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Classical Mythology in Mediaeval Art Author(S): Erwin Panofsky and Fritz Saxl Reviewed Work(S): Source: Metropolitan Museum Studies, Vol

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Classical Mythology in Mediaeval Art Author(S): Erwin Panofsky and Fritz Saxl Reviewed Work(S): Source: Metropolitan Museum Studies, Vol Classical Mythology in Mediaeval Art Author(s): Erwin Panofsky and Fritz Saxl Reviewed work(s): Source: Metropolitan Museum Studies, Vol. 4, No. 2 (Mar., 1933), pp. 228-280 Published by: The Metropolitan Museum of Art Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/1522803 . Accessed: 31/01/2012 05:44 Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at . http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected]. The Metropolitan Museum of Art is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to Metropolitan Museum Studies. http://www.jstor.org CLASSICAL MYTHOLOGY IN MEDIAEVAL ART1 By ERWIN PANOFSKY AND FRITZ SAXL The earliestItalian writers about the history of ropeancountries it was inconceivablethat a art, such for instance as Ghiberti, Alberti, and classicalmythological subject should be repre- especially Giorgio Vasari, thought that classi- sentedwithin the limits of the classicalstyle, cal art was overthrown at the beginning of the as it was in Raphael'spicture of Jupiterand Christian era and that it did not revive until, Venus in the ceiling of the Villa Farnesina during the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries (fig. i). Although there are monumentsof in Italy, it served as the foundation of what is Byzantine art, such as the so-calledrosette usually called the Renaissance.The reasons for casketswith reliefsof the Laborsof Hercules this overthrow, as those writers saw it, were and other similar themes (fig. 2),2 which, in the invasions of barbarousraces and the hos- so far as they representclassical subject matter tility of the early Christianpriests and scholars. in classical(or at leastpseudo-classical) forms, In thinking as they did the early writers are comparableto Raphael'sfresco, we find were both right and wrong. They were wrong nothing that is comparableto them in the in so far as the Renaissancewas connected with Westerncountries during the "high"Middle the Middle Ages by innumerable links, many Ages.Even in the Veniceof the dugento,close- of them being implicit in the very name Mid- ly connectedas it was with Byzantium,an an- dle Ages, which is a Renaissanceterm based on tique relief of Herculescould not be imitat- the old Italianconception of culturalevolution. ed withoutchanging its mythologicalsubject Classical conceptions survived throughout the (figs. 4, 5). The lion's skin was replacedby a Middle Ages-literary, philosophical,scientific, flutteringdrapery, the boarbecame a stag,the and artistic-and they were especially strong terrifiedEuristheus was left out, and the hero after the time of Charlemagne, under whose was madeto standupon a vanquisheddragon. reign there had been a deliberate classical re- As the humansoul was often symbolizedby a vival in almost every cultural field. The early stag, the resultof these changeswas that the writers were right in so far as the artisticforms classicalhero had been transformedinto the under which the classicalconceptions persisted Saviourconquering evil and saving the souls during the Middle Ages were utterly different of the Faithful.From this examplewe learn from our present ideas of antiquity, which did that mediaevalWestern art was unable, or, not come into existenceuntil the "Renaissance" what comesto the samething, was unwilling, in its true sense of the "rebirth"of antiquity to retaina classicalprototype without destroy- as a well-defined historical phenomenon. ing eitherits originalform, or, as here,its orig- During the Middle Ages in the western Eu- inal meaning. 1 This article is a revised version of a lecture de- 2 Still, Goldschmidt and Weitzmann in their recent livered for the first time to the teaching staff and stu- publication of these caskets pointed out that the By- dents of the Department of Fine Arts of Princeton zantine ivory carvers were far from really understand- University. It resulted, however, from the common ing the subject matter of the classical groups and fig- endeavor of the two authors, who in their research ures, which they generally used as mere ornaments, were assisted by the Hamburg students of art history. finally transforming all the figures into putti, as is the Furthermore I feel indebted to Mrs. Margaret Barr case in our figure 2 (Goldschmidt and Weitzmann, for her participation in the English wording. E. P. fig. 35). As for figure 3, compare note 26. 