3. Iconography/iconology
This kind of assignment occurs in courses covering art before the Modern period. Here you will look for a
particular element that occurs in the object (an object, action, gesture, pose) and explain either:
• when that same element occurs in other objects through history and how this object’s representation
of it is unique, or
• what that element means generally in art or to art historians—in other words, the traditional
association an art historian might make between that depiction and some other thing.