How to Read a Painting & How

to write a paper about paintings?

(Ways of Seeing)

Lecture 2: The Language of Art

Dr. Bootheina Majoul
 Reading Captions for Information

Artist: A caption usually begins with the name of the artist or architect, if it is known. If there is a question
mark after the name, that means that we have no documentary proof, but that the person who wrote the caption
thinks it is probably the work or design of this person. If it says something such as “After Polykleitos” it means
that the work is a copy by an unknown artist of an original by a known artist, in this case the ancient Greek
sculptor Polykleitos. “Circle of Rembrandt” or “School of Rembrandt” indicates an unknown artist who is
thought to have worked closely with, or been a student of, a known artist.

Title: A title for the work usually follows the artist’s name. Sometimes, artists give titles to their works.
Sometimes, titles are descriptive, usually given to the work by someone other than the artist (e.g., an art dealer
or an art historian), as a convenient way to refer to the work. The practice of artists giving titles to their
artworks is relatively recent. Most titles used by art historians are descriptive. Sometimes, a descriptive title
refers to a patron or collector. In English language titles, the first word and other main words (nouns, verbs,
adjectives, adverbs) are usually capitalized, while conjunctions (such as and) and prepositions (such as by,
from) are lower-case. In other languages there are different conventions. Official titles given to their works by
artists, and titles that have a long history of association with a work of art (e.g., Mona Lisa), are usually
italicized.

Date: The date for a work of art may be precise, as when it has been signed and dated by the artist or when
there is an historical document indicating when it was made. Otherwise, a work will have an approximate date
determined by scholars. In this case, a range may be given (for example, “460–450 BCE” or “9th–10th century
CE”) or the Latin word circa (“around,” often abbreviated as “c.”) may be used before the date to indicate that
it is approximate. In dates, BCE means “before the common era,” and CE means “the common era.” (In current
usage these two designations have replaced BC meaning “before Christ” and ad meaning anno domini, “in the
year of our Lord,” or after the birth of Christ).

Medium: A caption will usually list the materials used in the work because photographs may not give an
accurate impression of these materials.

Size: Measurements are important because they give a sense of the work’s scale. Size and scale are often hard
to judge from photographs, especially in a textbook, which can present a miniature portrait and a palace at the
same size on the same page.

Period or Culture: This tells you the work’s original time period or culture (as in Edo Period, Japan, or
Dynasty 18, New Kingdom, Egypt).

Location and Collection: This tells you where the work is now. For architecture or large, public works, it
will be a geographic location. For smaller, portable works, it is often the name and location of a museum or a
government entity. For works in museums, captions often give a unique accession number assigned to the
work by the museum, and sometimes the name of a particular collection within the museum. If the work is
owned privately, location may be given as “Private Collection.”
 Formal Elements
Art historians focus on certain basic characteristics, or elements, of works of art when investigating their style
using formal analysis— for example color, line, mass, space, and scale. Often, these visual or physical
qualities of the work are most effectively discussed in terms of a sliding scale between pairs of opposite
qualities, such as linearity vs. painterliness, coloristic vs. monochrome, flatness vs. three dimensionality,
or dark vs. light.

Style: “Style” is a favorite word in art history. There are styles of individual works, the developing personal
styles of individual artists, styles associated with particular times and places, moods and subjects, schools and
movements, training and influence. Style is not an easy word to define, but on the first page of an article
published in 1953, influential American art historian Meyer Schapiro (1904–96) may have given the art-
historical usage of the word its clearest definition: “By style is meant the constant form—and sometimes the
constant elements, qualities, and expression—in the art of an individual or a group. . .. To the historian of art,
style is an essential object of investigation. He [sic] studies its inner correspondences, its life history, and the
problems of its formation and change . . . style is, above all, a system of forms with a quality and a meaningful
expression through which the personality of the artist and the broad outlook of a group are visible”.1

Color: The first step in analyzing color is to identify the different hues (red, blue, green, etc.) used by the
artist and see whether they used a particular range of colors. You would also look at the characteristics of each
color used. If it appears to be a representation of the color in its most vivid form, as it is represented on the
color chart, it is highly saturated. If the hue can hardly be distinguished, then it is of low saturation. Value is
a term that describes the relative lightness of a color—whether it tends more toward white or more toward
black.

Line: Some paintings have a stronger emphasis on line than on color. Line is created or represented by a
strong, sharp barrier between two colors or between light and dark. In discussing two-dimensional media, art
historians often talk about linearity vs. painterliness, distinguishing between works that emphasize line and
linear contours as compared with those that emphasize the play of color, both light and dark. You might ask
whether the lines in a painting are strong and continuous or broken up into many small hatches or pieces. For
a building or sculpture, you might ask whether there is a strong sense of silhouette (the outline of the exterior
contours) or whether the outline is broken up or blurred.

Space and Mass: The term “space” indicates whether an image conveys a sense of three-dimensional depth,
either pictorial (fictive) or real. The term “mass” evaluates whether the artwork conveys a sense of substantial,
three-dimensional form—as if the figures and objects portrayed had weight or volume. These are actual
characteristics of sculpture, architecture, and installations, but they are illusory, fictive characteristics of two-
dimensional media such as painting, drawing, printmaking, and photography. The use of either linear
perspective or atmospheric perspective, for example, can establish a sense of spatial recession in a painting,
and shading or modeling that simulates the way light falls on an opaque figure or object from a single source
can give a sense of formal volume, as can the casting of shadows. We might say that the illusion of space and
mass are three-dimensionalizing agents, just as line is a flattening agent. For example, in the Madonna of the
Goldfinch of about 1506 (Figure 2.3), Raphael employed modeling and shading to indicate that the women
and children in the foreground of the painting have three-dimensional solidity and volume, and the overlapping
of their forms situates them within the space needed to contain them in the foreground.

1
Meyer Schapiro. “Style.” In Anthropology Today. An Encyclopedic Inventory, edited by A.L. Kroeber, 287–311. Chicago:
University of Chicago Press, 1953.
 2.3 Raphael, Madonna of the Goldfinch, 1506. Oil on wood panel. 42 x 29. in
(106.7 x 74.9 cm). Gallerie del Uffizi, Florence.

Their mass is underlined by the shadow they cast on the right side of the painting, a clear indication that the
implied single light source is to the left, in front of the picture plane. And the space described in this painting
recedes well behind the foreground figural group, deep into the distance. The use of atmospheric perspective
situates the mountains on the horizon in the deep distance. This technique decreases the saturation of colors
and the sharpness of drawing to a fuzzy, blueish grey, emulating an optical effect created in the natural world
in which the progressive screening provided by the atmosphere masks vibrancy and clarity as we look deeply
through it into the distance.

