The field of art history interested in the analysis of the specific image components of pictures. The term itself is a neologism constructed from the Greek words for image and writing, a fact that gives a clue to its main concern. Art historians like Aby Warburg and Erwin Panofsky show that Medieval, Baroque, and Renaissance Christian art use a limited number of images, which also have a fairly stable set of meanings. In the Romantic period, forests, mountains, and rivers were used in a similarly iconic manner to the standard Christian symbols of the previous era. Identifying these images and their specific, coded meanings, enables these works to be read. The practice of iconography was popularized by Dan Brownâs bestselling novel The Da Vinci Code (2003) in which a historian deciphers the meaning of several different artworks in order to solve a mystery. Further Reading: R. van Straten, tr. P. de Man An Introduction to Iconography (1994).