Meaning in the Visual Arts

by Erwin Panofsky

Book Overview

Since its original publication, Erwin Panofsky's "Meaning in the Visual Arts" has been standard reading for students of art history. It is both an introduction to the study of art and, for those with more specialized interests, a profound discussion of art and life in the Middle Ages and Renaissance. Panofsky's historical technique reveals an abundance of detail, detail he skillfully relates to the life and work of individual painters and their times...

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0385092482
• ISBN13: 9780385092487
• Release Date: June 1955
• Publisher: Doubleday Books
• Length: 364 Pages
• Weight: 1.41 lbs.

Customer Reviews

Essays by a great scholar in the field

Panofsky was one of the great founding fathers of Art History. His studies in Iconology opened up a whole new way of reading meaning into works of Art. In this work he combines masterful scholarship with great theoretical innovativeness to provide his own reading of the world of Art. Though his systematic approach can at times feel abstract he nonetheless continually gives the sense that the understanding of works of Art is an intellectual adventure of the highest order and of the most profound meanings.

A masterpiece in Art History

This book is a collection of different papers written by Panofsky during the years of his exile in America. Their content is often technical and hard to read, but some of them (like the one about the meaning of Poussin's and Guercino's "Et in Arcadia Ego" and the last one about the History of Art in America) are brilliant and sometimes even funny. This is one of the first book I've read about "iconology" and (together with the book about Duhrer's Melancholy) has made me falling in love with Art History. I think that this book is one of the best results of the interaction between different cultures (here, European and American).