any formulation of its structure or functioning assumed to be reflected in the nature of intrinsic meaning. The lack of a model linking these things clearly differen- tiates Panofsky's approach from most semiological inquiry.

The issue of the historicity of Panofsky's method provides another avenue to its distinction from semiotics. Both iconographv and iconology are integral parts of a form of history. Iconography is a "philology" of images; the descriptive, factual aspect of the process of understanding the past. Relative closeness to documents and concrete observations meant that iconography was more easily defended in an empirical intellectual climate.

Iconology sought to state the underlying principles that shape the expression of an age. As such it is a variant of the "history of ideas." Certain ambiguities, however, support questioning as to whether it is necessarily a historical concept. This has vast implications for the congruence of Panofsky's concepts with semiology. In Panofsky's table, three kinds of historical knowledge are given as conditions of correct analysis at each level -not as goals. This may engender questions as to whether Panofsky's approach is "history" at all- that is, whether he might not be closer to an essentially synchronic, semiotic approach to art than hitherto suspected. If "history" in Panofsky's chart is effectively a support to the investigation of meaning rather than a form of explanation, then the whole system becomes much easier to co-ordinate with semiological and structuralist approaches.

The table is, however, somewhat mislead- ing. Each level is a cycle rather than a sequence, as Panofsky stated at another point in the argument.36 He recognized that a

"history of style" could only be built up through analysis of the styles of individual works, and that it sounded like a vicious circle to use a history thus derived to classify and explain the style of subsequent works. However, he distinguished individual observations of new data from the "sense" made by analysis of ranges of data. This


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"circulus methodicus" characterized the relationships between a "history of images" and individual iconographical problems, and between history of "cultural symptoms" and the "essential meaning" of specific works. Since the object and the starting assumptions of each level are interdependent, the object of each level is not necessarily the goal of the investigation. The histories (of style, types, and cultural symptoms, respectively) with which one ostensibly begins analysis at each level (pre-iconographic, iconographic, and iconological) are in turn the products of historical analyses of works of art.

At all three levels, analysis is focussed on the characteristics which enable integration of each new object of analysis into a historical "sense." Diachronic ordering is not inci- dental, it is essential.

There is another large scale distinction between Panofsky's approach and a "semiotic of art": consistency of the model. Semi- ology is characterized by the assumption that communication is more homogeneous than previously suspected. "Meaning" is approached as a continuum whose levels are transformations of each other, and by extension, amenable to analogous analytical methods and descriptive models. Panofsky's typology of meaning is quite different. He made a sharp distinction between levels of meaning, precisely in the matter of the methods to which they were accessible.

It might perhaps be argued that Panofsky did pursue the ideal of a homogeneous investigation of meaning, but stopped short of solution of certain logical problems. By basing iconology on correct iconography and suggesting certain controls, he certainly hoped to mitigate the epistemological problems of iconology. It does not follow that he implied the essential homogeneity of all three levels of meaning. There is no continuity of method, model, or the key notion of "sign." The "linguistic" character of Panofsky's whole system is very limited. The sporadic appearance of "sign-like" units does not support attempts to extend that notion to other parts of the analysis.

There is little in Panofsky's definition of intrinsic meaning to suggest application of

linguistic models. The essential tendencies of the human mind that are the basis of synthetic intuition constitute a conceptual modality rather than a code. Interpretation does not involve correct association of signifier and signified. The object of iconology is close indeed to Sperber's notion of the symbolic, which he expressly contrasted with the semiotic. In entirely different language, Panofsky distinguished between meaning expressed in codes and meaning arising from conceptual ordering- the central issue of Sperber's critique of Levi- Strauss. At root it is a question of whether all meaning can lbe reduced to linguistic models.

It is inevitalle that attempts to extend semiotics to non-linguistic phenomena shall present new problems and severe tests. And, as Paul Bouissac has pointed out, one important way to define and work through the external resistance and internal questioning that face a fledgling discipline is to confront the new program with previous debates of a similar nature.37 These texts are important not only as a source of the "genealogy" of the new discipline, but also for the very epistemological, theoretical, and methodological problems that led them to formulate the problems differently than in the new program of semiotics. Many linguists, he remarks, seem unaware of the tradition - a humanistic tradition - which has per- mitted the definition of the problems they are trying to solve. They tend to proceed independently, or to view ideas parallel to their own in earlier generations as "proto- semiotic." The central point of his review is that semiotics cannot afford to overlook previous debates on the issues the discipline has claimed either by ignorance, or by chau- vinistically regarding them as "naive" or "incipient" forms of response to issues for- mulated meaningfully only in semiotics.

