Tradition and modernity: the image and the question of representation

In this essay the artistic image is thought of from its first social functions and conceptions up to modernity, when the artist established his autonomy and dealt with the internal issues. The latter has gone through a process of paradigm change, since it did not aim at representations any longer but became an expression of theoretical ideas. It is worth to revisit some methods of image interpretation that the historians have been using and suggest some reflexions.