From Symbol to Allegory: 's Theory of Art Author(s): Matthew Rampley Reviewed work(s): Source: The Art Bulletin, Vol. 79, No. 1 (Mar., 1997), pp. 41-55 Published by: College Art Association Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/3046229 . Accessed: 14/05/2012 07:54

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http://www.jstor.org From Symbol to Allegory: Aby Warburg's Theory of Art MatthewRampley

Recent years have seen a remarkable reawakening of critical Kunstindustrie, the latter having already been translated once interest among Anglophone art historians in the German (though poorly) little more than ten years ago.6 roots of their discipline. In particular, Michael Podro's book Within this context one person remains notable by his The Critical Historians of Art has seemingly acted as a catalyst absence. I am referring to Aby Warburg, and it is all the more for renewed attention to a subject that has more usually been curious that he should have suffered relative neglect, given restricted in its appeal, for obvious reasons, to German the continued existence of the institute bearing his name. It is scholars.' However, while Podro's book deals with a broad important not to read such an observation as recommending tradition extending from Kant to Panofsky, discussing the that we merely resurrect his writings, as if the investigation more famous figures in German as well as lesser- into the origins of art history were merely an archaeological known writers such as Adolf G611er, Anton Springer, or exercise. Indeed, if the return to the origins of art history has Gottfried Semper, the main beneficiaries of this new critical any meaning, it can only be because the thought of the interest have tended to be Erwin Panofsky and Alois Riegl. discipline's German and Austrian "grandfathers" is still felt to The reasons for the interest in Panofsky are fairly clear; be of relevance today.7 Rather, I draw attention to the neglect having immigrated to the United States during the 1930s, of Warburg precisely because it is through an engagement Panofsky was already prominent in the field of Anglo- with his thought, more than with that of Panofsky or Riegl, American scholarship through books such as Studies in Iconol- that the continued importance of the philosophical concerns ogy or Early Netherlandish Painting.2 Hence, the "return" to of the art history of the beginning of this century becomes Panofsky consisted largely of an extension of interest in his most evident. And yet, if the example of Warburg can serve work to encompass those writings produced before Panofsky's above all as the locus of a meaningful dialogue with art departure from Germany.3 Riegl, on the other hand, has history's past, it is also the case that he has frequently been benefited from the recognition of surface similarities between seen as an antecedent, his work treated as a prelude rather his structural analysis of the grammar of form and the current than as meriting substantial attention in its own right. "linguistic turn" in the social sciences. It is this topicality of Consequently, since Sir Ernst Gombrich's worthy study of Riegl, perhaps, that motivates Margaret Iversen's study of 1970,8 very little has been written in English on Warburg,9 an Riegl.4 In addition, at the time of writing, not only has Riegl's omission that stands in contrast with the situation in Ger- Stilfragen been translated,5 but also translations are currently many.10 under way of Das Holldndische Gruppenportrdtand Spdtromische In this paper, therefore, I intend to indicate some of the

Unless otherwise indicated, all translations are mine. Margaret Iversen, "Aby Warburg and the New Art History," in Aby Warburg: 1. Michael Podro, The CritzcalHistorians ofArt, New Haven, 1982. Akten des InternatzonalenSymposions 1990, ed. H. Bredekamp, M. Diers, 2. Erwin Panofsky, Studies in Iconology: Humanistzc Themes in the Art of the C. Schoell-Glass, Weinheim, 1991, 281-87; Peter Burke, "Aby Warburg as Renaissance, New York, 1939; Early Netherlandzsh Paintzng, Cambridge, Mass., Historical Anthropologist," Akten, 39-44. Michael Ann Holly has recently 1953. mounted a robust defense of Warburg against the charge by A. L. Rees and F. 3. This is certainly the case with Michael Ann Holly's study, as is confirmed Borzello, in their introduction to The New Art Hzstory,London, 1986, 2-10, that by the recent translation of Panofsky's pioneering paper on perspective. See German art history was hostile to theory. Holly, "Unwriting Iconology," in Holly, Panofsky and the Foundatzons of Art Hzstory, Ithaca, N.Y., 1984, and Iconographyat the Crossroads,ed. Brendan Cassidy, Princeton, N.J., 1993, 17-25. Panofsky, Perspectiveas SymbolicForm, trans. C. Wood, New York, 1991. 10. Most significant in this context is the forthcoming German publication 4. Margaret Iversen, Alois Rzegl: Art Hzstory and Theory, Cambridge, Mass., of Warburg's entire works, including the picture atlas "Mnemosyne" and 1993. Warburg's numerous notes and fragments: Aby Warburg, GesammelteSchrften, 5. Alois Riegl, Problemsof Style, trans. E. Kain, Princeton, N.J., 1992. ed. N. Mann et al., , 1996-. The following represent some of the more 6. Alois Riegl, Late Roman Art Industry, trans. R. Wlnkes, Rome, 1985. notable recent publications in German on Warburg: Dieter Wuttke, Aby Excerpts from the forthcoming publication by Zone Books of Benjamin Warburgs Methode als Anregung und Aufgabe, Gbttingen, 1979; Werner Hof- Binstock's translation of Das Holldndzsche Gruppenportrtithave recently ap- mann, Georg Syamken, and Martin Warnke, eds., Die Menschenrechtedes Auges: peared in OctobergLXXIV, 1995, 3-35. UberAby Warburg, am Main, 1980; Martin Jesinghausen-Lauster, Die 7. Both Michael Podro and Heinrich Dilly have asked just this question, Suche nach der SymbolischenForm: Der Kreis um dze kulturwzssenschaftlicheBzbliothek namely, why should we be concerned with the history of art history? See Dilly, Warburg, Baden-Baden, 1985; Yoshihiko Maikuma, Der Begnff der Kultur bei "Geschichte der Kunstgeschichte-Wozu?" Ars Hunganca, xvIII, 1990, 7-14; Warburg, Nzetzscheund Burckhardt, K6nigstein, 1985; Roland Kany, Mnemosyne Michael Podro, "Art History and the Concept of Art," in Kategonen und als Programm:Geschichte, Erinnerung und dzeAndacht zm Werkvon Usener;Warburg Methoden der deutschen Kunstgeschichte 1900-1930, ed. Lorenz Dittmann, Stutt- und Benjamzn, Tilbingen, 1987; Dorothee Bauerle, Gespenstergeschichtenfuir gart, 1985, 209-17. Ganz Erwachsene:Ezn Kommentarzu Aby WarburgsBilderatlas Mnemosyne,Mlinster, 8. Ernst Gombrich, Aby Warburg:An Intellectual Biography,2d ed., 1986. 1988; Roland Kany, Die relzgionsgeschichtlicheForschung an derKulturwissenschaftlz- 9. Exceptions would be Kurt Forster, "Aby Warburg's History of Art: chen Bzbliothek Warburg, Bamberg, 1989; Martin Warnke, "Warburg," in Collective Memory and the Social Mediation of Images," Daedalus, cv, 1976, Altmeister moderner Kunstgeschichte, ed. Heinrich Dilly, Berlin, 1990, 117-30; 169-76; Silvia Feretti, Casszrer,Panofsky and Warburg. Symbol, Art and Hzstory, Michael Diers, "Von der Ideologie- zur Ikonologiekritik: Die Warburg- trans. R. Pierce, New Haven, 1989; Carlo Ginzburg, "From Aby Warburg to Renaissancen," in FrankfurterSchule und Kunstgeschichte,ed. Andreas Berndt et E. H. Gombrich: A Problem of Method," in Myths, Emblems, Clues, trans. John al., Berlin, 1992; Salvatore Settis, "Kunstgeschichte als vergleichende Kultur- and Ann Tedeschi, London, 1990, 17-59; Margaret Iversen, "Retrieving wissenschaft: Aby Warburg, die Pueblolndianer und das Nachleben der Warburg's Tradition," Art Hzstory, xvi, no. 4, 1993, 541-53; and the contribu- Antike," in KzinstlenscherAustausch/Artzstzc Exchange Akten des xxvIwInternatio- tions of Iversen and Peter Burke to the Warburg Conference of 1990. See nalen Kongressesftir Kunstgeschichte, Berlin, 15-20Julz 1992, ed. T. Gaehtgens, 42 ART BULLETIN MARCH 1997 VOLUME LXXIX NUMBER 1 philosophical, psychological, and art historiographical con- cesses through visual images ... as embodied in the conven- cerns of Warburg's work that suggest why it should remain an tions and beliefs or assumptions of a society."'2 Similarly, object of more than mere historical interest. Central to my Colin Eisler has argued that Warburg's "institute was devoted argument is the contention that in many respects the charac- to the unravelling of the recherche, to the demystification of ter of Warburg's interest in the "Nachleben der Antike" has such varied monuments of visual authority as Botticelli's been misrecognized. In particular, I intend to demonstrate allegories or American Indian sand paintings, all to be seen that Warburg's researches, symbolized perhaps in his dictum through texts and understood by cultural context," while "Der liebe Gott steckt im Detail" (God is in the detail)," have more recently, according to Jack Spector, "Warburg's method often been interpreted, wrongly, as involving little more than as presented by Gombrich involved his restoring images of the the amassing of philological data. This view of Warburg past to their original setting, their cultural milieu."'3 thereby pays scant attention to the general cultural-theoreti- This interpretation appears to be vindicated by an initial cal perspective underpinning his work. Undoubtedly, War- reading of the dissertation. In his study of Botticelli Warburg burg's own immersion in often arcane and esoteric bodies of seems to be preoccupied with piecing together the web of knowledge has contributed to the underplaying of the philo- symbolic representations of antiquity dominant in quat- sophical basis of his thought. In contrast, however, a careful trocento Florence. Of particular importance in this context is study of Warburg's work throws up important parallels not the role of what Warburg terms the "bewegtes Beiwerk" only with Friedrich Nietzsche, Max Weber, and other contem- (Warburg, 1992, 18) in the Florentine re-creation of antiquity. This is a poraries, but also with figures such as Walter Benjamin, Georg difficult term to translate elegantly, but its sense may best be rendered as Lukaics, and Theodor Adorno, whose work still occupies a "animated incidental detail" or "ani- mated uses this notion to refer to the prominent position in the contemporary intellectual land- accessory." Warburg in Botticelli's Birth Venus on Venus's scape. In the case of Benjamin, a clear line of influence can be emphasis, of (Fig. 1), locks or to the of the seen; indeed, Benjamin's attempts to become associated with flowing, windswept representation mantle held out to her as in the a sense of the Warburg circle are well documented. Beyond Benjamin, fluttering wind, animation in in the dress of the however, one can see common to Warburg and those others repeated Primavera (Fig. 2) Flora on the far or of the of mentioned an interest in the archaeology of modernity in all nymph right goddess Spring flowers in the its forms, and within that archaeological project, Warburg's scattering foreground. on the of this achievement lies in his analysis of the visual documents that chart Warburg's study, by focusing presence element in Botticelli, that the re-creation of the emergence of a specifically modern cultural sensibility. suggests antiquity in The Birth of Venus and Primavera differs substantially from Warburg's first published work is his dissertation of 1893 on what even in Warburg's own time was the dominant image of Botticelli's Birth of Venusand Primavera, and while one has to the ancient world, namely, Johann Winckelmann's idea of exercise extreme caution when imputing any unity to War- "still grandeur."'14Further, the dissertation aims to place the burg's oeuvre, the dissertation introduces the one theme that "bewegtes Beiwerk" of Botticelli's paintings within the wider could be said to recur throughout his published and unpub- context of quattrocento Florentine culture by making refer- lished writings, namely, the role of the mimetic in the history ence to Botticelli's contemporaries Leon Battista Alberti and of representation. Angelo Poliziano. Warburg draws attention to the remarkable In drawing attention to Warburg's "theory" of mimesis, I similarities between The Birth of Venus and Poliziano's poem am quite consciously working against a widespread interpreta- Giostra, and between Primavera and Poliziano's Latin bucolic tion of Warburg. This interpretation holds that Warburg's poem Rusticus. Warburg's interest does not lie exclusively in thought marks the founding of the iconological "method," demonstrating the influence of Poliziano on Botticelli, though which calls for analysis of the meaning of works of art through he also argues for this.'5 Instead, he is concerned to show that attention to parallels between motifs in the works in question both Botticelli and Poliziano fit into a wider understanding of and other cultural phenomena of the time, including literary antiquity, one that finds parallels elsewhere, for example, in and theological documents. Hence, Warburg's iconological Alberti's comments in De Pictura on the importance of method is often taken as aiming merely toward the construc- movement, or in the works of other Florentine poets, such as tion of an artistic and cultural milieu within which the work of Zanobio Acciaiuoli, whose Horatian ode "Ve[ne]ris Descrip- art takes its place and gains meaning. Mark Roskill writes, for tio" presents an image of Venus that highlights just those example, that "Aby Warburg, in reviving [iconology] ex- animated features Warburg detects in Botticelli (Warburg, plained it as the study and interpretation of historical pro- 1992, 50).16

