Analysis of Viewing Paintings from the Perspective of Iconography

Distinguished from purely formalistic research methods, iconography pursues the interpretation of the hidden historical and humanistic connotations behind artworks, and is a discipline that combines visual text and content analysis methods. Combining the three stages of iconography proposed by Panofsky, the paper studies Shizeng Chen’s Viewing Paintings from the perspective of iconography, summarizing the formation and change of the images and contents of the artworks in the cultural system and civilization at that time, as well as their implied ideology, and analyzing the hidden spirit of the times and the historical significance behind them, so as to expound their iconographic significance. Through an in-depth discussion at three levels: pre-pictorial iconographic description, iconographic analysis, and iconographic interpretation, the facts and surface contents reproduced in the images, the traditional level of literary, artistic, and cultural knowledge, as well as the interpretation of the potential meanings are revealed.