‘(Photographic) Subject-matter: Fritz Saxl Indexing Mnemosyne: A Stratigraphy of the Warburg...

(Photographic) Subject-matter: Fritz SaxlIndexing Mnemosyne—A Stratigraphy of theWarburg Institute Photographic Collection’sSystem

Katia Mazzucco

Aby Warburg (1866–1929) created his photographic collection in Hamburg as a research tool.As new documents now reveal, in the late 1920s, a first system, focused on “subject matter,”was planned for the Bildersammlung (image collection) of Warburg’s library. The origin ofthe current iconographic arrangement has been dated to after the Institute’s move fromHamburg to London in 1933. The new source discussed here adds some elements to thisstory: the first step of the iconographic turn that occurred in London was initially designedby Fritz Saxl (1890–1948) in Hamburg within the context of work for the atlas Mnemosyne.

This paper discusses the role of Aby Warburg and Fritz Saxl in developing theKulturwissenschaftliche Bibliothek Warburg as a dual entity library, with an imagecollection ideally conceived as a counterpart of the book collection. It also aims to raisesome questions about the impact of photography on the praxis of description,interpretation, and classification of images as core questions of early “iconological studies.”

Keywords: Visual Content Classification; Art Documentary Photography; Iconography;Aby M. Warburg (1866–1929); Fritz Saxl (1890–1948); KulturwissenschaftlicheBibliothek Warburg; Mnemosyne Atlas

The photographic collection of the Warburg Institute was first assembled as a personalresearch tool by Aby Warburg (1866–1929) during his student and scholarly career,and was turned into a proper visual resource during the 1930s, after the move of thelibrary that he had founded from Hamburg to London in 1933. However, already inthe late 1920s, Fritz Saxl (1890–1948), deputy director of the library, and itsfounder, Aby Warburg, discussed the question of the arrangement of the copiouscollection of photographs and slides within the space of the KulturwissenschaftlicheBibliothek Warburg (KBW) in Hamburg. Their position regarding possible methodsand systems of classification can be studied through working papers, mainly thoseincluded within the documentation about the library building completed in 1926.The question can be traced, as well, through the photographs themselves.

As I argue, it is possible to demonstrate that the growth of the photographiccollection in the late 1920s was directly connected with the project of the unfinished

Visual Resources, Volume 30, Number 3, September 2014ISSN 0197-3762 © 2014 Taylor & Francis

http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/01973762.2014.936100

PROOF COPYcf. published editionhttp://www.tandfonline.com/toc/gvir20/30/3

Mnemosyne, Warburg’s last work, and, more generally, with one of the peculiarcharacteristics of his visual approach to “cultural studies” (Kulturwissenschaft): thepractice of employing photography for scientific disseminations, for publications,and for the installation of ad hoc exhibitions for seminars, lectures, or other academicoccasions.1 The visual atlas of the Mnemosyne itself was composed in the provisionalformat of a photographic exhibition. I present here several new documents on classi-fying content that emerged in relation to one of these scholarly dissemination events.I have selected and extracted other information from the material concerning thedialogue, not always clear, between Warburg and Saxl on the Mnemosyne.

Photographic Stratigraphy

In the autumn 1927, AbyWarburg returned to Italy for the first time since the outbreakof World War I and his bout with mental illness.2 That same year, the Kunsthistor-isches Institut of Florence was relocated to its former venue, Palazzo Guadagni at 10Piazza Santo Spirito, after spending four years in temporary quarters in the Uffizi build-ings. Warburg was invited to read the discourse for the reopening of the Institute in itsoriginal quarters on October 15, 1927. On October 29, he gave the inaugural lecture ofthe academic term at the Institute. This lecture was on the festivals depicted in thesixteenth-century Valois tapestries, one of the art treasures held at the Uffizi Gallery.

