Practice question · Multiple choice
A programme was often specified in writing before it was painted. Why does that matter methodologically?
Hints
- Recall what Gombrich asked interpreters to produce.
- A surviving document limits what a reading can claim.
Show the answer
D. It supplies documentary evidence that constrains interpretation, which is exactly the restraint Gombrich demanded
Why
Because it is checkable evidence. Gombrich's central demand was that iconological readings cite documents where they survive, and a written programme is precisely that: a statement of intended meaning made before the work existed, against which a modern interpretation can be tested.
Practise Judeo-Christian Sources II: Programmes and the Life of the Virgin
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More questions on Judeo-Christian Sources II: Programmes and the Life of the Virgin
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