Scale: As part of a formal analysis, you will want to consider scale, or relative size, both within the work and
in relation to the viewer. Determine if there is a consistent scale used within the work, or whether different
scales are used to emphasize or de-emphasize certain elements in the image. Figures of gods, for example, are
sometimes represented larger than other figures to indicate their divinity (a formal device known as hierarchic
scale). Consider also whether the image is monumental, life-size, or miniature in relation to the viewpoint of
the observer in front of the work of art. When we are in the presence of the work, its relative scale in relation
to the size of a human figure will be immediately felt intuitively, but in the small pictures used in books, we
will have to rely on knowledge of the size of the work indicated by dimensions given in the captions.

Composition: The term “composition” is used to describe how an artist puts together all the above elements
in the work of art. It is about the overall arrangement or organizing design used by the artist in creating the
representation, rather than the nature of the individual elements we have just surveyed. But, in a
comprehensive formal analysis, you will ask how these elements—line, color, space and mass, scale—
contribute to the work’s overall composition and its visual effect. Initially, you will be trying to answer some
basic questions, such as these, about design:

• What does the artist emphasize visually? What first attracts our attention?
• How does the artist emphasize this feature/these features? Through scale, line, color, or their placement within the overall
compositional design?
• Is there an underlying rhythm, pattern, or geometric structure to the composition? How would you characterize its design
or organization? Is it symmetrical or asymmetrical? Is it balanced or unbalanced?
• Does the composition seem unified; that is, do the elements appear integrated into a cohesive order or are the elements
separate and distinct from each other? In other words, does the presentation seem random or carefully structured?

The three works we have examined with reference to the individual elements of color, line, and space and
mass are examples of three different kinds of compositions. A basic bilateral symmetry also characterizes
Raphael’s composition in the Madonna of the Goldfinch (see Figure 2.3). The Virgin Mary is centralized
within the tall rectangle of the painting with one child on each side, though the boy to our right is closer to the
vertical axis, and thus closer to her, a special connection further emphasized by his position nestled between
her legs and the placement of his foot on top of hers.
 Examining An Italian Gothic Wall Painting: A Case Study

2.5 Giotto di Bondone, The Kiss of Judas, 1305–6. Fresco. 6ft 6.in x 6ft ⅞ in (2 x 1.85m).
South wall of the Scrovegni (Arena) Chapel, Padua, Italy.

The case study focuses on a fresco that formed part of an elaborate series of narrative episodes, painted by
Giotto de Bondone in 1305–6 CE on the walls of a private chapel in the Italian city of Padua (Figure 2.5).
There is a lot going on in this painting. It is packed with human figures standing within a seemingly shallow
space, though that space is undefined other than in an expanse of blue across the top. Faces glare across the
painting from both sides toward the center, leading viewers to the roughly centralized confrontation of two
foreground figures, both enveloped in the yellow cloak of the man to our right who stretches out his garment
as he embraces his companion. By covering him with his cloak, this figure essentially disembodies the figure
next to him, who commands special attention because of the halo that surrounds his head. This halo separates
him from a dense cluster of helmeted figures which form a blackened backdrop behind the bright, full-color
prominence of the two figures in the foreground. It also sets off the standing figures flanking the central pair,
slightly behind and just beside them, two on each side, posed in profile, symmetrical red and green bookends
to stabilize our focus on the central pair. This central pair seem to be trapped in a tense and unresolved
confrontation—face very close to face. A collection of weapons and lamps radiate from their standoff against
the sky above them, further drawing attention to them as the principal focus of the painting. And aggression
is not restricted to the center. It has already resulted, at left, in a severed ear slipping from the side of a figure’s
head across his neck, where a second haloed figure reaches out toward the right with a knife. His groping
gesture toward the right forms a mirrored visual rhyme with the expansive leftward reach of the figure who
covers his companion with his yellow cloak, linking these two aggressive actions in symmetrical pictorial
resonance. What is even more striking in this left third of the painting is the mysteriously hooded man draped
in blue whom we see from behind. He is one of four figures distributed across the foreground of the tableau,
figures whose outreaching arms coordinate to create an implied horizontal alignment, unifying and
sequestering the crowd behind them. The hooded man’s outstretched cape protects us as observers from the
violent act behind him, forming a curtain along with the yellow cloak to signal the front of the shallow
theatrical space, the stage. He is the only one in this picture who turns his back on us, standing as we stand
while viewing the painting, linking through his posture our world outside the picture to his world inside the
picture. This creates a breathtaking intimacy when we first notice it. Maybe he stands in for us in the painting,
holding our place in the story.
 Wölfflin and Formal Analysis

In Principles of Art History (1915)2, the Swiss art historian Heinrich Wölfflin (1864– 1945) sought to
systematize formal analysis through his definition of paired, contrasting terms to distinguish fundamental
stylistic differences. He defined five basic pairs of characteristics, which he saw as characterizing the
Renaissance in contrast to the Baroque: linear vs. painterly, planar vs. recessional, closed forms vs. open
forms, multiplicity vs. unity, absolute clarity vs. relative clarity. Here we will use Raphael’s School of Athens
(1510–11) (Figure 2.7) to represent the characteristics of Renaissance painting and Rubens’s Garden of Love
(c.1630–5) (Figure 2.8) to represent the Baroque. Comparing them clarifies the polarities Wölfflin saw in the
styles of these two periods.

2.7 Raphael, The School of Athens, 1510–11. Fresco. 19 x 2.8 Peter Paul Rubens, The Garden of Love, c.1630–
27ft (5.79 x 8.24m). Stanza della Segnatura, Vatican, Rome. 5. Oil on canvas. 6ft 6in x 9ft 4.in (1.99 x 2.86m).
Museo del Prado, Madrid.

Linear vs. Painterly: Wölfflin used the term linear to indicate works that emphasize outlines and have a
special kind of clarity in the spatial separation and relationship of objects to each other. Painterly form is more
elusive—attention is withdrawn from the edges, outlines are deemphasized, and form is developed primarily
through the use of light and shade.

Planar vs. Recessional: In a planar composition, objects are represented parallel to the picture plane. The
spatial recession is clear, achieved by a series of planes that are all parallel to the picture plane, as in much
fifteenth-century Italian art. In contrast, a work characterized by recession is one in which the planes are not
clearly articulated as separate parallel units. Spatial depth is created through diagonal placement, and the
frontal plane is not emphasized.

