Artwork title

The Arnolfini Portrait by Jan van Eyck in the National Gallery has been given several different titles by the museum over recent decades, as opinions as to the nature of the occasion and the people shown have changed.

[3] In the ancient world, artworks were not typically given a proper title, the identification of something like a cult image being self-evident in a particular sociocultural context,[4][5] akin to the concept of the Poor Man's Bible.

[7][8] The relatively small group of narrative religious subjects in Western medieval art were and are referred to by the standard names for an event shown, and used in theological and devotional literature.

[5] The need for an agreed-upon title only emerged in a Western context in the 18th century, with more secular subjects, and more printed literature of art criticism, and Age of Enlightenment cataloging of the first museums and first exhibitions.

[12] As a proper title is considered the default for modern works, others may be designated "Untitled" (by secondary sources or by the artist as a conscious choice), and are sometimes also assigned a parenthetical name for clarity.

(1919), to Freytag-Loringhoven and Schamberg's God 1917, to Maurizio Cattelan's America (2016), artists have used artwork titles to provide additional meaning and/or context to their works of art.