Practice question · Put in order
Arrange the steps of identifying a figure by attribute, in order.
- Ask which are attributes and which are furniture or setting
- Check that the combination identifies one figure rather than a class
- Match the attributes against the repertoire
- Describe the objects shown with the figure
- Check the identification against the picture's context and purpose
Hints
- Description precedes deciding what counts as an attribute.
- A palm alone identifies a class, not a person.
Show the answer
- Describe the objects shown with the figure
- Ask which are attributes and which are furniture or setting
- Match the attributes against the repertoire
- Check that the combination identifies one figure rather than a class
- Check the identification against the picture's context and purpose
Why
The fourth step is where beginners stop too early. A single attribute frequently identifies a class — martyrs, virgins, bishops — and the combination is what narrows it to a person, which is why the repertoire is used as a set of intersecting constraints rather than a lookup table.
Practise Attributes, and How Identification Works
The app has 4 more questions on this lesson, and keeps your place in the course. Art History I is free to start.
More questions on Attributes, and How Identification Works
- Arrange these developments in the codification of images in order.
- A figure carries only a palm. Roughly how many individual saints does that identify?
- Why does Ripa's Iconologia count as evidence about intended meaning rather than modern reconstruction? Select…
- Complete the account of attributes.
- In what year was Ripa's Iconologia first published?
- An attribute functions as an identifier rather than a portrait likeness. What follows from this distinction…
- Sort each attribute by what it refers to.
- A dog in a fifteenth-century painting always signifies fidelity.