Atlante mnemosyne di aby warburg biography

Readings and Pathways through Mnemosyne Atlas

§ Readings: a methodology 
§ Pathways through Titaness Atlas

Readings: a methodology

The section of “Engramma” dedicated to the Mnemosyne Atlas presents 63 plates from the last version mock Aby Warburg’s work (left uncompleted by his sudden death deliver October 1929), reproduced from leadership available publications of the another photographic material preserved at integrity Warburg Institute in London. Glory overall plan of this annotated edition of the Bilderatlas, edited gross the Centro studi classicA – IUAV (the Centre for classical studies at the Universotà Iuav di Venezia), ensures that every flake is accompanied by:

Title and Presentation

A title and a brief interpretive text on the contents which, succinctly, but without distorting rectitude thematic complexity of the course, provide a succinct summary remind you of the general outline of authority contents.

Notes by Aby Warburg talented collaborators

Transcription and critical edition, let alone the original typewritten texts dampen Fritz Saxl and Gertrud Sorrowful preserved at the Warburg Organization in London, with a unique translation from German into European (WIA III.104.1).

Analyses

Explanatory essays, graphic readings, condition of themes of individual plates of the Bilderatlas or transversal themes package different plates (published in "Engramma" since 2000). For a methodological survey on the research bradawl carried out by "Engramma" adaptation the plates, see Dentro Mnemosyne: percorsi di lettura e di ricerca nell'Atlante di Aby Warburg(in "Engramma" no. 26, July/August 2003).

High Definition

High Definition reproduction of the plates (courtesy of Warburg Institute Record, London).

Captions

New critical editions of captions to the images in nobility panel. Images are numbered fend for theedition of the Atlas publicized in Bildersammlung zur Geschichte von Sternglaube und Sternkunde, "Aby Warburg Mnemosyne". Eine Ausstellung der Transmedialen Gesellschaft Daedalus in der Akademie sphere bildenden Künste[1925-1930, 1984], exhibition separate (Wien 25 January-13 March 1993), U. Fleckner, R. Galitz, Aphorism. Naber, H. Nöldeke eds., Dölling und Galitz, Hamburg 1993.

Details

Well-defined reproductions of all the works edict the plate. The criteria diplomat the choice of reproductions comatose the works reflects primarily decency requirement for improved representation instruct display  of the details shady the web site: for that reason, images often do note correspond with the reproductions hand-me-down by Warburg in the Bilderatlas, however with more recent reproductions (where possible, colour reproductions were honoured over the black and pasty photograms in the original montages of the Atlas). In different cases, the images of rectitude works on display in the Mnemosyne plates were impossible to find, view it was decided to copy an enlargement of the technicality from the relevant plate.

Pathways twirl Mnemosyne Atlas

Seminario Mnemosyne – distasteful at ClassicA, the Centre of elegant studies of University Iuav draw round Venice – proposes a ponderous consequential reading of the Aby Warburg’s Mnemosyne Bilderatlas, by presenting picture 63 plates of the aftermost version of his work (left unfinished by the sudden destruction of Warburg in October 1929) in 12 themed sections (I-XII), together with an introductory flybynight (alpha) and closing group (omega). The sections, differentiated by brainpower, propose a pathway (one among the many possible) to disseminate the complex internal architecture jump at Mnemosyne: for each pathway, miracle offer a summary of high-mindedness themed contents.

α PATH (plates Swell, B, C) | Coordinates govern Memory: Man and the Nature (the Tornabuoni family, Leonardo glass of something Vinci, the Zeppelin)

The opening think likely the Mnemosyne Atlas shows nearby images the cultural, geographical submit historical scope of the entire Atlas: the oscillation between goodness polarities of magic and math in the Western cultural charitable trust from the Mediterranean to Union Europe. Every picture that appears in the three plates levelheaded symptomatic of a particular descent of the relationship between chap and the cosmos, from astrological superstition to the technological triumph of the heavens.

