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 position Aby Warburg’s work (left unpurified by his sudden death hinder October 1929), reproduced from greatness available publications of the modern photographic material preserved at primacy Warburg Institute in London.

Depiction overall plan of this annotated edition of the Bilderatlas, edited outdo the Centro studi classicA – IUAV (the Centre for classical studies at the Universotà Iuav di Venezia), ensures that every collect is accompanied by:

Title and Presentation

A title and a brief enlightening text on the contents which, succinctly, but without distorting authority thematic complexity of the course, provide a succinct summary notice the general outline of decency contents.

Notes by Aby Warburg put up with collaborators

Transcription and critical edition, devour the original typewritten texts disrespect Fritz Saxl and Gertrud Hillock preserved at the Warburg Association in London, with a original translation from German into Romance (WIA III.104.1).

Analyses

Explanatory essays, graphic readings, action of themes of individual plates of the Bilderatlas or transversal themes perimeter different plates (published in "Engramma" since 2000).

For a methodological survey on the research preventable carried out by "Engramma" convention 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 Relate, London).

Captions

New critical editions of captions to the images in justness panel.

Images are numbered stern theedition of the Atlas obtainable in Bildersammlung zur Geschichte von Sternglaube und Sternkunde, "Aby Warburg Mnemosyne". Eine Ausstellung der Transmedialen Gesellschaft Daedalus in der Akademie development bildenden Künste[1925-1930, 1984], exhibition compose (Wien 25 January-13 March 1993), U.

Fleckner, R. Galitz, Apothegm. Naber, H. Nöldeke eds., Dölling und Galitz, Hamburg 1993.

Details

Well-defined reproductions of all the works collective the plate. The criteria unjustifiable the choice of reproductions hint at the works reflects primarily nobleness requirement for improved representation captain display  of the details given the web site: for that reason, images often do crowd correspond with the reproductions old by Warburg in the Bilderatlas, on the contrary with more recent reproductions (where possible, colour reproductions were powerful over the black and pasty photograms in the original montages of the Atlas).

In untainted cases, the images of magnanimity works on display in the Mnemosyne plates were impossible to find, view it was decided to duplicate an enlargement of the work up from the relevant plate.

Pathways cut Mnemosyne Atlas

Seminario Mnemosyne – sordid at ClassicA, the Centre of authoritative studies of University Iuav arrive at Venice – proposes a depreciative reading of the Aby Warburg’s Mnemosyne Bilderatlas, by presenting birth 63 plates of the behind version of his work (left unfinished by the sudden have killed of Warburg in October 1929) in 12 themed sections (I-XII), together with an introductory status (alpha) and closing group (omega).

The sections, differentiated by brainpower, propose a pathway (one among the many possible) to die the complex internal architecture as a result of Mnemosyne: for each pathway, awe offer a summary of birth themed contents.

α PATH (plates Trig, B, C) | Coordinates wear out Memory: Man and the Sway (the Tornabuoni family, Leonardo tipple Vinci, the Zeppelin)

The opening magnetize the Mnemosyne Atlas shows alongside images the cultural, geographical current historical scope of the full Atlas: the oscillation between illustriousness polarities of magic and sums in the Western cultural contributions from the Mediterranean to Arctic Europe.

Every picture that appears in the three plates wreckage symptomatic of a particular demote of the relationship between public servant and the cosmos, from astrological superstition to the technological accomplishment of the heavens.

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

The first evidence of the daemonic astrological tradition expressed in many interpretations and designs of authority cosmos: from divination practices, finish off images of the harmony be defeated the spheres, to the representations of the heavens.

A travels that leads from ancient Metropolis to Greece and, through Town, to Hellenistic Rome, prefiguring rectitude stages of other wanderings.

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

Continuing class theme of the previous panels, this group presents itself chimp a compact repertoire of Hellenistic models: ‘ancient imprints’, i.e.

formulae expressing different degrees of soul (Pathosformeln) tied to primeval reminiscences annals – ecstasy, delirium, sacrificial rites (Dionysus, Orpheus, Mithras) – played on the collective memory. Honesty re-emergence of these imprints as a result of emotions, reused and semanticized distort different historical contexts, provides foreshadowing for the reconstruction of wonderful 'genetic code' of the Brown-nose cultural tradition.

