Art historians try to understand what artists are expressing in their works, and what the original viewers

saw in those works. They endeavor to explain why something we call art was made at the particular time
it was made, how it represented the part of the world in which it was made, and how it represented and
affected its cultural context. Art historians talk about individual artists and their goals and intentions, but
also about patrons (the people who commission and pay for artworks), about various sorts of viewers,
and about the kinds of institutions, places, and social groups in which art is made and circulated—
whether that is an art school, a temple, a government agency, or a private studio. When they do this,
they make art history.

A working definition of art

For the purposes of this book, we will define art as potentially any material or visual thing that is made
by a person, or persons, and that is invested with social, political, spiritual, and/or aesthetic value by the
creator, user, viewer, and/or patron. This definition of art includes the Sistine Chapel ceiling, but it also
includes such things as a wood figure from Papua New Guinea, an American crazy quilt, an Ottoman
ceramic pitcher, and a Sioux cradle board encrusted with dyed porcupine quills. It includes ephemeral
(non-permanent) things, such as a masquerade costume made from leaves by the Bwa people of
Burkina Faso in West Africa. Using the word “thing” here does not imply that a work of art has to be a
concrete object, like a marble sculpture— a film or a performance can also be art in this sense. All of the
above things are made with special skills and with great care, although most would be excluded from
the traditional category of “high art.” In our definition, art may have economic value but not economic
value alone. A pile of pine logs on a flatbed truck has economic value but it does not fit into our
definition of art—unless, of course, the loggers had deliberately arranged the logs in a certain way that
carries social/political/spiritual/aesthetic meaning.

historians today reject the idea that a work of art is, by definition, an inherently privileged type of
object. Rather, we use a broader definition of art because regarding things as “art”—putting them in
that category—helps us ask better questions and opens up certain ways of thinking about them.

Art takes many shapes and uses many materials

When many people think about art, what first comes to mind is a framed rectangular painting. The
priority of this type of art in our imagination can be traced back to the Renaissance when pictures were
conceived as fictive windows into an imagined world. For the purposes of this book, we will think about
art as potentially taking many shapes—both flat and three-dimensional—and being created from any of
a vast variety of materials, or a combination. This sort of diversity usually characterizes the works of art
that will be studied in an introductory art-history course. Below are some examples of types of art, along
with a list of the sorts of questions art historians might initially ask about them. Consider this a warm-up
for your first art-history class.

Painting, prints, photography

A number of questions address the specific qualities of two-dimensional works of art—that is, works
characterized by length and height, such as a painting, but of limited depth (or three-dimensional form).
How is color used? Are colors saturated (meaning intense, rather than subdued)? Where are the richest
colors? The darkest colors? The lightest colors? Is there a wide range of colors or a narrow range of
colors? Do the colors create a sense of calm or a sense of drama and excitement? Are they used to
emphasize certain forms or elements in the work?

Is there a strong contrast between areas of light and dark (especially significant in pictures that do not
use color)? Does this help to create the illusion of three-dimensional forms existing in space? Or do the
elements of the painting remain flat, emphasizing the picture plane (the plane occupied by the actual
surface of the canvas, board, wall, or sheet of paper)?

Can you see the marks of the tools used by the artist—pencil, pen, brush, knife, burin? Does the work
seem highly finished or rough and unfinished? Painstaking or spontaneous? How do these qualities
contribute to the overall effect of the work?

Does the artist try to create an illusion of depth beyond the surface of the painting, or do they use
techniques to focus the viewer on the flatness of the picture plane?

How are forms defined—through line or shading?

Formal analysis cannot address the many provocative contextual questions raised by this image. In the
tradition of European vanitas imagery, several elements in the painting refer to the passage of time and
the inevitability of death, even for the young, beautiful, and rich (watch, calendar, hourglass, candle).
The mirror, jewelry, and cosmetics allude to the particular ways that women fight the passage of time.

width. Goya used these techniques to produce a dramatic, unsettling image full of contrasts of light and
shade, tone and line. The aquatint background suggests a murky atmosphere. Bats— rendered with
dense, inky black lines—emerge from the gloom. The sleeping figure’s back and shoulders, delineated
with nervous etched lines, seem to be bathed in a glaring light, created by leaving these areas of paper
unprinted.

Architecture

Architecture demands that the viewer take into account both the physical and visual experience

experience of the building and the spaces it creates. In discussing architecture, you may want to talk
about its plan (or layout), its elevation (the sides of a building), or use a section (an imaginary vertical
slice through the building) to help understand the interior disposition of spaces. The following questions
may be useful:

What is the scale of the building in relation to humans?

Which parts of the building seem to be emphasized? Does the building appear to be composed of
geometric or more organic (soft and curving) forms?

How does the building fit into its environment? Does it seem to be distinct from or part of its
surroundings? How does it change the viewer’s perception of those surroundings?
Does the building seem accessible from the outside? How large and visible are doors and windows?

Does the building convey a sense of solidity or of the interplay of solids and negative spaces? Do the
forms of the building use light and shadow to break up the sense of solidity?

How are ornaments used on the building? Do the ornaments enhance the viewer’s awareness of three-
dimensional form or do they emphasize the building’s surfaces?

