Iconography
/ˌaɪkəˈnɒɡrəfi/noun
The set of images and symbols used in a body of art, or the study of what they mean.
The Greek roots
Literally: “image writing”
The story of the word
Before it meant the study of images, iconography meant the making of them: a drawing or a written description of a subject. Art historians turned it into a discipline in the nineteenth century, cataloguing which saint carries which instrument of his own execution. The Greek εἰκών was any likeness at all, a portrait or a reflection in water, long before Byzantium narrowed it to a panel of wood and egg tempera.
- How it travelled
- Ancient Greek → Latin → English
- First recorded
- 17th century
The same roots elsewhere
Other languages reached for exactly the same Greek pieces.
Same family
In a sentence
The wheel gives her away: in Christian iconography that is Catherine, no matter what else is in the frame.
Political campaigns build an iconography as deliberately as any church did.