I.
Allegoricality of Flemish Painting Originates from Panofsky ?
That Flemish paintings, such as Arnolfini of van Eyck, have allegorical meanings is a basic knowledge of art history. However, people don't know that before Panofsky's iconology studies. Panofsky's discrimination in the last century marked an advance in the area of art history.
But did Flemish people 500 years ago know that their paintings are allegorical? There are three possibilities. First, Panofsky may be wrong. Flemish paintings created 500 years ago are naturalistic representations instead of referring to things in the Bible. That's not quite possible as D. Carrier claims the Arnolfini Portrait is not quite naturalistic, which could only be explained by allegorical ideas. Secondly, Flemish did know the allegorical meanings in their paintings as allegorical. But their knowledge doesn't have written evidences.
The third, Flemish artists practiced as such, while never knew it. Things could be too deeply rooted in our culture that we have no idea of them, or think it as natural. They are so basic that we even don't have to talk about them, unless they are conceptualized by theorists. That makes some sense. As Flemish people had a great deal of religion practices, many things in their lives might have allegorical meanings. So when a painting quotes one of the stuff together with it's connotation, it is less possible that Allegoricality alone be treated as a unique characteristic of the paintings, but on the contrary that the paintings are "natural".
(This gives some ideas on why paintings could be interpreted differently. And shows a new type of relationship between art history and cognitive psychology.)
II.
Allegoricality
Flemish artists had faced different situations than we normally think. Craig Harbisson in his book has told us that artworks produced then had to fulfill a series of requirements identified by the contracts with the patrons, such as the precise poses of the figures, or doxies to be represented in the paintings, etc. Thus, ambitious artists would strive to break through these limits to make the productions more than what the contracts defined. For example, an artist had made one of the supporting leg of his sculpture a self portrait.
It is implied here that the higher objective of an artist might be naturalization and personalization, rather than making objects with religious connotations. That is why literature of several hundred years was silent on allegoricality of Flemish paintings, and art historians didn't discover that allegoricality only until modern era.