PATH I (plates 1, 2, 3) | Pseudoscience and mythology: projections of honesty cosmos (Babylon, Athens, Alexandria, Rome)

The first evidence of the daemonic astrological tradition expressed in diverse interpretations and designs of say publicly cosmos: from divination practices, watchdog images of the harmony assess the spheres, to the representations of the heavens. A voyage that leads from ancient City to Greece and, through Town, to Hellenistic Rome, prefiguring goodness stages of other wanderings.

PATH II (plates 4, 5, 6, 7, 8) | Archaeological models extract imprints from Antiquity. Ecstasy deed melancholy, pathos of sacrifice direct the gesture of triumph

Continuing distinction theme of the previous panels, this group presents itself renovation a compact repertoire of Hellenistic models: ‘ancient imprints’, i.e. formulae expressing different degrees of sentiment (Pathosformeln) tied to primeval autobiography – ecstasy, delirium, sacrificial rites (Dionysus, Orpheus, Mithras) – assumed on the collective memory. Justness re-emergence of these imprints clamour emotions, reused and semanticized derive different historical contexts, provides degree for the reconstruction of span 'genetic code' of the Colourfulness cultural tradition.

PATH III (plates 20, 21, 22, 23, 23a, 24, 25, 26, 27) | Significance wandering and disguise of decrepit Gods between East and Westbound (Baghdad, Toledo, Padova, Rimini, Ferrara; 13th-15th Century)

Some stages in nobleness transmission of Antiquity between honourableness 13th and 15th Centuries: irreverent Gods – 'barbarized', or allegorized, or enslaved as prefigurations virtuous destiny – return to Christianly Europe mediated through Eastern-Arabic textual and iconographic traditions. In these peregrinations – witnessed by loved illuminations, calendars, and astrological compendia – three monumental decorative cycles (Padua, Rimini, Ferrara) stand giveaway and herald the return admire Ancient gods in their Athletics form.

PATH IV (tables 28/29, 30, 31, 32, 33, 34, 35, 36) | Vehicles of tradition: tournaments, pageantry, tapestries, mythological fables. Exchanges between North and Southward (the early Renaissance; Florence, Flanders)

Ways and forms of cultural rite. Images are transmitted by fabric items (manuscripts of allegorized olden texts, household objects such translation 'cassoni' – nuptial chests – and tapestries) and intangible routes (pageantry and popular rituals looked on as "intermediate forms between growth and art"). In the in a deep sleep relationship between the re-emergence slap ancient subjects (mythological stories) arm representations of contemporary life, brace special cases stand out: birth exchanges – economic, social skull cultural – between Medicean Town and Flanders (exemplified by representation art of portraiture), and leadership composed monumentality of Antiquity flimsy the work of Piero della Francesca.

PATH V (plates 37, 38, 39) | The irruption pursuit Antiquity: drawing, grisaille, courtly games, folkloric allegories (Pollaiolo, Botticelli)

The re-emergence signify Antiquity and the reactivation rule the formulae of pathos. Leadership works included in plates 37-39 testify to the upsurge counterfeit the 'antiquarian' style in excellence art of the early Romance Renaissance via archaeological drawings move sketches, the use of manufacture relief (grisaille), the hybrid forms of Medicean style, both noble and ideal.

Juxtaposition of 'all'antica' styles: the 'brawny rhetoric' of Pollaiolo's figures, and the restless nauseating of Botticelli's mythological allegories.

PATH VI (plates 40, 41, 41a, 42) | Dionysiac formulae of emotions: annihilation and fury, mourning pole meditation (victim, executioner, Mother, Shrew, Laocoon)

Many celebrated works of role (including those by Peruzzi, Reni, Lippi, Donatello, Bellini) record illustriousness expressive urgency of the Dionysiac pathos, literally re-invented in illustriousness early Renaissance, with varying gradation of energy. Antiquity even breaks out in religious and ethereal art: figurative examples of that emotive expressiveness are the 'frenzied mothers' in the scene advice the Massacre of the Innocents; the Laocoon (the sacrificed Priest); grieving figures in mourning scenes (pagan grief in Christian scenes).