From this perspective, the question here is whether Panofsky's "semiotic of art" was as yet naive, or whether the discrepancies between his ideas and those of contemporary semiotics arise at least in part from the failure of semiotics fully to encounter or resolve the problems that shaped his en- quiry. The application of the tools of semi-

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otic analysis of linguistic phenomena to complex humanistic dimensions of meaning is subject to the same generalized, often un- defined values of our intellectual milieu that so profoundly structured Panofsky's approach. A consistent vocabulary and method based squarely on the most concrete dimensions of language codes conveys a sense of greater homogeneity than Panof- sky achieved. But the question is still open as to whether aspects of semiotics that transcend the analysis of codes and venture into what Sperber called the "symbolic" have really transcended the epistemological sta- tus of "synthetic intuition."

1I have discussed the concept of "style" in contemporary American art history as an index of these values in: Christine Hasenmueller McCorkel, "Sense and Sensibility: An Epistemological Approach to A Philosophy of Art History," Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism, XXXIV, No. 1 (Fall, 1975), 35-50.

2 See, for example: Sheldon Nodelman, "Structural Analysis in Art and Anthropology," in Jacques Ehr- mann, ed., Structuralism (Garden City, New York, 1970), pp. 79-93; originally published as a volume of Yale French Studies, 1966. For a consideration of Panofsky's concepts see: Hubert Damisch, "Semiotics and Iconography," Times Literary Supplement (Octo- ber 12, 1973), 1221ff. Meyer Schapiro's Words and Pictures, Approaches to Semiotics, 11, Thomas A. Sebeok, ed. (The Hague, 1973), is virtually alone in the attempt to develop elements of a semiotic of visual form.

3Giulio Carlo Argan, "Ideology and Iconology," trans. Rebecca West, Critical Inquiry, 2:2 (Winter, 1975), 299 and 303. Originally published in Italian in Storia dell'arte.

4 Gothic Architecture and Scholasticism is most recently published by Meridian Books (Cleveland, 1957). "Iconography and Iconology," first appeared as the Introduction to his Studies in Iconology: Humanistic Themes in the Art of the Renaissance (New York, 1939); a slight revision titled "Iconog- raphy and Iconology: An Introduction to the Study of Renaissance Art" appears in his Meaning in the Visual Arts (Garden City, New York, 1955).

5 Paul Bouissac has sLated the point succinctly in a recent review of Alain Bey, Theories du signe et du sens titled: "The Golden Legend of Semiotics," Semiotica, 17:4, 371-84. He observed that new disci- plines tend to seek a "genealogy" in prior statements of key principles, and that: "The result is generally a gratifying fallacy in as much as the texts which are recovered or unearthed for this purpose receive their relevancy precisely from the point of view which they are assumed to have generated, and not the re- verse" (p. 371).

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8 Roland Barthes, "Les sciences humaines et l'oeuvre de Levi-Strauss," Annales: economies -so- cietes-civilisations, XIX (November-December 1964), 1085-86; quoted in H. Stuart Hughes, The Ob- structed Path, Torchbook edition (New York, 1969), p. 285. 7 Dan Sperber, Rethinking Symbolism, Cambridge Studies in Social Anthropology, trans. Alice L. Mor- ton (Cambridge, 1975), a revised version of the French text published by Hermann (Paris, 1974).

8 It is important that his essays were presented as an approach to Renaissance art, and accordingly sub- titled. Panofsky's further work in iconography and iconology concerns mostly Renaissance material. The approach is conceived, then, as a tool for analysis of an art that balances naturalism and idealism in largely narra ive representation of predominantly literary subjects. The question of how art can "mean" when it does not fit this model does not arise. It is also important that much iconographical work on Panofsky's pattern involves the painting of the Netherlands in the fifteenth century. Northern art is, in Worringer's classic characterization, "literary": it is more focussed than even contemporary Italian art on meaning conveyed by motifs that refer directly to literature.

9 Of course, from many points of view, notably that of Gestalt psychology, it could be argued that the processes Panofsky distinguished are actually continuous. The immediate concern here, however, is not the validity of these distinctions, but their role in Panofsky's theory, and their implications for a rapprochement with semiotics.

