Erwin Panofsky was a German art historian whose academic career flourished in the United States following the rise of the Nazi regime. His work profoundly shaped the modern academic study of iconography, exploring humanist themes in Renaissance art and analyzing artists like Albrecht Dürer. Panofsky's insights into artistic meaning and interpretation have also significantly influenced contemporary sociological theories of taste and cultural habitus.
The rediscovery of Erwin Panofsky's manuscript reveals his in-depth thesis on Michelangelo, originally submitted in 1920 and thought lost. This work, now available in English, offers a comprehensive analysis of Michelangelo's artistic style, contrasting it with Raphael's, and situating both within the broader context of Western art. It highlights Panofsky's early intellectual development and reflects a pivotal moment in art history when formalist interpretations began to dominate over biographical analyses, providing fresh insights into the High Renaissance.
Erwin Panofsky's Perspective as Symbolic Form is one of the great works of
modern intellectual history, the legendary text that has dominated all art
historical and philosophical discussions on the topic of perspective in this
century. Finally available in English, it is an unrivaled example of
Panofsky's early method that placed him within broader developments in
theories of knowledge and cultural change. Here, drawing on a massive body of
learning that ranges over Antique philosophy, theology, science, and optics as
well as the history of art, Panofsky produces a type of archaeology of Western
representation that far surpasses the usual scope of art historical studies.
Perspective in Panofsky's hands becomes a central component of a Western will
to form, the expression of a schema linking the social, cognitive,
psychological, and especially technical practices of a given culture into
harmonious and integrated wholes. Yet the perceptual schema of each historical
culture or epoch is different, and each gives rise to a different but equally
full vision of the world. Panofsky articulates these different spatial
systems, demonstrating their particular coherence and compatibility with the
modes of knowledge, belief, and exchange that characterized the cultures in
which they arose. Our own modernity, Panofsky shows, is characterized by its
peculiarly mathematical expression of the concept of the infinite, within a
space that is necessarily both continuous and homogeneous.
Die Wirkung Erwin Panofskys auf das kunstgeschichtliche Denken des 20. Jahrhunderts ist enorm. Als Mitbegründer der Ikonologie entwickelte er eine der einflussreichsten Methoden zur Interpretation großer Kunstwerke. In dieser Sonderausgabe wird sein grundlegender Text, in dem er sein dreistufiges Interpretationsmodell erläutert, erstmals separat veröffentlicht. Panofskys Ansatz umfasst drei Stufen: Zunächst erfolgt die Beschreibung von Form und Gegenstand, wobei alltägliche Erfahrungen und Kenntnisse stilistischer Entwicklungen in der Kunst erforderlich sind. Darauf folgt die Analyse der dargestellten Bedeutung, die Kenntnisse von Textquellen, wie biblischen Attributen der Heiligen, voraussetzt. Schließlich wird der „Wesenssinn“ entschlüsselt, was zur ikonologischen Analyse führt. Hierbei verbindet der Betrachter das Gesehene mit allgemeinen kultur- und geistesgeschichtlichen Kenntnissen zu einer umfassenden Synthese. Panofskys Modell war bahnbrechend, da es ein konsequentes, logisches Vorgehen vorschlug, das Anschauung und historische Fakten vereint und somit die Grundlage für Begriffs- und Theoriebildung in der Kunstwissenschaft bildet. Die anschließenden Kontroversen um die Gültigkeit seines Analysemodells verdeutlichen seine scharfsinnige und weitblickende Herangehensweise.
Pandora was the "pagan Eve," and she is one of the rare mythological figures to have retained vitality up to our day. Glorified by Calderón, Voltaire, and Goethe, she is familiar to all of us, and "Pandora's box" is a household word. In this classic study Dora and Erwin Panofsky trace the history of Pandora and of Pandora’s box in European literature and art from Roman times to the present.
