Many of the themes Erwin Panofsky addresses in Meaning in the Visual Arts are particular to Renaissance art and the discipline of art history. The core of the book, however, is the questioning of how meaning is established—through various modes of interpretation—in the visual arts. Although he spent half of his life and scholarly career in the United States, Panofsky arrived at maturity when German humanistic scholarship had reached the last stage of its world dominance. Panofsky's Hamburg years were an intense period in terms of scholarly activity. Living and learning in the sphere of influence dominated by Warburg and Cassirer, Panofsky learned from them "what he needed without surrendering to the spell of their strong personalities". Warburg was concerned with the role of the classical tradition in European culture, and also interested in the search for signs of thought and life in art. For both men, art was a measure of changing attitudes, outlooks, myths, religions, and superstitions.