The language of images

When you first try to talk about a painting, it is easy to run out of words after “it’s beautiful” or “it’s strange”. A few simple terms change that. They let you say exactly what you see, and they give you an honest way to read symbols, which matters enormously in esoteric art, where hidden meanings are claimed everywhere. In this lesson you will learn the basic vocabulary of pictures, how artists show space, Panofsky’s three levels of meaning and how to read a museum label.

The building blocks

Modern Teachers often split a picture into elements and principles. You do not need to memorize them; they are simply words that make looking sharper.

• Line: an edge or a path. Is it straight, curved, calm or nervous?
• Shape and form: flat areas, and things that look solid.
• Color: hue, brightness and strength. Warm colors seem to come forward, cool ones seem to sink back.
• Value: light and dark. Where is the brightest point? The darkest?
• Texture: how a surface feels, or looks as if it would feel.
• Space: how deep the picture seems.

The principles describe how these are arranged: balance, rhythm (things that repeat), proportion, emphasis (where your eye is pulled) and unity. Try saying “the three heads form a triangle” instead of “it looks nice”. That is analysis.

Many ways to show space

Historical Perspective is any system for showing three-dimensional space on a flat surface, and there is no single correct one. Linear perspective makes parallel lines meet at a vanishing point. It was worked out in fifteenth-century Florence; the architect Filippo Brunelleschi is said to have demonstrated it with a painted panel and a mirror, sometime around 1413 to 1420, though we know this only from a biography written decades later by Antonio Manetti.

Atmospheric perspective makes distant things paler and bluer, and Roman wall painters and Chinese landscape painters used it long before Leonardo da Vinci wrote about it. Hierarchical scale makes the most important figure the largest: an Egyptian king towers over his enemies, a medieval Virgin Mary over the kneeling donor. Size there means importance, not distance. When a medieval picture looks “flat”, it is usually not failing. It is following different rules for a different purpose.

Three levels of meaning

Later tradition The art historian Erwin Panofsky gave the classic method for reading subjects and symbols in Studies in Iconology (1939), reprinted in Meaning in the Visual Arts (1955). The first level is what is visibly there: a woman, a dish, a head. You need only everyday experience. The second is the conventional subject: this woman with a head on a dish is Salome, or Judith.

You need texts and stories, and this level is called iconography. The third is the deeper meaning: what the work reveals about the attitudes of its culture. This is called iconology, and it is interpretation. Levels one and two can usually be checked. Level three is argument. It can be strong or weak, but it is never simply fact.

Panofsky’s hat

Historical Panofsky opened Studies in Iconology with an everyday example. An acquaintance greets you on the street by lifting his hat. At the first level you see a change in shapes, a man and a moving object. At the second level, if you know the custom, you recognize a polite greeting, a habit that Panofsky traced back to medieval knights removing their helmets. At the third level, the gesture tells you something about the man and his culture, such as his manners, background and attitude. The same three levels work on a painting or a tarot card.

Attributes: how saints and gods are recognized

Historical Much iconography rests on attributes, objects that identify a figure. Saint Catherine of Alexandria holds a wheel, the instrument of her martyrdom. Saint Lucy carries her eyes on a dish. Saint Peter holds keys. In Greek art, Hekate often holds torches and Hermes wears winged sandals. Once you know a few, you can identify figures across centuries. In 1593 the Italian writer Cesare Ripa published Iconologia, a handbook of personifications such as Justice, Fortune and Melancholy, and from 1603 it was illustrated. Artists used it for two centuries, which is why so many allegorical figures look alike.

Color that cost money

Historical Some colors carried meaning partly because they were expensive. Ultramarine blue was made from lapis lazuli mined in what is now Afghanistan, and in fifteenth-century Italy it could cost more than gold. Contracts sometimes named it: the historian Michael Baxandall quotes a 1485 contract in which the painter Domenico Ghirlandaio agreed to use ultramarine of a stated price per ounce for an altarpiece. When you see the Virgin Mary in a brilliant blue robe, you are seeing devotion and wealth at once.

An honest rule for symbols

Modern Here is the most important rule for anyone who loves esoteric art: a hidden meaning counts as history only if people at the time understood the symbol that way. If no source from the period supports it, it is a modern reading. Modern readings can be beautiful and useful, but label them as yours. Not every painting hides a secret. The art historian Svetlana Alpers argued in The Art of Describing (1983) that much Dutch painting is about observing the visible world, not hiding codes.