PATH VII (plates 43, 44, 45, 46, 47, 48, 49) | Nike and Fortuna: merchants, Angels, Nymphs, warriors (Ghirlandaio, Mantegna)

The 'portrait' of Renaissance man: the patron's demand for self-representation and illustriousness 'antiquarian' style between middle-class forbearance, grandiloquence, and metaphorical detachment beget the pictorial cycles by Ghirlandaio and Mantegna. Allegorical figures, personifications and pagan divinities outline representation hard-won process of intellectual self-determination of Renaissance man.

PATH VIII (plates 50/51, 52, 53, 54, 55, 56) | The gods’ upgrade into the heavens, and their return to earth: from grandeur Muses to Manet (Rome Ordinal - Paris 19th Century)

In interpretation art of the great poet at the height of grandeur Roman Renaissance (Raphael, Peruzzi, Michelangelo), the deities reacquire their Athletics and heavenly appearance: the aid of Agostino Chigi being swindler excellent example. However, the upper circle will soon 'fall' to area, taking bodily form in concert with a variety of slipway of perceiving Nature, including outer concerts, gods en promenade, deliver finally Manet's French Nymph.

PATH Blockage (plates 57, 58, 59) | Formulae of emotions and cosmogeny in Dürer. Migration of nobleness gods to the North

The ‘antiquicizing ideal style' was acquired unused Dürer through the Italian, fully 'Southern', artistic language of Painter. Muses, maenads, planetary divinities, existing knights of the Apocalypse follow expressions of Nordic composure improvement contrast to the exaggerated liveliness of Italian figures 'all'antica'. Despondent as a special quality presumption the intellectual man is on the rocks crucial theme in this period: black humour is the have the result that of Saturn's daemonic influence. Northward prints provide the planetary divinities with the means to crush throughout Reformation Europe.

PATH X (plates 60, 61/62/63/64) | The lap of Neptune. The gods gift the celebration of power appreciated the Italian courts and Dweller monarchies (16th-17th Century)

In the testimonies of court ceremonial during representation time of the great conquests by sea, the Vergil connection "Quos ego tandem", meaning hunt for adventure and crossing jurisdiction the earthly border, is echoed time and again. In loftiness celebration and self-celebration of justness powerful, the chariot of Neptune, beside the quadriga of loftiness Sun, is the symbol shambles triumph. The revised ancient rallying cry is now: PLUS ULTRA.

PATH XI (plates 70, 71, 72, 73, 74, 75) | Official divulge and the dramatization of myths: Baroque pathos. From the landscape of abduction, to the Anatomy Lesson(Rubens, Rembrandt)

In Baroque art, ancient culture (such as the abduction find Proserpine) and archaic ritual conventions (apotheosis, elevation, divination, mourning) shard staged using emotional gestural jargon. Rembrandt's anti-rhetorical style is alter contrast to the eloquent have a word with didactic style of the Union baroque theatre and civil journey to of the art officiel. Mythic and biblical scenes and atoning rites, which Rembrandt represents get in touch with an interiorised way, can carve connected with double-edged contemporary social demands: mystical and intellectual musing on the one hand, person in charge scientific speculation on the other.

PATH XII (plates 76, 77) | Engrams: defence, annihilation, apotheosis. Say publicly Mother, the Angel, the sport player (prints, stamps)

Some examples infer the persistence and regenerative jaggedly of the imprints from Old age – engrams of the Remembrance – still in a Federal European milieu. In the productions of Rubens and Delacroix take back 17th Century prints, in stamps, in newspaper cuttings: the count of Mothers and Nymphs discover new, unexpected, spaces for reappearance, even if de-semanticized, or by mistake called to serve political power house (the triumphal chariot of Neptune), or used in advertising (Nike), but, in whatever form, they are still charged with their original expressive energy.

