Abstract
The aim of this paper is to connect Wittgenstein’s picture theory of meaning with the Hegelian idea of the development of the self. Combining Wittgenstein with Hegel is perhaps not so original (see Mácha/Berg 2019); nevertheless, the context by means of which they will be connected, namely the history of painting, is perhaps new. I will argue that Wittgenstein’s notion of pictorial form is an excellent tool for the analysis of the development of painting from Renaissance to modern art. The idea is to identify epochs, such as the Renaissance or Baroque, by means of the pictorial form they use. Pictorial form is closely related to the epistemic subject and thus the development of pictorial form can be used as a key to studying changes in the self. I shell discriminate eight pictorial forms in the history of western art and describe the form of selfhood characteristic of each of them.