Is the interior divided into rooms or is it one open space? How does the arrangement of interior spaces
either help move the occupants or visitors through the building, or hinder their movement through the
building? Which spaces are readily accessible and which are remote or blocked off?

How do we put these bits and pieces together into the practice that we call history? History is telling
tales about the past—it is writing stories. These stories are not fictions (although sometimes fiction can
tell history). Histories are grounded in the events that actually happened— they have to be “true” in the
sense that they are based on verifiable historical evidence. Yet all historians, including art historians,
must confront the challenge of the gaps, omissions, misrepresentations, and inconsistencies in the
various documents, objects, texts, and memories comprising the historical record. This is why writing or
telling history is an act of interpretation. It is creative as well as scholarly. Sometimes being a historian is

blanket already woven for us, but instead starts from the scraps of yarn that are the remains of a
tattered old blanket. We take those bits and pieces of yarn and weave them again into a blanket. We
may be making a new blanket, but since we are skilled weavers, it will tell us something of what the old
blanket was like. It will make what it knows relevant to those who are living in the present, preventing
this knowledge from remaining isolated as part of a forgotten past.

The chronological range of art history sometimes confuses students. How far in the past does art have
to be for it to be history? Why is it that some art historians write about contemporary art? Art historians
do write about the art of both the recent and the distant past. They also write about art of the present
that will become the history of our time. Knowing about art is one of the ways people in the future will
learn about our present moment.

intelligence.

Art history also gives us access to a unique aspect of the past, because history cannot be told only
through documents, texts, and words. Human lives are short, but the things people make are enduring,
and they give us a sense of what those past lives were like. As the poet Robert Browning said, art is a
way of “speaking truth”—of expressing ideas, emotions, viewpoints that sometimes cannot be
expressed in any other way. If you want to know a culture’s “truths,” you will need to understand its art.

Art history and related disciplines

As you have already begun to learn in this book, art history is a distinctive way of studying and
explaining works of art. Art historians start from the premise that art is a key
element in the telling of human history, a part of culture rather than just a reflection of culture. To tell
art’s histories, art historians may employ a wide range of methods, from closely studying the works of
art themselves, to examining archival documents, to interviewing or reading the letters and writings of
artists and patrons, to searching broadly across various aspects of cultural history. At the same time,
many other academic disciplines share an interest in the visual and material arts.

Sociology

Sociology focuses on the analysis of society and social life. The sociology of art explores the function of
art in society, both generally and also within particular social groups. Sociologists,

Art out of context? Museums and art history

Museums are a fact of Western cultural life. Most people in Western societies have made at least one
visit to a museum, and these institutions can seem as natural a part of the cultural landscape as
churches or town halls. But public museums have not always been around (nor have churches and town
halls, for that matter). Museums are, in fact, cultural institutions with a specific history, which are
dedicated to specific ideals and goals. Students of art history need to be aware of this, because the
museum is the place where they will most often study art in person, even though much of the art in
museums was not actually made to be exhibited there. The museum context itself may shape the
viewer’s understanding of a work of art, by displaying it in a different context than it may have had in its
original cultural setting. At the same time, museums have their own cultural agendas, histories, and
politics that must be taken into account in any experience of art we have in museums.

A brief history of museums

For the ancient Greeks, a mouseion

Later, the treasuries of the great medieval cathedrals presented splendid displays of gold and silver
artworks which attracted pilgrims and other visitors. During the Renaissance, many nobles and wealthy
merchants formed collections of rare and wondrous objects, both natural and made by humans, and
displayed them in “cabinets of curiosities.” Collecting art—painting, sculpture, prints, drawings—
became an accepted activity of the elite. It was at this time that the word “museum” came into use
again, but now it described a collection of natural objects or works of art that promoted comprehensive
and encyclopedic knowledge, rather than philosophical contemplation.

When, in the eighteenth century, some individuals opened their collections to the public, the modern
museum was born. Many great European museums, such as the Louvre and the British Museum, trace
their origins to this time. Through the nineteenth century, museum collections grew with the spoils of
war, or artworks gathered by colonialists and missionaries. For better or worse, modern museums are
wrapped up in the history of the nations that fostered their growth.

Although museums as we know them today have their roots in the European Enlightenment, traditions
of collecting and display are widespread. The emperors of China collected works of art and displayed
them in imperial academies and palaces. Islamic leaders also displayed their art collections in palaces for
the pleasure of the elite. Buddhist temples in Japan have amassed collections of calligraphy and other
artworks for display on special occasions. Today, museums are found around the world. There are many
different kinds, dedicated not only to works of art but also to anthropology, history, natural history,
science, technology, and popular culture, among other things.

