Description and Analysis. A written interpretation of a visual requires description and analysis. Description is a type of writing that portrays a character, object, or scene. Descriptions make use of sensory details—words and phrases that describe how things look, sound, smell, taste, or feel. Effective descriptions contain precise—or concrete—nouns, verbs, adverbs, and adjectives. Analysis is the act of dividing a subject into parts and then thinking about how the parts are related. As you read, identify the parts of the interpretation that are description and the parts that are analysis. |
- Art History Connection. Iconography is the identification of symbols. Iconology is the interpretation of art through the meaning of its symbols. Art historians use these methods to study what an artwork meant to the people who were living in the time and place when the artwork was created. Especially in times when many people could not read, visual symbols made up a type of language that was understood by most everyone of the same culture. Ancient gods were always associated with specific symbols. The Egyptian goddess Hathor, for example, was associated with the cow and often appeared as a cow-headed woman. Sometimes symbols are very subtle and an ordinary scene may have hidden meaning. In Renaissance art, a dog in the presence of two people was understood to be a symbol of faithfulness between the couple. When an artwork contains many symbols interacting, different interpretations are possible. Most Modern art rejected this centuries-old iconographic system, as artists chose not to rely on traditional symbols and instead let the viewer decide the meaning of the painting.
- Science Connection. Infrared images are created using special film that can detect infrared radiation, or light waves that cannot be seen by the human eye. This infrared radiation is reflected from lighter areas in a painting, and absorbed by darker areas. Infrared film can detect the radiation and it can show, in a photograph, the light and dark areas in a painting that a person cannot see. On page 875, you can see an infrared image of the painting Death and the Miser by Hieronymus Bosch.
- Hieronymus Bosch (1450?–1516), a famous artist from the Netherlands, mainly painted large panels about good and evil, temptation and sin, folklore, and fantasy. He spent his whole life in the town of Hertogenbosch, where his father and his grandfather were also painters. Bosch used a method of painting called alla prima, in which he first applied a coat of brown paint and then began the picture as a second layer. He also designed a stained-glass window for the town church. Bosch’s art can be seen in European and American museums.
What is your favorite work of art, and why?
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