How to read a painting: a step-by-step method

Reading a painting means looking slowly and in steps: first the spontaneous impression, then what the picture shows, how it is built with composition, light and colour, what the symbols mean and finally in what context it was made. The method works on everything from medieval altarpieces to modern art.

Facts

Step 1: Look first

Don't start with the label. Give yourself a minute with just the picture and notice what catches your eye first, what mood the picture has and what you feel. Is it calm or restless, warm or cold, near or distant? The spontaneous impression is not wrong; it is the starting point for the rest.

Notice the size and the distance too. A small picture draws you close, a wall-sized one wants you to step back. A museum visit is different from a screen, but the same way of looking works for both. More about looking can be found in the section Seeing.

Step 2: Describe what you see

Describe the picture as objectively as possible, as if you were telling someone who cannot see it. Which people, objects and places are there? What are they doing, and where are they? What is in the foreground, the middle ground and the background? The art historian Erwin Panofsky called this level pre-iconographic.

Description often reveals more than you would think. In Las Meninas a careful look reveals that the painter is standing at his canvas, that a man appears in a doorway at the very back and that the royal couple exist only in a mirror on the back wall.

Step 3: Analyse the form

Now look at how the picture is built. Composition: are there diagonals, a triangle, symmetry, a centre? Where does the eye land and how is it led on? Light: where does it come from and what does it highlight? Colour: warm or cool, strong or muted, and how do the colours interact?

Think also about perspective and technique. Is the space deep or flat? Are the brushstrokes visible or is the surface smooth? Is it oil, tempera or fresco? Form is not just framing; it is a large part of what the picture says.

Step 4: Interpret the symbols

Many older pictures are full of signs that contemporaries could read. The study of the subjects and symbols of images is called iconography. A skull is a reminder of death, a lily of purity, a dog often of fidelity. Saints are recognised by their attributes: Peter has keys, Catherine a wheel.

In The Ambassadors of 1533 Hans Holbein painted a distorted skull across the floor. It looks right only from the side, a technique called anamorphosis, and reminds us that all the learning and wealth on the shelves behind the men is transient. Many terms are explained in the glossary.

Step 5: Place the picture in its context

Finally ask when, where, by whom and for whom the picture was made. Was it a commission for a church, a portrait for a home or a work for an exhibition? Which period does it belong to and what was happening in the world at the time? Panofsky called the deepest level iconology: understanding the picture as an expression of its time.

Then compare with other pictures. How does The Night Watch differ from an ordinary group portrait, and what does that say about Rembrandt? Comparing is one of the best ways of seeing what is special. Practise with the app's exercises and the feature for comparing works.

Checklist in front of a painting

Exercise

What is the technique behind the distorted skull in Holbein's The Ambassadors called?