Theology and the Genesis of Iconology

Abstract

The genesis of “iconology” as a method for art historical interpretation is commonly associated with the name of Aby Warburg, a historian of art and culture who first used this term in a 1912 lecture on Renaissance fresco painting. This essay argues, however, that key characteristics of this approach were prefigured and commonly practiced in nineteenth century scholarship. Academic theologians in particular pursued a hermeneutic approach to art that bears important similarities to what became known as “iconology”. This methodology was crucially motivated by the disciplinary frameworks of theology. Theologians had a particular interest in connecting artworks with scripture (bringing together ‘word and image’, as Warburg phrased it), and in interpreting them as historic expressions of belief. Since the early nineteenth-century, Christian symbolism also had become the subject of an increasing number of iconographical dictionaries and handbooks, enabling an increasingly complex approach to interpreting Christian art. These methodological developments are discussed with regard to the writings of three academic theologians working in nineteenth-century Germany: Gottfried Kinkel (1815–1882), Franz Xaver Kraus (1840–1901), and Heinrich Schrörs (1852–1928). In a second step, this essay situates their work within broader debates about disciplinarity in nineteenth century academia, considering in particular the attempts to define “Christian archaeology” as a subject separate from art history.