10 There is an important distinction between representation as an image of the world of experience and as an image of a perceptual/mental interpretation of the data of experience. The metaphor Panofsky uses tends to depict art as equivalent to the actualities which are the basis of experience. It is not clear whether this discrepancy has been simply missed, dismissed as not pertinent, or resulted from the character of the metaphor and is hence extraneous to inferences about Panofsky's notion of the psychological mechanism in question.

1 Culture and Communication: The Logic by Which Symbols are Connected, Themes in the Social Sciences (Cambridge, 1976), p. 12ff.

12 "Iconography and Iconology," p. 30.

13 Ibid., p. 38. It is also interesting that his remark on the "limitations placed on iconography especially in this country," (p. 32) did not appear in the earlier version of the text. See Panofsky, Studies in Iconol- ogy, Torchbook edition (New York, 1962). It seems, then, a response to the intensification of empirical bias in the American intellectual environment by the mid 1950s.

' Ibid., p. 31. 15 Ibid. 16 The relationship between the world as seen by

the investigator and the world seen by the investigator indirectly through the work of art is not as simple as Panofsky's analogy makes it appear. See foot- note 10.

17 "Iconography and Iconology," pp. 35ff.


HASENMUE L ER

's The Encounter, 1854, Musee Fabre, Montpellier. Only this detail of the meaning of Courbet's picture is adduced here.

19 Ernst Gombrich has elaborated this point in his well-known essay "Meditations on a Hobbyhorse or the Roots of Artistic Form," reprinted in Medita- tions on a Hobby Horse and Other Essays on the Theory of Art, 2nd ed. (New York, 1971). He used the metaphor of the relationship between a hobbyhorse and the horse it represents to elaborate the idea that representations do not simply imitate what they represent, but constitute a substitute that is significantly different in function. Representation and represented must be linked by sufficient evidence of "likeness" in form and function to be placed in the same class. In the case of the hobbyhorse, both the toy and the horse are "horses" and are "ridable." But the relationship is also characterized by differences: almost every aspect of the real horse is screened out except for the minimal visual details to establish "identity" and the accommodatability of both to different specifications of the concept "riding." Simi- larly, motifs in painting are identified with their subjects by the conventions of illusionism, but also lis- tinct from them in function. Interpretation of meaning, it follows, should consider both the identity of representation and subject, and the distinction. Panofsky's system describes the psychological mechanism for recognition of the first, but not the second. In effect, then, Panofsky's concepts reduce the meaning of art to the metaphoric (or paradigmatic) association between representation and represented. His analytical system does not explicitly include recognition of the change in context implied in the act of representation, nor does it provide for analysis of the function of motifs in this context.

20 For a summary sta:ement of Leach's taxonomy, see Culture and Communication, pp. 12ff. Based on the system of Mulder and Hervey, and ultimately Jakobson, the vocabulary adapts linguistic concepts of the nature and systematic functioning of communication events to the analysis of non-linguistic communicative behavior. Since it applies semiotic concepts to behavior, it is a particularly valuable formulation of these concepts for any consideration of their applicability to works of art. Panofsky's concepts would stand in somewhat different relationship to other uses of the same terms. These differences are technical, however. Leach's formulation has been chosen because it detaches these terms from linguistic and narrative material.

21 J. W. F. Mulder and S. G. J. Hervey, Theory of the Linguistic Sign, Janua Linguarum: Series Minor 136 (The Hague, 1972), pp. 13-17, quoted in Leach, Culture and Communication, p. 13.

Sperber, Rethinking Symbolism, see pp. 12ff. for statement of problem. He argues that there is a cog- nitive level of meaning - which he calls "the symbolic"- that is not analyzable in terms of sign functions, and hence inaccessible to semiotics.

23 Leach, Culture and Communication, p. 15. The concept is elaborated on p. 12, and pp. 14-16.

24 The distinction between sign and symbol is quite clear so far as it concerns the relationship between

signifier and signified that characterizes each. And, it emerges in the course of the discussion that the relationships among signs are highly structured and essential to the actualization of the meaning potential of individual signs. Relationships among symbols are not characterized by such highly developed sys- tems. Since signs are used in combination with signs from the same context, the kind of signifier/signified relationship is constant and insignificant once the system has been recognized and its conventions "bracketed." The same is not true of symbols, whose signifier/signified association is uniquely defined. In the case of signs, recognition of the "context" from which they are drawn (i.e., recognition of the system which they express) implies bracketing of the patterned signifier/signified relationship, and interpretation of the meaning of signs in such a sequence assumes application of knowledge of the systematic relationships that characterize that "context" or system. There is a connection between the signifier/ signified relationship within the structure of signa and the patterned relationships among signa that characterize the subtypes sign and symbol. Much of this connection is not explicitly expressed in Leach, and where specific aspects of signs or symbols are isolated for discussion, it is not always entirely clear whether the metaphoric or metonymic qualities ana- lyzed are characteristic of the internal structure or the external relationships of the signa in question. 25

