the.com/iconography
The secret handshake of images, where a halo means saint and a skull means memento mori.
means The visual symbols, motifs, and conventions used to represent subjects in art, plus the study of decoding them.
from From Greek eikon (image) plus graphia (writing) — literally the writing of images, born when art spoke fluent symbol and viewers read it like text.
Saint codesAttributes identify saints: keys mean Peter, arrows mean Sebastian.
Panofsky's rulesErwin Panofsky systematized decoding art's hidden meanings.
Modern echoBrand logos and emoji are iconography we still read.