228 CLASSICAL MYTHOLOGY IN MEDIAEVAL ART 229 One of the essentialcharacteristics of the classicalthought continuedthrough the post- westernEuropean mind seemsto be the way classicalera. To this end he built up a library in which it destroysthings and then reinte- devoted exclusivelyto that subject.In doing grates them on a new basis-breaking with this, so far from confininghimself to what is traditiononly to returnto it from an entirely usuallycalled art history- for thatwould have new point of view- and thus produces"reviv- madehis researchimpossible - he foundit nec- als" in the true sense of the word. Byzantine essaryto branchout into manyfields until then art,on the contrary,never having lost its con- untouchedby art historians.His library,there- FIG. I. VENUS IMPLORING JUPITER, BY RAPHAEL VILLA FARNESINA, ROME nectionwith antiquity,was incapableof find- fore, embraces the history of religions as well ing its way to what we may call a modern as that of literature, science, philosophy, law, style. Since the fourteenthand fifteenthcen- and what we may generally call superstition, turiesit has contenteditself with mere assimi- together with their various streams of tradi- lation of the Westernattainment to its own tion. In the present essay it will be our en- traditionof evolution. deavor, while examining a single problem, to Thus we can see that what may be called demonstrate the methods of research devel- the problem of "renaissancephenomena" is oped by Aby Warburg and his followers. one of the centralproblems in the historyof Our problem, then, is the role of classical Europeanculture. With this as his pointof de- mythology in mediaeval art. In examining it parturethe late ProfessorAby Warburgof we shall pay no attention to the innumerable Hamburgconceived the fruitfulidea of direct- examples, like the Venetian relief we have ing his scientificresearch at the way in which mentioned, in which a classical mythological ' 230 METROPOLITAN MUSEUM STUDIES figurehas been deprivedof its originalmean- of a complicatedevolution, and in earlytimes ing and investedwith another.3We shall, on was unknown. Primitiveman naturallysin- the contrary,consider the way in which medi- gled out someof the more easilyrecognizable aevalartists represented classical mythological groupsof starsin orderto get his bearingson figuresas such. In doing this it will be neces- land and sea,and, to rememberthem, he gave saryfor us to distinguishsharply between two them the namesof certainterrestrial objects - differenttraditions of work. In one, which we animalsor tools or human beings without myth- shall refer to as the "representationaltradi- ologicalconnotation- such as the Bear,the Hy- tion," the mediaevalartist had before him a ades,the Wain,etc. The primitiveOriental peo- seriesof versionsof his particularsubject which plesdid thisand so did thepre-Homeric Greeks. had come down to him as integralunities of The importantthing, however,was that the subjectmatter and form.In the other,to be re- Greeksdid not confinethemselves to this. Just as terrestrial such 4 :1:.;...;: .,_; .'e *:..; . : . .. they "mythologized" objects ' ' . ' . _.. T :. ,:. :"..' -- ' iI;' s as trees,springs, and mountains,so they gradu- ally investedthe constellationswith mytholog- o'h. ' E .;Srr`llr=i.,. ', .... FIG. 3. ORPHEUS, FROM BIBL. NAT. MS. COISLIN 239 BYZANTINE, XII CENTURY FIG. 2. HERCULES FIGHTING THE LION IVORY CARVING FROM A ROSETTE CASKET ical meanings. As early a poet as Homer speaks BYZANTINE, XI CENTURY MUSEO NAZIONALE, FLORENCE of mighty Orion and Bootes. This practice increased until, by the sixth ferred to as the "literary"or "textualtradi- and fifth centuries B.c., a considerablenumber tion,"the mediaevalartist had beforehim only of the constellations had been mythologized. a literarytext describinga mythologicalsub- An example of this is the group of constella- ject, for the illustrationof which he had to tions associatedwith the myth of Andromeda, work out new typesor formshaving no visual namely Andromeda herself, Cepheus her fa- connectionwith thoseof classicaltimes. 3 Even if we do not count the fundamental phenom- enon that Early Christian art borrowed its leading types from antique models (assimilating Christ to Ro- Our first problemis to find specimensof the man emperors, Alexandrian shepherds, Greek philos- representationaltradition. We find them, ob- ophers, or Hellenistic Orpheuses and developing the of the from the of classical viously enough, in representationsof astro- types Evangelists portraits authors), individual transformations analogous to that nomicaland astrologicalsubjects. For the mod- observed in the Venetian Hercules are much too fre- ern man it is a matterof courseto speakof the quent to be enumerated. A few interesting cases were constellationsas Andromeda,Perseus, Orion, discussed by Schlosser
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