Meaning in the Visual Arts

Erwin Panofsky of the Institute for Advanced Study is one of the greatest art historians of this or any other time.

He brings together in this volume a rich and varied cross section of his major work that includes material not only from such famous books as Studies in Iconology and The Life and Art of Albrecht Dürer but translations from the German of papers that have never before been available to American readers, as well as original work prepared especially for this volume.

The aim of the book – like the aim of Panofsky’s entire career – is to reveal the themes and ideas inherent in the history of art and to examine these themes and ideas as manifestations of our cultural tradition – to see the forms, postures and symbols of works of art as the living record of civilisation transformed by genius. His historical technique is at once meticulous and inspired – prodigious in its revelation of details and brilliant in its relation of these details to the life and work of individual painters and their times. The result is a volume – generously illustrated with 64 pages of illustrations and many text figures – that serves not only as an introduction to the study of art but, for more specialised readers, as a profoundly illuminating discussion of aspects of art and life in the Middle Ages and Renaissance.