Medium as message in Carolingian writing about art

Abstract

In Erwin Panofsky's classic ‘Introductory’ to his 1939 Studies in Iconology, he proposed that not only a work of art's subject but also its medium, the material from which it was made and the way that material was used, could be studied iconologically: ‘A really exhaustive interpretation of the intrinsic meaning or content might even show that the technical procedures characteristic of a certain country, period, or artist ... are symptomatic of the same basic attitude that is discernible in all the other specific qualities of his style’.1 The art of the Middle Ages can be characterized by the broad range of media it employed and the exceptional care it took in working those media but, although Panofsky's iconographical/iconological method now dominates the study of medieval art, few medievalists have examined the significance of particular media. This is not because scholars have disputed Panofsky's claim regarding the significance of medium, but because it has proved exceptionally difficult to assemble historical information to bring to bear on the question.

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