In the following contribution, I argue that reconstructing historical contexts is key to the understanding of images. Their production and consumption are constituted by their use, spatial setting, and temporal grounding. Every age has its own practical and conceptual knowledge to which images refer.

This somewhat traditional analytical approach has gone out of fashion. Although a prominent topic in the 1980s and 1990s, particularly in German-language research, the focus of many new studies has shifted. The actual interest in images is now much more focused on modes of storytelling and aspects of (inter-)mediality, the relationship between text and image (as was already of interest to Carl Robert), aesthetic and semantic jeux d’images, and ornamental matters, to name just a few research questions. All these approaches are extremely productive occupations with the phenomenon of the image. However, the new focus on the intrinsic value of images – the visual qualities of the image – has sometimes led to the claim of putting aside questions of social and historical context. Nevertheless, images only become understandable as social agents and means of communication in relation to their historical context.

However, research has followed many different paths to contextualize images. In the nineteenth century, images were understood to be an expression of the spirit of the times (Zeitgeist). Even in Erwin Panofsky's iconology, this idea still has force when he claims that “the general and essential tendencies of the human mind” are implicit in the works. Such concepts recurred in many studies right through the 1960s and 1970s. It is only recent research that has turned against the idea of a detached, homogeneous, and supposedly objective Zeitgeist. Instead, images are seen as agents in competing communication and interaction processes. But how do image contents relate to an external world that provides the frame for the interpretation of those very images? This is, for example, a central question for understanding the images that appear on vases in ancient Greece. However, vases are a very specific medium. They serve primarily as containers and, because they are mobile objects, are not bound to a specific place. Greek vases of the sixth and fifth centuries BC were used in domestic contexts, especially at drinking parties such as the symposion. Nevertheless, lavishly painted vessels also appeared in various public or semi-public settings, for example in sanctuaries or necropoleis.