1. The origins of art are closely connected with
religion and myth. The works of art of early civili-
zations were religious symbols, idols, expressions of
fears and desires. An interpretation of meaning con-
nected with these works of art is however uncertain
due to a lack of reliable records. It is often impossible
to say to what extent an idol or a religious symbol
was considered as a representation of some divine
power and to what extent it was considered as em-
bodying that power. The meaning of concepts like that
of image (
eikon) and of the corresponding Latin con-
cept (
imago) as well as of
figura varied greatly; in
general it evolved from that of substitution to that of
representation (Auerbach, 1959; Bauch, 1967).
In classical antiquity, due to the Greek tendency to
anthropomorphic depiction of mythical divinities, an
art world was created which was divine and human
at the same time. Far from producing only repre-
sentative statues of gods, suitable for cult worship, and
adoration, or for the narration of mythical events,
classical art soon proceeded to create an allegorical
interpretation of myth (Hinks, 1939).
The primitive mind is aware only of a generalized daemonic
force outside itself, to which it is subject and which it must
propitiate; and as it grows, the mythical presentation of
its experience progresses from the undifferentiated dae-
monic power to the personal god, and from the personal
god to the impersonal abstraction which is merely for con-
venience imagined in a human shape...
(Hinks, p. 107).
Just as the myth was provided with an aetiological expla-
nation when it had ceased at length to be self-explanatory,
so the image came to be interpreted allegorically when it
had lost its self-evident character....As soon as philosophic
reflection became self-conscious, the habit of furnishing
straightforward mythical representations with allegorical
explanations made its appearance in iconographical as in
literary criticism
(Hinks, pp. 11f.).
Hinks devoted a penetrating study to this problem.
For the Greeks poetry and myth were more serious,
more philosophical than history, since myth and poetry
concern general truths whereas history concerns par-
ticular ones (Aristotle, Poetics IX. 3). Hence, there
appeared a tendency to make mythical events express
allegorically particular historical events; mythical wars
of Greeks with Amazons, or of Lapiths against Cen-
taurs, were represented instead of the historical strug-
gle of the Athenians against the Persians. Mythical
symbols were always preferred to historical images.
This is a particular case of a general polarization which
can be observed in iconography between the general
and the particular, the mythical and the secular, the
timeless and the historical, between the symbol and
the story. The symbol corresponds to the mythical
frame of mind, the image to the historical:
... even when, during the sixth and fifth centuries before
Christ, the Greek mind succeeded in detaching itself from
the object of its contemplation, and the mythical and logical
forms of comprehension were theoretically distinguished,
this immense intellectual advance did not disintegrate the
plastic vision of the ancient artist, in the same way as the
enlargement of the scientific horizon in the nineteenth
century destroyed the coherence of the modern artistic
vision
(Hinks, p. 62).
In this way forms of iconography originated which
were to have a long life in European art, viz., those
of personification and allegory. The classical gods re-
ceived new, allegorical functions denoting natural
phenomena or abstract concepts. On the other hand,
abstract notions received personified form.
There also appeared in classical art mixed, transi-
tional forms, for example, what Hinks calls “mythistor-
ical” representations, in which heroes and/or gods
participated beside mortal humans and allegorical
representations (Pánainos' Battle of Marathon). Since
for the Greeks the essential meaning of an event was
its moral sense, the only way to bring this out in art
was to represent it in an allegorical way: “the moral
situation must be personalized: the dramatic conflict
of ethical principles must be represented by the con-
certed action of their symbols” (ibid., p. 66). The
greatness of the Greeks consisted in that they knew
how “to construct a mythical framework within which
the movements of the planets and the passions of the
heart are converted into symbols not merely compara-
ble but actually to some extent interchangeable” (ibid.,
p. 94).
In the later periods of antiquity when irrational
Orphic and Dionysiac religious movements prevailed
over the reasonably organized world of Olympian gods,
and when the Imperial Roman form of the state pre-
vailed over the tradition of small democratic Greek
states, there appeared new forms of iconography,
which were to remain influential in the Christian pe-
riod. Tomb decoration began to flourish, based on the
allegorical interpretation of mythical imagery: Seasons,
Bacchic myths, Venus Anadyomene, Sea-Thiasos
(Cumont, 1942); imperial ceremonies gave form to
elaborate triumphal iconography and they decisively
influenced Christian symbolism. Late classical art
elaborated also the representation of the internal dia-
logue of a man with his soul or conscience in the form
of an external dialogue with an allegorical person, often
acting in an inspiring way: a Muse, a Genius, an Angel,
thus giving shape to a long-lived representation of
inspiration, or of conversation with superhuman pow-
ers, current in art until modern times (Saxl, 1923;
Hinks, 1939).
