Violet and pomegranate fruit, 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, different from their own, superficial one. These signs, giving works depth, mystery, and multilayeredness, exist not only in the realm of reason but also in the realm of feelings. Symbols are diverse – they are denoted by numbers, objects and phenomena, forms and images of animals, birds, or insects, and so on. Symbols particularly manifest themselves vividly in painting and sculpture. Hundreds of years, and sometimes whole 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 preserved from those distant times were meant not only to please the eye and amaze with the finesse of execution but often carried a specific idea that contemporaries could easily decipher. We, while enjoying purely aesthetic pleasure when getting acquainted with these monuments, often overlook their semantic significance, not paying attention to the telling details or not understanding what they may imply, thus depriving ourselves of a complete perception of works of art. The meanings of signs and symbols are almost impossible to accidentally «decipher»; they need to be known. And this is where you will find help in the new book by Natalia Kortunova – a renowned art historian, senior researcher at the A.S. Pushkin State Museum of Fine Arts, curator of a number of exhibitions at the museum. Signs, symbols, and allegories in painting literally surround us. Often, it is enough to simply pay attention to them, understand what secret meaning they carry, for a work of art to take on new hues!
