Signs, Symbols, and Allegories in Art. How to Understand and Analyze Them

Violet and pomegranate, unicorn and dog, bull and lion, parrot and peacock, scales and pearl, cornucopia and 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 think that these images have an additional meaning, distinct from their own, superficial one. These signs, which add depth, mystery, and multilayeredness to the works, exist not only in the realm of reason but also in the realm of feelings. Symbols are diverse - they are represented by numbers, objects and phenomena, forms and images of animals, birds, or insects, and so on. Symbols are particularly vivid in painting and sculpture.
Hundreds of years, and sometimes entire millennia, separate us from the creators of these now-famous works of visual art. 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 their finesse but often carried a specific idea that contemporaries could easily grasp. We, while gaining purely aesthetic pleasure from encountering these monuments, often overlook their semantic significance, not paying attention to the telling details or not understanding what they may imply, thereby depriving ourselves of a complete perception of the works of art. The meanings of signs and symbols are almost impossible to "decode" accidentally; they need to be known. And you will find help in the new book by Natalia Kortunova - a well-known art historian, senior researcher at the A.S. Pushkin State Museum of Fine Arts, and curator of several exhibitions at the museum.
Signs, symbols, and allegories in painting literally surround us. Often, it is enough to pay attention to them, to understand what secret meaning they carry, for the artwork to come alive in new colors!