Iconografia e comunicação museológica: a retórica dos retábulos do arco-cruzeiro da Capela da Ordem Terceira do Carmo de Cachoeira - Ba

Abstract

Museology has as a major task to establish a relationship of communication between man and cultural good, through exhibitions. The museological communication, as an integral part of the process of conception of an exhibition and ultimate end of this process, enables the information contained on the cultural property to be more easily understood by the visitor. Erwin Panofsky’s iconological method performs the interpretation of art objects from image analysis, aiming to understand the semiotic dimension of the work. The iconography, as one of the levels of the process of measuring the significance of a work, from the viewpoint of the epistemological method of Panofsky, is understood as a branch the history of art whose object of study is the theme and meaning of works of art. Therefore, it means the breakdown of the elements of the piece in order to rank each one of them, clarifying the message it attempts to communicate. Therefore, museological communication can be an effective vehicle for the dissemination of information present in iconographic representations, enabling the offering to the general public of the possibility of expanding knowledge regarding the information it presents. Thus, at the interface of theology with Art History and Museology, this research aims to study the rhetoric of the altarpieces collateral to the crossing arch of the Church of the Carmelite Third Order of Cachoeira, Bahia, and emphasize the role of Museological Communication present on the iconographic representations and the role each element plays in the composition.