The Core Assumption
Images do not just decorate a text; they interpret it.
The Four Assumptions
- Where meaning lives
- Meaning lives in the encounter between the biblical text and the image that interprets it, as viewers receive both together.
- What the text is
- The text is a verbal work that images can interpret, extend, and sometimes challenge, rather than merely illustrate.
- Who may interpret
- The art historian, the theologian, and the viewing community may all interpret, each with different competence.
- What counts as a good reading
- A good visual reading names what the image adds, what it omits, and what it gets wrong about the text.
Genealogy
This method arose in the 20th c period (1970-present).
Key proponents: Robin M. Jensen, David Morgan, Margaret R. Miles, John Dillenberger.
Key texts: The Substance of Things Seen by Robin M. Jensen; Visual Piety by David Morgan; Image as Insight by Margaret R. Miles.
The Procedure
These are the same steps The Workshop will walk you through.
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Describe the image before judging it
Describe the image in plain detail: figures, composition, color, setting, and any text or symbols it carries.
Why this step matters: This step prevents a theological verdict from replacing actual looking.
How to do it: Record what is present and what is absent, and note the medium, size, and original location.
What goes wrong here: Describing only the parts of the image that fit a preferred reading.
You record: Visual description. Done well when: A reader who has not seen the image can picture its main features from your description.
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Set the image beside its text
Read the biblical passage the image takes up, and list where the image follows, fills out, or departs from it.
Why this step matters: This step makes the image answerable to the text it interprets.
How to do it: Note additions, omissions, rearranged events, and changed emphasis, and quote the passage for each claim.
What goes wrong here: Assuming the image illustrates the text faithfully because it depicts a biblical scene.
You record: Image-text comparison. Done well when: Each departure from the text is named rather than smoothed over.
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Recover the image's context
Record who made the image, who paid for it, where it stood, and what its first viewers were meant to do with it.
Why this step matters: This step explains choices that look like errors when the image is judged in isolation.
How to do it: Use patronage, liturgy, devotion, and contemporary controversy to explain compositional decisions.
What goes wrong here: Treating a devotional image as if it were a modern history painting.
You record: Context notes. Done well when: The context explains at least one choice that seemed puzzling at first.
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State the image's claim
Write, in one paragraph, what this image claims about the passage, and whether that claim holds.
Why this step matters: This step turns description into interpretation with a verdict.
How to do it: Distinguish the image's claim from your own judgment, and give reasons for agreeing or disagreeing.
What goes wrong here: Praising an image for beauty instead of assessing its interpretation.
You record: Visual interpretation and verdict. Done well when: The verdict follows from the description, the comparison, and the context.
Inputs Required
- A specific image or work of art
- The biblical passage it takes up
- Basic information on maker, patron, and original setting
Outputs Produced
- A disciplined description of the image
- A comparison of image and text
- A stated claim about what the image interprets and whether it holds
Quality Criteria
Under this method, a good reading is one that meets these tests:
- The description is checkable against the image
- Departures from the text are named
- The verdict separates the image's claim from the reader's judgment
Common Errors
- Using an image as a picture of the biblical event itself
- Ignoring patronage and liturgical function
- Reading modern realism back into premodern art
Strengths
- Recovers a major mode of biblical interpretation for readers who never read a commentary
- Shows how doctrine, devotion, and politics shaped what people saw in Scripture
- Trains viewers to look carefully instead of consuming images passively
Weaknesses and Critics
- Images are ambiguous, and two careful viewers can defend opposite readings of the same work
- Visual evidence rarely settles a textual question on its own
John Calvin: Calvin argued that images of God and of sacred history mislead worshippers by fixing the mind on visible form rather than on the Word, and he therefore distrusted visual mediation of Scripture. (Institutes of the Christian Religion, book 1, chapter 11 (1559))
E. H. Gombrich: Gombrich argued that iconological reading can over-read symbolic meaning into images, finding a program where the artist may have worked from convention, craft, or a patron's demand. (Aims and Limits of Iconology (1972))
Internal Schools
Iconographic analysis: Identifies subjects, attributes, and sources, asking what the image depicts.
Iconological interpretation: Asks what the image means within its culture, reading its symbols against theology and politics.
Visual culture studies: Studies how viewers actually used images in devotion, teaching, and public life.
Exemplar Readings
Grünewald's crucifixion and the body of Christ (John 19:17-30): A visual reading of the Isenheim Altarpiece shows how Grünewald's diseased and tortured body of Christ interprets the crucifixion for hospital patients, making the passage's suffering concrete in a way the text alone leaves to imagination.
Bruegel relocates the census to Flanders (Luke 2:1-7): A visual reading of Bruegel's Census at Bethlehem shows how a sixteenth-century Flemish winter scene interprets Luke's census as a present political burden, adding tax officials and snow that the text never mentions.
What This Method Cannot Do
Visual exegesis cannot prove what a passage originally meant, and it cannot substitute for reading the text. An image can show how a community received a passage, and it can expose a reading's beauty or distortion, but the image's claim must still be tested against the words it interprets.
Site Stance
The site has not yet assigned its stance on this method. The stance assignments wait on the named reviewers, the same naming the Christian Assessment verdicts wait on. The method stands here in full in the meantime: a stance discloses the site's judgment, and it never filters what a reader may read or run. The stance values and their criteria stand on the criteria page.
Run This Method in the Workshop
Open this method on the bench →
Across the Site
This method belongs to the Reception History and the History of Interpretation family. Its sources stand in the References register; its family stands among the site's tools; the positions it produces can be compared in the Diptych.
Primary Sources
- The artwork itself, with its medium, dimensions, and original location
- The biblical passage it interprets, and contemporary sermons or liturgies that used the image
Secondary Sources
- Robin M. Jensen, The Substance of Things Seen (2004)
- David Morgan, Visual Piety (1998)