Among the working papers of the event—which include preparatory notes, differ-ent versions of the fragmentary text, and bibliographic material—we find pages withnotes concerning “panels” (Tafeln), inserted between the introductory text and theconclusion.3 As far as we know and based on documents currently identified, no pho-tographic documentation of this visual section of the lecture exist. The Tafeln can beinterpreted as panels or boards of a provisional photographic exhibition, arrangedad hoc for the occasion, as those arranged by Warburg in his library in Hamburg forseminars or lectures; or as large-size plates, privately printed for display in front ofan audience. In order to have an idea of the display of pictures on the panels, orplates, the notes referring to the Tafeln can be placed next to the diagrams includedin a folder labeled by Warburg “Medicean festivals at the Valois court on Brussels tap-estries in the Uffizi Gallery, lecture on the 29th of October 1927 at the KunsthistorischesInstitut / List of the pictures exhibited.”4 In addition, comparing these and some othernotes, we can deduce that the visual section of the lecture on the Valois tapestries in-cluded objects of different formats: some of the so-called plates—one could call themvisual-stations of the lecture—consisted of a single image, or of an illustrated book(a festival book), both possibly to be handled by Warburg and/or the participants.

This Florentine event constituted the first occasion for Warburg to introduce animportant practical aspect of his method of “art-historical cultural studies” (kunstge-schichtliches Kulturwissenschaft)5: the extensive and original recourse to photographyfor scholarly dissemination. The Institute’s Jahresbericht of 1927/1928 includes a tech-nical comment on the lecture: that the very important results of a twenty-year researchproject had been “presented in the form of a lecture with comprehensive pictorialmaterial.”6

202 Classifying Content on Paper (ca. 1900–1950)

Among some of the original photographs of this research on the Valois tapestries,still preserved within the Warburg Institute Photographic Collection in London, is onein a series taken from the Balet de la Royne, the entertainment that was staged in 1581 inParis for Caterina de’ Medici (1519–1589) and the Valois court of France, and pub-lished in 1582.7 Warburg mentioned the ballet book, and this image is included inthe diagrams of the pictures exhibited in the visual portion of his lecture, as compar-ative material.8 This photograph—though it is not the actual one exhibited—representsa distinguishing example in that it bears important metadata testifying to a liminalposition between different systems of classification for art documentary photographs—one based on work type/ style/ topography, and the other based on subjects.9

Furthermore, this is the photograph of a print originally included in a book, and itrepresents a visual document of the history of performing arts: these characteristicsrepresent an interesting complication in the identification of work type, medium,and subject of the image.

The photograph reproduces an engraving on copper by Jacques Patin (1532–1587).In it we can see several groups of people dressed in late sixteenth-century court cloth-ing, sitting and standing within a theatrical scene (Figure 1). On the left, back and rightsides, part of the scenography and machinery of the display is visible: a fountain, Circe’s

Figure 1 “Figure de la Salle” of the Théâtre du Petit Bourbon. Engraving in Baltasar de Beaujoyeulx, Baletcomique de la royne, faict aux nopces de Monsieur le duc de Joyeuse & Madamoyselle de Vaudemont sa soeur(Paris: par Adrian le Roy, Robert Ballard, & Mamert Patisson, 1582), f. 4r.

Mazzucco: (Photographic) Subject-matter 203

palace, and her enchanted beasts, and Pan playing the panpipe under the trees. In themiddle, a dancer is depicted: he is the gentilhome, who has escaped from Circe’s palace.In the prologue depicted in the print, he introduces the entertainment while looking forthe king’s help (portrayed from the back, in the first row) against the sorceress. Theengraving shows the salle of the Théâtre du Petit Bourbon as prepared for the Baletthat was performed for the marriage of Marguerite de Lorraine-Vaudemont (1564–1625), sister of the Queen Louise, with the favorite of King Henry III, the duc Annede Jouyeuse (1560/1561–1587). The allegory of Virtues and Vices is representedthrough the myth of Circe and her spells, against whom the king of France is aidedby the Olympian deities and cosmic forces. The Balet represents one of the earliesthistorical examples of a consistent dance play. Myth and deities on the stage reflectthe knowledge and approach to the classics of the period, at that very place and occa-sion. The allegory has been interpreted as homage to the court and as a mirror of thecurrent religious and political situation.

Figure 2 Verso of mount of the photograph La salle of the Théâtre du Petit Bourbon, in the folder“Ballet Comique de la Reine, 1581,” showing stamped and written metadata. London, The Warburg InstitutePhotographic Collection.


