Studies in the Iconography of the Virgin

Kondakov1 and Likhachev,2 in their fundamental works on the iconography of the Virgin, collected an immense amount of material which illuminates the history of one of the basic iconographic types in the art of Byzantium and the Christian East. It would nevertheless be a serious error to accept their conclusions uncritically, not only because their works are now somewhat out of date in many respects, but also because they contain many serious inaccuracies, resulting from the specifically archaeological interests of these two scholars. Even Pokrovski,3 closely following Kondakov's lead, made an artificial distinction between form and content, which actually constitute an indivisible unit. All have narrowed down the concept of iconography to a mere question of the subject4 and remain silent on the problem of form. Since they hold that the style of a work of art is practically identical with its subject, their system of classification becomes wholly a matter of externals, which completely ignores the profound ideas expressed by the image. However paradoxical it may sound, this method—in essence, the direct antithesis of a formalistic history of art, and a very onesided analysis of form5—nevertheless, in practice, actually led to similar results, that is, an underestimation of the emotional element and its meaning in art. Consequently, the iconographic studies of Kondakov and his school have led to a considerable impoverishment in the entire conception of iconography. A comparison of their work with that of Panofsky6 will make it immediately apparent that the latter has given us an incomparably deeper and methodologically more mature interpretation of the iconographic types, and has preserved the proper balance between the sublime ideas which they express and their purely artistic merit.