Berlzn, 1993, 139-58; Robert Galztz and Brzta Reimers, eds., Aby Warburg:"Ekstatz- of Psychoanalytic Research in Art History," Art Bulletzn, i.xx, no. 1, 1988, 67. It sche Nymphe ... trauernder Fluflgott," Portrait eines Gelehrten, Hamburg, 1995, should be added that Spector's remarks offer a peculiar reading of Gom- also the Proceedings of the 1990 Conference (as in n. 9). Mention should be brich's study. made of the forthcoming English translation of Warburg's GesammelteSchrzften 14. Johann Winckelmann, Geschichteder Kunst des Altertums, Dresden, 1764, under the imprint of the Getty Center for the History of Art and the 167-68. Humanities. Publication is not imminent, however. 15. Warburg's argument for the influence of Poliziano on Botticelli has in 11. For some time there was debate over whether or not Warburg actually any case been disputed. See Ernst Gombrich, "Botticelli's Mythologies: A said this. Recently, however, a literary fragment containing precisely this Study in the Neo-Platonic Symbolism of His Circle," in SymbolwcImages, Oxford, dictum has been published in Warburg, Ausgewahlte Schriftenund Wurdzgungen, 1972, 31-81. 1992, 618. 16. Leon Battista Alberti, On Paintzng, trans. C. Grayson, Harmondsworth, 12. Mark Roskill, The InterpretatzonofPzctures, Amherst, Mass., 1989, 96. 1991, 76 ff. Warburg notes in addition that the image of Venus in both 13. Colin Eisler, "Panofsky and His Peers in a Warburgian Psyche Glass," Botticelli paintings recalls a passage of the De Rerum Natura of Lucretius and Source:Notes in the Hzstory ofArt, Iv, nos. 2-3, 1985, 85;Jack Spector, "The State also one of Horace's odes (Book I, 30). ABY WARBURG'S THEORY OF ART 43

1 Sandro Botticelli, TheBirth of Venus.Florence, Uffizi Gallery (photo: Alinari)

2 Sandro Botticelli, Primavera.Florence, Uffizi Gallery (photo: Alinari) 44 ART BULLETIN MARCH 1997 VOLUME LXXIX NUMBER 1

Warburg's dissertation aims to establish the character of a space.22 Underlying this theory was also the idea that vision discourse of antiquity in quattrocento Florence, an aim that alone perceived the world in two dimensions: "space has its would seem to confirm the picture of Warburg discussed origin in two dimensions ... the third dimension can evi- above, namely, as concerned to reconstruct a particular dently not be seen at first, it must be regarded ... as sociohistorical cultural milieu. This reconstruction of the something supplementary."23 Such a theory is, of course, cultural milieu of quattrocento Florence seems to be the highly problematic in its assumption that the visual field is but it was to influential for a central goal of the study of Botticelli, thereby reinforcing the two-dimensional, prove highly strand of aesthet- popular view of Warburg I discussed above. It would be specific nineteenth-century psychological ics, in Adolf Hildebrand's Problem wrong, however, to focus exclusively on this aspect of his work. culminating, perhaps, of Form in theFine Arts of 1893 and use of the Specifically, such an approach would be singularly one-sided, Riegl's haptic/optic distinction.24 Herbart's stress on the interaction of the hand neglecting the considerable philosophical and psychological and the eye and his argument that experience of the three- themes governing the argument. An indication that the dimensional world depends on the supplementing of visual dissertation has a wider purpose than the mere amassing of perception by an active bodily engagement with the world are philological and historical data can be seen in Warburg's of central importance in this regard. His use of a dialectic of comments in the preface, where he notes the role of empathy the visual and the corporeal was to have a substantial impact as a "force active in the generation of style" (Warburg, 1992, on general theories of perception since it paved the way for 13). Warburg's mention here of empathy is noteworthy, for the application of physiology, then a fast-growing field, to the this is central to an of the dissertation, concept understanding psychology of perception. Thus, a general orientation of as is also his reference to the influential of Robert essay philosophy to science resulted, which remained dominant in Vischer of 1873, On the Sense Form.17As Wind Optical of Edgar the mid-nineteenth century, through figures such as Her- has the of argued, philosophical significance Warburg's mann Helmholtz and Friedrich Lange, until the renewal of dissertation becomes clear if one takes into account the only Kantianism by Hermann Cohen and the so-called Marburg influence of Vischer's essay on empathy;18 consequently, I School of neo-Kantians in the 1870s.25 shall now turn to discussion of the idea of empathy. Within the sphere of Aesthetics this conflation of the The origins of a philosophical interest in empathy lie in cognitive and the physiological formed the basis of empathy German Romanticism, but empathy did not become a subject theory, whereby the aesthetic interest in the purely formal of substantial debate until the second half of the nineteenth aspects of the object was accompanied by an emotional century with the growth of interest in the psychology of engagement with it. In Outlines of Aesthetics, for example, perception. The ground for Vischer's treatise had been well Hermann Lotze writes that "we cannot mentally represent prepared by the work of Johann Herbart, Hermann Lotze, the most abstract concepts ... without ... transposing our- and Karl K6stlin. Indeed, in various ways Vischer's essay On the selves ... into their content and sympathetically enjoying the Optical Sense of Form develops further ideas of his father, peculiarly coloured pleasure or pain which corresponds to Friedrich Theodor, first indicated in the "Kritik meiner it," adding later that Asthetik" of 1866.19 Yet if Robert Vischer's essay was not the the exerted for the first essay on empathy, it was this study that was to prove impression upon us, example by of a the of the curvature of seminal for an entire generation of art historians, including symmetry figure, by consistency a line, by the peculiar contrast between the two equal Warburg, Heinrich W61lfflin,and Bernard Berenson.20 branches of an ... in measure The inaugural moment for late-nineteenth-century empa- arabesque depends large upon the fact that all these individual phenomena secretly thy theory can be located in Herbart's attempt to mediate remind us of this universal nature of the aforesaid three between empiricism and rationalism, based on the conviction great forms [space, time, motion] by means of which ... that "the doctrines either that the soul is originally a tabula the impossibility of ever withdrawing oneself from the rasa or that it produces its representations from itself, can and close union with reality is everywhere secured.2" must be united."''21 In particular, Herbart took issue with Immanuel Kant's notion of space as an a priori form of It is from this context that Vischer's treatise on empathy intuition, arguing instead that the experience of space was an and perception emerges. To translate the term "Einfiihlung" abstraction based on the synthesis of tactile sensations. In this as "empathy" is in one sense misleading in that it masks a process, Herbart claimed, a key role was taken up by the complex taxonomy of psychological responses outlined by movement of the body, for it is only "when one moves the eye Vischer, including "Zuffihlung," "Nachffihlung," "An- that sees and the hand that touches backwards and forwards" fihlung," and "Zusammenffihlung." Underlying all these that one builds up a representation of three-dimensional interrelated concepts, however, is a much more basic distinc-