Museums and the experience of art

Museums shape our understanding of works of art. This may be most striking when they

display works that were specifically intended for another particular setting and environment, often the
site of activities and ceremonies that were central to what they meant to the original viewers, central to
why they were made. When we are in the museum, we can examine these works closely and spend as
much time with them as we need, but not all works of art were created to be seen that way. For
example, three medallions of Gothic stained glass are highlighted in the Philadelphia Museum of Art,
installed in an isolated room that makes them easy to examine privately by visitors ( Figure 1.15 ). Such
close access allows viewers today to marvel at the complex shapes and vibrant colors of the pieces of
glass that are leaded together to form these panels, as well as at the smooth and sophisticated contours
of the articulating lines painted on the surface. From up close, viewers immediately grasp the audacious
composition of the lower medallion, with its boldly foreshortened horses, seen from behind, and the
way the equestrian warriors who ride them break their ranks to turn and face each other. The artist of
this painting was part of a mature “Classicizing” and experimental Gothic pictorial movement that told
stories with verve, paying close attention to moments of human action and interaction within these
visual narratives. This work was commissioned by the most important Parisian patron at this time—King
Louis IX, better known today as Saint Louis. In the museum installation, we see these paintings as they
were seen by those who created them—up close and personal. But they were not meant to be seen this
way by the original viewers.

In the thirteenth century, these medallions formed part of a huge stained-glass window that portrayed
the story of Judith, heroine of the deuterocanonical Book of Judith in the Bible. The window, created in
the 1240s, was part of the glazing of the Sainte-Chapelle in Paris ( Figure 1.16 ), a private chapel
attached to the palace of Louis IX, where religious services were held for him and his court, and where
visiting pilgrims were allowed to venerate the relics of Christ’s passion which were among the king’s
most valuable and powerful possessions. As a part of the chapel, these medallions were installed high
above the heads of viewers, who would have been unable to savor the full extent of the artists’
technical virtuosity and suave painting style. But these artists did create bold presentations that were
legible, and their subjects comprehensible, to those who were standing on the floor and looking up. In
the chapel, the medallions were viewed in the magical context

of royal and sacred ceremony, and served to set the stage for those “dramas” rather than offering
themselves to viewers as an opportunity for private reflection and close scrutiny, as they are in their
museum setting today. Even now, when the chapel itself is a museum rather than a sacred space, we see
the stained glass fully aware of the crowds of tourists around us, the hubbub they bring, and the
relationship of the windows to the artistic panorama of carving and painting that surrounds them. It is a
busy, loud, often chaotic space—very different from the almost private experience in their room within
the Philadelphia Museum of Art.

For works of art created before the advent of the modern museum, we must work to understand the
way in which they were seen by their original patrons and viewers, and never assume that our
experience in the museum replicates theirs. At the same time, we should remember

that much European and American art from the late eighteenth century onward has been made with
public museum or gallery spaces in mind, with a presumption that these are the places where the works
would ultimately reside. Much contemporary installation art or performance art, for example, requires
the kind of large, public spaces that museums and galleries are designed to provide.

More recently, in 1999, a controversy broke out when the Brooklyn Museum included Chris Ofili’s The
Holy Virgin Mary ( Figure 1.17 ) in a special exhibition on young British artists. Among the most vocal
critics were the then-mayor of New York, Rudolph Giuliani, and local Catholic leaders, who were
offended by the aritst’s use of elephant dung and “found” pornographic pictures in the creation of a
stylized image of the Virgin Mary. The artist—of Nigerian decent and trained, in part, in Zimbabwe—
defended the offending materials in his painting since there was a long-standing practice of using them
in African art. Of course, such controversies are not new. Michelangelo was severely criticized for
depicting a nude Christ in his Sistine Chapel Last Judgment (1536–41). Although his patron, Pope Paul III
(r.1534–49), was greatly moved by the work, later popes ordered swaths of cloth to be painted over the
genitals of figures who were most prominent.

response of different sectors of the audience or viewership. An instructive example is the international
controversy over the destruction, in early 2001, of the monumental stone Buddhas at Bamiyan,
Afghanistan ( Figure 1.18 ), ordered by the ruling Taliban. Carved into the living rock, the Buddhas had
presided over the Silk Route since the fifth or sixth century CE . Their dramatic dynamiting may have
been motivated by more than a “Muslim” aversion to figurative imagery. After all, local Muslim
populations had coexisted with the Buddhas for centuries, and a delegation from the multinational
Organization of the Islamic Conference petitioned the Taliban not to destroy the statues. The
iconoclastic act might better be seen in the context of contemporary politics, at a time when the
repressive Taliban regime was rejecting an international power structure that was pressuring it in
various ways. Their horrific act was a dramatic rejection of international cultural values which
encouraged the preservation of historical artifacts such as the Bamiyan Buddhas. There were also claims
that the government had destroyed the works to protest against international financial support for
conserving the statues, but not for what Afghanistan needed most: international aid to

threatened the population of the country with starvation.

Introducing art history’s toolbox: analysis of style, subject, and context

When starting out in art history, you may find it helpful to group the different approaches to
interpreting works of art under three broad categories:
formal analysis (sometimes called stylistic analysis )

identification of subject matter and symbols (often called iconography )

contextual or cultural analysi s (sometimes called iconology )

Formal analysis includes methods of understanding the visual and physical aspects of a work of art. In
formal analysis, we seek the answers to our questions in the work of art itself, usually without referring
to outside sources. We explore the visual structure and expressive effect of the work of art, seeking an
understanding of what the artist is trying to accomplish directly through visual means.

In contrast, identifying subject matter and symbols—especially when works of art were created long
ago and in cultural contexts quite different from ours—usually requires research. We may not know the
story that is represented, nor the theology or ideology behind it. We may not understand the symbolic
meaning of the objects or the visual features of the image. We often need to look into literature

and conventions in order to figure out these subjects and symbols.

