Article

The influence of Christian iconography on a television commercial for Lavazza coffee

by Piero Polidoro

in Versus n. 114, From Analysis to Theory: Afterthoughts on the Semiotics of Culture, pp.111-125

Abstract (english)

One of the aims of a semiotics of visual culture should be to map areas of this culture and discover how certain images are formed by drawing on different traditions (the fine art tradition, mass culture, other cultures...). Iconography is one of the most useful tools for this research, even though the aims of the semiotics of visual culture are different, since they endeavour to reconstruct a “geography” of images (as in Aby Warburg’s Mnemosyne) rather than to identify sources.
This article attempts to apply this method to a series of television commercials broadcast in Italy between 1995 and 2011 by the coffee company Lavazza. By focussing on the representation of Saint Peter, I will try to show how this is drawn from many sources, deriving partly from the iconography of St Peter, partly from other types that are found in Catholic iconography and partly from a cinematic tradition which in its turn was inspired by motifs and types developed over the centuries by Western art.