Analysis and Commentary of Images and Artworks: Identification, Description, Interpretation and Contextualisation
This domain is the skill the whole exam turns on: converting a work into an ordered commentary. Marks come from structure and evidence, not from adjectives.
The protocol
- Fitxa tècnica: author (or "anonymous"), title, date, technique and support, dimensions, location, style.
- Description (denotation): what is literally visible - figures, objects, setting, inscriptions.
- Formal analysis: composition, line, colour, light, space, facture.
- Iconography and iconology: identify the subject through attributes (keys = Saint Peter, lily = purity), then its meaning in context - Panofsky's three levels: pre-iconographic, iconographic, iconological.
- Context: patron, function, original location, historical moment; genre (religious, mythological, portrait, landscape, still life, genre scene, history painting).
- Valuation: a reasoned judgement tied to the evidence already given.
For posters and mass media, add denotation versus connotation, and Barthes' ancoratge (text pins the meaning) versus relleu (text adds meaning).
Worked example
Goya, El 3 de mayo de 1808 (1814): describe the lantern-lit firing squad, the diagonal of bodies, the man in white with raised arms. Formal: harsh chiaroscuro from the lantern, strong diagonals, foreground compressed against a dark landscape. Iconography: anonymous victim echoing the crucifixion pose; soldiers as a faceless machine. Context: painted in 1814, after the Dos de Mayo uprising and the restoration of Fernando VII; Goya offers no triumphant hero. Interpretation: a modern image of war that refuses glory - hence its citation as a precedent for Picasso's Guernica (1937).
Traps that cost marks
- Describing for two pages without ever naming work, author and date.
- Confusing iconography (what is depicted) with iconology (what it means).
- Narrating the artist's biography instead of analysing the object.
- Omitting technique and dimensions - the easiest marks in the fitxa.
- Ignoring provenance when the image comes from Balearic heritage (a retaule, a Taüll-style fresco, a Sagrera detail).