Allegory and symbolism

An allegory presents one subject through another. The National Gallery in London says an allegorical painting may contain figures standing for states of mind such as envy or love, or personifying abstractions such as sight, glory, beauty, or France; these are allegorical figures. Making sense of the picture starts with recognising who they are, though even then the meaning may stay hard to pin down. Allegories were a common subject from the Renaissance to about 1800, perhaps most often on medals and in the engraved frontispieces of books. Painters also made single figures, sometimes as a series, each embodying a single Liberal Art or Virtue. Tate adds that allegory turns up in every art form, in large part because it makes complicated ideas tangible and easy to take in. The National Museum of Western Art explains that in Renaissance Italy the images of the classical gods came back into use and, under humanist interpretation, were read as allegories. Symbolism is also the name of a late-19th-century movement, which Tate says put the expression of an idea ahead of realistic description of the natural world; the critic Jean Moréas coined the name in 1886.

Look for a figure who seems to be an idea rather than a person, and for what they hold or stand beside. Ask what each could stand for.