17. Robert Vischer, Uber das OptzscheFormgefiihl: Ezn Beitrag zur Aesthetzk, 1993, 106-13. Leipzig, 1873. This has been recently translated as "On the Optical Sense of 19. Friedrich Theodor Vischer, "Kntik meiner Asthetik," in Kntzsche Gange, Form," in Mallgrave and Ikonomou, 1994, 89-123. All references to the essay Stuttgart, 1866, v, 1-156, and vi, 1-131. will be to the English translation. 20. W61lfflin's doctoral dissertation of 1886 consisted of an application of 18. Wind wrote a hostile review of Gombrich's Aby Warburg-An Intellectual Robert Vischer's notion of empathy to architectural theory. See Heinrich Bzography,and one of his principal objections focused on precisely this point, W1lfflin, "Prolegomena to a Psychology of Architecture," in Mallgrave and namely, the seminal role of Vischer, which Wind felt Gombrich had quite Ikonomou, 1994, 148-90. As Edgar Wind has pointed out, while Berenson's wrongly passed over. See Edgar Wind, "On a Recent Biography of Warburg," fame (or notoriety) now rests on his espousal of Morellian connoisseurship, in The Eloquence of Symbols:Studies zn Humanist Art, ed. J. Anderson, Oxford, much of his interest in empathy and tactile values is derived directly from ABY WARBURG'S THEORY OF ART 45 tion between 'seeing' ('sehen') and 'looking' ('schauen'). Vischer explores two other issues of central importance here, This distinction rests on an opposition between simple passive which will clarify the nature of his influence on Warburg, that 'seeing' as a physiological process of stimulus reception, is, his analyses of imagination and of the dream. where the "impression received is still undifferentiated" While the body serves as the indicator of similarity and (Vischer, 93) and 'looking.' The latter, Vischer argues, "sets dissimilarity, it is the imagination, argues Vischer, that permits out to analyze the forms dialectically... and to bring them such a mimetic entering into the object. In other words, while into a mechanical relationship.. . the impression of seeing is the immediate sensation of pure seeing in some sense repeated on a higher level" (Vischer, 94). A familiar philo- presents the raw data of experience, it is the imagination that sophical motif is being played out here, since Vischer is functions as a "fluid medium" within which the subject implying the primary importance of the interaction of the achieves an empathic reciprocity with the object, and it is also subject with the world, inasmuch as the world becomes because of the mediating role of the imagination that the meaningful only through a process of reflection and analysis. empathic object is invested with an emotional content. As Indeed, the nature of this interaction is specified through Vischer writes, "my kinship with the elements is too remote to appeal to Herbart's work on the relation of optic and haptic; require any kind of compassion on my part. ... At this point, as Vischer says, "the child learns to see by touching" (Vischer, however, our feeling rises up ... we miss red-blooded life and 94). This analysis of form is not to be assimilated to a Hegelian precisely because we miss it we imagine the dead form as process of logical reflection, however, despite the surface living" (Vischer, 104). Hence, the imagination permits the similarities, for Vischer is keen to stress that 'looking' involves analogy with the body to extend so far as to invest the object more than simply giving the phenomenon greater conceptual with the same animation as the subject's body itself. Mention determinacy. As will be apparent later, the consequence of the of the imagination also points toward art, since ultimately the active participation in the world central to looking is that the treatise is an inquiry into aesthetics. For, Vischer claims, art is world becomes invested with value. As Vischer notes, "I have "an intensification of sensuousness" (Vischer, 116), and an enclosed, complete image, but one developed and filled therefore, through the artistic imagination the mimetic assimi- with emotion" (Vischer, 94); the "dead phenomenon" of lation of the subject to the object occurs in its most intense mere seeing is, through looking, "given a rhythmic enlivening form. and revitalization" (Vischer, 94). With the mention of art we are also introduced to a Following Vischer's argument, the basis of this "penetrat- secondary consideration, namely, the symbolization of em- ing into the phenomenon" (Vischer, 101) is a mimetic pathic sensation through myth. In a later part of the treatise impulse, since, as he notes, "the criterion of sensation lies ... Vischer discusses the tendency in myth to symbolize natural in the concept of similarity ... not so much a harmony within phenomena such as storms, avalanches, and so forth on the the object as a harmony between the object and the subject" basis of empathy, for the desire to explain them as the work of (Vischer, 101). This introduction of the notion of mimesis is mythical deities stems directly from the urge to "animate" perhaps a key moment in Vischer's text since it opens up his nature by analogy with the subject's own experience. It is a thought to much wider currents of thinking than what are familiar kind of argument, common in late-nineteenth- often held to be the rather narrow and dated concerns of century psychology and anthropology. Vischer first discusses late-nineteenth-century physiological psychology. Specifically, symbol formation within the context of his analysis of dreams, the concept of "mimesis" as presented here connects Vischer and his argument draws heavily on Eduard von Hartmann's with philosophers such as Max Scheler, Walter Benjamin, Philosophie des Unbewussten (Philosophy of the Unconscious) Wilhelm Worringer, and even Theodor Adorno, for whom a and Karl Scherner's Das Leben des Traums (The Life of the fundamental level of experience consists of a mimetic passing Dream).27 Above all, argues Vischer, it is in dreams that over into the object. This is a theme to which I shall return later; at physical stimuli are translated into empathic symbols: "I present it is important merely to note that Vischer, and by stimulate, on the basis of simple nerve sensations, a fixed extension Warburg, through their attention to identification, form that symbolises my body.... It does not matter whether or mimesis, have a far greater community of interest with the object is imagined or actually perceived: as soon as our twentieth-century philosophy than is usually acknowledged. idea of the self is projected into it, it always becomes an Vischer's brief discussion of the central role of similarity is imagined object" (Vischer, 101). This account of symbol further developed through consideration of the body as the formation in dreams becomes the model for empathic symbol measure of (dis)similarity. Much of his argument is marked by formation in general, a highly significant move. For if myth- the materialist discourse I have outlined above, and this making is seen as a primal form of symbol construction, accords with Vischer's avowed aim of establishing the physi- Vischer is engaging in a typically early modern equation of ological basis of the psychology of aesthetic experience. the unconscious with the mythic, and ultimately the uncon-

