Iconographic Motifs Emblematic Themes of Western Art
A working list of Iconographic Themes & Allegories
Focused on enduring classical → medieval → Renaissance → post-Renaissance ideas of the same kind as memento mori and homo bulla: moral, philosophical, allegorical, emblematic. Not every biblical subject (Annunciation, Crucifixion), unless it also functions as a portable motif-idea across art.
Time, Death, Transience
Memento mori — remember you must die
Homo bulla — man is a bubble
Vanitas vanitatum — vanity of vanities
Ars longa, vita brevis — art is long, life is short
Tempus fugit — time flies
Sic transit gloria mundi — thus passes the glory of the world
Danse macabre / Dance of Death
Triumph of Death
Triumph of Time
Father Time / Chronos / Saturn devouring
The Ages of Man
The Three Ages of Man
The Four Ages of the World (Golden, Silver, Bronze, Iron)
Ubi sunt — where are they now?
The broken column
The extinguished candle
The hourglass / clock / sundial
Wilting flowers / cut flowers
Rotting fruit
The soap bubble
Smoke / fumus
The snuffed lamp
The empty skull / caput mortuum
The open grave / sepulchral monument
Et in Arcadia ego — even in Arcadia, I (Death) am
The cadaver tomb / transi
Ars moriendi — the art of dying
Last Judgment as moral spectacle
The weighing of souls
Death and the Maiden
Death and the Lover
The meeting of the three living and the three dead
Quod fuimus, estis; quod sumus, eritis — what we were, you are; what we are, you will be
Fortune, World, Power
Wheel of Fortune (Rota Fortunae)
Lady Fortune / Fortuna
Occasio / Kairos — Opportunity (forelock to seize)
Sic vos non vobis — thus you labor, but not for yourselves
The fallen king / deposed tyrant
Ubi Caesar, ibi Roma inverted as ruin-of-empire imagery
Ruins and the fall of empires
The colossus with feet of clay
Crown cast down / discarded regalia
Sic transit of worldly power
The Ship of State
The Ship of Fools (Narrenschiff)
World upside down / mundus inversus
Carnival and Lent
The beggar and the king (leveling motif)
Nemesis
Hubris and fall
Icarus falling
Phaethon falling
The Tower struck / Tower of Babel
Babylon the Great
The vanity of crowns and scepters
Love, Desire, Beauty (Venusian)
Omnia vincit amor — love conquers all
The blind Cupid
Cupid disarmed
Cupid punished / educated
Venus and Mars (love taming war)
Venus Pudica
Sacred and Profane Love
The Choice of Hercules (Virtue vs. Pleasure)
The Judgment of Paris
Diana and Actaeon
Apollo and Daphne
Echo and Narcissus
Pygmalion and Galatea
Orpheus and Eurydice
Amor and Psyche
The wounded stag / love’s wound
The flaming heart
The arrow of love
The mirror of Venus
The rose and the thorn
Courtly love / the lover’s service
The fountain of love
The garden of love
Carpe diem — seize the day
Carpe florem — gather the flower (while it blooms)
Beauty’s rose that fades
The toilette of Venus
Susanna and the Elders (desire and violation)
Joseph and Potiphar’s wife
Lot and his daughters
The loves of Jupiter (as power + desire cycle)
Marsyas flayed (art, hubris, Apollo)
The Sirens
Circe
The enchantress / femme fatale before the name
La belle dame type
The bride and the widow
Marriage as sacrament and social bond
The sacred marriage / hieros gamos in allegory
Virtue, Vice, Soul
The Psychomachia — battle of virtues and vices
The Seven Deadly Sins
The Seven Virtues (cardinal + theological)
Justice with sword and scales
Fortitude with column or lion
Temperance pouring water into wine
Prudence with mirror and serpent
Faith, Hope, Charity
Hercules at the crossroads
The narrow path and the broad path
Homo viator — man as pilgrim
The Christian Knight / Miles Christianus
St. George and the Dragon (as soul-allegory)
The armored soul
The heart as fortress
Anima / the soul as maiden
The soul weighed
The soul hunted
The good shepherd
The lost sheep
The prodigal son
The wise and foolish virgins
The pearl of great price
The unclean spirit cast out
Contemptus mundi — contempt of the world
Contemptus mundi vs. love of the world
The two standards (Ignatian visual tradition)
Angel and devil contending for the soul
Guardian angel
The ladder of virtues / Jacob’s ladder as ascent
The mountain of salvation
The wilderness of temptation
Knowledge, Art, Making
Ars simia naturae — art the ape of nature
Ut pictura poesis — as is painting, so is poetry
The inspired poet / furor poeticus
The Melancholy artist (Melencolia)
Melancholy as genius
The scholar in his study
St. Jerome in his study
The armillary sphere / cosmographer