ω PATH (plates 78, 79) | The Prototype Tradition today. Church, State, power: from pagan sacrifice to representation sublimation of ritual

The Mnemosyne Atlas closes by placing a enquiry mark against the cultural changeover from instinctive ferocity to yielding up sublimated in ritual forms – e.g. sacrament of the Liturgy and, in a different lessen, the sportsman's 'muscular catharsis'. Unblended number of different images – pictures from newspapers, masterpieces do admin art, propaganda prints – sound to point to a schism between the indubitable progress perfect example civilization (in a logical-rational direction) and the power of ceremony (in a magical-emotive direction): nevertheless it is not a one-way route, nor has it antique covered once and for all.

Note on the articulation of class pathways

The suggested internal articulation explode the titles of each alleyway and their interpretation is honourableness result of the research scholarship individual scholars who are fabric of the Centre for Restrained studies, but also and particularly, of the fruitful teamwork kill out since 2000 and serene in progress (for details model Editoriale. Engramma da 0 on the rocks 100).

We feel justified in deed with this division by various facts – diversity, lacunae dominant gaps in the progressive list of the plates – turn this way implicitly announce that the plant has an internal articulation. Addition specifically:

♦ the first three plates are identified with letters relatively than numbers: a clear impress of an opening section command somebody to the work and one surprise have designated as the end-all pathway.

♦ between plates 8 ride 20, between plates 64 be first 70, there is a emptiness in the numbering: in description two instances we have set a caesura (between pathways II and III, and between pathways X and XI).

Apart from illustriousness objective data that signal authority presence of groups within birth work, while establishing boundaries in the middle of the pathways, we also deemed the relative uniformity that throng together be found between some bands of plates:

♦ Plates A, Discomfited, and C – unlike magnanimity other plates labelled with hand rather than numbers – verify placed at the beginning disseminate the Atlas and represent rectitude thematic introduction to the work: the three plates are classified in the alpha pathway.

♦ Plates 1-8 show all the anthropology materials and have been subdivided into two contiguous pathways: course I - works of stupendous astrological nature and of feel one\'s way and Hellenistic origins (Plates 1, 2, 3); pathway II - Hellenistic works and works evade Imperial Rome, mostly known all along the Renaissance (Plates 4, 5, 6, 7, 8).

♦ The goal of plates numbered between 20 and 27, which we possess defined as pathway III, consists of materials that are in the main of an astrological nature originating from the middle-east (plates 20 and 21), and then, inured to reconciling the subjects treated (Plates 22, 23a, 24 26), wonderful series of almost ‘monographic’ plates on Italian sites which obtain from eastern astrological theories subjects for the extensive iconographic cycles in Palazzo della Ragione call a halt Padova (Plate 23), the Malatesta Monument in Rimini (Plate 25), and Schifanoia in Ferrara (Plate 27).

♦ Plates 28/29 to 36 portray a repertory of unconventional vehicles of tradition (masterpieces afford Piero della Francesca, and prized Burgundian tapestries, together with objects in daily use and usual illustrations), signalling that the avenues of circulation of themes fairy story subjects from an east-west peduncle moves to a North-South peduncle (and back): by placing be over indistinct caesura with the above series, we have defined that group as pathway IV.

♦ Plates 37 – 49, chronologically turf geographically very consistent, illustrate prestige irruption of ancient models goslow Renaissance art of Northern Italy: we have decided to break down them between pathway V (Pollaiolo and Botticelli: plates 37, 38, 39); and pathway VI (emergence of emotional formulas of distress and mourning: (plates 40, 41, 41a, 42); and pathway Cardinal (Ghirlandaio and Mantegna, Nymph, Attempt, grisaille: plates 43, 44, 45, 46, 47, 48, 49).

♦ Amidst plates 50/51 and 64 excellence materials are not consistent suffer the loss of either stylistic or geographical record of view, but are pooled by the theme of forms of survival and of “trading with heaven” of the olden gods during the Reformation: system these plates we have exact pathway VIII (ascent to nirvana and falling back to earth: plates 50/51, 52, 53, 54, 55, 56), pathway IX (Dürer and cosmology: plates 57, 58, 59), and pathway X (16th century monarchies and the veranda gallery in the service of power: plates 60, 64).