Vischer. See Art and Wind, Anarchy, Oxford, 1985, 46, 127. history of German philosophy remains Herbert SchnTdelbach, Philosophy zn 21.Johann Friedrich Herbart, Psychologie als Wissenschaft, [K6nigsberg, Germany 1831-1933, trans. E. Matthews, Cambridge, 1983. See also Michael 1824-25], in SaimtlzcheWerke, ed. Karl Kehrbach, Langensalza, 1897-1912, v, Podro, TheManifold in Perception:Theories ofArt from Kant to Hildebrand, Oxford, 219. 1972, 61-91. 22. Ibid., vi, 90. 26. Hermann Lotze, Outlznes of Aesthetics, trans. and ed. G. Ladd, Boston, 23. Ibid., vi, 101. 1885, 20, 23. Adolf 24. Hildebrand, The Problem of Form in the Fine Arts, in Mallgrave and 27. Eduard von Hartmann, Philosophzedes Unbewussten: Versuchezner Weltan- Ikonomou, 1994, 227-79. schauung, Berlin, 1869; Karl Scherner, Das Leben des Traums, Berlin, 1861. 25. The best general account of this somewhat neglected period in the 46 ART BULLETIN MARCH 1997 VOLUME LXXIX NUMBER 1 scious with the primitive. As Vischer notes, "in the mythical also the case that their positions diverge considerably in key world we are of course, not dealing merely with playful respects, a divergence all the more notable given that they groping and attachment but with ideal primeval inten- both invest the Renaissance with a similar importance as a tions.... the natural emotions are filled with mythical con- critical juncture in the emergence of modernity. tent" (Vischer, 111). For Nietzsche, one of the foremost characteristics of moder- This constellation of ideas is of significance not only in the nity is the hypertrophy of Socratic culture. What Nietzsche interpretation of Vischer but, more important, also as a means with this phrase is the classifying discourse of logic, means of understanding Vischer's relevance to Warburg. marked by the impulse to categorize and to strive for scientific Warburg's consuming passion is in the tracing of the life of intelligibility. Although finding its origins in Socrates the symbols from their primitive empathic origins, and the Athenian, this stands in marked contrast to the traditional equation of the primitive with the unconscious and the dream wisdom of the Greeks, which acknowledged the necessity of a explains why in his later work Warburg engages with the Dionysian excess of meaning opening out onto the "abyss" of psychological studies of Richard Semon and Tito Vignoli.28 I Being. When comparing Nietzsche and Warburg, the key shall analyze more closely the way in which Warburg makes moment is to be found in Nietzsche's comments on opera as use of Vischer's theory of empathic symbolism and, in an attempt to resurrect Greek tragedy. For while opera was a particular, how it applies to his interpretation of the Renais- Renaissance reconstitution of tragedy, Nietzsche argues that sance later on. Before doing so, however, it is important first in contrast with tragedy, in which music and words form a to engage once more in a discussion of the Botticelli disserta- totality, opera imposes a Socratic will to intelligibility on the tion, especially to explore its links with Warburg's other operatic form, specifically through the stile rappresentativo, papers on the Renaissance. which subordinates music to verbal intelligibility. Music, the Dionysian art form par excellence, gives way to discourse. As In his study of Botticelli and, specifically, in his exploration of Nietzsche argues, "Opera is the offspring of theoretical man the role of the "bewegtes Beiwerk" in the two paintings under ... not the artist.... It was truly unmusical listeners who discussion, Warburg is attempting more than simply an art demanded that the words should be understood above all 1 historical interpretation. By bringing out the parallels be- else." Thus, the inversion in opera of the original function tween Primavera, TheBirth of Venus,and various other phenom- of Greek tragedy, which formed an occasion for loss of self in ena of quattrocento Florentine culture, such as the poetry of the face of a vision of Dionysian excess, symbolizes for Poliziano or the sculpture of Agostino di Duccio, Warburg is Nietzsche the more general conflict between the scientific, reading Botticelli's work as a microcosm of Renaissance Socratic values of modernity and the Dionysian wisdom of the Florence. Specifically, the focus of his research is the dialecti- Greeks, which the young Nietzsche believed was being brought cal nature of the Renaissance appropriation of antiquity, back to life in the Wagnerian "Gesamtkunstwerk." combining a "still grandeur" with a much more animated, I have drawn attention to the issue of opera because in one ecstatic vision inspired by the Bacchanalian excess of the of his lesser-known papers Warburg discusses the early history maenads of Dionysus. This dialectical vision accounts for the of opera, attending to much the same issues as Nietzsche, simultaneous presence in Botticelli's Primavera of the still though reaching somewhat different conclusions from the figure of Venus and of the windswept nymph Flora, with her earlier thinker. In "The Theatrical Costumes for the Inter- counterpart in the three dancing Graces. This vision also mezzi of 1589" Warburg examines the pageant staged in May explains the intrusion in the otherwise dignified narrative of 1589 by Count Giovanni de' Bardi and Giacopo Peri in honor Ghirlandaio's Birth of Saint John the Baptist of the bustling of the wedding of Grand Duke Ferdinand de' Medici to "ninfa fiorentina," whom Warburg discusses in his fictitious Christine of Lorraine.32 Warburg's attention is drawn both to correspondence with his friend Andr Jolles around 1900.29 the productive "misappropriation" of classical motifs and A crucial influence on Warburg's interpretation of the also to the subsequent attempt by Peri in 1594 to reinvent Renaissance is Nietzsche's The Birth of Tragedy,as has been tragedy in his opera Dafne. widely recognized. Indeed, Warburg was a much more careful The object of interest in Warburg's account is the contrast and sympathetic reader of Nietzsche than many would admit; between the first and third intermezzi. Music served as the as Margaret Iversen has argued, while Gombrich acknowl- overarching theme uniting all six intermezzi; in particular, edges the influence of Nietzsche, he is also at pains to read intermezzi 2, 3, and 4 consisted of Neoplatonic allegorical Warburg as ultimately privileging the rational and ordered at tableaux representing the cosmic significance of music, the expense of the irrational, the ecstatic.30 There is a very whereas the others were episodes from classical myth con- obvious coincidence of interests between Warburg and Nietz- cerned with the psychological effects of music. Following the sche in their reading of antiquity and the Renaissance, but it is contemporary description by Sebastiano de' Rossi, one of the

28. The key works here are Richard Semon, Dze Mneme als erhaltendesPrznzip See Warburg, 1992, 593. Gombrich quotes extensively from the contents in zm Wechseldes organischen Geschehens,2d ed., Leipzig, 1904, and Tito Vignoli, Gombrich, 107-27. for a similar Mzto e Sczenza, Milan, 1879. Vignoli's book was translated into German very 30. Iversen, 1993 (as in n. 9). Iversen also criticizes Panofsky shortly after publication as Mythus und Wzssenschaft,ezne Studze, Leipzig, 1880. process of "de-problematising" Warburg. Panofsky's essay on Diirer and Gombrich discusses these authors in Gombnch, 68-72, 242-43. antiquity, while frequently referring to Warburg's "Durer and the Italian 29. The unpublished fragmentary notes and letters forming the "correspon- Antique," removes all sense of tension or dialectic by promoting the dence" are gathered together in a folder dating from 1900 entitled "Ninfa reconciliation of opposites. Panofsky notes, for example, "the Italian Quat- Fiorentina," in the Warburg Institute. The folder in question corresponds to trocento was impressed and excited by the 'tragic unrest' of the Antique items 118 1-2 of Section Iv of Wuttke's listing of the Archives of the Institute. ABY WARBURG'S THEORY OF ART 47

and for him organizers, it appears that the first intermezzo was a tableau tally nonaesthetic drive to scientific intelligibility, representing the harmony of the spheres. This tableau bore opera represents a use of classical forms to impoverished all the hallmarks of Baroque spectacle coupled with an excess ends. Warburg's position is rather more complex, stemming of humanist Neoplatonic allegory, in contrast with the third from a different evaluation. Critical of the one-sided perspec- intermezzo, which represented Apollo's slaying of the Python tive of a Winckelmann, he stresses the presence of both a and employed choral accompaniment in very obvious refer- sentimental (Dionysian) pathos and classical humanist learn- ence to Greek tragedy. Warburg sees in this contrast another ing, the intermezzi occupying the point of intersection of the symptom of the dialectic of Renaissance culture, which two. This emphasis on the dialectics of the Renaissance is oscillates between a Dionysian pathos and an all too evident sustained in many of Warburg's other articles on the period. humanist learning, both of which represent the two cultural In "Diirer and the Italian Antique," for example, he writes extremes: on the one hand, the reawakening of Greek tragic that "already in the second half of the fifteenth century culture and, on the other, the self-conscious conceit of Italian artists searched in the treasury of antique forms for Baroque allegorizing. He notes, for example, that spectators models for the mimesis of both a heightened pathos and also of the intermezzi com- who gave contemporary descriptions a classic-idealizing tranquillity" (Warburg, 1992, 125). This missed the of the first inter- pletely allegorical signification peculiar duality stems ultimately from the complex nature of mezzo. In in the third in order to attract contrast, intermezzo, Florentine society itself, of which Warburg writes in "Portrai- the interest of the Bardi resorted to one audience, drama, ture and the Florentine Bourgeoisie" of 1902, "The quite even melodrama: "here a dramatic content was might say heterogeneous qualities of the medieval Christian, knightly which could arouse the interest of the unedu- incorporated, romantic or classical-platonising idealist and the worldly, cated fear and that was the chorus public through sympathy: Tuscan-heathen practical merchant interpenetrate and achieve of ... which had to the with the Delphians accompany fight unity...." (Warburg, 1992, 74). In the discussion of the word, and python through song pantomime" (Warburg, intermezzi and early opera of the late sixteenth century a 1932, 434). I, different duality has been established. This should come as no Unlike Nietzsche, does not see, with reference to Warburg surprise, given that a hundred years have passed and that this the intermezzi, cultural redemption either in the rebirth of a period hardly counts as the Renaissance anymore. The culture or in the suppression of the Dionysian pure Dionysian dialectic here is not between the Dionysian-pagan and Apollo- through the highly artificial language of humanist allegory. nian-idealist; instead, it is between the Dionysian and the The same is true, for Warburg, of the opera Dafne, whose Baroque spectacle of allegory. In contrast to Nietzsche, the innovation of the monodic stile recitativo, so heavily criticized Dionysian impulse for Warburg is not opposed to a lack of by Nietzsche, represents an interplay of classical content and artistry so much as to its hypertrophy-a self-conscious use of Florentine humanist learning. Far from constituting a loss of symbolic forms emphasizing the intervention of human aesthetic sensibility, as Nietzsche claims, the growth of opera artifice. This is since it will inform is rather to be seen as a creative "misuse" of classical motifs to change highly significant, account of to which I shall form a new self-conscious with Warburg's general modernity, aesthetic-symbolic language return later. transformed expressive capacities.33 Warburg notes, In general, then, Warburg is suspending the kind of judgment made by Nietzsche, since he does not share Nietz- It was certainly one of the main tasks of the classicising sche's metaphysics of culture whereby the Greeks are extraor- Riforma Melodrammaticato get rid of Baroque artificiality dinarily privileged. It would be wrong, however, to see not only in madrigalesque music but also in the external as interested in the historical details of frills which absorbed so much of the energy of inventors, Warburg merely Renaissance (and Mannerist) culture, as if his aim were artists and tailors. But this reaction did not lead away from to correct hitherto To recall, the the classical authors; on the contrary.. . the Florentines merely partial pictures. declared aim of his doctoral dissertation is to make a ... searched so long in the ancient authors until they contribution to Hence, his work has a believed they had found there what they really owed only empathy theory. to which it theorizes the to their own genius, the tragedia in musica and the stile philosophical foundation, according recitativo.34 dialectics of the Renaissance through the notion of empathy. At this point, therefore, it is necessary to return once more to Between Nietzsche and Warburg, therefore, there is obvi- the work of Vischer, in order to draw out the character of ously much in common, the most important feature being a Warburg's engagement with the theory of empathy. shared recognition of the dialectical character of the Renais- sance. Nietzsche sees the Renaissance as revolving around the As I indicated earlier, the focus of Vischer's theory of empathy polar opposites of a Dionysian classical legacy and a fundamen- is the tendency of the subject to identify with the object, a