The series of photographs to which this one belongs is filed in the WarburgPhotographic Collection in the section “Social Life,” in a folder labeled “BalletComique de la Reine, 1581.” On the verso of this photograph, reproducing the pro-logue print from the Balet book, we can read some of the German and English layersof the catalog-stratigraphy (Figure 2). The “keyword” (Schlagwort) includes threeterms “Festivals / Baroque / France” (Festwesen / Barock / Frankreich). The photo-graph is marked “116 Heilwigstrasse,” which tells us that it was stamped after theconstruction of the building for the Warburg Bibliothek at that address, and thusafter 1926. The hand that wrote with pencil the name “Beauylleux”—[sic] Baltasarde Beaujoyeulx (Baldassarre di Belgioioso, “Baltazarino,” d. 1587), composer, chore-ographer, and director of the ballet—is probably that of Lothar Freund (1903–1941),a pupil of Saxl’s, who was assistant at the library beginning in 1928, working partic-ularly on photographs and slides, and it is the same hand that annotated the so-calledfirst version of the visual atlas Mnemosyne in May 1928. The current main category—“Social Life”—is printed in block letters using one of the old stamps still preservedat the Warburg Institute Photographic Collection, and it is in English, therefore it wasprinted after 1933, following the Institute’s move to London. The English stamp“University of London . . . Woburn Square” tells us that the photograph wasmarked a second time, after 1958, the year of the Warburg Institute’s move to itscurrent location.

In the final lines of his lecture on the Valois tapestries, Warburg stressed one of thegoals of his research: to grasp, according to a “comparative Psychology of Style,” the“phenomenon of the growing process . . . we denote with the keyword (Schlagwort)Baroque” as a “natural necessity historically determined” (geschichtlich-bedingte Natur-notwendigkeit). This point had been discussed through a visual series on the French fes-tivals à la antique, defined by Warburg as the “attempt to display genetically (genetischzu plazieren) in front of the audience’s eyes” the images. The scholar aimed therefore toshed light on one peculiar aspect of the development of the Baroque, the one identifiedwith the “isolation of the expressive values from the imprinting (coining work, Präg-werk) of active life (life in motion, bewegtes Leben).”10 From these fragments, to becompared and recollected with other passages from the lecture and with different doc-umentary materials, we may draw some knowledge of Warburg’s elaboration of theconcept of style; on his intellectual indebtedness to historian of culture and art JacobBurckhardt and his studies on “society and festivals,” and on the art of the Baroque;and finally, we can look with new eyes at the keyword Barock on the back of thephotograph.

This is an interpretation of archival stratification, a process of data accumulationwhich is usually a-systematic and/or unintentional. In classifying images accordingto a system with given rules, it is not possible to attach all of these data to eachsingle photograph. The cataloger selects information and then constructs cross-references. Duplicates of the picture can be arranged within different categories ofthe system—the latter possibility being viable only in the case of an arrangement,and apart from a card index, that, as much as possible, physically reproduces theconceptual system, as in the case of the Warburg Institute collections (books andimages).


The example provided by this photograph allows us to think about thematicordering and to formulate questions about description and levels of interpretation ofthe image captured and printed on this picture:

. Is the title of the book, and the name of the entertainment, the main subject?

. Are “Circe,” “Pan,” and the “sixteenth-century dancer” secondary subjects of thispicture?

. Are the content themes (classical [Gods and Myths] and contemporary persons[sixteenth-century dancer, Social Life]) depicted according to formal motifs ofsixteenth-century French visual culture? Are they literary figures?

. Considering the interpretations of the entertainment, is it the allegorical theme ofthe play that should be signaled? Could the topographic keyword “France” carryalso a reference to the symbolical interpretation of the Balet content?

. Can we consider “Festivals” as the work type or medium of this image? Are“copper print” and “illustrated (festival) book” the secondary and main worktypes?

. Is “Baroque” a chronological stylistic keyword or rather an expressional andmorphological one?

Indexing Mnemosyne in 1927

Mnemosyne would have been, when and if completed, a scientific work composed of avisual atlas, two volumes of text, a massive bibliography (a version of the KBW catalog),and possibly the reproductions of full original documents. It would have provided acollection of tools (both visual and verbal) or a portable laboratory for the scholar of“art historical cultural studies” (kunstgeschichtliches Kulturwissenschaft). And thephotographic collection was to be a resource for the library, organized according tothe library system.