Closed Forms vs. Open Forms: In a closed form, the depicted contents of represented forms seem to stand
in clear relation to their edges, allowing the viewer to establish a clear sense of the forms’ position in relation
to other objects in the image. In an open form, spatial relationships are less clear, either among objects within
the work or between those objects and the viewer. The elements within the image are not oriented in relation
to clear edges. Sometimes, objects merge with other objects into a single mass, without a clear barrier
separating them individually.

Multiplicity vs. Unity: This dichotomy contrasts works in which the individual parts appear as independent
units (even when they are subordinate to a whole), with works that are perceived as unified wholes, in which
individual elements are less clearly distinguished from each other.

Absolute Clarity vs. Relative Clarity: Wölfflin’s final pair is closely related to the preceding pair. Absolute
clarity refers to works with explicit and clearly articulated forms, and relative clarity refers to works with less
explicit and less clearly articulated forms. Although art historians today may not continue to use these same
paired terms, Wölfflin’s comparative method still dominates art-historical research and presentation. Many
classroom lectures still rely on a series of paired images to make their points, especially when characterizing
stylistic change.

2
Heinrich Wölfflin. Principles of Art History: The Problem of the Development of Style in Later Art. Translated by M. D. Hottinger.
New York: Dover, 1940 (originally published in 1915)
 Two Special Types of Formal Analysis
Although formal analysis is almost always a part of art-historical research and interpretation, there are two
specific ways to use it that deserve mention here: formalism and connoisseurship.

Formalism: For strict formalists, a pure and direct engagement with the visual qualities of a work of art takes
priority over all external issues of context or meaning in interpreting them, or understanding their place within
the history of art. Stylistic analysis is not a first step but the essential, and at times the only, step. The artwork
should be probed for its formal features —e.g., composition, material, shape, line, color—rather than for the
way it represents an identifiable figure, symbol, story, or idea. The idea that works of art have a unique visual
presence, and impact on us, has a long history. The German philosopher Immanuel Kant (1724–1804), for
example, famously argued for the special character of aesthetic encounters in the Critique of Judgement
(1790). He claimed that artists seek to transcend the limits of actual experience by communicating an idea
rather than a representation, challenging the mind to grasp or seek a deeper and more expansive understanding
of experience. In art history, the formalist theories of Swiss scholar Heinrich Wölfflin (1864–1945) were
highly influential during the first two-thirds of the twentieth century and still have an impact on the way many
art historians teach their subject. Writing at a time when sciences and social sciences were uncovering
seemingly immutable laws of nature and human behavior, Wölfflin argued that similarly unchanging
principles governed the development and progression of artistic styles: the cyclical repetition of three phases,
early (or archaic), classic, and baroque. He believed that the way to explore this dynamic was through rigorous
formal analysis using pairs of opposing principles (see box here). Wölfflin’s theory and practice of cyclical
stylistic dichotomy was pitched against the belief of many people during his time that Baroque art was a
degeneration of the Classical principles of the Renaissance. For him, Baroque was a different approach to art,
guided by different representational principles. It is not a question of ripe and rotten apples, but apples and
oranges. Whereas Wölfflin focused primarily on Renaissance and Baroque art, other formalists have
approached other periods: Alois Riegl (1858–1905) studied late-antique art and seventeenth-century
Netherlandish painting; Roger Fry (1866–1934) addressed Modern art; Henri Focillon (1881–1943) developed
a widely debated but influential theory of formalism in his 1934 book, Vie des formes (The Life of Forms in
Art), which in many ways grew out of his work on Gothic art; Clement Greenberg (1909–1994) championed
Abstract Expressionism, which, with its focus on the picture plane and the brush stroke, and its avoidance of
narrative, was ideally suited to a formalist perspective.

Connoisseurship: Connoisseurship is a specialized type of formal analysis that, on the basis of style, aims to
identify works of art with a particular artist, artistic movement, or moment in time. The visual skills and
expertise required to do this work must be developed over years of looking at the art of a particular time and
place, or the output of a single artist. Connoisseurship is also a tool used to judge the authenticity of a work
of art, to separate genuine works from forgeries, and works of a particular artist from those made by followers,
copyists, or forgers. The current practice of connoisseurship is based on the ideas and work of Giovanni
Morelli (1816–91), an Italian intellectual and political figure, who had studied medicine and comparative
anatomy in Germany. Because of his longstanding interest in art, and his scientific training, Morelli believed
that verifiable empirical evidence, rather than intuition, should be the basis for determining authorship and
authenticity, and he claimed that the best evidence for such conclusions resided in the seemingly trivial or
marginal aspects of paintings. For instance, the way in which artists painted less obvious or noticeable aspects
of figures— such as their hands or ears—was more revealing than an assessment of a painting’s overall
composition or the facial expressions of its figures. These latter features were less revealing aspects of
individual authorship since they were features of the broad period style of the artists’ time and place. In these
marginal aspects, he proposed, artists adhere to personal conventions almost automatically rather than
consciously conforming to current fashion or observation. Many art historians dismiss connoisseurship as a
superficial formalist study that emphasizes taste and judgment rather than contextual interpretation or social
significance. For others, connoisseurship’s focus on individuality feeds into a problematic emphasis on seeing
the history of art as a sequence of great geniuses rather than a broader cultural activity. On the other hand,
making judgments about authenticity and authorship can be an important first step in many art-historical
studies whose goal is probing the cultural contexts of works of art from any number of theoretical perspectives.
Today, the close visual analysis of Morellian connoisseurship is but one aspect of broader assessments of
authenticity and authorship, which can also include various kinds of scientific analysis and imaging.
 Panofsky’s Iconography and Iconology3
German art historian Erwin Panofsky (1892–1968) was educated during the second decade of the twentieth
century by German scholars and professors whose vision of the history of art—rooted in aspects of the
philosophical writings of Kant and Hegel—diverged from the formalist systems proposed at that time by
Heinrich Wölfflin. Panofsky wrote his dissertation on Albrecht Dürer’s theory in 1914, and in 1923 he was
appointed as the first professor of art history at Hamburg University. There, he became associated with a circle
of art historians and philosophers that grew up around Fritz Saxl (1890–1948), Ernst Cassirer (1874–1945),
and Aby Warburg (1866–1929). They developed modern iconographic and iconological theory, rejecting what
they saw as a purely formal approach to art in the work of scholars such as Wölfflin. They argued that the art
of a given period was connected in numerous ways with its religion, philosophy, literature, science, politics,
and social life. They developed iconography and iconology as methods that would enable scholars to retrieve
content embedded in works of art as symbolic aspects of broader cultural phenomena. In 1931, Panofsky
became a visiting professor at New York University, positioning himself well for emigration to the United
States when the Nazis dismissed him from his post at Hamburg in 1933 because he was Jewish. He spent the
rest of his life in the United States, ultimately joining the faculty of the Institute for Advanced Study in
Princeton, where one of his dear friends was Albert Einstein, a fellow refugee from Nazi Germany. In Studies
in Iconology (1939), he defined three levels of iconographic/iconological analysis—each with its own method
and goal. Soon, this analytic process became a rigorous model that brought systematic vigor to the American
practice of art history.

