When Jan van Eyck painted the "Arnolfini Portrait" in 1434, he loaded every inch of the canvas with meaning. The single lit candle in the chandelier above the couple was not a convenience but a symbol of the divine witness to their vow. The dog at their feet stood for fidelity. The discarded shoes on the left edge indicated that the figures were standing on holy ground. The convex mirror on the rear wall reflected the entire room, including two additional figures in the doorway, one of whom may be Van Eyck himself, with the inscription "Johannes de Eyck fuit hic 1434" ("Jan van Eyck was here") written in an elaborate legal script above it. A visitor in 1434 who understood the visual conventions of Flemish painting would have read all of this as naturally as reading a text. We do not share that visual literacy, but we can learn it.
Symbolism in art is the use of objects, colours, animals, gestures, and spatial arrangements to carry meanings that extend beyond their literal description. It operated as a shared language between artist and audience for centuries, encoding religious doctrine, moral commentary, social status, and emotional states into images that could communicate across literacy levels and national boundaries. Learning to read that language opens up layers of meaning in paintings that look, on first encounter, like straightforward depictions of interiors, portraits, or landscapes.
Why Artists Used Symbols
The most important reason artists used symbolic language was practical: they needed to communicate complex ideas within the limitations of a single image. A painting of the Virgin Mary could not include a theological treatise, but by placing a white lily beside her (purity), a crescent moon at her feet (associated with the Immaculate Conception), or a snake underfoot (the defeat of sin), the painter communicated precise doctrinal content to any viewer who shared that symbolic vocabulary.
The second reason was social. In cultures where literacy was limited, symbolism allowed complex moral and narrative content to reach broad audiences. The carved exterior programmes of Gothic cathedrals, covered with figures, animals, and scenes, were intended to be read by largely illiterate parishioners as visual theology. Every grotesque, every saint, every narrative frieze was part of a coherent symbolic system.
The third reason was protection. Symbols could carry subversive or personal content that could not be stated openly. A political prisoner in a Renaissance court portrait might be depicted with a broken column (endurance under suffering). A merchant patron of a religious painting might have his own portrait inserted as a donor figure, associating himself with sacred subjects he was not permitted to appear in directly. The symbol provided plausible deniability while delivering meaning to those with eyes to see it.
The Most Common Symbols and What They Mean
Vanitas and the Still Life
Dutch and Flemish still life painting of the 17th century is probably the densest body of symbolic imagery in Western art history. The "vanitas" tradition, taking its name from Ecclesiastes ("vanity of vanities"), embedded reminders of mortality and the transience of worldly pleasures into seemingly straightforward arrangements of objects.
A skull was the most explicit memento mori (reminder of death). But many still lifes encoded the same message more subtly: a half-peeled lemon (beauty that conceals bitterness), an overturned goblet (interrupted pleasure), a watch or hourglass (time passing), a butterfly (the soul; also the transience of beauty), a guttered candle (a life ending), a soap bubble (the briefness of existence). A wilting flower in a vase beside fresh blooms told a narrative about the inevitability of decay without a single skull in sight.
Simultaneously, these same objects carried positive associations that created productive tension. A nautilus shell displayed the collector's wealth and sophistication. Chinese porcelain indicated global trade and prosperity. A map on the wall or a globe in the corner signalled a cosmopolitan household. The vanitas tradition worked precisely because its objects were also genuine status symbols, making the memento mori commentary inseparable from the display of the things that the commentary was questioning.
Jan van Eyck, "The Arnolfini Portrait" (1434), oil on oak panel, 82.2 x 60 cm. National Gallery, London. Almost every element in this painting carries symbolic weight: the single candle (divine witness), the dog (fidelity), the discarded shoes (holy ground), the convex mirror (omniscience and witness), and the ripe fruit on the windowsill (fertility). Reading the painting requires knowing this vocabulary. Image: Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
Colour Symbolism
Colour carried consistent symbolic weight in medieval and Renaissance painting, though its meanings shifted across time and culture. In Christian iconography, blue was the colour of heaven and divinity, reserved primarily for the Virgin Mary's mantle, which is why ultramarine (made from lapis lazuli, the most expensive pigment available) was specified in contracts for major commissions: the blue had to be worthy of its subject. Red indicated sacrifice, martyrdom, and Christ's blood. White represented purity and resurrection. Green signified hope and new life. Black was associated with mourning and evil, gold with divine light.
