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Articles

No. 9 (2019): ARTis ON 9 - Art & Image

Art and Iconography of Life and Death

DOI
https://doi.org/10.37935/aion.v0i9.235
Submitted
August 3, 2022
Published
2019-12-27

Abstract

Figurative arts demand the observation and identification of depicted themes through the two auxiliary subjects, Iconography and Iconology, which are often mistaken one for the other. Erwin Panofsky, the eminent Art historian, was the one who discerned these concepts in his 1939 work “Studies in Iconology”. Leonardo da Vinci’s “Last Supper” shows a very typical Renaissance interpretation of the Apostles’ attitudes that masterly depict the doubt which seized the assembly when Christ announces the treason of one of them. This duplicity of attitudes is found in all artistic periods when the same graphic elements can be interpreted in completely opposed ways, for example, the Greco-Roman “carpe diem” which turns into “danse macabre” during the Middle Ages associated with the “Vanitas”. Always the present idea of the inevitable death influencing human behavior, not only the search for pleasure while we are alive but also the preparation for a good and virtuous death, rewarded in an uncertain Paradise.

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