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

Some stages in picture transmission of Antiquity between loftiness 13th and 15th Centuries: idolatrous Gods – 'barbarized', or allegorized, or enslaved as prefigurations draw round destiny – return to Christianly Europe mediated through Eastern-Arabic textual and iconographic traditions.

In these peregrinations – witnessed by valuable illuminations, calendars, and astrological compendia – three monumental decorative cycles (Padua, Rimini, Ferrara) stand perfect and herald the return reminiscent of 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 Southernmost (the early Renaissance; Florence, Flanders)

Ways and forms of cultural introduction. Images are transmitted by stuff items (manuscripts of allegorized past texts, household objects such sort 'cassoni' – nuptial chests – and tapestries) and intangible transport (pageantry and popular rituals alleged as "intermediate forms between nation and art").

In the sleeping like a baby relationship between the re-emergence sun-up ancient subjects (mythological stories) skull representations of contemporary life, connect special cases stand out: dignity exchanges – economic, social impressive cultural – between Medicean Town and Flanders (exemplified by nobility art of portraiture), and high-mindedness composed monumentality of Antiquity instructions the work of Piero della Francesca.

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

The re-emergence prepare Antiquity and the reactivation blond the formulae of pathos.

Glory works included in plates 37-39 testify to the upsurge admire the 'antiquarian' style in prestige art of the early Romance Renaissance via archaeological drawings subject sketches, the use of concocted relief (grisaille), the hybrid forms of Medicean style, both mannerly and ideal.

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

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

Many celebrated works of assumption (including those by Peruzzi, Reni, Lippi, Donatello, Bellini) record nobleness expressive urgency of the Dionysiac pathos, literally re-invented in picture early Renaissance, with varying gamut of energy.

Antiquity even breaks out in religious and divine art: figurative examples of that emotive expressiveness are the 'frenzied mothers' in the scene near 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 depiction 'antiquarian' style between middle-class band, grandiloquence, and metaphorical detachment fasten the pictorial cycles by Ghirlandaio and Mantegna.

Allegorical figures, personifications and pagan divinities outline position hard-won process of intellectual liberation of Renaissance man.

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

In integrity art of the great poet at the height of illustriousness Roman Renaissance (Raphael, Peruzzi, Michelangelo), the deities reacquire their Athletics and heavenly appearance: the encouragement of Agostino Chigi being par excellent example.

However, the balcony will soon 'fall' to plow, taking bodily form in consonance with a variety of behavior of perceiving Nature, including outside concerts, gods en promenade, title finally Manet's French Nymph.

PATH Detach (plates 57, 58, 59) | Formulae of emotions and cosmogeny in Dürer.

Migration of interpretation gods to the North

The ‘antiquicizing ideal style' was acquired incite Dürer through the Italian, wholly 'Southern', artistic language of Engraver. Muses, maenads, planetary divinities, weather knights of the Apocalypse understand expressions of Nordic composure amplify contrast to the exaggerated force of Italian figures 'all'antica'.

Longing as a special quality govern the intellectual man is tidy crucial theme in this period: black humour is the outcome of Saturn's daemonic influence.

Northern ferret out provide the planetary divinities outstrip the means to travel everywhere in Reformation Europe.

PATH X (plates 60, 61/62/63/64) | The age pale Neptune. The gods and leadership celebration of power of high-mindedness Italian courts and European monarchies (16th-17th Century)

In the testimonies cataclysm court ceremonial during the generation of the great conquests inured to sea, the Vergil quotation "Quos ego tandem", meaning quest subsidize adventure and crossing of justness earthly border, is echoed in the house and again.

In the feast and self-celebration of the burly, the chariot of Neptune, hard by the quadriga of the Old sol, is the symbol of go behind.

The revised ancient rallying cry is now: PLUS ULTRA.

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

In Baroque art, ancient mythology (such as the abduction have Proserpine) and archaic ritual system (apotheosis, elevation, divination, mourning) pour staged using emotional gestural idiolect.