“PRE-ICONOGRAPHIC DESCRIPTION” (or “natural subject matter”) On this first level, we catalogue
what can be recognized visually without reference to outside sources, a basic kind of analysis formed on our
own experience of the world in which we live.
“ICONOGRAPHICAL ANALYSIS” On this second level, we identify the image as part of a known story,
with recognizable characters, specific settings, and conventional symbols or allegories, usually basing
identifications on acquired knowledge of textual sources. Iconographic research will also identify
conventional symbols.
“ICONOLOGICAL INTERPRETATION” (or “intrinsic meaning”) On the final, third level, we decipher
the deeper, cultural significance of the image by broadening our investigations to probe other aspects of the
culture in which the work was made—e.g., religion, philosophy, politics, economics, social relationships,
other forms of art.

Iconography
Iconography is the study that identifies conventional motifs, stories, images, and symbols in works of art. For
example, in a Christian religious painting, a haloed woman (often dressed in blue) accompanied by two young,
scantily clad boys (see Figure 2.3) represents the Virgin Mary with her son Jesus and his cousin John the
Baptist. In the Buddhist tradition, a modestly dressed figure sitting cross-legged with hair in a topknot and
elongated earlobes represents the Buddha. Sometimes, iconographers focus on a particular element within an
image, such as a human figure who is part of a larger, crowded scene, or a flower motif used to decorate a
landscape setting; at other times, they focus on the whole image as the representation of a moment in a larger
story, such as the Last Supper of Jesus and his Apostles or the Great Departure of Prince Siddhartha before he
became the Buddha. Sometimes, our own background and education makes the identification of subject and
symbol in some works of art almost automatic, but the process is not always simple. It often requires extensive
knowledge of a culture and its key stories and symbols, as well as its processes of image-making and the
conventional way it portrays holy or princely figures.
The current practice of iconography has its roots in the first half of the twentieth century in the work of German
art historian Erwin Panofsky, who developed notions of the cultural position and meaning of works of visual
art drawing on a longstanding preoccupation of the German philosophical tradition. In order to understand the
meaning of art, Panofsky believed we first need to use iconography to identify the subjects and symbols it
portrays, and he saw this as a two-stage process. First, we recognize the subjects and forms that we know

3
Erwin Panofsky. Studies in Iconology: Humanistic Themes in the Art of the Renaissance. New York: Harper & Row, 1972
(originally published in 1939).
“naturally” because of our own life experiences. Only then do we seek within the literature and visual
conventions of the culture in which the work was produced to discover more specific iconographic information
on the meanings conveyed by the natural forms. Panofsky developed his theory and method from the study
of Renaissance art, but the system he devised often remains useful when studying the history of art from a
variety of times and places. For example, in American artist Kerry James Marshall’s 1993 painting De Style
(Figure 2.10), we can understand many aspects of the scene “naturally.” There are five human figures within
an interior setting. Two stand and three sit. The four whose heads are visible address the viewer directly,
almost as if those viewers had just come into the room and those already in the room are acknowledging them.
A mirror on the back wall extends all the way across the room, but the viewer is not reflected here. Some
viewers today will draw on their own experiences to recognize that this scene is set in a barber shop, and since
the figures in the painting are Black, presumably this painting represents a barber shop that serves an African-
American clientele.

2.10. Kerry James Marshall, De Style, 1993. Acrylic and collage

on unstretched canvas. 8ft 8in x 10ft 2in (2.64 x 3.10m). Los
Angeles County Museum of Art.

The shop is full of tools used in cutting hair, such as the electric clippers in the
right hand of the barber. There are also many products used to style hair, though extra research might be
needed to identify some of them—for instance the Royal Crown Hair Dressing, a still well-known pomade
used in grooming, that sits on a surface near the barber’s right elbow. The particular barber shop represented
(real or imagined) is identified within the painting itself as Percy’s House of Style in a framed diploma hung
in front of the mirror at upper left. In the same area of the painting, the mirror itself reflects in reverse a part
of the shop’s name— which we presume is painted on the other side of a street-front window glass. A Zenith
radio sits on the counter, suggesting the sort of background noise that may have filled the setting. Snaking
electrical cords run along the top edge of the picture leading to two large rectangular lamps that illuminate the
workspace. Radiating around and along these light fixtures are flat, foregrounded, pink stars with white,
blocky “K7” inscriptions, proclaiming the brand name of a still-used hair conditioner in a pink jar. Because
of their placement and scale, the three men in the middle of the painting draw primary attention. To the left in
this trio, the barber (identified by his tool and action) is in the midst of giving a haircut to the man seated in
front of him, while lifting his left hand in what seems to be an interrupted wave to greet those who are entering
the space. Separated from this pair is a well-dressed figure with an astonishing hairdo that establishes his
prominence in the painting. He is the embodiment of the “style” and “stylishness” indicated in the title
Marshall title gave to this painting. Much more subtle visually, but perhaps equally powerful iconographically,
are the beams of light radiating from the head of the barber, a kind of unexpected halo given to an everyday
saint, whose heroic status in African-American life is underlined by his juxtaposition with a framed picture of
the boxer Joe Louis, reflected from the front wall of the shop in the mirror between the barber’s head and
waving hand. Perhaps his halo should be seen in relation to the pink stars extending across the painting above
him. This is just the beginning of a full iconographic analysis of this dense painting, but it provides a sense of
how Panofsky’s method could initiate a fuller understanding of what is portrayed here. When we perform an
analysis such as this, it will often be useful to understand which aspects of our interpretation derive from our
own experience and which aspects are brought in from cultural research. Sometimes the “natural” information
we bring may ultimately turn out to be wrong once we have done our cultural research. We need to hold those
initial understandings from our present lightly and check them against what we learn about the cultural
situations of artists, patrons, and initial viewers.
 Contextual Analysis

When undertaking a contextual analysis, you will seek to understand a work of art in relation to a particular
cultural moment. This can mean focusing on the work of art as it exists today, or resituating the work of art
within its own time and place, or at another point in history. This involves exploring the social, political,
spiritual, and/or economic significance of the work. Art historians often talk about “art in context,” but in
many ways this is a simplistic way to describe contextual analysis. It suggests that context (culture) is already
developed before or without the work of art, as if the work of art itself has no effect on individuals or society.
To think of a work of art “as” cultural context rather than “in” cultural context means recognizing it as
something that has an effect on people, on how they think and feel and act, and on larger social processes—
how groups of people think and feel and act. Works of art and cultural context are often thought of as mutually
constituting—that is, having an effect on each other. Works of art are shaped by historical processes, which
are, in turn, shaped by works of art in a continual interactive dialogue.