Contextual analysis also requires us to go outside the work of art for answers. In contextual or cultural
analysis, we seek to understand how a work of art expresses or shapes the experiences, ideas, and
values of the individuals and groups that make, use, view, own, or display it. To develop a contextual
analysis, we might explore evidence such as contemporary documents, other images, books written
during the period, the artist’s writings, and broad histories of various aspects of culture (e.g., economics,
philosophy, religion, politics, social relations).

Our first-level analysis would acknowledge these last two points about color. It would

also note the inclusion of a painted strip of ornament that runs along the edges of the painting to form
an internal frame surrounding the subjects. Note the way that the series of triangles that fill this border
band are not all set at the same angle, introducing a sense of agitation or independent “dancing”
movements that activate the frame. If we look carefully, we can see a series of implied triangular forms
inside the framed area that form “visual rhymes” with the elements of this border—for example the
snippets of white T-shirts revealed by the open collars of the figures’ jackets, the forms implied by the
diagonal zippers on the front of those jackets, and even the angular indentations of negative space
between the figures’ ears and along their bushy tails. And yet, the “floor” on which these figures stand

along the outside edge of their companion, implying that their arms wrap around each other’s backs—a
pictorial embrace.

But who are these figures? Do they each have particular identities? Are they part of a story? Do they
represent conventional meanings or ideas? Here, we enter into level two of the art-historical analysis—
iconography. Many viewers will recognize the two figures as coyotes; others may have to do some
searching to associate these canine creatures with a particular species. In many Native American
cultures, coyotes are playful tricksters and slippery transformers, with a tendency to transgress
boundaries and refuse to live up to staid expectations as they remind us not to take ourselves so
seriously. Coyotes are able to move freely and unnoticed from one cultural

world to another. Fonseca’s coyotes stand and act like humans, suggesting that they must represent
human behavior in some way. Their clothing—blue jeans and black-leather motorcycle jackets with
multiple, prominent zippers and metal appliqués, as well as their platform boots and high-top sneakers
—identifies them with a cool, macho fashion trend that was popular among gay men in the Mission
District of San Francisco from the 1970s into the 1990s.

Because this is a relatively recent painting, we have much material to work with in contextualizing this
work within its societal and cultural settings—level three of our basic interpretive process. Exploring
information beyond the painting reveals that this picture had a personal meaning for the artist, which
helps us crack some of its visual codes. The anthropomorphized figure of the coyote had been a central
subject in Fonseca’s art since the late 1970s, and he described the figure as a kind of personal avatar for
his role as an artist, specifically one who had left the context of his Native American heritage (with the
Maidu people and culture in California, just outside modern Sacramento) to work within the modern
America art world, but was able to move smoothly back and forth from one cultural setting to another.
During the 1970s, Fonseca also began to spend more time in the Mission District of San Francisco, one of
the first gay neighborhoods in America. In a sense, this 1993 painting was a public “coming out.” His
partner, Harry Nungesser, described it this way in a video interview that was part of a major 2019
exhibition of Fonseca’s work at the Autry Museum in Los Angeles: “[ Wide-Eyed and Bushy-Tailed #1 ]
was a very important painting personally for Harry [Fonseca] because it was like an announcement, a
very graphic announcement, that he was gay. . . . I got home from work one day, and there was this
envelope. In it, he had sent a watercolor of this painting. He said, ‘Well, of course, it is us.’”

Style and subject

Today, we are so constantly bombarded by visual images on the Internet, television, movies, billboards,
books, magazines, even our phones, that it is all too easy to develop habits of lazy looking. Dazed by
visual overload, we often fail to take the time to examine images carefully and critically analyze what we
are seeing. Since art history requires slow, careful, intelligent looking, we are going to need to change
our looking habits. This chapter explores the art-historical method of formal analysis, which will help you
look carefully and frame good questions as you interpret works of art. We will also explore, in this
chapter, the ways in which art historians determine the subject matter and decode the symbolism that
form a primary aspect of the meaning of works of art. Some of these meanings will be clear to us from
the way we understand our own visual culture, but the subjects and codes of many works—especially
those from other cultural situations and from the distant past—can only be understood after prolonged
research and analysis. Style and subject—they are the basics.

Formal analysis

Describing in words what you see in a work of art, visually, is important and not easy, but it is
description, not formal analysis. Formal analysis—also called stylistic analysis—seeks an understanding
of the work’s distinctive formal qualities and visual structure, artistic decisions about formal elements
and the way the visual presentation is put together to create a coherent “statement.” In a sense, this
analysis can mean looking at the work of art and trying to understand what the artist wants to convey,
or determining what the original viewers were likely to have made of it. Art historians usually try to
perform this stylistic assessment objectively, but even pure formal analysis is always guided, to a certain
extent, by the viewer’s cultural position. The way we interpret pictures is based on who we are—a
person living in a particular place and time, formed by a particular education and individual experiences.

The personal context of the observer inevitably shapes their interpretation. This helps ground the
analysis in the needs and concerns of viewers in the present.

