The essays collected in Edwin Panofsky's Meaning in the Visual Arts deal with a diverse range of topics from the sphere of art history. The key themes, however, are those concerned with: Panofsky's famous theory of interpretation; and the discipline of art history. Committed to humanist values, Panofsky argued for the paramount role of the humanist interpreter. For him, the humanist is an autonomous individual who cannot exist apart from a well-established and elaborate frame of reference. Panofsky was also associated with the development of the field of iconology. However, his approach, first presented in the early 1930s, was not systematized as a method until 1939. The needs of a large audience interested in Panofsky's theories must have played an important role in the book's completion. Firstly, it brings together scattered articles and essays in one volume. Secondly, three of the essays, which are translations from the German, were made accessible to the English-speaking academic community for the first time.