The Reality of Symbols Studies in the Iconology of Netherlandish Art 1400-1800

"Bedaux brings the discussion of meaning in northern painting back to the basics: the description of real objects, the evocation of everyday associations, the employment of standard visual metaphors, symbols and allegories. With the first publication of an eighteenth-century iconographical program drawn up by the Hague painter Mattheus Verheyden, he demonstrates the continued importance of allegory, that stepchild of iconography." -- Cover page 4.