theory | iconography | hermeneutics | sexuality + psychoanalysis
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I C O N O G R A P H Y means “writing with images.” It refers to the symbolic and allegorical meanings embedded in visual art forms, including paintings, statues, emblems, and the decorative programs of the designed world. Iconography can also describe the coded use of visual images in poetry and drama. The modern study of iconography was championed by members of the Warburg School in Germany at the turn of the twentieth century. Its main practitioners included Aby Warburg, Erwin Panofsky, and Edgar Wind.Walter Benjamin was also influenced by the visual studies of the Warburg circle, especially in his early work on Baroque drama, The Origin of the German Tragic Drama (published 1927). Iconography is a means of connecting Shakespeare’s poetry to a dynamic range of visual types and designs and to philosophical, psychological, and theological debates about the nature and status of the image.

Othello: Epiphany Kings
Teaching tool/JRL

The Winter's Tale and the Gods:
Iconographies of Idolatry
chapter from Afterlives of the Saints
by Julia Reinhard Lupton
copyright StanfordUniversity Press, 1996
(pdf file)

Iconophilia and Iconoclasm in Othello
Conference paper by Catherine Winiarski
(download MS Word document)

Spectacle of Venice
teaching tool/JRL

Ophelia's Fountain
NY Times article / download MS Word scan