"Iconography and Iconology," p. 36. 26 Ibid., p. 38. 27"Iconography and Iconology," pp. 36-38. In

Panofsky's own iconographical work, investigation typically treats each image as a separate problem with comparatively little discussion of the implications of their interrelations. His approach gives us no method or vocabulary for the description or analysis of these "metonymic" patterns within the work of art. This omission need not, however, lead to the conclusion that Panofsky excluded such observations absolutely from his approach. Certain kinds of structured relations among images, such as narrative sequence, axial sequence, and spatial devices for juxtapositions that transcend illusionistic verity have certainly been widely observed and incorporated into conclusions. It may be simply that the significance of relationships that tie together, for example, the voussoir reliefs that frame Rogier's Mary Altarpiece, or the images distributed along the center axis of Jan van Eyck's Arnolfini Wedding have seemed so obvious to Panof- sky and others that no "method" has seemed necessary to their correct interpretation. In examples like these, the relationship among images is certainly both simple and prominent. There remain, however, two problems: correct inierpretation of more subtle structure, and the logical importance of the kind and extent of structures images may form to evaluation of image as a semiotic concept.

2s Though not, of course, with what Sperber called "the symbolic." 29

"Iconography and Iconology," p. 31. 30 Ibid., p. 32. 31Ibid., p. 38. 32 Ibid., p. 39.

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33 Ernst Gombrich, "The Logic of Vanity Fair: Alternatives to Historicism in the Study of Fashions, Style, and Taste," in The Philosophy of Karl Popper, ed. Paul Arthur Schilpp, Library of Living Philoso- phers, Vol. XIV (La Salle, Ill., 1974), 11:925-957, p. 926.

-' See his "Art History as a Humanistic Discipline," in his Meaning in the Visual Arts (Garden City, N. Y., 1955). As a humanist of the classical tradition - whose notion of the "symbolic" came from the Neo-Kantian approach of Cassirer rather than from anthropological or linguistic formulations - Panofsky

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is a descendant of an intellectual tradition hard to correlate with Levi-Strauss. He is a likely candidate, in fact, for that group Levi-Strauss denounced as retreating into "history as the last refuge of transcen- dental humanism." (Savage Mind [Chicago, 1966], p. 262), quoted in H. Stuart Hughes, The Obstructed Path, p. 284.

3 "Iconography and Iconology," pp. 40-44. 3 Studies in Iconology, "Introduction," p. 11, note 3.

3 "The Golden Legend of Semiotics," pp. 371-373.


Article Contentsp. [289]p. 290p. 291p. 292p. 293p. 294p. 295p. 296p. 297p. 298p. 299p. 300p. 301

Issue Table of ContentsThe Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism, Vol. 36, No. 3, Critical Interpretation (Spring, 1978), pp. 251-403Front MatterCritical Interpretation: Introduction [p. 251]Critical Interpretation, Stylistic Analysis, and the Logic of Inquiry [pp. 253-262]On Difficulty [pp. 263-276]The Appeal to the Text: What Are We Appealing to? [pp. 277-287]Panofsky, Iconography, and Semiotics [pp. 289-301]Tradition and Interpretation [pp. 303-316]Mrs. Siddons, the Tragic Muse, and the Problem of as [pp. 317-328]Validity in Interpretation: Some Indian Views [pp. 329-340]Creativity and Correspondence in Fiction and in Metaphors [pp. 341-350]Some Problems of Critical Interpretation: A Commentary [pp. 351-360]ReviewsReview: untitled [pp. 361-365]Review: untitled [pp. 365-367]Review: untitled [pp. 367-369]Review: untitled [pp. 369-371]Review: untitled [pp. 371-372]Review: untitled [pp. 372-374]Review: untitled [pp. 374-377]Review: untitled [pp. 377-378]Review: untitled [pp. 378-379]Review: untitled [pp. 379-380]Review: untitled [pp. 380-381]

Books Received [pp. 383-384]American Society for Aesthetics News [pp. 385-387]Back Matter [pp. 389-403]

panofsky, iconography, and semiotics

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