When beginning a formal analysis, remember that works of art change with the passage of time. Be
sure that you are not paying undue attention to visual or physical characteristics of the work that it did
not have at the time it was made and originally seen. For example, although we now see the Parthenon
as an austere and fragmentary white-marble structure, patterned with the patina of time, it was
originally decorated with red, blue, and yellow paint, and adorned with polished bronze disks. The bright
colors that were revealed when the Sistine Chapel ceiling frescos were cleaned in the 1980s, to remove
centuries of grime and candle smoke, radically altered the art-historical understanding of Michelangelo’s
work. A wooden mask from New Guinea may have originally borne now-lost decorations of shells,
feathers, leaves, or pigments. When you are uncertain about how changes over time have altered the
work of art, you may want to consult outside sources rather than work purely from your visual
experience. Sometimes, it takes significant skill to tell the old from the new.

Style

“Style” is a favorite word in art history. There are styles of individual works, the developing personal
styles of individual artists, styles associated with particular times and places, moods and subjects,
schools and movements, training and influence. Style is not an easy word to define, but on the first page
of an article published in 1953, influential American art historian Meyer Schapiro (1904–96) may have
given the art-historical usage of the word its clearest definition: “By style is meant the constant form—
and sometimes the constant elements, qualities, and expression—in the art of an individual or a group. .
. . To the historian of art, style is an essential object of investigation. He [sic] studies its inner
correspondences, its life-history, and the problems of its formation and change . . . style is, above all, a
system of

Formal elements

Art historians focus on certain basic characteristics, or elements, of works of art when investigating
their style using formal analysis— for example color, line, mass, space, and scale. Often, these visual or
physical qualities of the work are most effectively discussed in terms of a sliding scale between pairs of
opposite qualities, such as linearity vs. painterliness, coloristic vs. monochrome, flatness vs. three-
dimensionality, or dark vs. light.

Color
The first step in analyzing color is to identify the different hues (red, blue, green, etc.) used by the artist
and see whether they used a particular range of colors. You would also look at the characteristics of
each color used. If it

appears to be a representation of the color in its most vivid form, as it is represented on the color chart,
it is highly saturated. If the hue can hardly be distinguished, then it is of low saturation. Value is a term
that describes the relative lightness of a color—whether it tends more toward white or more toward
black.

Line

Whereas the landscape by Monet that we have just examined concentrates visual attention on color
and uses color alone to represent the

subject, some paintings have a stronger emphasis on line than on color. Line is created or represented
by a strong, sharp barrier between two colors or between light and dark. For example, in a cross-carpet
page from the eighth-century Saint Chad Gospel Book ( Figure 2.2 ), actual pen-and-ink

Space and mass

The term “space” indicates whether an image conveys a sense of three-dimensional depth, either
pictorial (fictive) or real. The term “mass” evaluates whether the artwork conveys a sense of substantial,
three-dimensional form—as if the figures and objects portrayed had weight or volume. These are actual
characteristics of sculpture, architecture, and installations, but they are illusory, fictive characteristics of
two-dimensional media such as painting, drawing, printmaking, and photography. The use of either
linear perspective or atmospheric perspective, for example, can establish a sense of spatial recession in
a painting, and shading or modeling that simulates the way light falls on an opaque figure or object from
a single source can give a sense of formal volume, as can the casting of shadows. We might say that the
illusion of space and mass are three-dimensionalizing agents, just as line is a flattening agent.

left, in front of the picture plane. And the space described in this painting recedes well behind the
foreground figural group, deep into the distance. The use of atmospheric perspective situates the
mountains on the horizon in the deep distance. This technique decreases the saturation of colors and
the sharpness of drawing to a fuzzy, blueish grey, emulating an optical effect created in the natural
world in which the progressive screening provided by the atmosphere masks vibrancy and clarity as we
look deeply through it into the distance.

books, we will have to rely on knowledge of the size of the work indicated by dimensions given in the
captions.

Composition

The term “composition” is used to describe how an artist puts together all the above elements in the
work of art. It is about the overall arrangement or organizing design used by the artist in creating the
representation, rather than the nature of the individual elements we have just surveyed. But, in a
comprehensive formal analysis, you will ask how these elements—line, color, space and mass, scale—
contribute to the work’s overall composition and its visual effect. Initially, you will be trying to answer
some basic questions, such as these, about design: . What does the artist emphasize visually? What first
attracts our attention?

presents a carefully painted picture in black slip on a uniform coating of white slip. The composition
combines geometric ornamental motifs with three animals: two birds seen from the side and a turtle
viewed from above.

There are three separate representational fields within this painting. First, there are the three outermost
areas that hug the framed circle—one at the top above the birds’ heads and the other two on either side
of the lower ornamental ensemble. We cannot be sure if these fields adhere to the contour of the
continuous circle that runs around the top of the bowl, or if that circular frame overlaps a larger field
that exists beyond the picture but is only visible to us in part. This field is filled with fine, parallel lines
(often called hachure , or hatching ) and delimited by an alternately straight and zigzagging ribbon of
white. These strips overlap the pure black expanse of a second field containing the lower ornamental
ensemble with the spirals—beneath the three animals, as seen in Figure 2.4 , left.

An Italian Gothic wall painting

Our second case study focuses on a fresco that formed part of an elaborate series of narrative episodes,
painted by Giotto de Bondone in 1305–6 CE on the walls of a private chapel in the Italian city of Padua
( Figure 2.5 ).

