The Routledge companion to medieval iconography

Sometimes enjoying more favor, sometimes less, iconography has been an essential element in medieval art historical studies since the beginning of the discipline.

Some of the greatest art historians-including Male, Warburg, Panofsky, Morey, and Schapiro-have devoted their lives to understanding and structuring what exactly the subject matter of a work of medieval art can tell us about it.

The last thirty years or so in scholarship have seen the term broadened in its meaning and methodologies.