Confronting our Assumptions

When interpreting the relationship of works of art to their cultural context, it is important to remain aware of
the assumptions we make when we approach them. We must question those assumptions—ask where they
come from, why we maintain them, and how they shape our interpretations. Some assumptions may seem
factual—for example assuming that the Renaissance in Italy extended from the fifteenth into the sixteenth
century. Others may be more about personal judgements—for example believing that Italian Renaissance
painting is a naturalistic representational tradition, or believing that Italian Renaissance art represents one of
humanity’s highest artistic achievements. These sorts of assumptions, both factual and personal, should be
questioned and held in abeyance when undertaking art-historical analysis. Some of them may be disabling
stereotypes that will get in your way. Instead of assuming that you already know or understand a work of art
that you have chosen, or been assigned, to study, consciously begin with the position that you do not know
anything about it for sure— everything you think you already know must be tested, reexamined, and rethought.
This does not mean that your assumptions are necessarily wrong, just that you need to be aware of what they
are so that evaluating them can become part of the interpretive process.
In a famous line from the novel The Go-Between (1953), British author L.P. Hartley (1895–1972) observed
that “The past is a foreign country; they do things differently there.” We always need to keep in mind that we
cannot assume that we understand the past, nor that there is an immediate connection or understanding
between us and the past, even within our own country and culture. In this sense, studying a work of art from
the past is like visiting a foreign country or culture. As art historians, we need to learn rules and expectations
of the visual language of that past culture, as well as its customs. The challenge lies in not falling back on easy
assumptions or stereotypes about what you know, or think you know, or can ever know, about the meaning of
a work of art.
A good linguistic example of this principle of informed interpretation is the word “artificial.” Today it usually
means “fake” or “not natural,” as in the frequent mention of “artificial flavoring and coloring” on food labels.
For us, the word often carries a negative connotation. But in the eighteenth century, artificial meant simply
“made by human hands.” For example, on his voyages of exploration in the Pacific Ocean, Captain James
Cook (1728–79) collected both “artificial curiosities” (baskets, sculptures, textiles) and “natural curiosities”
(shells and plants). To complicate matters further, we can also note that earlier, in the sixteenth century,
“artificial” actually had a positive connotation, as in “made with art,” or “full of deep skill and artistry.” So,
even the use of a common word such as “artificial” requires sensitivity in when, where, how, and why it is
used. In other words, you need to be as sensitive to the particular context in which you find the word as you
are to the particular context in which the work of art was attached to it.
Visual images change meanings through time just as much as the words that are used to describe and explain
them. There are original meanings—created by the artist, patron, and first viewers—and there are the meanings
that subsequent generations attach to and find in the work. As an art historian, you must be aware of this
process, and aware of how differently you might look at a work compared with its creator, patron, initial
audience, or people of other times and places. You may regard a painting such as Olympia by Edouard Manet
(1832–83) as completely unobjectionable, but you will discover that many nineteenth-century viewers were
shocked by Manet’s depiction of a naked young woman staring out directly at the viewer to challenge and
confront them.
The Challenges of Cross-Cultural Interpretation
Like many modern artists, Pablo Picasso (1881–1973) was interested in and inspired by the art of other
cultures. He kept masks and figural sculptures from Africa and the Pacific in his studio and frequently visited
ethnography museums. Unlike art historians today, Picasso was primarily interested in the formal qualities he
admired in these works, not their cultural context. For him, personal understanding arose from purely visual
engagement. Try using Picasso’s practice with the sculpture pictured in Figure 3.1: How might you interpret
this work, without researching any contextual information about it? What does the artist emphasize? What
personal ideas or emotions does the work provoke in you, as its viewer? Can you determine how the work was
originally used? Why did it come into being? Why are nails and metal blades inserted in its surface?

3.1 Nkisi nkondi. Kongo people, Congo region (present-day

Democratic Republic of Congo), 19th century. Wood, nails, and other
materials. Height 46in (116.8cm). Field Museum, Chicago.

Here is a brief interpretation of sculpture of this kind, one that draws on both formal analysis and contextual
analysis for its insights. As you read it, think about how much of this insight is available to the viewer simply
through looking:

In the late nineteenth- and early twentieth-centuries, Kongo peoples, who live along the Atlantic coast of central Africa, used such
sculptures in rituals that dealt with social and personal problems, including public strife, theft, disease, seduction, and the
accumulation of wealth. The figure contains relics of a dead person, whose spirit was a powerful force to be harnessed toward the
desired end. A ritual specialist, nganga, owned the figure and used it as a medium to access the spirits on behalf of his or her client.
The insertion of nails and blades into the surface of the sculpture was not the work of the artist, but of subsequent users of the piece.
Hammering a nail or blade into the figure attracted the attention of the spirit associated with it and roused that spirit to action. The
figure itself is impressive, it conveys a sense of strength and power in its large, staring eyes and muscular arms held at the ready.
However, to the people who made and used it, the wooden sculpture itself was not the most important part of the piece—the
medicines and relics were. In fact, nganga specialists often simply kept the medicines and relics in simple clay pots, and they were
considered just as effective in that form.

Picasso asserted that he was not interested in context, but in some ways, without knowledge of that original
context, he—like us—could only interpret such works by applying his own cultural criteria to what he was
seeing. His looking process was not neutral; it was personal and informed by his own culture. Even if he
denied any interest in context, he was actually creating a context of meaning for the work because of the ideas
and assumptions he himself brought to bear. For example, Picasso probably found wooden figures of this kind
more interesting and more important for the qualities of their carving and the abstraction of their representation
than for the small bits of bone and herbs contained within them—a perception contrary to that of the Kongo
people themselves but central to the way the formal qualities of the work informed Picasso’s own art.
Picasso, like many other Europeans during his time, called works like this “fetishes.” For him this might have
seemed to be simply a descriptive term, but today it is loaded with cultural assumptions. In Picasso’s time, the
word “fetish” indicated a material object worshipped by people who endowed it with divine powers and the
ability to act like a person and fulfill their wishes. At the same time, the term fetish was also being used in
psychoanalysis to indicate an irrational sexual fixation on an object (as in a “foot fetish”). The two meanings
of fetish imply that the religious practices connected to these figures were at that time perceived at the very
least as misguided, if not “sick.” Rather than taking these practices at face value within their own cultural
context, the term fetish assigns these figures a value based on European cultural judgments and practices.
So, even Picasso, who had explicitly denied any interest in context or the interpretation of context, was looking
and interpreting with culturally informed eyes. It was not wrong for Picasso to do this; it is really unavoidable.
We all come to art history—to the process of interpretation—with prior knowledge and our own cultural
experiences. We are not blank pages, and this is not a bad thing. Some of your assumptions and prior
knowledge may be what made you interested in the work and they may help you to engage with it on a variety
of levels. But art historians should avoid applying unthinkingly what they know from their own cultures to the
interpretation of works from other cultures. It is almost always misleading to assume that there are universal
values expressed through art, or universal systems of representation. These kinds of “universal truths” usually
turn out to be simply the interpreter’s own specific cultural beliefs or values in disguise, in other words
stereotypes. Return to your initial thoughts about and interpretation of the Kongo figure. How do they reflect
your own cultural assumptions?