" before it could appreciate and abandon itself to its 'classical calm.' 1589," this essay is not included in Warburg, 1992. See Warburg, 1932, I, 259 ff. Warburg's own essay explicitly attacks the "one-sided classicising doctrine of The German translation, excluding the quotations from contemporary 'still grandeur' " (Warburg, 1992, 125). See Erwin Panofsky, "Albrecht Difrer sources used in the original version, appears in the same volume, 422-38. and Classical Antiquity," in Meanzng zn the Visual Arts, Harmondsworth, 1970, 33. A similar point is made by Helmut Pfotenhauer, who examines the issue 277-339. in much greater depth. See Pfotenhauer, "Das Nachleben der Antike: Aby 31. Friedrich Nietzsche, The Bzrth of Tragedy, trans. S. Whiteside, ed. M. Warburgs Auseinandersetzung mit Nietzsche," Nzetzsche Studzen, xIv, 1985, Tanner, Harmondsworth, 1993, 91. 298-313. 32. First published in Italian as "I Costumi Teatrali per gli Intermezzi del 34. Warburg, 1932, I, 437. 48 ART BULLETIN MARCH 1997 VOLUME LXXIX NUMBER 1 passing over into the other that results in a negation of the reduce those formations to any single principle, leading to his self. Central to this mimetic process is the body, which dialectical understanding of the Renaissance, which he sees functions as a common measure of comparison by which the reproduced in Renaissance imagery. Indeed, one could argue object is invested with the qualities of subjective embodied that Warburg's most sensitive follower was Walter Benjamin, experience. Furthermore, this comparison through the me- whose theories of the symbol and of historical inquiry closely dium of the body is possible on the basis of the subjective resemble Warburg's own.3s Moreover, Warburg's understand- imaginative capacity to symbolize; it is by virtue of the symbol ing of the symbol takes the notion still further by virtue of that two or more heterogeneous elements can be literally the fact that in his work the image does not simply act as thrown together on the basis of some perceived similarity. the archive of a specific historical experience, it also bears the Clearly, Warburg's account of Renaissance culture owes much imprint of that experience. What I mean by this is that the to this theory, most particularly in his attention to the image, as a symbol of the empathic projection onto the other, Dionysiac element at the birth of classical culture and the itself becomesthe empathized other. The symbolic representa- Renaissance refashioning of it. The idea of the Dionysiac is tion loses its symbolic quality, the distinction between the introduced in the reference to the "bewegtes Beiwerk" in the image and its symbolized object is collapsed, and the image is Botticelli dissertation, where the importance of bodily move- subject to the same empathic identification as its represented ment has very clear parallels with Vischer's stress on the object. empathic projection of embodied experience onto the object. Warburg's understanding of the symbol derives from Ro- What Warburg introduces in his dissertation is then discussed mantic theories of literary symbolism and, as will become elsewhere, for example, in his study on "Diirer and the Italian clear later, their concomitant denigration of allegory. In Antique," which explores the various treatments in the particular, the symbol was held to be embodied in the work of Renaissance of that most Dionysiac of classical myths, the art; indeed, beauty itself was thought to appear only in the death of Orpheus. Warburg's adoption of Vischer's theory is symbol. In his Doctrine of the Gods Karl Philip Moritz argues thus extended in two ways. First, Vischer's comments on the that in the work of art "we find total opposites brought role of symbolism are given much greater weight, and second, together," which "renders that poetry beautiful and it be- the phenomenon of empathy (and its symbolism) is histori- comes here, as it were, a higher language which combines in a cized. I shall deal with each in turn. single expression a good number of concepts that resound It has all too frequently been assumed, as I suggested harmoniously together whereas elsewhere they are dispersed earlier, that Warburg's method rests on a concept of the and separate." 39 Moritz's theory of beauty as the harmony of image, or, indeed, any symbolic representation, as symptom- opposites is repeated elsewhere, for example, in his claim that atic of wider social practices and discursive formations. "I view the [beautiful object] as something that finds comple- Gombrich refers to the precedent of Hippolyte Taine, whose tion not in me, but in itself, something that forms a self- work aimed at the construction of a historical intellectual contained totality and gives me pleasure for its own sake."'4 In "milieu" without the metaphysical weight attached to Hege- other words, the symbolic work of art presents a formal unity, lian notions of a "Zeitgeist."'35Parallels have also been drawn resulting from a dialectical synthesis of opposites, a view with Gottfried Leibniz, whose monads, interiorizing the repeated in Friedrich Schelling's argument that "An infinite world, seem to prefigure Warburg's idea of the symbol.36 In dichotomy of opposed activities ... is ... the basis of every fact, while these writers undoubtedly have a significant bear- aesthetic production and by each individual manifestation of ing on Warburg, one need only look to contemporary art it is wholly resolved.'"41 Moreover, as Moritz indicates, the historians of art such as W61fflin, Riegl, or Max Dvorak for a symbol not only presents a formal unity of opposites, it is also similar approach to the social function of the image. For indivisible from its referent, in contrast with allegory, in which example, Riegl's historical grammar of the arts quite clearly allegorical form and content are external to one another. relates the formal syntactic and morphological features of a This theme recurs throughout the aesthetic theory of the period style to wider extra-aesthetic beliefs,37 and W6lfflin's time. In his "Doctrine of Art," for example, August Wilhelm Principles of Art History quite clearly operates according to the von Schlegel writes that "language passes from pure expres- notion of period-specific ways of seeing and their exemplifica- sion to arbitrary usage for the purpose of representation, but tion in individual works of art. Such approaches to art were when arbitrariness becomes its dominant feature ... lan- common in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, guage is no longer anything but a collection of logical even if a Hegelian metaphysics of culture had been discarded. ciphers."42 Similarly, Schelling notes that "Each figure in Where Warburg's thought diverges from that of his contempo- mythology is to be taken for what it is, for it is precisely in this raries (and followers such as Panofsky) is in his refusal to way that it will be taken for what it signifies. The signifying

35. Gombrich is, of course, hostile to Hegel and is thus keen to dissociate subjective interiority in late Roman art. Warburg and Hegel. See Ernst Gombrich, "In Search of Cultural Tradition," 38. See especially Walter Benjamin's The Orngin of German Tragic Drama, in Ideals and Idols, Oxford, 1979, 24-59. 1985. 36. See William Heckscher, "PetztesPerceptzons: An Account of sortes Warburgi- 39. Karl Ph. Moritz, Gbtterlehre,oder mythologzscheDzchtungen der Alten, Lahr, anae," in Art and Lzterature.Studzes zn Relatzonshzp,Baden-Baden, 1985, 435-80. 1948, 101-2. 37. Riegl's concept of the "Kunstwollen" is supposed to indicate the 40. Karl Ph. Moritz, "Versuch einer Vereinigung aller schonen Kuinste und autonomy of art, but in the final section of Late Roman Art Industry (as in n. 6), Wissenschaften unter dem Begriff des in sich selbst Vollendeten," in Schnften Riegl argues for parallels between the rise of Christianity and the emphasis on zur Aesthetikund Poetzk,Tubingen, 1962, 3 ABY WARBURG'S THEORY OF ART 49

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3 Domenico Ghirlandaio, Foundingof the Orderof Saint Francisby Pope Honorius III. Florence, Santa Trinita (photo: Witt Library)

here is at the same time the being itself, it has passed into the wax voti, which he interprets as a continuation of pagan cult object."43 practices: "Through the practice of votive offerings to sacred It is perhaps no coincidence that Warburg's own interest in images, the Catholic church had, with penetrating insight, the of role the symbol in art developed at the same time as the provided converted pagans with a legitimate mode of expres- late-nineteenth-century revival of such Romantic theories of sion for the ineradicable primal religious impulse to ap- symbolism, language, and allegory, most obviously in the art proach the divine ... and this could be done either in person theories of the Symbolists, for example, in Charles Baude- or in the form of a representation" (Warburg, 1992, 73). laire's doctrine of "correspondences." In this regard it is Mention of the atavism of wax voti introduces the second to important take note, too, of Walter Benjamin's interest in way in which Warburg extends Robert Vischer's essay, namely, precisely this aspect of Baudelaire in articulating his own by historicizing the phenomenon of empathy. Gombrich has theory of "aura."44 In his discussion of Domenico Ghirlan- argued that the widespread influence of Darwinism and the daio's Founding of the Orderof Saint Francis by Pope Honorius III general acceptance of the theory of evolution were significant in Santa Trinita (Fig. 3), Warburg notes, "The modest for Warburg in this regard.45 Certainly, their importance of privilege the donor to piously occupy a corner of the image cannot be overlooked, but as Edgar Wind has forcefully is expanded by Ghirlandaio and his client without a second argued, one can locate a much more specific source for thought into the right of their corporeal likeness to enter Warburg's conceptual system, namely, the essay "Das Symbol" freely into the sacred event as a spectator or even as an actor by Friedrich Vischer, on the basis of which Warburg con- in the story" (Warburg, 1992, 71). The fact that all the figures structs a historical typology of orders of representation.46 In in the foreground can be identified as various members of the this respect it is significant that Friedrich Vischer's essay is Sassetti and Medici households, Warburg argues, indicates mentioned immediately after Robert Vischer's treatise in the the loss of the sense of historical and symbolic distance preface to the Botticelli dissertation. For the elder Vischer, between viewer and representation. symbolic representation oscillates between two polarities, the In the same study Warburg also notes a parallel process in one magical-associative, where the symbol and the symbolized the enormous growth in popularity during the Renaissance of merge, and the other logical-dissociative, in which a relation

