Iconology is a method of interpretation in cultural history and the history of the visual arts used by Aby Warburg, Erwin Panofsky and their followers that uncovers the cultural, social, and historical background of themes and subjects in the visual arts. Though Panofsky differentiated between iconology and iconography, the distinction is not very widely followed, "and they have never been given definitions accepted by all iconographers and iconologists". Few 21st-century authors continue to use the term "iconology" consistently, and instead use iconography to cover both areas of scholarship.
Douglas Sirk was a German film director best known for his work in Hollywood melodramas of the 1950s. Sirk started his career in Germany as a stage and screen director, but he left for Hollywood in 1937 after his Jewish wife was persecuted by the Nazis.
Et in Arcadia ego is a 1637–38 painting by Nicolas Poussin (1594–1665), the leading painter of the classical French Baroque style. It depicts a pastoral scene with idealized shepherds from classical antiquity, and a woman, possibly a shepherdess, gathered around an austere tomb that includes this inscription. It is held in the Louvre.
Erwin Panofsky was a German-Jewish art historian, whose academic career was pursued mostly in the U.S. after the rise of the Nazi regime.
Erwin Friedrich Maximilian Piscator was a German theatre director and producer. Along with Bertolt Brecht, he was the foremost exponent of epic theatre, a form that emphasizes the socio-political content of drama, rather than its emotional manipulation of the audience or the production's formal beauty.
Wolfgang Kurt Hermann "Pief" Panofsky, was a German-American physicist who won many awards including the National Medal of Science.
Max Skladanowsky was a German inventor and early filmmaker. Along with his brother Emil, he invented the Bioscop, an early movie projector the Skladanowsky brothers used to display the first moving picture show to a paying audience on 1 November 1895, shortly before the public debut of the Lumière Brothers' Cinématographe in Paris on 28 December 1895.
Variety is a 1925 German silent drama film directed by Ewald Andre Dupont based on the 1912 novel The Oath of Stephan Huller by Felix Hollaender.
Francesco Maffei was an Italian painter, active in the Baroque style.
The Allegory of Prudence is an oil-on-canvas painting attributed to the Italian artist Titian and his assistants. The painting portrays three human heads, each facing in a different direction, above three animal heads. It is in the National Gallery, London.
Claire Waldoff, born Clara Wortmann, was a German singer. She was a famous kabarett singer and entertainer in Berlin during the 1910s and 1920s, chiefly known for performing ironic songs in the Berlin dialect and with lesbian undertones and themes.
Melencolia I is a large 1514 engraving by the German Renaissance artist Albrecht Dürer. The print's central subject is an enigmatic and gloomy winged female figure thought to be a personification of melancholia – melancholy. Holding her head in her hand, she stares past the busy scene in front of her. The area is strewn with symbols and tools associated with craft and carpentry, including an hourglass, weighing scales, a hand plane, a claw hammer, and a saw. Other objects relate to alchemy, geometry or numerology. Behind the figure is a structure with an embedded magic square, and a ladder leading beyond the frame. The sky contains a rainbow, a comet or planet, and a bat-like creature bearing the text that has become the print's title.
The Bioscop is a movie projector developed in 1895 by German inventors and filmmakers Max Skladanowsky and his brother Emil Skladanowsky (1866–1945).
The Tomb of Pope Julius II is a sculptural and architectural ensemble by Michelangelo and his assistants, originally commissioned in 1505 but not completed until 1545 on a much reduced scale. Originally intended for St. Peter's Basilica, the structure was instead placed in the church of San Pietro in Vincoli on the Esquiline in Rome after the pope's death. This church was patronized by the Della Rovere family from which Julius came, and he had been titular cardinal there. Julius II, however, is buried next to his uncle Sixtus IV in St. Peter's Basilica, so the final structure does not actually function as a tomb.
René Bazinet is a German-Canadian clown, mime, and stage and film actor. He is known for his work with Cirque du Soleil, first as a performing artist touring extensively with Saltimbanco, and later as the clown act creator and acting consultant for the show as well as for Cirque du Soleil's 2011 production Zarkana. He has also starred in shows at the Berlin Wintergarten and the Circus Roncalli.
Ludwig Heinrich Heydenreich was a German art historian specialized in Italian Renaissance art. From 1947 to 1970, he served as director of the Zentralinstitut für Kunstgeschichte, Munich.
Triptych of the Virgin's Life is an oil on panel painting by the Early Netherlandish painter Dieric Bouts. It was executed circa 1445 and is in the collection of the Museo del Prado, in Madrid.
Orpheum Darmstadt was a famous Varieté or Music hall in Darmstadt. It was destroyed in World War II and is remembered in the name of the arena Sportzentrum Orpheum that now stands on the site.
Robin Merrill is a British musician, presenter, producer and journalist. He was a member of the original London cast of the musical Evita. He was a journalist, starting his journalism career with BFBS radio in 1989 and then for Deutsche Welle-TV.
Dora Panofsky was a German-American art historian.
