ABSTRACT
In the twentieth century, academic art history was given an essential boost by the undoubtedly most talented art historian of that first generation of students, Erwin Panofsky. Panofsky constantly sought to promote and develop inter- and transdisciplinarity, which are the foci and hallmarks of international research in the world of art history. Panofsky’s retreat from the visual and tactile world following his death corresponded exactly to the activity on which his life as a historian had been focused: envisioning life past in the mind’s eye in order to disclose the future to the humane human being. Hercules am Scheidewege of 1930 was the work on which Panofsky’s reputation and renown as an iconographer are based, and “iconographic” is the key word which first meets the reader’s eye in the preface. In combination with the English versions of 1939 and 1955 it made Panofsky the leading theoretician of iconography and iconology.