The two projects overlapped in their material aspect, that is, they were both com-posed of the same type of materials, and most of the time of the same objects: photo-graphs collected, duplicated, enlarged, cut, and framed to fit the publications of thelibrary, the panels for temporary installations, and the many provisional layouts ofthe draft-plates of the atlas. The project of the visual atlas had significantly increasedthe photographic collection, and the new acquisitions, in their turn, created theurgency for systematic cataloging and arranging the photographs and slides. Planningthe process for this work in progress demanded a discussion on classification. The newbuilding for the BibliothekWarburg was built between 1925 and 1926. The move of thecollections from the library rooms of Warburg’s home to the new space was then theoccasion for a systematic rearrangement of both the book and image collections.

In January 1925, reporting about a trip to Berlin and about viewing recent librarybuildings and libraries systems, Fritz Saxl stressed, for instance, the quality of the“image collection” (Bildersammlung) of the Kunstgewerbe Museum (Museum ofApplied Art), which was perfectly ordered and presented photographs mounted onlarge cardboard, all of the same size. As for arrangement methods and shelf-marks,Saxl pointed out the Library of the Zentralinstitut für Erziehung (Central Institute


for Education) and its double system: arrangement according to accessions; and“orientation” (Orientierung) of readers presented not only to a traditional catalog,but also to a refined catalog of keywords (Schlagwortskatalog), within which eachcontent title was card-indexed many times.11 The question of a system for arrangingand occasionally displaying images also had a practical aspect, and we know thatwhile Warburg was corresponding with the architect during the completion of thelibrary building, he also discussed the question of racks for images (Bildergestelle)that would be placed in the reading room:12 these were the great wooden panelsthen used for exposing both photographs and books, on occasion of seminars, lectures,or exhibitions. Furthermore, on one of the first pages of the work diary inauguratedwith the new building, Saxl mentioned the new lamp for the enlarger: thanks to theinstruments of its photographic laboratory, at the top floor, the KBW could manipulatepictures to fit different circumstances and needs.13

The building of the Warburg Bibliothek was planned with a great reading andlecture room—the double-high rear section of the building—where the referencelibrary was then located. In the four-level front section of the building, called the“tower,” there were four stockrooms for the books.

As I have discuss elsewhere, a document reproduced in a glass slide brings out theexistence of a plan for the library system organized in four main sections, dating back toaround 1926–1927, and therefore to the rearrangement of collections in the new build-ing, and ascribable to a systematization by Saxl following Warburg’s formulations.14

The document, possibly printed as a leaflet, was probably a general scheme meant topresent the setting of the KBW field of studies and specific resources.

According to this scheme, the book collection was organized in the following foursections: Image (Bild)—Orientation (Orientierung)—Word (Wort)—Action (Hand-lung).15 For example, as to the lecture on the Valois tapestries mentioned above, thefirst section, “Image,” includes the subcategory “Applied Arts” (Kunstgewerbe). Thethird subcategory of the section “Action” is titled “Morphology of Social Life” (Mor-phologie des soziale Lebens) and includes two further subcategories, the latter including“Heraldic,” “Costumes,” “Festivals” (Festwesen, “nature of festival”), “Melodrama andOpera,” and “Theatre.” The morphological view applied to the study of social phenom-ena is particularly interesting here if connected to the question of the denotativemeaning of works of applied art and festivals. Despite the difficulties of the movesand relocations in different places in London, the structure of the book collectionremained more or less the same, though in a different disposition (Aufstellung).16

According to the same plan, the image collection (Bildersammlung) was organized inthe following four sections: Image—Word and Image—Orientation and Image—Action and Image. The section “Action and Image” includes three subcategories:“Elementary forms of social action through the imprinting power of image”(Elementarformen der sozialen Handlung vor Bildprägender Kraft)—such as “Hunting,”“Duel”; “Symbolic acts of festive active life” (symbolische Akte des festlichbewegten Lebens)—such as “Plays” (Spiele: ex. “Sword-dance,” “Moresca”) and“Parades” (Umzüge: ex. “Triumph”); “Stage and Image” (Bühne und Bild)—theatersubjects such as “Orpheus” and “Medea.” Within this plan for the image collection,we do not find a formal recall to morphology. However, the system included some


