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Centenary of Erwin Panofsky’s lecture, “Perspective as Symbolic Form”

Written by Pierre Von-Ow |

Erwin Panofsky’s 1925 lecture at the Kulturwissenschaftliche Bibliothek Warburg (KBW) revolutionised the study of space and representation in art history. Titled “About the Evolution of the Perspectival Sensible Intuition of Space” and later reworked as “Perspective as Symbolic Form” for its 1927 publication, the lecture argued that perspective is more than a technical method for creating depth—it reflects how different cultures understand and perceive the world. By viewing perspective as a “symbolic form,” Panofsky connected artistic techniques to broader cultural and philosophical worldviews.

In this blog, Pierre Von-Ow revisits the historical context of Panofsky’s lecture and its lasting influence on art history and beyond. Drawing on newly digitised material from the Warburg Institute Archive, he uncovers fascinating details about the event and Panofsky’s methodological shift in approaching perspective—not merely as a formal technique, but as a symbolic form reflecting a culture’s relationship to space and perception.

This year marks the centenary of Erwin Panofsky’s seminal lecture, “Perspective as Symbolic Form”. Although first published in 1927 as part of the Vorträge der Bibliothek Warburg,[1] the text originated as a lecture delivered on January 31st, 1925 at the KBW in Hamburg. Few essays in art history have garnered the enduring reputation of this text. In spite – or perhaps due to – its proverbial brevity, it remains a cornerstone that anchors and polarises studies on space and its representation. As Hubert Damisch observed, the history of perspective cannot but operate under the “jurisdiction” of Panofsky’s essay.[2]

Annual lecture programme of the Warburg Library in Hamburg for the year 1924-1925. London, Warburg Institute Archive, I.9.18.4.2.1

The Warburg Institute Archive preserves materials related to this event, which have been digitised for this occasion.[3] They comprise the attendance sheets signed by nearly eighty participants, including the name of Fritz Saxl, whose role would prove pivotal in the Institute’s history, but also of architect Hans Blumenfeld. Comparing the KBW’s printed annual lecture programme with copies of the original invitation cards found in the archive reveals a crucial detail about the lecture’s methodological ambitions. In the few months between submitting a title for his lecture and invitations being sent out, Panofsky changed his mind. Originally announced as a conference Über die Entwicklung der perspektivischen Raumanordnung, meaning “On the Evolution of the Perspectival Ordering [or Arrangement] of Space”, the event’s actual title became more Kantian: Über die Entwicklung der perspektivischen Raumanschauung, that is, “About the Evolution of the Perspectival Sensible Intuition of Space”. This detail underscores a leap in Panofsky’s approach to spatial representation: from a formal problem (Anordnung) to a somewhat metaphysical one (Anschauung); from a descriptive issue to one of projection, so to speak – an aspect about which much ink has been spilled since then.

Annual lecture programme of the Warburg Library in Hamburg for the year 1924-1925. London, Warburg Institute Archive, I.9.18.4.2.1

Panofsky was not the first scholar to isolate perspective as a distinct object of study.[4]In 1911, for example, Russian Byzantinist and freshly minted Baron Wladimir de Grüneisen published an essay entitled “La perspective: Esquisse de son évolution des origines jusqu’à la Renaissance” in the Mélanges de l’École française de Rome.[5] Primarily technical and vaguely stylistic, this study examined how the different forms of perspective might reveal the artistic influences between Ancient Egypt, Greece, Assyria, and Byzantium. For Grüneisen, the comparative study of techniques – perspective being prime among them – represents to art history what philology is to the history of literatures, that is: “an arid and unappealing, yet necessary, introduction.”[6] Although he does not mention Grüneisen’s text in his relatively plethoric notes, Panofsky was familiar with its methodology. 

Invitation to Erwin Panofsky’s lecture, 'Über die Entwicklung der perspektivischen Raumanschauung', January 31st, 1925. London, Warburg Institute Archives, I.9.18.4.5.1.

While pursuing the stylistic/philological study of perspectives, Panofsky’s paper added the why to the how. In this “epic of visuality”[7], as W. J. T. Mitchell called it, perspective became more than a mere graphic technique. As he signalled in the title of the published version, it was a “symbolic form”, a notion that he loosely borrowed from his colleague Ernst Cassirer—whose signature appears on the attendance sheet of the 1925 lecture (see below, page 2)[8] In this “relativist history”[9], a certain kind of perspective denotes a certain kind of spatial and perceptual understanding and a certain way of projecting oneself within it. In other words, perspective is historically and culturally determined. Based on Panofsky’s radical claim, methods of representing objects and spaces in three dimensions offer themselves to retroactive analysis, revealing the Weltanschauung or “Sensible intuition of the world”, a supra-individual, cosmological drive. Understood as a way of organising experience through representation, perspective reveals something of the artist’s – and more broadly their culture’s – relationship vis-à-vis others and the world.[10] 