The book and the skull (learning vs. death)
The broken lute / silent music
Music as harmony of the spheres
The tuning of the world
Apollo Musagetes
The nine Muses
Minerva / Athena as wisdom
Mercury as eloquence and mediation
Hermes and the arts
The forge of Vulcan
The web of Arachne
Daedalus the craftsman
The labyrinth
Penelope’s web
The unfinished work / non finito as idea
Nulla dies sine linea — no day without a line
Fame crowning the artist
The calumny of Apelles
Painting as liberal art
The paragone (painting vs. sculpture vs. poetry)
Nature, Cosmos, Order
Et in Arcadia ego
The Golden Age
The pastoral / bucolic ideal
The locus amoenus — pleasant place
The locus terribilis — terrible place
The four seasons
The four elements
The four humors
The four winds
Macrocosm and microcosm
The music of the spheres
Zodiacal man / melothesia
Sol and Luna
The alchemical wedding (as art motif)
The ouroboros
The pelican in her piety
The phoenix
The unicorn
The stag of the forest
The tree of life / tree of Jesse (as image-idea)
The enclosed garden (hortus conclusus)
The wilderness and the garden
Storm and calm
Shipwreck
The rainbow after the flood
Nature as book
Nature as mother
Nature as fallen / cursed ground
Truth, Illusion, Vision
Veritas filia temporis — Truth the daughter of Time
Naked Truth
Truth unveiled by Time
The veil
The mirror (truth, vanity, self-knowledge)
Plato’s cave as later visual allegory
The dream
The vision
The ladder of ascent
Anamorphosis / hidden skull (Holbein type)
Trompe-l’oeil as meditation on appearance
The curtain / Parrhasius motif
Painting within painting
The world as stage (theatrum mundi)
All the world’s a stage
The mask
Persona and true face
Blindness and insight
The blind leading the blind
Diogenes with the lamp
The owl of Minerva
Light vs. darkness as moral cosmology
Lux in tenebris
Social, Moral, Satirical
The ages of woman / ages of man
The unequal lovers
The money changer / usurer
Death and the miser
The physician and death
The quack
The fool / jester as truth-teller
Stultifera navis — ship of fools
Carnival
The world as madhouse
Peasant dance / peasant wedding as moral mirror
The prodigal among swine
Charity and avarice opposed
The rich man and Lazarus
Dives and Lazarus
The tribute money as moral image
Render unto Caesar
The widow’s mite
Justice corrupted
The bribe
The flattering courtier
The philosopher and the king
War, Peace, Heroism
Mars disarmed by Venus
The spoils of war
Arms and armor at rest
Pax
The olive and the sword
The broken sword
The hero’s choice
The return of the warrior
The lamentation over the dead hero
Triumph and its emptiness
The captive
The weeping woman / personification of the city
Roma / Germania / Britannia type personifications
Hercules as civilizing hero
David and Goliath as type of the underdog soul
Judith and Holofernes
Samson
The peaceable kingdom
Classical mythic themes that became Western art commonplaces
The birth of Venus
The triumph of Bacchus / Bacchanal
The drunken Silenus
The education of Bacchus
Apollo and the Muses
Apollo flaying Marsyas
The Laocoön group-idea (suffering clarity)
Niobe
Prometheus bound / fire-bringer
Pandora
The labors of Hercules
The Amazonomachy
The Centauromachy
The Trojan cycle compressed (Judgment of Paris, abduction of Helen, fall of Troy, Aeneas fleeing)
Aeneas and Anchises (piety)
Dido and Aeneas
Romulus and Remus
The continence of Scipio
The death of Seneca
The suicide of Lucretia
Cleopatra
The triumphs (Petrarchan: Love, Chastity, Death, Fame, Time, Eternity)
Petrarchan / Renaissance triumph cycle
Especially useful as a structured set:
Triumph of Love
Triumph of Chastity
Triumph of Death
Triumph of Fame
Triumph of Time
Triumph of Eternity
Emblematic mottos that often stand as independent art-ideas
Festina lente — make haste slowly
Concussus surgo — struck, I rise
In sterculio margarita — a pearl in the dunghill
Medio tutissimus ibis — the middle way is safest
Ne quid nimis — nothing in excess
Nosce te ipsum — know thyself
Hic terminus haeret — here the limit holds
Mors ultima linea rerum — death is the final boundary of things
Vita brevis
Post tenebras lux — after darkness, light
Per ardua ad astra
Ad astra per aspera
In hoc signo vinces
Amor vincit omnia
Labor omnia vincit
Dulce et decorum est (and its later bitter afterlife)
Nunc est bibendum
Memento vivere — remember to live
Respice finem — look to the end
Quid tum? / Quid deinde? — what then?
Vanitas
Humilitas
Charitas
Spes
Fides