Presentation held at the Institute of Art History, University of Munich on Tuesday 24 June 2014, 7 p.m. "Vortragsreihe zur Digitalen Kunstgeschichte"

1. Distant viewing in art history
by K. Bender, independent researcher
An example of a quantitative approach
in art history based on
a digital thematic research collection of
the iconography of Venus
from the Middle Ages to Modern Times
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2. "Vortragsreihe zur Digitalen Kunstgeschichte"
Institut für Kunstgeschichte
Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München
Tuesday 24 June 2014, 7 p.m.
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3. https://sites.google.com/site/venusiconography/
with webpages:
*Topical Catalogues
*Data Analysis
*Connectivity Maps
*Aphrodite/Venus Art Exhibitions and other Events
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4. http://kbender.blogspot.be/
Iconography in Art History, a Blog to discuss:
1° Thematic Research Collections or Topical Catalogues, their compilation
methodology and their use among art historians.
2° Papers, articles or blogs and websites where the iconography is of
importance.
3° 'ut pictura poesis' (poetry resembles painting and vice-versa) or inter-art
analogies and differences between literature (poetry, theatre, prose) and
visual arts and other 'sister' arts ( music, dance, etc).
With special attention to the iconography of Aphrodite/Venus
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5. Synopsis
• 1. A thematic collection and its compilation
• 2. Descriptive statistics
• 3. Regional and temporal frequency
distributions
• 4. Distribution of artworks and artists
• 5. Frequency distributions of topics
• 6. A curious observation: Lotka’s law in art history
• 7. Distant viewing or macro-analysis: conclusion
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6. 1. A thematic collection
and its compilation: sources
• Museum catalogues and ‘catalogues raisonnés’ of
artists are the common sources in art history
Not appropriate to study the iconography of a specific subject
across artists, periods and regions
• Exhibition catalogues or monographs do not contain
exhaustive subject lists
• Compilation of sales catalogues from the 17th
century onwards, death inventories, myriads of
bibliographical references and the Internet
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7. 1. A thematic collection
and its compilation: topical catalogues
• Topical catalogues categorize this endless
information into 'topics‘, sub-topics, etc.,
possibly chronologically ordered.
• Few printed topical catalogues exist, they are
not illustrated and not digitized.
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8. 1. A thematic collection and its
compilation: Topical catalogues
• 'Barockthemen - Ein Auswahl von
Verzeichnissen zur Ikonographie des 17. und
18. Jahrhunderts
by A. Pigler
Akademiai Kiado, Budapest, second edition 1974
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9. 1. A thematic collection and its
compilation: Topical catalogues
• 'The Oxford Guide to Classical Mythology in
the Arts, 1300-1990s‘
by Jane Davidson Reid
Oxford University Press, NY/Oxford 1993)
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10. 1. A thematic collection and its
compilation: catalogues on-line
• Bildarchiv Foto Marburg, founded in 1913
• Warburg Photographic Collection,
since 1933 in London
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11. 1. A thematic collection and its
compilation: catalogues on-line
• Iconclass with a hierarchical structure and alphanumeric
classification codes
• Ten main divisions:
0 Abstract, Non-representational Art
1 Religion and Magic
2 Nature
3 Human Being, Man in General
4 Society, Civilization, Culture
5 Abstract Ideas and Concepts
6 History
7 Bible
8 Literature
9 Classical Mythology and Ancient History 11