Asking Contextual Questions

The following are some basic questions to ask when developing a contextual analysis. Not every question is
applicable to every artwork. For example, if you do not know the artist’s personal identity, for whatever
reason, then there are a number of questions that you cannot ask about the creation of the work.

One range of questions focuses on the people involved in the creation, use, and viewing of the artwork—the
patron, artist, and viewers:
• Who were the patron, artist, viewers?
• What sorts of records did the artist leave about the creation of this work? Did the artist say anything about their intentions
in creating the work? Were other designers, artists, or assistants involved?
• What were the patron’s motives in sponsoring this work? To what extent did the patron participate in its creation? If there
is one, what does the contract for the work or correspondence about it reveal? Was the patron acting individually, or on
behalf of an institution?
• Who was able to see the work? Under what circumstances? What was the response of contemporary viewers to this work?
Other questions for building a contextual analysis address the physical work of art, its location, and use:
• When was this work made?
• Where was it originally located? Was it seen by individuals or by assembled groups or by the general public?
• In what rituals or gatherings was this work used or seen?
• Does the work make use of rare or costly materials? Does it include materials that have either ritual or symbolic value?
• Are the artist’s techniques new or innovative in some way? Was there any particular significance in the choice of
techniques?
Still other contextually oriented questions address the larger social issues presented by the work of art:
• What was the political, religious, or social context in which this work was created, used, and/or seen?
• Was the subject of this work new or innovative, or does it treat a familiar subject conventionally? If new, what prompted
the change? If traditional, what was the motivation for conservatism?
• Are political, religious, and/or social messages conveyed through the style, subject matter, or placement of this work?
• Was this work’s style new or innovative? If so, what prompted the change? If it uses an established, accepted style, what
are the reasons for adhering to the status quo?

We can trace how some of these questions might be used in interpreting a work of art using the example of
the Selimiye Mosque built in Edirne, Turkey, in 1568–75 (Figure 3.2). The architect was Koca Mimar Sinan
(1489–1588) and, in a contextual analysis, we will want to find out as much background information about
him as possible. Sinan was an amazingly productive architect who designed more than 80 large Friday
mosques. He began his career as a soldier and engineer, and was not appointed architect to Sultan Suleyman
the Magnificent (ruled 1520–66) until 1538. His patron for the Selimiye Mosque—the person who
commissioned and paid for its construction—was Suleyman’s son, Selim II (ruled 1566–74). In this case, we
would examine Selim’s reign, his patronage of mosques generally, and of Sinan’s work in particular. In terms
of viewers, we would want to think not only about the Muslim residents of the city and those who worshipped
at the mosque, but also about foreign visitors and what their impressions might have been.

3.2 Sinan, Mosque of Sultan Selim, 1568–75. Edirne, Turkey.

The second set of questions listed above will raise other interesting issues. The Selimiye Mosque is located in
Edirne, which was the first Ottoman capital in Europe. We would consider the role this provincial capital city
had in the Ottoman empire at this time. Since this mosque was built for communal Friday worship, we would
look at its floor plan and consider how it was designed to accommodate the large numbers of people who
assembled within it on Fridays.
As far as the third set of contextual questions is concerned, there are numerous political and religious messages
conveyed by the building. In designing this mosque, Sinan wanted to build a dome that would surpass that of
Istanbul’s congregational mosque, which was originally built as the Christian church of Hagia Sophia (Holy
Wisdom). We might think about the messages conveyed by such an act—in surpassing a dome constructed in
the sixth century by Christians, and constructing it in an Ottoman capital city closer to the main centers of
western Europe. In this regard, we might consider Selim’s motives as patron and Sinan’s motives as architect.
We would also investigate the range of activities that went on at this site in a complex of buildings adjacent
to the mosque, including a madrasa set aside for study, a hospital, charity kitchens, a covered market, and
public baths. The minarets provide an opportunity to see how formal questions can lead to contextual insights,
and vice versa. In an initial formal analysis, we might discuss the remarkable soaring presence of the minarets,
how they spring up from the mass of lower buildings of the complex and frame the dome itself, accentuating
its own lightness and upward thrust. We would note that, since the mosque is located on an elevated foundation
at the edge of the city, the minarets dominate the skyline and provide a landmark visible from many parts of
the urban environment. We could discuss the remarkable engineering required to build these soaring minarets,
each of which is more than 295 feet (89.9 meters) high but only 12 feet (3.81 meters) in diameter at the base.
This might initiate a contextual discussion of Sinan’s engineering accomplishments and the general practice
of engineering in Ottoman culture. From a contextual standpoint, we could also focus on the fact that only
royal mosques were permitted to have more than one minaret and usually no more than two. This makes the
presence of four in this building extraordinary. This could lead to an investigation into why Sinan and his
patron Selim would want to construct a mosque with four minarets in this particular city, at this particular
time—searching for the complex of artistic and political factors that might have prompted such a decision.

