Practice question · Multiple choice
Why did Panofsky attach a corrective to each level of interpretation?
Hints
- Ask what would restrain a claim at the third level.
- Without checks, the most ambitious level is unconstrained.
Show the answer
C. Each level can go wrong in its own way, and needs a check drawn from a different kind of evidence
Why
Because each level fails differently and needs its own check: what was stylistically possible at that date, what the established types were, and how an interpretation sits against other cultural evidence. Without them, the third level is unconstrained, and that is precisely the objection Gombrich later pressed.
Practise The Iconographic Method
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More questions on The Iconographic Method
- In Panofsky's usage, iconography and iconology name different levels of the method.
- Complete the account of the method.
- Which are true of Warburg's Mnemosyne Atlas?
- How many levels does Panofsky's method distinguish?
- Panofsky insists that practical experience alone is not sufficient to secure pre-iconographical description,…
- Arrange the steps of a Panofskyan reading in order.
- Match each figure or term to what it contributed.
- Of Panofsky's three levels, how many can be performed without knowing the literary sources behind the image?