Iconologia, Alegorismo Medieval e o conceito de habitus na obra de E. Panofsky

Abstract

The present article addresses the concept of habitus according to Erwin Panofsky's work Gothic Architecture and Scholasticism, seeking todistance it from past historiographical traditions–such as Wölfflin's, Riegl's, Warburg's and Cassirer's. It also aims at the debates which Panofsky's works engendered, and the influence that his theory and methodology exerted, through the concept of habitus, upon authors coming from the most diverse fields of knowledge. Such influence would cause this concept to be readapted by authors such as Gombrich, Eco, Bourdieu and Chartier. These last two recognized in the concept Panofsky's overcomingof his criticisms of Wölfflin and Riegl: the overcoming of Positivism and Formalism, as well as the abandonment of the search for the pioneer,oftheidea of anindividual's freedom and capacity for invention,of the psychological approach to genius and his detachment from the“History ofthe Spirit”. Despite being an efficient theoretical solution to many open historical questions (some of them common to The Annales School), this concept received very little attention from historians and theoreticians. Most often they turn their sights strictly to his renowned Iconologic method, or to the "symbolic forms". However, both the concept of habitus and the Iconologic method share a common historiographic genesis. Both come from Panofsky's interest in the Gothic phenomena,in Scholasticism–especially from his interest in Aquinas and Suger–and in the Sacred Allegorism. Allegorism–the medieval idea of revealing triple meanings inimages and texts–is the basis upon which Panofsky conceived of his tripartite method of artistic meaning investigation: the Iconology. Likewise, the elaboration of the concept of habitus and his renowned thesis from Gothic Architecture and Scholasticism share a scholastic foundation with Allegorism itself.