This central pair seem to be trapped in a tense and unresolved confrontation—face very close to face. A
collection of weapons and lamps radiate from their standoff against the sky above them, further
drawing attention to them as the principal focus of the painting. And aggression is not restricted to the
center. It has already resulted, at left, in a severed ear slipping from the side of a figure’s head across his
neck, where a second haloed figure reaches out toward the right with a knife. His groping gesture
toward the right forms a mirrored visual rhyme with the expansive leftward reach of the figure who
covers his companion with his yellow cloak, linking these two aggressive actions in symmetrical pictorial
resonance.

What is even more striking in this left third of the painting is the mysteriously hooded man draped in
blue whom we see from behind. He is one of four figures distributed across the foreground of the
tableau, figures whose outreaching arms coordinate to create an implied horizontal alignment, unifying
and sequestering the crowd behind them. The hooded man’s outstretched cape protects us as observers
from the violent act behind him, forming a curtain along with the yellow cloak

to signal the front of the shallow theatrical space, the stage. He is the only one in this picture who turns
his back on us, standing as we stand while viewing the painting, linking through his posture our world
outside the picture to his world inside the picture. This creates a breathtaking intimacy when we first
notice it. Maybe he stands in for us in the painting, holding our place in the story.
Wölfflin and formal analysis

In Principles of Art History (1915), the Swiss art historian Heinrich Wölfflin (1864–1945) sought to
systematize formal analysis through his definition of paired, contrasting terms to distinguish
fundamental stylistic differences. He defined five basic pairs of characteristics, which he saw as
characterizing the Renaissance in contrast to the Baroque: linear vs. painterly, planar vs. recessional,
closed forms vs. open forms, multiplicity vs. unity, absolute clarity vs. relative clarity. Here we will use
Raphael’s School of Athens (1510–11) ( Figure 2.7 ) to represent the characteristics of Renaissance
painting and Rubens’s Garden of Love (c.1630–5) ( Figure 2.8 ) to represent the Baroque. Comparing
them clarifies the polarities Wölfflin saw in the styles of these two periods.

LINEAR VS. PAINTERLY

Wölfflin used the term linear to indicate works that emphasize outlines and have a special kind of clarity
in the spatial separation and relationship of objects to each other. Painterly form is more elusive—
attention is withdrawn from the edges, outlines are deemphasized, and form is developed primarily
through the use of light and shade.

PLANAR VS. RECESSIONAL

In a planar composition, objects are represented parallel to the picture plane. The spatial recession is
clear, achieved by a series of planes that are all parallel to the picture plane, as in much fifteenth-
century Italian art. In contrast, a work characterized by recession is one in which the planes are not
clearly articulated as separate parallel units. Spatial depth is created through diagonal placement, and
the frontal plane is not emphasized.

CLOSED FORMS VS. OPEN FORMS

In a closed form, the depicted contents of represented forms seem to stand in clear relation to their
edges, allowing the viewer to establish a clear sense of the forms’ position in relation to other objects in
the image. In an open form, spatial relationships are less clear, either among objects within the work or
between those objects and the viewer. The elements within the image are not oriented in relation to
clear edges. Sometimes, objects merge with other objects into a single mass, without a clear barrier
separating them individually.

MULTIPLICITY VS. UNITY

This dichotomy contrasts works in which the individual parts appear as independent units (even when
they are subordinate to a whole), with works that are perceived as unified wholes, in which individual
elements are less clearly distinguished from each other.

ABSOLUTE CLARITY VS. RELATIVE CLARITY

Wölfflin’s final pair is closely related to the preceding

pair. Absolute clarity refers to works with explicit and clearly articulated forms, and relative clarity refers
to works with less explicit and less clearly articulated forms.

Formalism

For strict formalists, a pure and direct engagement with the visual qualities of a work of art takes
priority over all external issues of context or meaning in interpreting them, or understanding their place
within the history of art. Stylistic analysis is not a first step but the essential , and at times the only, step.
The artwork should be probed for its formal features—e.g., composition, material, shape, line, color—
rather than for the way it represents an identifiable figure, symbol, story, or idea. The

Connoisseurship

Connoisseurship is a specialized type of formal analysis that, on the basis of style, aims to identify works
of art with a particular artist, artistic movement, or moment in time. The visual skills and expertise
required to do this work must be developed over years of looking at the art of a particular time and
place, or the output of a single artist. Connoisseurship is also a tool used to judge the authenticity of a
work of art, to separate genuine works from forgeries, and works of a particular artist from those made
by followers, copyists, or forgers.

In Studies in Iconology (1939), he defined three levels of iconographic/iconological analysis—each with

its own method and goal. Soon, this analytic process

became a rigorous model that brought systematic vigor to the American practice of art history.

“PRE-ICONOGRAPHIC DESCRIPTION” (or “natural subject matter”)

On this first level, we catalogue what can be recognized visually without reference to outside sources, a
basic kind of analysis formed on our own experience of the world in which we live.

“ICONOGRAPHICAL ANALYSIS”

On this second level, we identify the image as part of a known story, with recognizable characters,
specific settings, and conventional symbols or allegories, usually basing identifications on acquired
knowledge of textual sources. Iconographic research will also identify conventional symbols.