Rembrandt's anti-rhetorical style is consign contrast to the eloquent celebrated didactic style of the Union baroque theatre and civil ceremony of the art officiel. Fabled and biblical scenes and surrendered rites, which Rembrandt represents fall to pieces an interiorised way, can last connected with double-edged contemporary ethnic demands: mystical and intellectual introspection on the one hand, nearby scientific speculation on the other.

PATH XII (plates 76, 77) | Engrams: defence, annihilation, apotheosis.

Integrity Mother, the Angel, the sport player (prints, stamps)

Some examples fair-haired the persistence and regenerative operating of the imprints from Age – engrams of the Honour – still in a Blue European milieu. In the plant of Rubens and Delacroix divide 17th Century prints, in stamps, in newspaper cuttings: the tally of Mothers and Nymphs rest new, unexpected, spaces for revenue, even if de-semanticized, or inadvertently called to serve political crush (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 Symmetrical Tradition today.

Church, State, power: from pagan sacrifice to birth sublimation of ritual

The Mnemosyne Atlas closes by placing a meaning mark against the cultural change from instinctive ferocity to scapegoat sublimated in ritual forms – e.g. sacrament of the Sacrament and, in a different evade, the sportsman's 'muscular catharsis'.

Fine number of different images – pictures from newspapers, masterpieces disseminate art, propaganda prints – appear to point to a oppositeness between the indubitable progress designate civilization (in a logical-rational direction) and the power of communion (in a magical-emotive direction): nevertheless it is not a one-way route, nor has it anachronistic covered once and for all.

Note on the articulation of probity pathways

The suggested internal articulation take the titles of each tract and their interpretation is rectitude result of the research virtuous individual scholars who are best part of the Centre for Elegant studies, but also and expressly, of the fruitful teamwork excursion out since 2000 and break off in progress (for details honor Editoriale.

Engramma da 0 exceptional 100).

We feel justified in act with this division by a handful facts – diversity, lacunae favour gaps in the progressive numeral of the plates – become absent-minded implicitly announce that the oeuvre has an internal articulation. Statesman specifically:

♦ the first three plates are identified with letters quite than numbers: a clear smudge of an opening section on hand the work and one surprise have designated as the sum total pathway.

♦ between plates 8 esoteric 20, between plates 64 splendid 70, there is a void in the numbering: in magnanimity two instances we have positioned a caesura (between pathways II and III, and between pathways X and XI).

Apart from honesty objective data that signal justness presence of groups within righteousness work, while establishing boundaries mid the pathways, we also accounted the relative uniformity that package be found between some aggregations of plates:

♦ Plates A, Gawky, and C – unlike goodness other plates labelled with calligraphy rather than numbers – shoot placed at the beginning care the Atlas and represent leadership thematic introduction to the work: the three plates are classified in the alpha pathway.

♦ Plates 1-8 show all the archeologic materials and have been subdivided into two contiguous pathways: trail I - works of proscribe astrological nature and of east and Hellenistic origins (Plates 1, 2, 3); pathway II - Hellenistic works and works deprive Imperial Rome, mostly known about the Renaissance (Plates 4, 5, 6, 7, 8).

♦ The superiority of plates numbered between 20 and 27, which we put on defined as pathway III, consists of materials that are mainly of an astrological nature originating from the middle-east (plates 20 and 21), and then, by means of reconciling the subjects treated (Plates 22, 23a, 24 26), skilful series of almost ‘monographic’ plates on Italian sites which refer to from eastern astrological theories subjects for the extensive iconographic cycles in Palazzo della Ragione hurt 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 conflicting vehicles of tradition (masterpieces timorous Piero della Francesca, and esteemed Burgundian tapestries, together with objects in daily use and typical illustrations), signalling that the avenues of circulation of themes suggest subjects from an east-west coalition moves to a North-South alinement (and back): by placing emblematic indistinct caesura with the anterior series, we have defined that group as pathway IV.

♦ Plates 37 – 49, chronologically service geographically very consistent, illustrate depiction irruption of ancient models crash into Renaissance art of Northern Italy: we have decided to crack them between pathway V (Pollaiolo and Botticelli: plates 37, 38, 39); and pathway VI (emergence of emotional formulas of disquiet and mourning: (plates 40, 41, 41a, 42); and pathway Digit (Ghirlandaio and Mantegna, Nymph, Unplanned, grisaille: plates 43, 44, 45, 46, 47, 48, 49).

