Signs, Symbols, and Allegories in Art

The violet and pomegranate, the lion and the dog, the monkey and the cat, the parrot and the peacock, the scales and the pearl, the horn of plenty and the mirror, the sign "Mirror of Venus" and the Christian sign "ichthys"… How often do we see these and other signs and symbols in the paintings of famous masters and do not even realize that these images have an additional meaning, different from their own superficial one? These signs, which give works depth, mystery, and multilayeredness, exist not only in the realm of reason but also in the realm of feelings. The symbols are diverse – they are represented by numbers, objects and phenomena, shapes and images of animals, birds or insects, and so on. Symbols particularly manifest themselves in painting and sculpture. We are separated from the creators of these now-famous works of visual art by hundreds of years, and sometimes whole millennia. These people existed in a different system of life coordinates and believed in different gods. The monuments that have survived from those ancient times were meant not only to please the eye and amaze with the intricacy of execution but also often carried a specific idea that contemporaries easily understood. We, while enjoying purely aesthetic pleasure when encountering these monuments, often overlook their meaningful significance, not paying attention to the telling details or not understanding what they might imply, thereby depriving ourselves of a full perception of the works of art. The meanings of signs and symbols are almost impossible to "decipher" by chance; they must be known. And this is where the new book by Natalia Kortunova – a well-known art historian, senior researcher at the Pushkin State Museum of Fine Arts, and curator of several exhibitions at the museum – will help you. Signs, symbols, and allegories in painting literally surround us. Often, it is enough just to pay attention to them, to understand what secret meaning they carry, for a work of art to play with new colors!