“ICONOLOGICAL INTERPRETATION”

(or “intrinsic meaning”)

On the final, third level, we decipher the deeper, cultural significance of the image by broadening our
investigations to probe other aspects of the culture in which the work was made—e.g., religion,
philosophy, politics, economics, social relationships, other forms of art.

Erwin Panofsky. Studies in Iconology: Humanistic Themes in the Art of the Renaissance . New York:
Harper & Row, 1972 (originally published in 1939).
Iconography

Iconography is the study that identifies conventional motifs, stories, images, and symbols in works of
art. For example, in a Christian religious painting, a haloed woman (often dressed in blue) accompanied
by two young, scantily clad boys (see Figure 2.3 ) represents the Virgin Mary with her son Jesus and his
cousin John the Baptist. In the Buddhist tradition, a modestly dressed figure sitting cross-legged with
hair in a topknot and elongated earlobes represents the Buddha. Sometimes, iconographers focus on a
particular element within an image, such as a human figure who is part of a larger, crowded scene, or a
flower motif used to decorate a landscape setting; at other

times, they focus on the whole image as the representation of a moment in a larger story, such as the
Last Supper of Jesus and his Apostles or the Great Departure of Prince Siddhartha before he became the
Buddha. Sometimes, our own background and education makes the identification of subject and symbol
in some works of art almost automatic, but the process is not always simple. It often requires extensive
knowledge of a culture and its key stories and symbols, as well as its processes of image-making and the
conventional way it portrays holy or princely figures.

scene “naturally.” There are five human figures within an interior setting. Two stand, and three sit. The
four whose heads are visible address the viewer directly, almost as if those viewers had just come into
the room and those already in the room are acknowledging them. A mirror on the back wall extends all
the way across the room, but the viewer is not reflected here. Some viewers today will draw on their
own experiences to recognize that this scene is set in a barber shop, and since the figures in the painting
are Black, presumably this painting represents a barber shop that serves an African-American clientele.

The title art historians have given to this painting is “The Kiss of Judas.” Actually, Giotto portrays the
moment just before the kiss of Judas There is time for the betrayer to pull back, change his mind,
rewrite the script. In other words, near the center of the painting, the artist halts the story at a critical
moment just before the required action. Judas is frozen in arrested aggression. Jesus remains
extraordinarily

extraordinarily calm. This painting portrays not only a charged scene from the life of Jesus, but a mythic
confrontation between good and evil.

Chapter 3

Contextual analysis

When undertaking a contextual analysis, you will seek to understand a work of art in relation to a
particular cultural moment. This can mean focusing on the work of art as it exists today, or resituating
the work of art within its own time and place, or at another point in history. This involves exploring the
social, political, spiritual, and/or economic significance of the work.

Art historians often talk about “art in context,” but in many ways this is a simplistic way to describe
contextual analysis. It suggests that context (culture) is already developed before or without the work of
art, as if the work of art itself has no effect on individuals or society. To think of a work of art “as”
cultural context rather than “in” cultural context means recognizing it as something that has an effect on
people, on how they think and feel and act, and on larger social processes—how groups of people think
and feel and act. Works of art and cultural context are often thought of as mutually constituting—that is,
having an effect on each other. Works of art are shaped by historical processes, which are, in turn,
shaped by works of art in a continual interactive dialogue.

Asking contextual questions

The following are some basic questions to ask when developing a contextual analysis. Not every
question is applicable to every artwork. For example, if you do not know the artist’s personal identity,
for whatever reason, then there are a number of questions that you cannot ask about the creation of
the work.

1. One range of questions focuses on the people involved in the creation, use, and viewing of the
artwork—the patron, artist, and viewers:
Who were the patron, artist, viewers?
What sorts of records did the artist leave about the creation of this work? Did the artist say
anything about their intentions in creating the work? Were other designers, artists, or assistants
involved?
What were the patron’s motives in sponsoring this work? To what extent did the patron participate
in its creation? If there is one, what does the contract for the work or correspondence about it
reveal? Was the patron acting individually, or on behalf of an institution?
Who was able to see the work? Under what circumstances? What was the response of
contemporary viewers to this work?
2. Other questions for building a contextual analysis address the physical work of art, its location, and
use:
When was this work made?
image (Illlustration) Where was it originally located?
Where was it originally located? Was it seen by individuals or by assembled groups or by the
general public?
image (Illlustration) In what rituals or gatherings was this work used or seen?
image (Illlustration) Does the work make use of rare or costly materials? Does it include materials
that have either ritual or symbolic value?
image (Illlustration) Are the artist’s techniques new or innovative in
some way? Was there any particular significance in the choice of techniques?
3. Still other contextually oriented questions address the larger social issues presented by the work
of art:
image (Illlustration) What was the political, religious, or social context in which this work was
created, used, and/or seen?
image (Illlustration) Was the subject of this work new or innovative, or does it treat a familiar
subject conventionally? If new, what prompted the change? If traditional, what was the motivation
for conservatism?
image (Illlustration) Are political, religious, and/or social messages conveyed through the style,
subject matter, or placement of this work?
image (Illlustration) Was this work’s style new or innovative? If so, what prompted the change? If it
uses an established, accepted style, what are the reasons for adhering to the status quo?
Iconology
When we introduced Erwin Panofsky’s theory of iconography and iconology in the previous chapter
(see here ), we concentrated only on iconography, the second part of his three-part system for
determining meaning in the visual arts. Iconography is the identification of conventional subjects
and symbols. Iconology is about context. It picks up where iconography leaves off by taking the
identifications achieved through iconographic analysis and explaining how, and why, such subjects
were chosen to express the cultural situation of its production. Iconology can put both style and
iconography in context. Panofsky calls this knowledge “intrinsic meaning.”
To perform a contextual analysis of this sort, we work to discover the deeper, cultural significance
of the image. We take into account when and where it was made, the prevailing meanings of stories
and symbols, and the wishes and expectations of the artist, patron, and audience. In developing this
method of contextualizing art, Panofsky was strongly influenced by Ernst Cassirer (1874–1945), a
German philosopher who was Panofsky’s colleague at the University of Hamburg, and who, like
Panofsky, was dismissed from his post by the Nazis, in 1933, and eventually found himself teaching
in the United States. Cassirer argued that, since images represent the fundamental principles or
ideas (symbolic values) in a culture, we can see works of art as primary “documents” of an artist, a
religion,
religion, a philosophy, even an entire civilization. They are loaded with cultural meaning.