41. Friedrich Schelling, quoted in Tzvetan Todorov, Theories of the Symbol, Tallahassee, Fla., 1983. trans. C. Porter, Oxford, 1982, 185. 45. See Gombrich, "Aby Warburg und der Evolutionismus des 19. Jahrhun- 42. August Wilhelm von Schlegel, quoted in Todorov (as in n. 41), 178. derts," in Galitz and Reimers (as in n. 10), 52-73. 43. Friedrich Schelling, Simmtliche Werke,Stuttgart, 1856-68, I Abteilung, v, 46. Edgar Wind, "Warburg's Concept of Kulturwissenschaft," in Wind (as in 411. n. 18), 26 ff. Vischer's original essay appears in PhilosophischeAufsdtze, Eduard 44. On of see Benjamin's theory aura, Marlene Stoessel, Aura: Des Vergessene Zeller zu seinem 50 jdhrigen Doctor-Jubildumgewidmet, ed. F. T. Vischer, Leipzig, 1983. For a Menschliche,Munich, general account of histories of the symbolic 1887, 153-93. Gombrich also mentions the influence of Vischer, though he see Todorov (as in n. 41) and Hazard Adams, Philosophyof the Literary Symbolic, gives it less prominence than does Wind. See Gombrich, 72-75. 50 ART BULLETIN MARCH 1997 VOLUME LXXIX NUMBER I of disjunction operates between the symbol and its object. burg's extensive study Heathen-Antique Prophecy in Word and The lineage of such a conception is clear, since the notion of a Image at the Time of Luther53 history of symbolization can be traced back to Giambattista The ostensible focus of interest in this work is the varying Vico's New Science,47 and the distinction between the two use made of astrology by parties both supportive of and repeats the Romantic opposition of symbol and allegory. It is opposed to Luther. This includes the falsification of Luther's implicit, too, in Robert Vischer's treatise. There, empathy was birthdate in order to make him fit into preestablished discussed using the model of dream symbolization, and it is astrological patterns and the reading of natural phenomena only a short step to equating processes originating in the as portending the Peasants' Revolt of 1524-25. The object of unconscious with processes originating in primitive stages of study is thus the continued use of classical omens throughout human development. This equation of empathic symboliza- the Reformation, but Warburg's perspective is not limited to tion with the unconscious and the primitive would later collecting cases of such continued use. This is indicated in his surface in Freud and Jung, while the historicizing of the early observations that Renaissance astronomy succeeded in distinction between the magical-associative and the logical- combining the mathematized abstract thinking familiar to a dissociative would perform a central role in Georg Lukacs's contemporary understanding of the subject with the cultic early Theory of the Novel of 1914 and Walter Benjamin's early superstition more associated with astrology. Warburg notes philosophical essays on language and experience.48 It also that while in Italy the astrological symbols become allegorical informed the theories of modernity in the emerging disci- signs, a phenomenon also explored in his paper on the pline of sociology, including, for example, Max Weber's Palazzo Schifanoia in Ferrara,54 in Germany the magical notion of the disenchantment of nature or Ferdinand T6n- conception of the astrological figures predominates. Conse- nies's distinction between the community ("Gemeinschaft") quently, they are felt to inhabit the same world as humans and and society ("Gesellschaft").49 affect actual historical events. Only in Luther himself does Warburg falls exactly into this early modernist pattern, the Warburg observe a sense of unease with the hysterical most obvious example being his study of the serpent ritual of interpretation of natural phenomena, arguing that "God's the Moki Indians.5o Writing of the Moki he notes, "They stand signs and the warnings of the angels are confused with the on the middle ground between magic and logos, and their messages and signs of Satan . .. such that everything becomes instrument of orientation is the symbol. Between a culture of intermingled and no distinction between them can be made" touch and a culture of thought is the culture of symbolic (Warburg, 1992, 243). Yet if Luther's primary concern is with connection.""'51Shortly afterward he adds, "It is, one might the difficulty of reading omens correctly, Warburg sees in the say, a Darwinism of mythical elective affinity which deter- work of Albrecht Dfirer a further degree of skepticism, mines the lives of these so-called primitive people.""'52 More whereby the omens and astrological symbols are transformed significantly, in the final section of the study Warburg argues into self-consciously allegorical figures or curiosities of natu- that exactly the same "elective affinity" is to be found in ral history. Hence, in his engraving of the pig of Landser (Fig. classical culture, where the participants in the festival of 4) Dfirer has turned an (admittedly monstrous) misformed Dionysus and the mythical maenads and Erinyes give expres- eight-footed pig into an object of scientific interest, in stark sion to the same primitive mentality encountered among the contrast with the reaction at the time of its birth in 1496, when Moki. it was seen as a portent of things to come. Most dramatically of We have returned full circle, since the reference to Dio- all, Warburg points to Diirer's MelencoliaI, which represents a nysus draws us back to Warburg's initial interest in the creative transformation of the figure of Saturn, most fearful "bewegtes Beiwerk" and its Dionysian connotations. Against of all the astrological deities, into an allegory of the melan- the background of the foregoing discussion it is perhaps clear cholic self-absorption of genius. Warburg concludes, "we that for Warburg the Renaissance constitutes a period of stand with [Luther and Duirer] in the midst of the struggle for conflict between magical-associative (symbolic) and logical- the inner and religious liberation of the modern individual, dissociative (allegorical-semiotic) modes of representation. albeit in its infancy" (Warburg, 1992, 261). However, he does not interpret this to mean simply that the The general direction of the argument has so far suggested Renaissance had recovered both the Dionysian and the that Warburg's obsessive focus on the Renaissance is aimed at Apollonian drives of classical antiquity, since this would imply showing that the culture of quattrocento Florence repro- that the Renaissance had formed a "correct" image of duced both the antique sense of Dionysian self-loss and its antiquity, and such a conclusion is alien to Warburg's thought. Apollonian "still grandeur." As the parallel with Nietzsche Rather, he sees the Renaissance as constituting a transitional might therefore lead one to conclude, Warburg has put phase from the one to the other, where primitive symbolic forward theories of both the Renaissance and of antiquity. If, representation gives way to the allegorical-semiotic mode of however, his conceptual system places the Renaissance at the modernity. Nowhere is this clearer, perhaps, than in War- site of transition from the symbolic to the allegorical, the

47. Giambattista Vico, The New Science (1725), trans. T. Bergin and M. Fisch, Grundbegnffe der reznen Sozzologie,Leipzig, 1887, opposes a premodern Ithaca, N.Y., 1948. schaft""community" based on organic life to modern "society" founded on the 48. Georg Lukics, Theone des Romans (1914), Munich, 1994; Walter Benja- reduction of all to abstract, calculable quantities. "A Lecture on min, "On Language as Such and on Human Language," in One WayStreet and 50. This was originally published as Aby Warburg, Serpent and Courtauld 277-92. OtherWhtzngs, London, 1979, 107-23; and Benjamin, "Program of the Coming Ritual," Journal of the Warburg Institutes, 1I, 1938-39, was a to North Philosophy," in WalterBenjamzn: Phtlosophy,History, Aesthetics,ed. Gary Smith, While this lecture was first given in 1923, its basis journey his Chicago, 1989, 1-12. America undertaken in 1896, very shortly after Warburg completed 49 Ferdinand T6nnies's widely influential study Gemeznschaftund Gesell- dissertation. See, too, the German edition, Schlangenrtual En Reisebencht,ed. ABY WARBURG'S THEORY OF ART 51 question has to be raised as to the status of the intervening period in Warburg's thought. In other words, if in the Renaissance the Dionysian energies of antiquity were re- trieved along with the classical knowledge of Florentine humanism, what was the status of images before the quat- trocento? A straightforward answer to this question is made all the more difficult by the fact that Warburg wrote very little about Early Christian and medieval art. An intimation of his ideas can be gleaned, however, from his various comments on Gothic realism. One of the themes that preoccupied Warburg, and which I have until now passed over, was the penchant of Florentine culture for the art of the North, for example, Burgundian tapestries or painters such as Hans Memling and Hugo van der Goes. This taste caught Warburg's attention for the simple reason that the works in question appeared so incongruous; in scenes from pagan myth figures were represented as clothed in contemporary dress. Such representations seemed devoid of the classical learning sustaining those by Florentine artists. Consequently, one finds, as he notes in "Flemish Art and the Early Florentine Renaissance," that Giovanni de' 4 Albrecht Dfirer, TheMonstrous Pig of Landser(photo: British Medici's Burgundian tapestries displayed a "baroque mixture Museum) of contemporary Burgundian dandyish costume and antique disposition of the folds, of Florentine goldsmith's fantasy and the extreme Flemish sense of reality" (Warburg, 1992, 104). In his explanation of this so-called realism, Warburg describes At it as a "naive realism which lacks any sense of distance displaced by the classicizing language of Dionysian pathos. in terms of between the present and the past" (Warburg, 1932, I, 74). the same time, both are functionally isomorphic little This explanation was to form the basis, subsequently, of the status of the representation itself. Warburg says very bold to Panofsky's own attempt to define the Renaissance as a about medieval imagery, but it is perhaps not too coincidence of classical form and content, though Warburg's suggest that his interpretation of Northern realism can be interpretation aims at something else.55 For Warburg's inter- extended to form a more general theory of pre-Renaissance est is in understanding the meaning of late medieval and representation, a theory following which the medieval venera- Northern realism. His comments on the lack of distance in tion of images, for example, would testify to the power of this art point the way, perhaps, to the place this phenomenon symbolic magical-associative representation. Although not would occupy within Warburg's system. In its lack of symbolic acknowledged as a source, Warburg's work in this area has distance from the object, Northern realism obviously brings been continued recently in Hans Belting's monumental study back to mind the "realism" of those Florentine altarpieces of Byzantine icons, Likeness and Presence, which develops a where the donor literally steps into the image. That incorpora- similar function-theoretical history of the image from late tion of the donor into the mythical/allegorical representation antiquity until the Renaissance.56 was interpreted as an example of the same empathic drive While Warburg traces the history of representation from underlying the Dionysian undercurrent in Botticelli, and the the magical-associative to the logical-dissociative, he also realism of Northern art can also be read in this way. Indeed, in maintains a conviction of the constant possibility of a recidi- the final paragraph of his study of Burgundian tapestries vist return to magic, to the alogical. It has often been thought Warburg draws out the explicit parallels between the two, that Warburg's own nervous breakdown contributed directly when he says that "the monumental genre art of these to this belief (although it has also been suggested that illustrated Burgundian tapestries was, as it were, the source of Warburg's breakdown was a consequenceof his theories5'), but that Northern verism which set up its life-mirroring humor as this is to ignore the psychological theories that lie at the a counterweight to Dionysian pathos, in the contest over the origin of Warburg's "system." Robert Vischer's equation of stylization of vital life" (Warburg, 1992, 171). empathy and its symbolizing with the symbol formation of For Warburg, then, late medieval realism was an alternative dreams can easily be seen to imply a constant subconscious mode of symbolizing empathic identification, one that was empathic drive, which on occasions is reawakened. It is only a

