Visualizing the Unknown in the Digital Era of Art History

Abstract

Te study of what can be seen defnes and delimits the feld of art history. In the nineteenth century, visual analysis distinguished art history as a discipline independent from other felds in the humanities. As the feld grew, methodologies such as connoisseurship and iconography were elaborated to elicit greater understanding of an artwork through formal analyses of style and subject matter. Approaches from psychoanalysis to poststructuralism have subsequently ofered insight to the meanings and signifcance of an artwork while allowing for critical interpretations of visual culture. In the twenty-frst century, digital visualization promises to further enrich and extend art history. “Visualization” is an umbrella term for the myriad ways digital technology can organize and represent diferent types of information. 1 It permits, as Victoria Szabo writes, “retrospective as well as prospective analysis, exploration of counter-factuals and hypotheses