medium-specific—so to speak—subcategories. Within the first section “Image,” we findthe subcategory “materials on the history of ancient pictorial tradition” (Materialien zurGeschichte der antiken Bildtradition), which includes three specific kinds of media—and,in fact, patterns—of transmission: “mythological and astrological manuscripts,”“cassone,” “graphic arts and book illustration.” Also, the section “Orientation andImage” includes, within the subcategory “magic practice and divination” (magischePraktik und Divination), “lapidaries” (Loosbücher—books collecting materials for divina-tion), and “playing cards” (Spielkarte). The keyword Spielkarte, identified both the tradi-tion of cards practically used for divination, and their system of illustrations withsubjects representing the humanistic cosmos. This view on the material aspect ofmeaningful images is visualized in one of the unfinished plates for the atlas, dedicatedto the Tarots (Figure 3). The composition was annotated by Gertrud Bing accordingto Warburg’s original formulations: “sharing out and making manageable”(Aufteilung und Handbarmachung),17 a definition that we may apply to the visualcontent collected, arranged, handled, and spread by the production of playing cardssuch as the Tarots.

This Bildersammlung plan was not followed when the Warburg Institute Photo-graphic Collection was organized iconographically in London in the 1930s. It hadonly partial correspondence to the Schlagwort stamps we still find on the oldest photo-graphs. It was only partially applied to the practical classification of photographs. It isdocumented only in a few folders, on deep layers of the system’s “stratigraphy.” Thisplan appears as having been traced ideally specular to the one devised for the library.For instance, would the picture of the French Balet have been filed within the

Figure 3 Detail of plate 50/51 for Aby Warburg’s Mnemosyne. Arrangement of photographs of the “Tarots,” bythe Master of the Tarots, series E, ca. 1465; and lower right, Andrea Mantegna’s Parnassus, 1497, and MinervaExpelling the Vices from the Garden of Virtue, ca. 1500. Photograph: London, Warburg Institute Archive.


subcategory “Stage and Image,” section “Image and action,” or rather “graphic arts andbook illustration,” section “Image”? Or, in both of them, in different formats?

However, new evidence suggests that some nuclei of the current system of the col-lection were already organized, or at least planned, even though in a different context ofwork: the work for the composition of the Mnemosyne.

In November 1927, while Warburg was in Italy for his lecture and visit in Florence,Saxl wrote a report for him in a letter on the work in progress at the KBW.18 Thanks tothis report, we know that many of the young scholars, library assistants, and secretarieswere engaged with the photographic collection: Franz Alber, secretary and factotum ofthe library, was working, according to the instructions of Edgar Breitenbach (1903–1977), on arranging photographs, and he was acquiring a good knowledge of thelibrary’s image material (Abbildungsmaterial); Breitenbach, a pupil of Erwin Panofsky’s,also educated in library science, was responsible for the arrangement of the “systematicsection,” and had been sent to London to acquire pictures of astrological and mytho-logical manuscripts; while Hans Meyer (1900–1941)—young philologist, library assis-tant, and collaborator on the Kulturwissenschaftliche Bibliographie zum Nachleben derAntike edited by the library—19went to Munich, for the same purpose. The photo-graphic collection was growing so quickly that the special drawers would have beenfilled very soon; and the same was true for the slides: the risk was going back tochaos if the work did not continue with the same method and order. So the workfor the image collection was in progress, and urgent.

Yet, the main subject of the report is the work on the atlas. Saxl describes anarrangement of the estimated 550 images according to three main groups:

1) The reformulation (Gestaltwandel) of the ancient gods as Olympians anddemons in the Middle Ages and the restitution (Restitution) of their ancientforms in the Renaissance

2) Tradition and reception (Rezeption) of the ancient Pathos formulae in theMiddle Ages and in the Renaissance

3) Transformation (Formwandel) of individual ancient figures (antiker Gestalten)into pictorial forms (Bildformen) in Middle Ages and Renaissance.20

The first group “reformulations” includes ancient gods and deities, such asApollo as an archer or as Musagetes; Fortuna with the wheel or with the sail; andancient heroes, such as Hercules killing the boar or resting. It is evidently a draftor more likely a scheme: it does not include the canonical system of the Olympians(Jupiter is missing, for instance), nor does it include a range of heroes and person-ifications of the classical tradition—Hercules and Fortuna are the only examplesrepresented.