U. Raulff, Berlin, 1988. Recently a new edition has been published, Aby "Italian Art and International Astrology in the Palazzo Schifanoia in Ferrara," Warburg, Imagesfrom the Region of the Pueblo Indians of North America, trans. and in GermanEssays in Art History, ed. Gert Schiff, NewYork, 1988, 234-54. ed. Michael Steinberg, Ithaca, N.Y., 1995. 55. See Erwin Panofsky, Renaissance and Renascencesin WesternArt, New York, 51. Warburg, 1995 (as in n. 50), 17. 1969. 52. Ibid., 19-20. 56. Hans Belting, Likeness and Presence,Chicago, 1987. in Hof- 53. Warburg, 1992, 199-309. 57. See Martin Warnke, "Der Leidschatz wird humaner Besitz," 54. Warburg, "Italienische Kunst und internationale Astrologie im Palazzo mann, Syamken, and Warnke (as in n. 10), 151. Schifanoja zu Ferrara," in Warburg, 1992, 173-98. This is also translated as 52 ART BULLETIN MARCH 1997 VOLUME LXXIX NUMBER 1 short step from here to Warburg's own recognition of the ever sky's search for an Archimedean point from which to survey present potential for the "reanimation of demonic antiquity" the history of art.59 Although Iversen's study indicates the (Warburg, 1992, 267). In his later notes Warburg ultimately political connotations of Warburg's work, however, it is also comes to see the unconscious as a storehouse of just such the case that Warburg's concerns extended beyond those repressed memories and impulses, a view that underlies his outlined by Iversen. Indeed, any parallels between Warburg theory of collective memory. The immediate source of this and feminism stem from the fact that both represent mo- view is Richard Semon's book Die Mneme, but it easily follows ments within the decentering of subjectivity that has increas- from Vischer's work. ingly taken place in philosophy and the humanities during the last one hundred years. Clearly, Warburg's awareness of The general shape of Warburg's thought is thus becoming the recurrent danger of a reanimation of demonic antiquity is clearer. The Renaissance is central to his interests, since it is closely allied to the fear of regression, both psychological and seen as a pivotal point in the transition from the symbol to the political, and Warburg's well-known hostility to Fascism is allegory and, being an "era of transition" (Warburg, 1992, often interpreted in this context. Social memory, however, is 260), is a site of conflict, of tensions between two contradic- not merely a deposit of regressive impulses. In particular, tory attitudes toward representation. The images Warburg Warburg came to regard memory as a form of resistance to discusses are themselves representative of much wider changes, what he termed the "disconnected dynamograms"'60 of the perhaps most succinctly interpreted as the evolution from a Baroque, which as noted above, divorced meaning from primarily metaphorical pattern of thinking to predominantly subjective experience. In his NotebooksWarburg wrote, "the abstract-conceptual thought. This process is itself parallel (or task of social memory emerges quite clearly: through renewed even bears a causal relation) to the loss of empathy-this contact with the monuments of the past the sap should be much is evident from Warburg's frequent comments on enabled to rise directly from the subsoil of the past."''1 This distance. "Logic," he notes, "creates ... conceptual space offers scant evidence of the concern, so often imputed to between individual and object," while "magic ... in turn Warburg, to avoid Alexandrian irrationality; memory is seen destroys this same conceptual space" (Warburg, 1992, 202). as crucial in the resistance to the hypertrophy of rootless, However, although Warburg's thought would seem to signal a allegorical signification. Implicit in this account is the view sense of the loss of artistic culture, manifest in the dominance that not only is the regression to Dionysian symbolization to of the logical sign, Warburg's actual conclusion is quite the be resisted, but also the excess of allegory; in this, Warburg's reverse. In contrast with Nietzsche, for whom the loss of the thought looks forward to more recent studies of the Baroque, Dionysian heralded the birth of modern, scientific, Socratic which focus on the relation between Baroque spectacle and culture, the transformation signifies for Warburg a growth of authoritarianism.62 Crucial for Warburg is social memory, aesthetic creativity. The distance of the sign from its object which serves both as a tool of redemption and as a focus of indicates the intervention of human artifice, as had been regression. implied in Warburg's study of the intermezzi and early opera. Mention of the role of memory together with that of This process finds its most extreme expression in the Ba- allegory invites comparison once more with Walter Benjamin, roque, where, as Warburg writes in one of his notebooks, a comparison all the more obvious given Benjamin's attempts "expressive values were cut loose from the mint of real life in to gain access to the Warburg circle and, specifically, given the movement."58 nature of his interests in The Origin of German Tragic Drama. Warburg's thought therefore appears to consist of an This work, which now occupies a central place in the innovative response to problems preoccupying German aes- understanding of Benjamin's oeuvre, makes numerous refer- thetics and psychology of the late nineteenth century. It also ences to Warburg and associates of Warburg such as Fritz Saxl, appears to enter into a creative dialogue with what in the late Panofsky, and Karl Giehlow. I have already mentioned a nineteenth and early twentieth centuries was the fast-growing certain congruence between Benjamin and Warburg over the field of anthropology, suggesting that the categories of anthro- question of historical inquiry. Warburg's attention to the pological thought should be directed away from an exclusive dialectical character of Renaissance culture bears a remark- interest in the colonial "other" toward the more recent able similarity to Benjamin's contention in the "Epistemo- history of Western culture. I have already indicated above the Critical Prologue" to The Origin of German Tragic Drama that extent to which the interest of Warburg's writings goes "ideas come to life only when extremes are assembled around beyond the historically specific concerns to which he was them" (Benjamin, 35) and that "From the point of view of the responding. philosophy of art the extremes are necessary" (Benjamin, In her recent article "Retrieving Warburg's Tradition" 38). Notable, too, is the parallel between Warburg's monado- Margaret Iversen has argued that in Warburg one can see an logical understanding of the symbol and Benjamin's own anticipation of feminist critiques of art history's goal of a reference to Leibniz, or their common interest in Dadaist position of objectivity, as embodied, for example, in Panof- montage as a technique. The parallel is most apparent,

die 58. Warburg, quoted in Gombrich, 250. 63. See Wolfgang Kemp, "Fernbilder: Benjamin und Kunstwissen- 59. Iversen, 1993 (as in n. 9). schaft," in WalterBenjamin im Kontext, ed. Burckhardt Lindner, Frankfurt am 60. Warburg, quoted in Gombrich, 250 Main, 1978, 246-54 du 61. Warburg, quoted in Gombrich, 248. 64. See Christine Buci-Glucksmann, Lafolze du vozr De l'esthitzque Baroque, 62. SeeJose Maravall, Culture of the Baroque, trans. T Cochran, Minneapolis, Pans, 1986, and idem., Baroque The Aesthetzcsof Modernity, London, 1986. Reason" ABY WARBURG'S THEORY OF ART 53