Today, the painter of the frescos is better known than the man who paid for them. Although he was
a supremely gifted and expressive storyteller in the medieval tradition, we mostly think of Giotto di
Bondone (c.1266–1337) as a proto-Renaissance artist because of the solidly modeled three-
dimensionality of his figures and the convincing rendering of the shallow spaces they occupy. Early
art historians of the sixteenth century—such as Giorgio Vasari (1511–74)—traced the Renaissance
of their times back to Giotto, and many famous Renaissance artists—including Michelangelo—
traveled to Padua to study and draw his frescos. These observations, from the fresco’s future, have
affected the way we see them in the present.
The original viewers already knew the subjects portrayed in these paintings; many knew them quite
well. What must have captivated them—and still captivates us—is the way Giotto’s prodigious gifts
as a storyteller allow him to concentrate on the human, emotional dimension of these dramatic
stories by choosing carefully the moments he chose to represent from them, moments full of the
possibility of emotional intensity. Jesus appears as a human being among human beings. The
principal figures in each scene react in understandable, and occasionally restrained, ways to
believable human situations and actions, and the spectators often serve as a chorus responding to
those actions so that we can find our way into the scenes through them. This combination of human
actions and reactions situates sacred stories into situations we can understand directly from our
own life experience. They are not theological statements but calls to courageous and authentic
action.
Giotto’s focus on human content and dramatic narrative is related to the devotional strategies of
the Franciscans, a religious order which promoted the relationship of the Church and its art to
human lives and spiritual simplicity. They encouraged faithful Christians to visualize the events
described in scripture in tangible ways as if they were happening at their own time and place, and
Giotto provided examples of how this can work in
the Scrovegni chapel. Perhaps Giotto soaked up this Franciscan approach to visualizing
This handwritten manuscript, on paper, made in the royal Safavid workshop in Tabriz (in modern
Iran), contains 759 folios of elegant Nasta’liq calligraphy and 258 full-page paintings. The most
Some theoretical approaches to contextual analysis
Art historians usually form their questions, conduct their research, and craft their interpretations
guided by focused theoretical perspectives. A particular theory about history or a theory about
creating meaning can serve as the basis or inspiration for art-historical work and its presentation. It
can help us develop precise and penetrating lines of questioning to guide our research and form our
conclusions. Certain theoretical perspectives have been developed within the practice of art history
itself (e.g., formal analysis and iconography), but, since the middle of the twentieth century, art
historians have also drawn on a group of theories employed commonly across the social sciences
and the humanities in a variety of disciplines. This group of shared theories is often called “critical
theory.” What follows is a short list of the types of critical theory that you are most likely to
encounter while studying art history, with references to a few examples of literature that can help
you explore each approach further.
If you develop an interest in critical theory, our companion book may be a good place to pursue
that interest by learning about theoretical approaches in more detail: Michael W. Cothren and Anne
D’Alleva. Methods & Theories of Art History . 3rd edition. London: Laurence King Publishing, 2021.

Psychoanlysis and reception theory

Both the making of art and the viewing of art have a psychological and physical basis. Some art
historians approach art’s history from these perspectives, starting with psychoanalytic theory and
proceeding to various theories of reception and the gaze. Narrowly speaking, psychoanalysis is a
method of analyzing psychic (psychological) phenomena rooted in a philosophy of human
consciousness, both individual and social. Its modern founder is Sigmund Freud (1856–1939), an
Austrian physician who developed a therapeutic method for analyzing the unconscious through the
interpretation of evidence such as dreams, verbal slips, jokes, and through the use of free
association. Freud himself, and many after him—notably Jacques Lacan (1901–81)—applied the
theory and practice of analysis to works of art and literature and to society at large. Reception
theory shifts attention from the artist to the audience, specifically the psychic and physiological
aspects of viewing works of art which, some believe, actively complete the work of art itself.