Reading a label

Historical Labels use careful words. “By” means the museum accepts the work as the artist’s. “Attributed to” means probably, with some doubt. “Workshop of” means made in the artist’s studio, and “circle of”, “follower of” and “manner of” move further away. A label is a claim, and claims can change. Context also changes meaning. Michael Baxandall showed in Painting and Experience in Fifteenth-Century Italy (1972) that Italian patrons’ contracts often fixed how much gold and costly ultramarine blue a painter had to use. A blue robe could be a statement about money as well as faith.

The vocabulary in action: the Magician

Here is the vocabulary used on one picture you can easily find, the Magician from the 1909 Rider-Waite-Smith deck, drawn by Pamela Colman Smith. Work through it with the card in front of you.

Line. The strongest line is the vertical of the figure’s raised arm, which continues down through the body to the pointing hand below. The picture is built on an up-and-down axis, very steady.

Shape. The table is a firm rectangle across the lower part of the card, and on it lie four objects: a cup, a sword, a coin marked with a star and a wand. Above the head floats a sideways figure eight.

Color and value. The background is flat yellow, so the white robe and red cloak stand out sharply. The brightest area is the figure’s body, which is exactly where your eye goes.

Space. There is almost no depth. Flowers fill the foreground and hang at the top, and the yellow behind is not a sky but a flat field, more like a stage backdrop.

Principles. Emphasis falls on the figure; balance comes from the arm up and the arm down; rhythm comes from the repeated flowers at top and bottom.

Notice that none of this needed a tarot meaning. You described and analyzed first. Only now would you move to Panofsky’s second level and ask what the four objects meant to Waite and Smith, which they explained in the book that went with the deck.

Composition: three shapes to look for

Many pictures are organized around a few simple shapes, and spotting them is an easy way to begin analysis. A triangle or pyramid of figures, common in Renaissance paintings of the Virgin and Child, feels stable and calm. A strong diagonal feels like movement or struggle, which is why Baroque painters loved it. A circle or ring of figures can suggest unity, a dance or a gathering. Try sketching a picture’s main shapes with three or four pencil lines. The sketch will look nothing like art, and that is the point: it shows you the skeleton underneath.

Questions beginners ask

Does every color have a fixed meaning? No. White is the color of mourning in parts of East Asia and of weddings in the modern West. Meaning depends on time and place.

What if I cannot identify a figure? Look for attributes, inscriptions and the museum’s label, and remember that sometimes even experts are unsure.

Why do art historians disagree so much? Because level three, iconology, is interpretation. Disagreement is normal and healthy.

Myths to drop: Symbols are not universal codes. Perspective is not the only “correct” way to show space. And “attributed to” on a label is not an insult; it is honesty about doubt.

A worked example

Imagine looking at Artemisia Gentileschi’s Esther before Ahasuerus at the Met. At Panofsky’s first level you write: “A richly dressed woman faints into the arms of two attendants while a young man in fine clothes rises from a throne.” At the second level, using the biblical Book of Esther, you write: “Queen Esther approaches King Ahasuerus uninvited, risking death, to plead for her people.”

At the third level you write, clearly marked as yours: “My reading: the painting turns a story about royal power into one about a woman’s courage under pressure.” Notice how the first two sentences can be checked by anyone, while the third is an argument you would need to support.

Try this

Choose one religious or mythological painting in a museum collection, such as Esther before Ahasuerus by Artemisia Gentileschi. Write one sentence at each of Panofsky’s three levels, and mark the third clearly as your own interpretation.

A variation: choose three saints or gods and find each in two different works from different centuries. Note which attribute stayed the same and what changed.

Recap

The elements of a picture (line, shape, color, value, texture, space) and its principles (balance, rhythm, proportion, emphasis, unity) give you words for what you see. Linear, atmospheric and hierarchical systems show space in different ways for different purposes. Panofsky’s three levels move from what is visible, to the conventional subject, to interpretation, and only the first two are usually checkable. A symbol’s meaning counts as history only if people at the time read it that way, and museum labels are claims that can change.

What next

Press “Mark as done” and continue with Ancient and medieval symbols. For more, read about esoteric art and the Early Renaissance, where linear perspective began.

Further reading: Michael Baxandall, Painting and Experience in Fifteenth-Century Italy (Oxford University Press, 1972). James Hall, Hall’s Dictionary of Subjects and Symbols in Art (John Murray, 1974).

Sources

• Erwin Panofsky, Studies in Iconology (New York: Oxford University Press, 1939), reprinted in Meaning in the Visual Arts (Garden City: Doubleday, 1955).
• Svetlana Alpers, The Art of Describing: Dutch Art in the Seventeenth Century (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1983).
• Michael Baxandall, Painting and Experience in Fifteenth-Century Italy (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1972).

Go deeper: the art movements timeline and art history pages on this site

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