The second group is a schematization of the theory of the “Pathos formulae”(Pathosformeln) and of their “posthumous life” (Nachleben), which was elaboratedbyWarburg in his study on Albrecht Dürer.21 It is organized according to subcategoriesof iconographic subjects connected to figures of the ancient tradition—such as “Pain—Laocoon” (the ancient statue depicting Laocoon and his sons, in the Vatican Museums)or “Infanticide—Medea,” “Human sacrifice—sacrifice of Iphigenia”—and gestures


connected to specific formulations—such as “Dying/Tornabuoni—Alcestis” (themarble relief attributed to Andrea Verrocchio depicting death during childbirth in1477 of Francesca Tornabuoni, in the Bargello Museum, as inspired by ancientmodels, such as the sarcophagi depicting the myth of Alcestis), or “Mourning/thedead Christ.”

The third group includes both figures and scene of the classical tradition and theirtransformations into “pictorial forms” and themes during the course of the medievaland into Renaissance tradition, such as the “Nymph” (Ninfa), a subcategory, whichincludes dancing figures, such as Judith; or bearing figures, such as the girl carryinga basket; or flying and progressing figures, such as the angel.22

This structure has almost no correspondences with what is currently known andidentified as the visual atlas—based on the recently published sequence of photographstaken in 1929, depicting the last sequence of pictures composed by Warburg on largescale panels, as sketches for the plates of the atlas of Mnemosyne.23 Nor does it havecorrespondences with the earlier two versions of the atlas—recorded in May 1928and later in September 1928.

In this index, we read interesting reformulations of Warburg’s terms: “landscapeformulae” (third group), for instance, a content category applied to a non-figuregenre, namely to a kind of extra-iconographic field of analysis. And we also find herea schematization of Warburg’s inventions, such as the figure of the “Nymph” and herdifferent subcategories, including, for example, the epiphany in the shape of an angel.Yet, the strict antiquity/Middle Ages/Renaissance dynamic does not reflect the concep-tual content of the Mnemosyne project, the composition of single plates, the historicalconception, or philosophy of history, which are the bases of the whole work.

This scheme seems rather to be Fritz Saxl’s programmatic index for the contents ofthe atlas—those already collected and also those yet to be completed. And it also seems tobe Saxl’s vision of what the visual atlas should have included and should have been, orbetter, it reflects schematically Saxl’s thought on the dynamics of cultural transmission.Here we have a clearer iconographic approach in that, for instance, the index is system-atically devoted to works of visual art in their pure visual qualities, excerpted from theircontext, and organized according to a special point of view on dynamics of the classicaltradition—namely grasped through the terms “reformulation,” “restitution,” “tradition,”“reception,” or “transformation.” And we have only two concessions to non-subjectmatters, including the question of work type, in connection with two special examples:the Pathos formula of “Pain,” as Laocoon, in different shapes and work types; and that of“Mourning,” within the context of ancient private tombs (second main group).

In fact, this index includes an early formulation of two of the current sections ofthe Warburg Photographic Collection: the first main group (reformulations and resti-tutions) can be traced into the current section “Gods and Myths”; the second maingroup (tradition and reception of Pathos formulae) together with the third (transfor-mation of ancient figures, such as the Ninfa) can be traced, and have been partiallyincorporated with their old folders in the current section “Gestures” (Figure 4).

Some material of the unfinished project for the visual atlas of the Mnemosyne,including photographs and work papers like this index, will therefore be rearrangedand transformed into the “Saxl-based” iconographic system of some sections of the


Photographic Collection, then later systematically implemented in London, thanks tothe work of Rudolf Wittkower (1901–1971), the curator of the collection beginning in1933.

(Which) Science for Images; (What) Classification of Pictures:Panofsky and Saxl (1931–1955)

The main source typically referred to as a theory for iconographic classification is thefamous three-level scheme of interpretation of works of visual art by Erwin Panofsky(1892–1968). Panofsky’s system was first presented at the Kant-Gesellschaft in Kielon May 20, 1931, and then published in 1932 in Germany, as a final overview of atheoretical essay, “On the Problem of Describing and Interpreting the Works ofVisual Art.”24 As Panofsky explains in the first footnote, the essay “explores the prin-ciples that guide an art historian particularly interested in iconographic interpretation(ikonografisches Deutungsarbeit) in his practical work. The task of the author thereforeis not to examine the problems of such interpretative work systematically but rather toexemplify its methodological consequences.”