Iconology
When we introduced Erwin Panofsky’s theory of iconography and iconology in the previous chapter (see
here), we concentrated only on iconography, the second part of his three-part system for determining meaning
in the visual arts. Iconography is the identification of conventional subjects and symbols. Iconology is about
context. It picks up where iconography leaves off by taking the identifications achieved through iconographic
analysis and explaining how, and why, such subjects were chosen to express the cultural situation of its
production. Iconology can put both style and iconography in context. Panofsky calls this knowledge “intrinsic
meaning.” To perform a contextual analysis of this sort, we work to discover the deeper, cultural significance
of the image. We take into account when and where it was made, the prevailing meanings of stories and
symbols, and the wishes and expectations of the artist, patron, and audience. In developing this method of
contextualizing art, Panofsky was strongly influenced by Ernst Cassirer (1874–1945), a German philosopher
who was Panofsky’s colleague at the University of Hamburg, and who, like Panofsky, was dismissed from his
post by the Nazis, in 1933, and eventually found himself teaching in the United States. Cassirer argued that,
since images represent the fundamental principles or ideas (symbolic values) in a culture, we can see works
of art as primary “documents” of an artist, a religion, a philosophy, even an entire civilization. They are loaded
with cultural meaning.
 Some Theoretical Approaches to Contextual Analysis
Art historians usually form their questions, conduct their research, and craft their interpretations guided by
focused theoretical perspectives. A particular theory about history or a theory about creating meaning can
serve as the basis or inspiration for art-historical work and its presentation. It can help us develop precise and
penetrating lines of questioning to guide our research and form our conclusions. Certain theoretical
perspectives have been developed within the practice of art history itself (e.g., formal analysis and
iconography), but, since the middle of the twentieth century, art historians have also drawn on a group of
theories employed commonly across the social sciences and the humanities in a variety of disciplines. This
group of shared theories is often called “critical theory.” What follows is a short list of the types of critical
theory that you are most likely to encounter while studying art history, with references to a few examples of
literature that can help you explore each approach further.
Michael W. Cothren and Anne D’Alleva. Methods & Theories of Art History. 3rd edition. London: Laurence King Publishing, 2021.

Cultural Studies and Post-Colonial Theory: Cultural Studies is an interdisciplinary academic movement
that takes culture out of the realm of the elite and examines its interconnections throughout all levels of society.
Cultural studies is wide-ranging. Its practitioners may discuss novels, workers’ diaries, concepts of race or
gender, soap operas, or objects of daily life, from hand-embroidered tablecloths to IKEA furniture. In doing
this work, cultural studies is strongly interdisciplinary; it derives its methods and issues from anthropology,
history, economics, sociology, literary criticism, and art history. Art historians have been particularly involved
in the branch of cultural studies known as visual culture studies, or simply visual studies. Post-colonial theory
has been important in the development of cultural studies. The term “post-colonial” refers not only to the
shaping of new identities, as well as political and cultural practices in former colonies, but also to a body of
theory that supports the study of the distinctive cultural, social, and political dynamics of both colonial and
post-colonial societies.
Ashcroft, Bill, Gareth Griffiths, and Helen Tiffin, eds. The Post-Colonial Studies Reader. New York and London: Routledge, 1995.
Bryson, Norman, Michael Ann Holly, and Keith Moxey, eds. Visual Culture: Images and Interpretation. Middletown: Wesleyan
University Press, 1994.
King, Katherine, ed. Views of Difference: Different Views of Art. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1999.
Mirzoeff, Nicholas, ed. The Visual Culture Reader. 3rd edition. London: Routledge, 2012.

Feminisms: Feminist art history is an exciting and innovative mode of inquiry, and yet it can sometimes be
confusing to students. Does it mean studying only women artists? Is it also the study of women as subject
matter in art? Are all studies of women artists by definition feminist? As you familiarize yourself with feminist
art history, you will learn how multiple and varied the approach can be. Rather than a single feminist art
history there is a collection of “feminist art histories,” all of which focus on women as artists, patrons, viewers,
and/or subjects. A feminist study explicitly addresses the issue of female gender—that is, the idea of femininity
and/or the experience of being a woman—in one or more of these arenas
Broude, Norma, and Mary D. Garrard, eds. Feminism and Art History: Questioning the Litany. New York: Harper & Row, 1982.
Nochlin, Linda. “Why Have There Been No Great Women Artists?” ARTnews (January, 1971), 22–39, 67–71.
Pollock, Griselda, and Rozsika Parker. Old Mistresses: Women, Art, and Ideology. London: Pandora Press, 1981.

Psychoanalysis and Reception Theory: Both the making of art and the viewing of art have a psychological
and physical basis. Some art historians approach art’s history from these perspectives, starting with
psychoanalytic theory and proceeding to various theories of reception and the gaze. Narrowly speaking,
psychoanalysis is a method of analyzing psychic (psychological) phenomena rooted in a philosophy of human
consciousness, both individual and social. Its modern founder is Sigmund Freud (1856–1939), an Austrian
physician who developed a therapeutic method for analyzing the unconscious through the interpretation of
evidence such as dreams, verbal slips, jokes, and through the use of free association. Freud himself, and many
after him—notably Jacques Lacan (1901–81)—applied the theory and practice of analysis to works of art and
literature and to society at large. Reception theory shifts attention from the artist to the audience, specifically
the psychic and physiological aspects of viewing works of art which, some believe, actively complete the
work of art itself.
Bal, Mieke. Looking In: The Art of Viewing. London: Taylor & Francis, 2001.
Gombrich, E.H. Art and Illusion: A Study in the Psychology of Pictorial Representation. Princeton: Princeton University Press,
1961.
Mulvey, Laura. “Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema.” Screen 16, no.3 (1975): 6–18.
Pollock, Griselda, ed. Psychoanalysis and the Image: Transdisciplinary Perspectives. Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell, 2006.
 Writing Art-History Papers
Art-Historical Arguments: Opinion vs. Interpretation: One of the objections we hear from students who
are unhappy with the grades we have given to their papers is: “But art history is just a matter of opinion. Mine
is as good as yours!” As I hope you have come to realize by now, art history is not opinion, it is interpretation,
which could be better characterized as a supported and informed viewpoint. In art history, students have to be
able to deal with the available evidence in a way that meets not only their instructor’s expectations but also
the standards of the discipline they are studying. It is sometimes difficult to make this shift in thinking with
art history, as opposed to other subjects such as chemistry or physics, because visual images play such a large
role in our daily lives. We are bombarded with pictures in a variety of ways, and in a variety of contexts, and
are usually not expected to analyze them critically. You may have visited museums, or traveled to new places,
and spent time looking at art and reacting to it, even developing opinions about it, in a way that you do not do
in, for example, a chemistry lab. The kinds of thoughts you have and opinions you express on these occasions
may be a wonderful and rewarding way to talk about art with a friend, but in the context of an art history
course, where you are learning to be a scholar working with the discipline’s established methods of enquiry,
these ideas are not necessarily valuable. They can even be distracting.
Imagine what the response would be if students took an “It’s my opinion, so it’s OK” approach to chemistry.
In a chemistry lab, if your test tube at the end of an experiment did not contain 2.5ml of blue liquid, you would
not say to the instructor, “Well, it’s your opinion that this experiment ought to yield 2.5ml of blue liquid. I’m
very happy with 1.2ml of green liquid. Who cares if I didn’t add ammonium hydroxide? I just didn’t feel like
my test tube needed it—it wasn’t the focus of my experiment.” Because it is easier to recognize that chemistry
as a discipline is separate from other areas of knowledge and experience, students are less likely to tell their
professors “It’s my opinion, so it’s OK.” But art history, as well as chemistry, has its own established methods
as an academic discipline and, when taking art-history courses, you will need to follow them, experiment with
them for a while, even though you do not have to give up your own personal viewpoint as a result. The hope
is that you will become a more rigorous, flexible, and creative thinker through your engagement with these
established methods and their relationship to your experience of art.
Art history is not looking for a result as specific as 2.5ml of blue liquid in a test tube. Most professors are not
looking for one specific interpretation. They are looking for a rigorous and careful process of interpretation.
Yet, even if there may be no one right answer, some interpretations will be more convincing than others
because they take into account more of the available information about a particular subject or resolve a
particular interpretive question. The analogy of being a lawyer is sometimes useful in grasping the process of
building interpretations about art, rather than expressing opinions or feelings about it. In a courtroom, both
opposing lawyers have the same set of information, but in making their case, they interpret it in different ways.
Two stories are argued from the same set of information. But as lawyers, the stories they create have to be
presented in a certain way, according to legal standards for the kind of evidence and the presentation of it that
are permissible in a courtroom. In the end, one story has to convince the jury and the judge by accounting for
all the evidence available. If you contend, in a murder case, that your client is innocent, but you cannot
satisfactorily explain why his fingerprints were all over the gun used in the crime, then your interpretation is
not going to convince anyone of his innocence.

