The lives and afterlives of medieval iconography

Abstract

"What does the study of iconography entail for scholars active today? How does it intersect with the broad array of methodological and theoretical approaches now at the disposal of art historians? Should we still dare to use the term 'iconography' to describe such work? The seven essays collected here argue that we should. Their authors set out to evaluate the continuing relevance of iconographic studies to current art-historical scholarship by exploring the fluidity of iconography itself over broad spans of time, place, and culture. These wide-ranging case studies take a diverse set of approaches as they track the transformation of medieval images and their meanings along their respective paths, exploring how medieval iconographies remained stable or changed; how images were reconceived in response to new contexts, ideas, or viewerships; and how modern thinking about medieval images--including the application or rejection of traditional methodologies--has shaped our understanding of what they signify. These essays demonstrate that iconographic work still holds a critical place within the rapidly evolving discipline of art history as well as within the many other disciplines that increasingly prioritize the study of images."--

Contents

Plus ça change...? The lives and afterlives of medieval iconography / Pamela A. Patton and Henry D. Schilb -- Found iconography / Dale Kinney -- The archaeology of Carolingian memory at Saint-Sernin of Toulouse / Catherine A. Fernandez -- Representation, signature, and trace in Islamic art / D. Fairchild Ruggles -- A matter of perception: a hesychastic understanding of the work or art / Charles Barber -- Spectacles and prosthetic visions in fourteenth- and fifteenth-century art / Kirk Ambrose -- Iconography and the loss of representation / Elina Gertsman -- The work of Gothic sculpture in the age of photographic reproduction / Jacqueline E. Jung.