This volume explores a basic question in the historiography of art: the extent to which iconology was a homogenous research method in its own immutable right. By contributing to the rejection of the universalizing narrative, these case studies argue that there were many strands of iconology.

Part 1: Overview 1. Mapping Iconologies: Concepts and Contexts Part 2: Diverse Concepts of Iconology and Their Use in Western and Central Europe 2. Iconology or Iconography?: The Term Iconology in Erwin Panofsky's Research on Art 3. Iconology vs. Iconography: G. J. Hoogewerff's Seminal Distinctions 4. The Political Iconology of Ernst H. Kantorowicz 5. Flat Iconology: Metamorphoses of a Method in British Exile 6. Imperial Style and the Content of Architecture: Concepts of Architectural Iconography of the 1930s and 1940s, and Their Afterlife 7. Hans Sedlmayr's Structural Analysis of the Gothic Cathedral: An Iconological Study? 8. Zofia Ameisenowa, William S. Heckscher and 'The Genesis of Iconology' (Bonn 1964) 9. Erwin Panofsky, Hans Sedlmayr, Lech Kalinowski, and the Meanders of Iconology 10. Jan Bialostocki: From Iconology to the Aesthetics of Image Part 3: (Marxist) Reinterpretation of Iconology Behind the Iron Curtain 11. Iconology Versus Iconography in the Soviet Art-Historical Discourse, 1960s-1980s 12. Sneaking In: Iconology and the Process of Renewal in Late Soviet Estonian Art History 13. The Prague School of Marxist Iconology 14. Helga Sciurie, Friedrich Möbius, and the Jena Arbeitskreis für Ikonologie und Ikonographie in the German Democratic Republic Part 4: Absence and Non-Acceptance of Iconology in Some Regions Behind the Iron Curtain 15. The Absence of Iconology in Romania: A Possible Answer 16. A Strange Place of 'Style' in Iconology: A Case Study from Southeastern Europe