ABSTRACT
Secular iconography, like the secular arts, is a comprehensive term and, at the same time, a wide-ranging and simultaneously heterogeneous field. It is a field which lacks clearly defined literary links, unlike Christian iconography, which has the Bible as well as the legends of the saints as well as many other such texts. The secular arts have historically been seen as minor and comments on them can also be applied to the secular iconography: Their values are based to a certain extent on their importance in the larger developmental picture, but are also the result of their independent existence from such developments. The relationship of secular to religious art is central to this study, and the most important question in defining secular iconography is to see whether it is possible and how sensible it is to demarcate it from religious iconography – to separate the secular from the sacred.
