Iconography is the science of identification, description, classification, and interpretation of symbols, themes, and subject matter in the visual arts. The earliest iconographical studies, published in the 16th century, were catalogs of emblems and symbols collected from antique literature and translated into pictorial terms for the use of artists. The most famous of these works is Cesare Ripa’s Iconologia (1593).
The Iconologia was a highly influential emblem book based on Egyptian, Greek, and Roman emblematical representations, and many personifications. The book was used by orators, artists, poets, and “modern Italians” to give substance to qualities such as virtues, vices, passions, arts, and sciences. The concepts were arranged in alphabetical order. For each concept there was a verbal description of the allegorical figure proposed by Ripa to embody the concept, giving the type and color of its clothing and its varied symbolic attributes, along with the reasons why these were chosen, reasons often supported by references to literature.