Since 1925, countless studies have expanded the geographical and chronological scope, the methodological approach, and the technical focus of this landmark study. Explorations of non-Western visual arts, in particular, have demonstrated that single-point perspective, although widespread since its codification by Leon Battista Alberti in the Quattrocento, is far from hegemonic on a global scale. Scholars have drawn attention to other modes of figuration, other worldviews that express themselves through different techniques and forms. Postcolonial studies have identified perspective as a tool in the Western project of abolishing distances and forcefully, brutally homogenising geographies under the aegis of a single horizon. Feminist approaches have shown how perspective not only changes the way we look at spaces, but also shapes the perception of bodies, serving as an instrument of gender, cultural, and political divisions. Examinations in film studies and more recently of images generated by artificial intelligences demonstrate how Panofsky’s pioneering approach can apply to new media. 

“Perspective as Symbolic Form” boasts lasting relevance and fertility for all those who believe that solutions offered to the problem of spatial representation always reflect broader considerations vis-à-vis the problem of order.[11] More than just Erwin Panofsky’s lecture, this centenary should be a celebration of histories (plural) of perspectives (plural), and an encouragement to explore their many remaining unfocused areas. 

View the attendance list for Erwin Panofsky’s lecture:

Attendance list for Erwin Panofsky’s lecture, Über die Entwicklung der perspektivischen Raumanschauung, January 31st, 1925. London, Warburg Institute Archives, I.9.18.4.5.2.

Pierre Von-Ow, PhD, is a Fellow at the Académie de France à Rome – Villa Medici. Between 2022 and 2024, he was the postgraduate representative on the Warburg Institute’s Advisory Council and in October 2024, he co-organised the international symposium “Histories of Perspectives” at the Deutsches Forum für Kunstgeschichte Paris and the Centre Pompidou.

References 

  • [1] A digitised edition of the original published text is accessible at: https://archive.org/details/vortrgederbiblio4192warb/page/258/mode/2up. English translation: Perspective as Symbolic Form, transl. Christopher S. Wood, New York, Zone Books, 1991.
  • [2] Hubert Damisch, “Panofsky am Scheidewege” in André Chastel et al., Erwin Panofsky, Paris, Centre Georges Pompidou/Pandora Éditions, 1983, p. 101.
  • [3] WIA, I. 9.18.4.2; I. 9.18.4.5.1-2. The author would like to thank Claudia Wedepohl for her assistance in locating and providing reproductions of these documents.
  • [4] For a survey of preceding studies on perspective, see Kim Veltman, “Panofsky’s Perspective: A Half Century Later”, in La Prospettiva Rinascimentale: Codificazioni e Trasgressioni, ed. Marisa Dalai Emiliani, Florence, Centro Di, 1980 pp. 570-2; and M. D. Emiliani, “La question de la perspective” [1961], in Erwin Panofsky, La perspective comme forme symbolique et autres essais, transl. dir. Guy Ballangé, Paris, Les Éditions de minuit, 1975, pp. 7-35.
  • [5] Wladimir de Grüneisen, “La perspective. Esquisse de son évolution des origines jusqu’à la Renaissance”, Mélanges de l’École française de Rome, 1911, pp. 393-434. 
  • [6] Ibid., p. 393.
  • [7] W. J. T. Mitchell, Picture Theory: Essays on verbal and visual representation, Chicago, Chicago University Press, 1994, p. 23.
  • [8] On Cassirer and Panofsky, see Emmanuel Alloa, “Could Perspective Ever be a Symbolic Form? Revisiting Panofsky with Cassirer”, Journal of Aesthetics and Phenomenology 2/1 (2015), pp. 51-71; Allister Neher, “How Perspective Could be a Symbolic Form”, The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 63/4 (Autumn 2005), pp. 359-73; Rhys W. Roark, “Panofsky: Linear Perspective and Perspectives of Modernity”, Renaissance? Perceptions of Continuity and Discontinuity in Europe, c. 1300-1550, Leiden, Brill, 2010, pp. 181-205.
  • [9] Christopher S. Wood, A History of Art History, Princeton, Princeton University Press, 2019, p. 323.
  • [10] On the notion of “symbolic form”, see (among other sources) Samuel Y. Edgerton, The Renaissance Rediscovery of Linear Perspective, New York, Basic Books, 1975, pp. 153-65.
  • [11] Thomas Golsenne recently addressed the topicality of perspective as an object of art historical study in: “Inactualité de la perspective?”, Perspective 2024/2, pp. 13-20.