Formal-Analysis Papers: Formal-analysis papers help students develop the ability to examine the visual
qualities and structure of works of art in a sustained and analytical way. Indeed, doing formal analysis is
necessary before pursuing a contextual analysis during which you work, in a more precise and sophisticated
way, with various theoretical perspectives. Keep in mind that formal analysis is not a description of the work
of art. Instead, you are trying to see how far you can interpret the visual communication, of the image without
consulting outside sources beyond the basic facts of identification.

The Comparison Paper: Formal-analysis assignments often ask students to write a paper comparing and
contrasting the visual structure of two works of art. In such papers, by discussing the similarities and
differences between the works, you will deepen your, and your reader’s, understanding of the distinctiveness
of each. The best way to write a comparative formal analysis paper is not to write first about one work and
then about the other, but to discuss them together through the paper. This means that your introductory
paragraph presents a thesis about what the juxtaposition of the two works means, and each paragraph of the
body takes up a different issue in turn to prove and demonstrate the thesis.
Research Papers: A research paper may be a part of the written work required for your art history course.
This is where you will have the opportunity to dig into research as an art historian, combining formal,
iconographic, and contextual analysis to engage deeply with the work of art. There are several types of
research papers. You may write about a specific work of art, or the development of a specific theme in the art
of a particular time and place, or about a specific institution (for example, the history of a particular museum
or collection), or you may write about an art historian and his or her ideas. Writing a research paper exposes
you to the literature of art history, including scholarly works written from strong points of view with highly
developed arguments. These kinds of works are different from your course textbooks, which are intentionally
wide ranging. While these new kinds of sources can be exciting and challenging to work with, they can also
be hard to evaluate.

Developing a Topic and Starting your Research: As an example, we can walk through the steps of
researching Judith Beheading Holofernes by Artemisia Gentileschi (1593–1652/3), painted around 1619–20,
and now in the Uffizi Gallery in Florence (Figure 5.4). In deciding on a research topic, you might choose to
work on this painting because of the unusual subject and the dramatic way in which Gentileschi presents it: a
determined Judith cuts through Holofernes’s neck with a powerful twist of the arm, while her maidservant
coolly holds him down on the bed. From your course, you would probably know enough about seventeenth-
century European art and women artists to think that:
There were relatively few women artists in this period, so Gentileschi is an unusual and potentially interesting character; the painting
represents a powerful woman, so it might be interesting to look at how the artist’s identity as a woman affected her choice and
treatment of the subject; it might be interesting to compare this image to the treatment of this subject by other artists in the period—
both male and female, if possible.

5.4 Artemisia Gentileschi, Judith Beheading Holofernes, c.1619–20. Oil on

canvas. 6ft 6 ⅜ in x 5ft 4in (1.99 x 1.63m). Gallerie degli Ufizzi, Florence.

The story of Judith comes from the deuterocanonical (or apocryphal) Book of Judith in the Bible.
When the Assyrian general Holofernes laid siege to the Israelite town of Bethulia, the widow Judith set out with her maidservant to
rescue her people. She went to Holofernes’s camp and seduced him, but then when he was drunk and asleep, she cut off his head.
Judith and her maidservant escaped back to Bethulia, where she advised the people to display the head on the town walls. The
Bethulians easily defeated the demoralized Assyrians, making Judith a heroine.

Bal, Mieke. The Artemisia Files: Artemisia Gentileschi for Feminists and other Thinking People. Chicago: University of Chicago
Press, 2006.
Barker, Sheila, ed. Artemisia Gentileschi in a Changing Light. Turnhout, Belgium: Brepols/Harvey Miller, 2017.
Bissell, R. Ward. Artemisia Gentileschi and the Authority of Art: Critical Reading and Catalogue Raisonné. University Park:
Pennsylvania State University Press, 1999.
Christiansen, Keith and Judith W. Mann. Orazio and Artemisia Gentileschi. New York: Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2001.
Exhibition catalogue.
Garrard, Mary D. Artemisia Gentileschi: The Image of the Female Hero in Italian Baroque Art. Princeton: Princeton University
Press, 1989.
Garrard, Mary D. Artemisia Gentileschi around 1622: The Shaping and Reshaping of an Artistic Identity. Berkeley: University of
California Press, 2001.
Locker, Jesse M. Artemisia Gentileschi: The Language of Painting. New Haven, CN: Yale University Press, 2015
Treves, Letizia, Shiela Barker, et al. Artemisia. London: National Gallery, 2020. Exhibition catalogue.
Garrard, Mary D. Artemisia Gentileschi. New York: Rizzoli International Publications, 1993.
Spear, Richard E. “Artemisia Gentileschi: Ten Years of Fact and Fiction.” The Art Bulletin 8⅔ (September 2000): 568–79.
Cohen, Elizabeth S. “The Trials of Artemisia Gentileschi: A Rape as History.” The Sixteenth Century Journal 31/1 (Spring 2000):
47–75.

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