Imago Dei : 1 Metaphorical conceptualization of pictorial artworks within a participant-based framework Fabio I. M. Poppi (Sechenov University, Russian Federation) Marianna Bolognesi (University of Oxford, United Kingdom) Amitash Ojha (Università degli studi di Cagliari, Italy) Abstract This article presents an exploratory analysis of the metaphoric structure of five artistic paintings within “Think aloud” protocols, in which a group of 14 English speakers with a low self-rated art and history of art expertise were asked to verbalize all their thoughts, ideas and impressions about the artworks. The main findings of this study can be summarized as follows: 1) multiple interpretations for the same artwork are possible, 2) the interpretations of the metaphorical structures described by the participants often diverge from those advanced by the researchers. These findings challenge the methods in which metaphor identification and analysis in pictorials is currently approached. As a matter of fact, most of the research in pictorial metaphors tends to reduce stimuli such as artistic paintings to unique metaphoric interpretations generally produced by a single researcher by means of introspections. By addressing this methodological problem in metaphor research, this article contributes to the development of a theoretical and operational participant-based framework that takes into account the role of metaphoric conceptualization within the domain of art and art cognition. Keywords : Artwork; Conceptualization; Interpretation; Pictorial Metaphor; Think-aloud protocol 1 “Imago Dei”, lat. “Image of God”. The title is a reference to “Lettera agli artisti” (Letters to the artists) by Pope John Paul II (1999), in which the “artistic creation” is metaphorically represented as “image of God”.