Revisioning the Image Ruskin’s ‘Iconology-in-Progress’

This paper explores Ruskin's lifelong concern with the nature and significance of visual images. It argues that the diverse modes and moments of his engagement with vthem may be read as variant expressions of a progressively constituted iconology, unified by basic conception of the image as a representation whose essence is interpretative, but the locus and orientation of whose interpretative function are diversely intended and articulated over time. A chronological review of select stages and junctures of his 'iconology-in-progress' highlights Ruskin's increasing emphasis on this indexical mode of interpretative meaning.