Recognized the Bird's Sign with Panovsky's Votes in the Graphic Art of the First Period of the Qajar

In modern times, sign has been the center of human’s attention and is among the topics that have undergone thorough rethinking. Qajar painting has witnessed the development of semiotic readings in recent decades. Abundantly seen in Qajar painting, bird is one of the main signs in Qajar period. Adopting iconographic interpretation, Erwin Panofsky (1892-1968) relates studies on the history of art with other studies of humanities. In comparative studies, we do not always examine formal qualities of an artwork, but find relations between the work and literature, philosophy, social system, and other cultural systems of its era, whether the artist had such an intention or not. To do so, the research analyzes the key concepts of Panofsky’s theory. Based on this analysis, the main question of the research is as follows: According to Panofsky, what is the signification of bird in the portraits of men and women of the court in the Qajar era? The content of this research is qualitative and based on descriptive-analytic methodology and the method of library data collection. The findings indicate that the norms of aesthetics of Iran in the preceding periods influenced the display and presence of bird in Qajar art. In these works, bird acts as an active and dynamic symbol that is in balance with the painting and manifested in the evolution of the final process of the portrait.