perhaps, in Warburg's incomplete pictorial atlas "Mnemo- min's oeuvre in general, even if the motif of allegorical syne" (Fig. 5), a collection of over eighty panels that map the distance would eventually be recast in a Marxist configura- transformation of various pictorial motifs, or "engrams," tion. These concerns, however, were by no means limited to from antiquity to the present, through the juxtaposition of Benjamin, since the critique of allegorical signification feeds different incarnations of the motif on one and the same into the modernist cultural-philosophical theories of figures display panel. This unfinished project could in many respects such as the young Lukaics, Siegfried Kracauer, and Adorno. I be interpreted as a visual counterpart to the montage of am referring here to the common topos of modernity as a Benjamin's ArcadesProject, an exploration of the prehistory of rootless alienation from and loss of immediacy to Being. In Parisian modernity. Much of this relation has already been Theoryof the Novel, for example, Lukaics describes this with the explored by Wolfgang Kemp,63 and a clear line of influence notion of "transcendental homelessness," which becomes can be traced from Warburg to Benjamin with regard to central to the emergence of the novel form, of which methodological considerations. But there are also other ways Cervantes's Don Quixote constitutes an important early ex- in which their concerns intersect. ample.65 For Adorno the alienations of modernity are indi- I argued that the study of the emergence of allegory from cated by the loss of the name as the primary constituent of the symbol during the Renaissance is central to Warburg, for language, an age in which "the Enlightenment calls a halt whom this process denotes the emergence of a distinctly before the nomen, the exclusive, precise concept, the proper "modern" cultural sensibility predicated on a logical- name.'"66 At stake here is the notion of the creation of dissociative order of representation. Ironically, however, while distance through abstract conceptual language, an idea that for Nietzsche, so important to Warburg, this process signified has an obvious resonance in Warburg's comments on the the hypertrophy of Socratic reason and the loss of artistic creation (and destruction) of "Denkraum," or "conceptual for it indicates an excess of artistic impulse, Warburg actually space," in the opening pages of his essay on Luther, Dfirer, production. At no stage does Warburg actually present these and astrology. themes as part of a unified theory, but given his interest in In drawing a comparison between such cultural-philosophi- montage and the dialectics of culture, this is not surprising. cal theories of modernity and the work of Warburg, one has The closest one comes to such an equation in Warburg's nevertheless to exercise a certain degree of caution. Lukaics, is his of the published writings study intermezzi, where certain Benjamin, and Adorno, not to mention T6nnies and Weber, of the tableaux are so semantically overdetermined that their are concerned with outlining "modernity" both as a socio- status as signs prevents identification with the represented historical epoch and a cultural configuration, given most objects. Arguably, it is Benjamin who, despite his fondness for obvious concrete form in the rationalizations of the Enlighten- the fragmentary, draws out the implications of Warburg's ment and the Industrial Revolution. Warburg shares little of work most fully. the interest in the much broader notions of the "modern" Benjamin's treatise presented a seminal theory of allegory; that underpin the thought of those other figures. What I am overturning long-established Romantic aesthetic theories that arguing, however, is that Warburg's "system" can be placed denigrated allegory, it expanded beyond the limits of a within the context of a cultural and philosophical analysis of philological study of a neglected period in German literature the emergence of postmedieval European society that be- to offer a theory of allegory that still occupies a central place came especially widespread in Germany in the latter years of in the account of specifically modern literary practice. As the nineteenth century. It is no coincidence that such such it a represented literary-theoretical counterpart to the analyses grew in prominence at precisely this period, since the theories sociological of modernity of T6nnies, Weber, and authors in question were tracing the genealogy of their own Simmel. Recent Georg writings by Christine Buci-Glucks- time back to the Renaissance and the loss of a "magical- mann and Owens Craig testify to the continued importance associative" sensibility. Warburg's exploration of art in primar- of, and renewed interest in, Benjamin's study.64 Arguably, ily the Florentine Renaissance is based on the fact that for Warburg's writings acted as a significant influence on the Warburg the Renaissance is understood as a pivotal moment formation of Benjamin's allegorical conception of the mod- between the modern and the premodern. Perhaps the clear- ern, as is indicated by Benjamin's comment on Dfirer's est indication of the overarching perspective that Warburg Melencolia Ithat "this, the 'ripest and most mysterious fruit of brings to his concerns, and that links him with the writers the cosmological culture of Maximilian's circle' as Warburg already discussed, can be seen in one of his unpublished has called it, may well be considered as a seed in which the Notebooksof 1927-28: allegorical flower of the Baroque, still held in check by the power of a genius, lies ready to burst into bloom" (Benjamin, Our attempt to understand the processes of stylistic evolu- 154). tion in their psychological necessity by viewing them The concepts so central to The Origin of German Tragic against the background of antiquity was bound ultimately Drama would subsequently become an integral part of Benja- to lead to a criticism of the periodizations of history. Can

1994; Owens, "The Towards a of Craig Allegorical Impulse: Theory Postmod- dialectically opposed to that of Lukics. SeeJesinghausen-Lauster (as in n. 10), ernism," Pts. and in Los 1 2, Beyond Recognztzon, Angeles, 1992, 52-69. For 235 ff. The work in question is Lugowski's DzeForm der Indzvdualztdt im Roman, these authors, of course, allegory and the Baroque have a rather different Berlin, 1929. from meaning that argued for by Maravall (as in n. 62). 66. Theodor Adorno and Max Horkheimer, Dzalectzc trans. 65. It is of Enlzghtenment, interesting that, as Jesinghausen-Lauster points out, Clemens J. Cumming, London, 1989, 23. Lugowski, a member of the Warburg circle, offers a theory of the novel 54 ART BUILLETIN MARCH 1997 VOLUME LXXIX NUMBER 1

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there, for instance, be an exact delimitation between the possibly become a meaningful and fruitful one, rather than Renaissance and the Middle Ages in the light of the an exercise in art historiographical archaeology. psychology of style? Such an attempt at drawing a purely If it is the case that Warburg's thought is organized around chronological dividing-line can never rest on evident such cultural-philosophical problems it is also true, however, principles of categorization, since what we call the Middle that his theoretical concerns always remain understated. In Ages and the Modern Age are merely our own attempts to this respect his vast corpus of notes is more revealing than his give a common name to the mental characteristics of a published works. No doubt it is for this reason that the given coherent group of people. Even though their exter- functional-theoretical underpinning so crucial to the under- nal habits of mind can be shown to be more or less standing of Warburg's oeuvre was from an early stage over- dominant, they are still rooted in the human psyche. ... looked. Already in the 1930s one can see Warburg's interest in We attempt to grasp the spirit of the age in its impact on the historicity of representation being interpreted as an style by comparing the same subject as it is treated in exercise in cataloguing often overlooked and arcane symbols. various periods and various countries... .67 For example, Rudolf Wittkower's essay "Eagle and Serpent: A Study in the Migration of Symbols" of 1938 consists primarily Of course, as has it is to think Kany argued, slightly misleading of the empirical gathering of data testifying to the continued of as interested in art; he was also drawn to the Warburg only presence of the symbols of the eagle and serpent, failing to of and its transformation into history astrology astronomy, draw any further conclusion from such an observation.69 into more in alchemy's development chemistry, or, generally Much the same can be said, too, of Fritz Saxl's lecture on the the various of belief and metamorphoses religious practice.68 "Continuity and Variation in the Meaning of Images," which Such comments it is also true that notwithstanding, generally opens with the assertion, "I am not a philosopher, nor am I Warburg's interest was in the specifically visual documents of able to talk about the philosophy of history."''7 In contrast, the such transformations, a of and guided by notion symbolism continued importance of Warburg is directly related to the derived from Vico, Vischer, and Romantic representation cultural-philosophical perspective that at all times directed aesthetic theory. his method and decided in advance the type of material to which his attention was drawn. Indeed, if Warburg's work is of I have argued in this that while paper Aby Warburg's thought, interest today it is because it stands at the point of intersection much in very grounded nineteenth-century psychological of a number of intellectual currents central to the understand- theories, is still of continued relevance since it uses those ing of modernity, currents that still engage us. theories to map out the emergence of a modern order of visual representation. My argument has been based on the that the fact that can in no premise despite Warburg's writihgs Cited Sources sense be regarded as a unified corpus, and despite the Frequently discontinuities in the corpus of Warburg's work, one can The German nevertheless discern a continuous strand of Benjamin, Walter, Ongin of TragicDrama, trans. J. Osborne, thought running London, 1985. through the oeuvre. Central to this strand is, the analysis of the Gombrich,Ernst, Aby Warburg: An IntellectualBiography, 2d ed., Oxford, 1986. transformation of symbols, in particular, the transformation Vischer, Robert, "On the Optical Sense of Form," in Empathy,Form and Space: of their function from to Problemszn GermanAesthetzcs 1873-1893, trans. and ed. H. Mallgraveand E. magical-associative symbols logical- Ikonomou, Santa Monica, 1994. dissociative allegorical signs. In turn, this transformation of Warburg,Aby, Dze Erneuerung der heidnischen Antzike: Gesammelte Schrften, ed. G. function is indicative of a history of experience; in which the Bing and F. Rougemont, Berlin, 1932. und mimetic identification with over into a Warburg,Aby, AusgewaihlteSchnften Wiirdzgungen,ed. D. Wuttke, Baden- phenomena passes Baden,1992. sense of distance from them. Warburg thus historicizes Robert Vischer's theory of empathy and at the same time gives a greater weight to the unconscious roots of empathic MatthewRampley is a senior lecturerin art historyand visual culture identification. It is this equation of the magical-associative at the Surrey Institute of Art & Design. He completeda Ph.D. on symbol with the unconscious that underlies Warburg's aware- Nietzsche's aesthetics at the University of St. Andrews. He has ness of the possibility of recidivism. It would be to articles on Nietzsche, and He is wrong argue published Heidegger, Riegl. currently that this thread constitutes the "essence" of his thought. I am writing a bookon Warburgand modernity[Faculty of Arts & Media, merely suggesting that if we wish to engage with Warburg, it is by SurreyInstitute of Art & Design, Falkner Road, Farnham, Surrey, attending to this dimension of his work that the encounter will GU9 7DS, GreatBritain].

67. in 268-69. Quoted Gombrich, 69. Rudolf Wittkower, "Eagle and Serpent," Journal of the Warburg and 68. Kany, 1989 (as in n. 10). Kany points out that art historical studies form Courtauld Institutes, 11, 1938-39, 293-325. about a of the total volume of research the only quarter published by Warburg 70. Fritz Saxl, "Continuity and Variation in the Meaning of Images," in Institute in Hamburg and then London. Lectures,London, 1957, I, 1.