Practice question · True or false
A dog in a fifteenth-century painting always signifies fidelity.
Hints
- Ask what evidence would be needed to establish the symbolic reading.
- Sometimes it signifies fidelity, and sometimes it is a dog.
Show the answer
False
Why
False, and the caution generalises. Sometimes the dog carries the meaning and sometimes it is a dog, and the defence against over-reading is Gombrich's: establish what kind of picture this is and what it was for, and require evidence proportional to the strangeness of the reading.
Practise Attributes, and How Identification Works
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More questions on Attributes, and How Identification Works
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