L’Epiconografia: l’opera d’arte come sintesi visiva di scrittura e immagine

The article introduces a new methodological tactic that would integrate the epigraphs (palaeography, text and image) in the study of visual art. This methodology could be called Epiconography. In his famous introduction to the study of iconography, Erwin Panofsky proposed three levels of meanings in visual representation: primary or natural, secondary or conventional, and intrinsic meaning or content. In this perspective, the epigraphs themselves must also be considered as images, in which iconicity and textuality are married in an integrated, rhetorical machina. This is particularly applicable to inscriptions presented in monumental contexts, the so-called Scritture esposte or public lettering, defined by Armando Petrucci as inscriptions executed with a refined calligraphy or of monumental dimensions designed to be legible to a broad but targeted public. Working together in a complex reciprocal relationship, the scripts and the others images give the monument/icon a unified and highly articulated significance which can not be divorced from the “physical” impact of the image on the public. Such inscriptions best reveal, in fact, the complexity of the visual message. Only by examining the work of art as an ensemble of diverse semantic vehicles, which include both images and texts, and are produced by a coherent cultural system, do inscriptions become essential to in defining modes of communication. This proposal is illustrated by examples of Italian and European medieval masterpieces.