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Iconography
Iconography
Iconography
Matrikel-Nr.: 2048287
Iconography
The first study was written by Kubler about the Maya iconography during the
Classic and the Late Classic period. He tries to establish the subjects and the main types
of Classical Art of the Mayan in the second level of iconographic analysis, according to
Panofsky.
sculpture in the first level, because her conclusion proceeds form a history of style
the artists sensibilities, rather than in their choices of subjects. Besides, her point is to
establish definite and significant style characteristics in order to discover the pattern
of changes among the forms depicted in Classic Maya monumental sculpture. Also, she
refrains from commenting on symbolism, and confines her method to the seriation of
selected motifs.
conventional topic matter having to do with images, stories, and allegories. Also, the
of the historical situation of the work under study constitute the third level.
analyze and group a number of commemorative and ritual scenes, because the scenes
such as for example the consideration of complementary pairs: texts and images,
isolation and clustering, figural allographs, age and change, invariance and disjunction,
stage front for ritual and carriers important religious and political symbolism from the
In this study, Schele was concentrated on analyzing the mask programs for the
following reasons: they are the most important and dominant sculptural programs in
diverse forms and the most ancient and widespread of all architectural decoration in
lowland Maya architecture. Also, she clarifies that the inventory displayed is not
exhaustive, but provides an illustrative example of the kind of functions and meanings
that can be documented for the architectural sculpture of the Classic period.
Furthermore, she mentions the two main techniques used in these sculptural programs
which are: plaster modeled over stone armatures and relief mosaic sculpture covered
She describes the different elements that compose the facades and the meaning
transmitted by them. Mountains, cosmic monsters, snakes, grains of maize, sky dragons,
the face of the God Itzamna, flowers, war imagery and cleft among others are examples
of those elements. She concludes that the strategy used by the builders was to construct
creation and therefore, the architectonic programs functioned to center the world at time
and space of creation. Her conclusion is that the city and the architectural sequences in
it were the earthly manifestation of creation and founding throughout their history. Like
a great cultural fugue, the many different traditions replayed these themes with variation
Stuart. This ritual is the most expressive royal ritual and the dominant subject of Maya
bloodletting) theme, the variations are not only visual, but also based on differing
degrees of meaning, the various religious and cosmological concepts of this ritual.
Stuart discusses the abstract representations of blood (dots and drops of blood)
and in the end proposes two types of interpretation: the dots could either be closer to a
naturalistic motif, or they could be rather abstracteded images which encompass certain
meanings and definitions not yet understood. A fundamental key used in this study are
possible to record and transmit elaborate information. Among the Maya, those
conventions were extremely rigid and sharply defined. Thus, the art was very capable of
conveying very specific themes, messages, and statements, almost to the degree of
writing (Stuart, 1984:12). In other words, the iconographic symbolism and the written
In brief, the works of Stuart and Schele both handled the principles that Kubler
discusses, which are texts and images. They confirm that the latest decipherments of
Maya writing have been facilitated by the observation and the regularity of the associate
methods therefore depends upon the detection of relational and contextual uniformities