12. 1. A thematic collection and its
compilation: catalogues on-line
Warburg Photographic Collection
• Eleven main divisions
1 Antiquities
2 Architecture
3 Gods and Myths
4 History
5 Literature
6 Magic and Science
7 Ornament
8 Portraits
9 Religious Iconography
10 Secular Iconography
11 Social Life
Iconclass
• Ten main divisions
0 Abstract, Non-representational Art
1 Religion and Magic
2 Nature
3 Human Being, Man in General
4 Society, Civilization, Culture
5 Abstract Ideas and Concepts
6 History
7 Bible
8 Literature
9 Classical Mythology and Ancient
History
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13. 1. A thematic collection
and its compilation:
six Topical Catalogues
with mutually exclusive entries
• Total: 14155 artworks
sculptures, reliefs, paintings, frescoes,
drawings, prints and illustrations
from 5421 identified artists
in 9 European regions
• Volume 1.1 'The Italian Venus'
1840 artworks of 649 identified Italian artists. 156pp. (2007)
• Volume 2.1 'The French Venus‘
2997 artworks of 977 identified French artists. 194 pp. (2009)
• Volume 3.1 'The Venus of the Low Countries'
2636 artworks of 728 identified artists of the Low Countries.
202 pp. (2010)
• Volume 4.1 'The German, Swiss and Central-European
Venus'
3198 artworks of 1506 identified artists of Germany,
Switzerland and Central-Europe. 302 pp. (2012)
• Volume 5.1 'The British and Irish Venus'
2113 artworks of 912 identified artists of Great Britain and
Ireland. 197 pp. (2013)
• Volume 6.1 'The Venus of Eastern, Southern and
Northern European Regions'
1371 artworks of 629 identified artists of the Eastern,
Southern and Northern European Regions. 154 pp.
(2014)
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14. An example of VELAZQUEZ’s ‘Rokeby Venus’ and copies or imitations
(from Volume 6.1 'The Venus of Eastern, Southern and Northern European Regions')
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15. 2. Descriptive statistics
ordering of observations, selection of scales,
presentation in contingency tables and graphical visualization
• number of artists = unknown
• number of artworks of the
selected theme = indefinite >
population
• information about the population
through sampling
• if all artworks have equal chance
to be selected > ‘sampling at
random'
• always limited information
sources > 'convenient sampling‘
• sample representativeness
• sample size
• artworks compiled and described
= observations
• numbers of observations =
frequencies
• ordered in an interval scale (time
scale) and in a nominal scale
(regions and topics)
• table of ordered frequencies =
contingency table with marginal
totals and grand totals of
frequencies
• frequencies divided by their
marginal or grand totals = relative
frequencies (frequency
percentages)
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16. 2. Regional and temporal frequency distribution
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17. 2. Regional and temporal
frequency distribution
3D presentation
Cumulative frequency curves
(S-curves)
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18. 2. Regional and temporal frequency distribution
skewness of the distribution a steady rise of the distribution
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19. 2. Regional and temporal frequency distribution
Coping with uncertainty of dates of artworks
• *date of creation of an artwork :
often uncertain , active life of the
artist
• *interval of 50 year is
questionable
• *calculation of moving averages
of overlapping intervals of 50
years.
• *= arithmetic average of
frequencies of intervals 1500-49
and 1550-99 > frequency of new
interval 1500-99
• *= average frequency of intervals
1550-99/1600-49 > interval 1550-
1649
• *= till the last interval 1900-99.
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20. 4. Distribution of artworks and artists
• the demography of artists >
interdisciplinary research
• serious estimates better than no
estimates at all
• 'The Demography of Art in Western
Europe, 1300-1899' (DAWE) by Paul
Taylor (Warburg Institute)
• estimates number of painters and
sculptors active per decade between
1300 and 1899 in ten West-European
countries: Italy, Spain & Portugal,
Austria/Hungary, France, Belgium,
Netherlands, Germany, Switzerland,
British Isles, Scandinavia
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21. 4. Distribution of artworks and artists
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The rise and fall of the frequencies of Venus-artworks
in Italy and in the Low Countries
is correlated to the numbers of both Venus-artists and DAWE-artists

22. 4. Distribution of artworks and artists
Both numbers of Venus-artists and
DAWE-artists in France follow the
time-lag of the production of Venus-
artworks, with 'Boucher'-effect in
period 1750-99 (skewed distribution)
Distinct time distribution of Venus-
artworks with continuous rise in
Germany, Switzerland and Central-
Europe, reflected by both numbers
of Venus-artists and DAWE-artists
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23. 5. Frequency distributions of topics
• categorization of all artworks in 18 main
topics (entries mutually exclusive)
• detailed questions: e. g. how did the
popularity of the myth of Venus with her
classical companions evolve in the five
regions ?
Examples
• ‘ Venus and Adonis ‘ : most popular topic
in the Low Countries, Italy and France,
second popular in Great Britain & Ireland
and third in Germany & neighbours
• 'Judgement of Paris‘ most popular in
Germany & neighbours and in Great
Britain & Ireland , second popular in the
Low Countries and in France
• 'Venus and Mars‘ : popular in the Low
Countries, second popular in Italy and in
Germany and neighbouring countries
• etc
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24. 6. A curious observation
• average number of
Venus-artworks
created by the artists
= total number of
artworks/ total
number of artists
=between 2,1 and 3,6
or about 2,7 overall
• actual numbers per
artist are quite
different
• Graph Fig.4 from Research Paper 1 (webpage Data Analysis)
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25. 6. A curious observation:
Lotka’s law
• percentage of artists, who produced
only once in their lifetime a work
depicting Venus, is very high:
always near 60%
• phenomenon is well described by
the so-called
Lotka’s law in bibliometrics
y = C/x a
y: proportional number of artists
C: constant approximately = 0,6
x: number of works
a: exponent approximately = 2
• law of productivity :
success breeds success, i.e. the artist will
continue to depict Venus if his/her
first work was successful
• Graph Fig 11 from Research Paper 5 (webpage Data Analysis)
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26. 7. Distant viewing or macro-analysis
• Paul Moretti: literature is not a 'sum of
individual cases', but a 'collective system'
• in 'distant reading' the canon disappears
into the larger literary system
• in traditional art history:
focus on works considered as the greatest
masterpieces of art
• lesser artists and their works are often
forgotten
• quantity in the arts cannot be dismissed: it
is part of the historical complexity of art
production
• art historians were aware about the
shifting popularity of the Venus-myth in
different time periods and countries
• 'distant viewing‘ or ‘macro-analysis ‘
offers knowledge and aggregate large
quantitative data
• of interest for advanced analysis and
interdisciplinary research 26

27. Conclusion
•
Distant viewing is a condition of knowledge
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28. Postscriptum
• The female species ‘Aphrodite/Venus’• The female species ‘Aphrodite/Venus’
of the genus ‘Greek-Roman Gods’
in the family of ‘Gods and Myths’ is
very persistent in evolutionary art history
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29. Postscriptum
• “The irrational delight in the beauty
of the object is a precondition
for successful observational science”
Konrad Lorenz
quote in TLS June 6, 2014 p.24
• Art history : an observational science
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