An Iconological Study of the Bakhtiari Pictorial Carpet by Panofsky’s Methodology

Studying visual artworks, especially when there is not much to know about their hidden meanings, is a problem which should be solved in a systematic way by adopting an authentic methodology. Passing through an image to reach the meaning is a process which always and unconsciously happens in artworks' addressees with nearly different methods. Determining such a methodical approach in the critical perusal of artworks will develop as different methods of art criticism. One of the methods that create an academic analysis for passing through the meaning of image is iconology in Panofsky's approach. This methodology has been proved to be efficient in this article by applying which to a photo of a Bakhtiari carpet from Hinegan region with no obvious meaning. The carpet has some properties with religious implications, but the woven events were not correspondent to any religious narratives. Studying the carpet with Panofsky's method and paying attention to small visual contents, it became clear that three groups of motifs which do not seem interrelated in the first look,  create a network of meanings. By reading pretexts carefully, they guide the research to their origins and hidden meanings which were not obvious in the beginning for the artist, audience and the artwork.