Course detail
Image and its persistance: iconography in long duree
FaVU-1OJPAcad. year: 2026/2027
The course offers a longue durée perspective focused on the transformations of visual types, iconographies, and symbolic forms from prehistory to the present, with a particular emphasis on ancient Western Asia, North Africa, the Mediterranean, Greco-Roman antiquity, Late Antiquity, and the Middle Ages, as well as their later reception. Drawing on the methods of iconography and iconology, it guides students toward a critical reflection on cultural transfer, historiography, and the shifting relationship between continuity and discontinuity of visual forms across various religious, political, and cultural contexts. The first nine sessions will consist primarily of visually oriented lectures, regularly supplemented by the collective analysis of selected artworks, short interpretative exercises, and guided discussion. The final three sessions will take the form of a student colloquium, in which pairs or groups of three will present their own case studies examining the survival and transformation of a selected visual motif.
Designed to complement survey lectures on prehistoric, ancient, medieval, and early modern art, the course focuses on the question of how images survive, transform, and acquire new meanings down to contemporary visual culture.
Language of instruction
Number of ECTS credits
Mode of study
Guarantor
Entry knowledge
Secondary school level of history/art history knowledge.
Rules for evaluation and completion of the course
The course is completed with credits awarded on the basis of active participation in class and a final group presentation. Working in pairs or groups of three, students will prepare a fifteen-minute case study tracing a single visual motif across at least three historical or cultural contexts, including its modern or contemporary reception.
Up to two absences during the semester are permitted without requiring justification.
Aims
The aim of the course is to deepen the capacity for critical interpretation of images by tracing their long-term cultural, formal, and semantic transformations. Students will master iconographic and iconological methods and learn to analyze visual motifs not merely as isolated elements, but as part of broader historical processes in which diverse traditions, religious systems, and cultural environments intersect. The course develops the ability to critically reflect on questions of cultural memory, reception, and the history of interpretation, guiding students to understand images as active vehicles of meaning whose forms and functions transform depending on time, place, and their modes of use. Students acquire the tools for independent analysis of visual phenomena across historical periods as well as in contemporary culture.
Study aids
Prerequisites and corequisites
Basic literature
Panofsky, Erwin. Význam ve výtvarném umění. Praha: Malvern, 2021. (Eng. orig. Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1955)
Recommended reading
Elsner, Jas. Art and the Roman Viewer: The Transformation of Art from the Pagan World to Christianity. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995. (EN)
Gimbutas, Marija. The Goddesses and Gods of Old Europe: Myths and Cult Images. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1982. (EN)
Holly, Michael Ann. Panofsky and the Foundations of Art History. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1984. (EN)
Michaud, Philippe-Alain. Aby Warburg and the Image in Motion. New York: Zone Books, 2004. (EN)
Panofsky, Erwin. Studies in Iconology: Humanistic Themes in the Art of the Renaissance. New York: Oxford University Press, 1939. (EN)
Potts, Alex. The Sculptural Imagination: Figurative, Modernist, Minimalist. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2000. (EN)
Russell, Pamela. The Palaeolithic Mother: A History of Interpretation of the Female Figurines. (In: Reader in Gender Archaeology). London: Routledge, 2000. (EN)
Settis, Salvatore. The Future of the “Classical”. Cambridge: Polity Press, 2006 (It. orig. Torino: Einaudi, 2004). (EN)
Vout, Caroline. Classical Art: A Life History from Antiquity to the Present. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2012. (EN)
Warburg, Aby. The Renewal of Pagan Antiquity. Los Angeles: Getty Research Institute for the History of Art and the Humanities, 1999 (orig. essays 1893–1929, ed. 1932). (EN)
Warner, Marina. Monuments & Maidens: The Allegory of the Female Form. London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1985. (EN)
Classification of course in study plans
- Programme VUM_B Bachelor's 2 year of study, summer semester, compulsory-optional
2 year of study, summer semester, compulsory-optional
2 year of study, summer semester, compulsory-optional
2 year of study, summer semester, compulsory-optional
2 year of study, summer semester, compulsory-optional
2 year of study, summer semester, compulsory-optional
2 year of study, summer semester, compulsory-optional
2 year of study, summer semester, compulsory-optional
2 year of study, summer semester, compulsory-optional
2 year of study, summer semester, compulsory-optional
2 year of study, summer semester, compulsory-optional
2 year of study, summer semester, compulsory-optional - Programme DES_B Bachelor's 3 year of study, summer semester, elective
3 year of study, summer semester, elective
3 year of study, summer semester, elective
3 year of study, summer semester, elective
Type of course unit
Lecture
Teacher / Lecturer
Syllabus
- Introduction: Why Do Images Survive?
- Origins of Sacred Femininity: From Prehistoric Figures to Goddesses
- Aphrodite, Venus, and the Transformation of Female Divinity
- The Apotropaic Image and Medusa
- The Heroic Body: From Gilgamesh and Heracles to Christian Martyrs
- Portraits of Power: Gods, Kings, and Emperors
- Death, Memory, and the Afterlife
- Dionysus and the Transformation of Ritual
- Monsters, Hybridities, and the Boundaries of the Human
- Student Case Studies: The Survival of Images I
- Student Case Studies: The Survival of Images II
Student Case Studies: The Survival of Images III and Final Discussion
Individual preparation - study of technical texts
Teacher / Lecturer
Individual preparation - creating a presentation
Teacher / Lecturer
Syllabus