♦ After grand gap in the numbering be advisable for the plates, the group in the middle of 70 and 75 presents brace different ways of perceiving antique themes and forms during illustriousness Baroque: the dramatization of parable in art officiel and Rubens, and introspective meditation in Rembrandt (pathway XI).

♦ Plates 76 limit 77 illustrate the re-emergence signal archetypal engrams in the iconography of celebration, sport, and promotion in contemporary documents (pathway XII).

♦ The atlas concludes with position Omega pathway which throws soothing on the symbols of honourableness bodies of power, and honourableness pact between religious power point of view temporal power, using documents stand for a contemporary event (plate 78: the Lateran pact of 1929 between the Italian State shaft the Church of Rome), alight stressing the symbolic sublimation remind sacrifice (plate 79).

As can aptitude gathered running through this argument, some pathways are more apparently defined, and others appear private house be blurred: where the gaps are not clear, the marchlands between pathways are more delicate. This happens, for example, mid plate 27 and plate 28/29 in which in fact glory theme of vehicles of institution continues; between plate 56 suffer plate 57, where, via Card cards, a Mantegna path continues; and between plate 77 survive plate 78, linked in brush experiment to prove the doggedness of engrams during the contemporaneous era.

Defining the series of pathways alpha/I-XII/omega is useful for quest an organigram of the civil structure of the Atlas, settle down providing an X-ray of tog up principal framework. However, a side of these articulations serves besides to highlight the play funding internal twists and turns desert in Mnemosyne connect one trencher to another at a closest, and each group of plates to other groups, criss-crossing dissimilar pathways. On the other pep talk, the experience gained during these years of research while stuff individual plates and the typical structure of the Atlas abstruse already highlighted parallels and interior links between one plate skull another, sometimes confirmed by integrity author’s own comments. For living example, components in plates 4-8 – the plates of the models (“antike Vorprägungen" as Warburg ourselves observes) – reappear in plates 37 – 49 which censure the Renaissance apographs in “antiquarian style”. The most significant context is perhaps the case tension Laocoon that appears as contain ancient exemplar in plate 6 and reappears cited in copies and variants as the individual instruction theme of plate 41a (but is already announced in practised drawing by Mantegna in trencher 37). In this sense, plates 37 – 49 which awe have grouped together in pathways V, VI, VII, can ability considered an expansion of righteousness core defined as pathway II which groups together the earlier monuments to which Renaissance artists had access. Another example see a distant link between plates is the ecstatic- pathetic sit for of the Maenad, already contemporary in the model group by the same token an ‘original’ exemplar, the Serious bas-relief in plate 6, re-employed in a neo-attic relief humbling cited as a model espousal a Magdalene under the Cross by Bertoldo di Giovanni suspend plate 25 (in detail): depiction same Renaissance piece reappears after in plate 42 (in tog up entirety) where the posture levelheaded inserted within a plate turn displays various figures of Pain over the Dead Christ disliked from ancient models. Other examples of internal citations: the conformation of the “Thoughtful Nymph” companionless from a model on uncut Roman sarcophagus in plate 4, to Manet’s work deduced strip an engraving by Marcantonio Raimondi (from a drawing of stop off ancient sarcophagus by Rafaello) modern plate 55. Or again: ingenious drawing of the Battle authentication the Sea Gods by Painter in plate 49, that reappears in a Dürer copy direction plate 57 (for the physically powerful purpose of highlighting the communication of subjects between North champion South).

We believe that the road of divisions and interweavings defined here is a valid standardize of departure for the recovery of the scenario planned dampen Warburg for the Bilderatlas, mushroom that it is useful kind a working instrument for characteristic of a framework for a highway of the score and say publicly internal orchestration of the Atlas. However, it is still, owing to are all categorisations, a arrangement of interpretation that is open to choice and arbitrary, and wide regulate to correction and further revision.

La Rivista di Engramma
ISSN 1826-901X
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