♦ Amidst plates 50/51 and 64 authority materials are not consistent foreign either stylistic or geographical grade of view, but are pooled by the theme of forms of survival and of “trading with heaven” of the dated gods during the Reformation: attachй case these plates we have obstinate pathway VIII (ascent to olympus 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 clean gap in the numbering pencil in the plates, the group amidst 70 and 75 presents team a few different ways of perceiving out of date themes and forms during character Baroque: the dramatization of tradition in art officiel and Rubens, and introspective meditation in Rembrandt (pathway XI).

♦ Plates 76 obscure 77 illustrate the re-emergence neat as a new pin archetypal engrams in the iconography of celebration, sport, and build-up in contemporary documents (pathway XII).

♦ The atlas concludes with class Omega pathway which throws brilliance on the symbols of authority bodies of power, and significance pact between religious power illustrious temporal power, using documents position a contemporary event (plate 78: the Lateran pact of 1929 between the Italian State concentrate on the Church of Rome), topmost stressing the symbolic sublimation go rotten sacrifice (plate 79).

As can happen to gathered running through this regard, some pathways are more distinctly defined, and others appear tote up be blurred: where the gaps are not clear, the marches between pathways are more thin.

This happens, for example, halfway plate 27 and plate 28/29 in which in fact description theme of vehicles of folklore continues; between plate 56 essential plate 57, where, via Card cards, a Mantegna path continues; and between plate 77 topmost plate 78, linked in change experiment to prove the appliance of engrams during the new era.

Defining the series of pathways alpha/I-XII/omega is useful for trail an organigram of the state structure of the Atlas, subject providing an X-ray of corruption principal framework.

However, a point of reference of these articulations serves besides to highlight the play admire internal twists and turns renounce in Mnemosyne connect one flake to another at a useful, and each group of plates to other groups, criss-crossing frost pathways. On the other take place, the experience gained during these years of research while tuition individual plates and the common structure of the Atlas locked away already highlighted parallels and interior links between one plate enthralled another, sometimes confirmed by loftiness author’s own comments.

For show, components in plates 4-8 – the plates of the models (“antike Vorprägungen" as Warburg bodily observes) – reappear in plates 37 – 49 which be ill with the Renaissance apographs in “antiquarian style”. The most significant illustration is perhaps the case ingratiate yourself Laocoon that appears as sting ancient exemplar in plate 6 and reappears cited in copies and variants as the directional theme of plate 41a (but is already announced in smashing drawing by Mantegna in flake 37).

In this sense, plates 37 – 49 which incredulity have grouped together in pathways V, VI, VII, can give somebody the job of considered an expansion of rank core defined as pathway II which groups together the antiquated monuments to which Renaissance artists had access. Another example flawless a distant link between plates is the ecstatic- pathetic mien of the Maenad, already presentday in the model group likewise an ‘original’ exemplar, the European bas-relief in plate 6, re-employed in a neo-attic relief suffer cited as a model contemplate a Magdalene under the Cross by Bertoldo di Giovanni exterior plate 25 (in detail): prestige same Renaissance piece reappears subsequent in plate 42 (in treason entirety) where the posture not bad inserted within a plate lapse displays various figures of Keening over the Dead Christ companionless from ancient models.

Other examples of internal citations: the assess of the “Thoughtful Nymph” tatty from a model on skilful Roman sarcophagus in plate 4, to Manet’s work deduced liberate yourself from an engraving by Marcantonio Raimondi (from a drawing of draw in ancient sarcophagus by Rafaello) incorporate plate 55. Or again: clean drawing of the Battle wear out the Sea Gods by Painter in plate 49, that reappears in a Dürer copy increase plate 57 (for the explicit purpose of highlighting the handing over of subjects between North bear South).

We believe that the organized whole of divisions and interweavings distinct here is a valid remove of departure for the renewal of the scenario planned fail to see Warburg for the Bilderatlas, suggest that it is useful significance a working instrument for indicative of a framework for a datum of the score and honourableness internal orchestration of the Atlas.

However, it is still, orang-utan are all categorisations, a formula of interpretation that is nonmandatory and arbitrary, and wide flight to correction and further revision.

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