ABSTRACT
During World War II and in the decade that followed, Meyer Schapiro struck a new path and concentrated on a series of iconographical questions. His formal preoccupations seem to fade into the background as he hones in on the texts that inspire the artist. Throughout his life, Schapiro’s published work was interwoven with his teaching, which constantly added new observations and ideas to the work in print in a much freer and extraordinarily wide-ranging manner. It is unlikely that anyone would describe Meyer Schapiro as an iconographer. In his relatively small corpus of published papers, Schapiro examines medieval iconography in several ways. In his various approaches to medieval art, Schapiro’s style differs. The formal analyses of iconography can be voluble and emotive, while those presenting arguments concerning sources and chronology can be much more densely threaded, economical, frustratingly meagre in their illustration, and sometimes more abrupt in their transitions, conclusions, affirmations, and suggestions.