These associations were not arbitrary; they derived from a long tradition of theological writing that artists, patrons, and viewers all shared. When Raphael painted the Virgin in blue and red in "The Sistine Madonna" (1512), he was using a colour code that every viewer would have read immediately. The red dress beneath the blue mantle referred simultaneously to her human motherhood (red, the colour of blood and earthly life) and her heavenly status (blue, the colour of the divine).
Animals
Animal symbolism in European art derives from two main sources: the "Physiologus," an early Christian text that assigned moral and theological meanings to animal behaviours, and the Classical tradition of associating specific animals with specific gods. The lamb stood for Christ (the Agnus Dei, Lamb of God). The dove represented the Holy Spirit and peace. The eagle symbolised St John the Evangelist and, by extension, divine vision. The ox stood for St Luke. The lion for St Mark. The angel for St Matthew.
In secular painting, the associations were more varied. A peacock could mean pride, immortality (because its flesh was believed not to decay), or vanity depending on context. The fox denoted cunning. The dog, as Van Eyck demonstrates, meant fidelity. The horse indicated nobility, military prowess, and political power, which is why so many royal portraits showed the subject on horseback.
Reading Symbols in Practice: A Worked Example
Stand in front of Jan van Eyck's "Arnolfini Portrait" and apply this approach systematically. First, identify the unusual: why is there only one candle lit when there are two holders? The lit single candle above the man's head referred to the "marriage candle" or nuptial torch, a symbol of the presence of God as witness. Why is the dog there at all? Lapdogs were common in Flemish interiors, but in this context the small dog between the couple encoded fidelity directly into the composition.
Second, look at what is absent. Why are the shoes removed and placed near the window? In biblical tradition, removing shoes indicated standing on holy ground (Exodus 3:5). Van Eyck translated this into the secular setting of a domestic interior to give the scene a sacred quality without a religious subject.
Third, look at the position of figures. The man's raised right hand is often interpreted as an oath-taking gesture. The woman's hand rests in his, the traditional gesture of the joining of hands in a marriage ceremony. Their positions relative to the window (light, the world) and the bed (domestic interior, the conjugal) are deliberate compositional choices, not naturalistic placement.
This approach, noticing the unusual, asking what is absent, and attending to positioning and gesture, can be applied to any painting from the medieval period through the 19th century where symbolic conventions were operative. It is the same method used by art historians and discussed in our broader introduction to how to look at art. For a deeper dive into the specific iconographic systems used in religious art, our guide to understanding iconography covers the theological and classical traditions in greater detail.
When Does Symbolism Stop?
Not every element in every painting is symbolic. A 17th-century Dutch interior might include objects that are simply documented with extraordinary fidelity because the painter was proud of painting them convincingly. Over-reading, finding hidden meanings where the artist intended none, is a genuine risk in applied symbolic analysis. The test is always contextual: does this interpretation cohere with other evidence about the work's date, commission, intended audience, and the iconographic conventions operating in that tradition?
Symbolism becomes less operative as painting moves toward Realism in the 19th century, and largely disappears from Modernist abstraction. But it resurfaces constantly in contemporary art. Joseph Beuys used fat and felt as symbols of warmth, healing, and survival, derived from a personal story about being rescued by nomads after his plane crashed in World War Two. Frida Kahlo's self-portraits are dense with symbolic objects, Mesoamerican imagery, and personal narrative symbols. And in digital and conceptual art, symbolic language continues to operate wherever artists need to communicate more than the literal subject of an image can carry.
Final Thoughts
Learning to read symbolism in art does not require memorising a dictionary of meanings. It requires developing a habit: the habit of pausing at the unusual, the precisely placed, and the apparently incidental, and asking why it is there. Art made between roughly 1000 and 1850 CE in the Western tradition operates on this symbolic level consistently, and developing fluency in its language transforms the experience of walking through any collection of pre-modern painting.
The most rewarding discovery is that symbolic reading is not a special skill reserved for scholars. It is a form of close attention that anyone can practice, and it rewards patience with a continuous expansion of what any single painting contains. For a companion approach to compositional and spatial reading of paintings, our guide to understanding composition covers the formal structures that organise symbols and figures into coherent visual arguments.