The object of the first level of interpretation was here defined as “sense of thephenomenon” (Phänomensinn)—to be distinguished in factual and expressive sense—interpreted through the “subjective source” of the “vital experience of being”(vitale Daseinserfahrung) and through the “objective corrective” of the history of

Figure 4 Folder “Flucht”/ “Fleeing.” London, Warburg Institute Photographic Collection.


styles. The object of the second level of interpretation was the “sense of meaning”(Bedeutungssinn), interpreted through “literary knowledge” and through the correctiveof the “history of types.” The object of the third level was the “documentary sense /essential sense” (Dokumentsinn / Wesensinn), seen through the “worldview Ur-behav-ior” (weltanschauliches Urverhalten) and through “general intellectual history.”

In 1939, this scheme was reformulated and discussed in English in “Introductory”in Studies in Iconology.25 The reformulation could be shown schematically as follows:first level—“pre-iconographical description”—“primary or natural subject matter”(factual, expressional), identification of “pure forms” (natural objects, events, expres-sional qualities), recognition of “artistic-motifs” through the “equipment” of “practicalexperience,” and through the “controlling principle” of the “history of style”; secondlevel—“iconographical analysis in a narrower sense”—“secondary or conventionalsubject matter,” connection of “artistic motifs” with “themes or concepts,” identifica-tion of “images” (personifications or symbols), “stories” (allegorical idea as superim-posed meaning), “allegories” (combination of personifications or symbols) throughthe “knowledge of literary sources,” and through the “history of types”; third level—“iconographical interpretation in a deeper sense”—ascertaining the “intrinsicmeaning or content” (“symbolical values”) through the “synthetic intuition” (“essentialtendencies of the human mind,”Weltanschauung), and through the “history of culturalsymptoms or symbols.”

In 1955, the scheme was again reformulated as the first chapter of Meaning in theVisual Arts:26 the second level was defined as “iconographical analysis” and the thirdlevel became that of “iconological interpretation.”

One focus of the critical reading of Panofsky’s scheme in its most diffuse 1955version has been the problematic reformulation in English of a theory based on aGerman philosophical lexicon: Sinn—pointing at the core question—which becomes“subject matter.” Also under discussion was the reformulation of the field of compe-tencies and even the name of this hermeneutic of images: iconography and iconology.27

In 1925, Panofsky had already published an essay formulating the theoretical prin-ciples for “Art studies” (Kunstwissenschaft), which were excerpted from the theory andthe history of art considered, respectively, as a system of concepts for the formulation ofartistic problems, and as a science describing the sensible quality of works of art,through a pure morphological and stylistic operation. The result of the interconnectionof the two was defined as a “discipline of interpretation aimed at understanding theKunstwollen.”28

Another reference point along these lines is the lecture on “Classical Mythology inMediaeval Art” delivered at the Department of Fine Arts at Princeton University andpublished in 1933 by Panofsky and Saxl.29 The main question discussed in the essay,which is the principle of disjunction of classical form and content, would later bedeveloped by Panofsky in Renaissance and Renascences.30 The text was meant to“demonstrate” the methods of research developed by Aby Warburg and his followers.31

But, as has been noted, this demonstration represents more of a transformation than anapplication of the Warburg approach.32 Within the text of the lecture, we may traceadaptations of Warburg’s inventions: above all, Pathosformeln, “formulae of classicalart,” or “artistic formulae by which… [physical] qualities [, emotions] and passions


had been expressed in the classical style,”33 while the sphere of meaning of the expres-sion bewegten Lebens could be recalled by the “rehabilitation or even rediscovery of apurely ‘human’ vitality” concerning the sphere of social life and its representation.34

And we can read as well some of the crucial terms of this English lexicon adoptedby Panofsky in his iconological essays to come. “Rebirth,” “reintegration,” “revival,”“assimilation,” and “transformation” indicate different renascences and Renaissancephenomena—the latter as a “reunion of classical thought and feeling with classicalform and expression.” So for the expression “subject matter”—Sinn, in the 1931lecture for the Kant-Gesellschaft—that was largely adopted in this essay: theseGerman and English formulations are more or less coincidental, and should be contex-tualised in the “practical experience of images and books as structured by the library inwhich (Panofsky) mainly worked in Hamburg and in relation to his great collaboratorof the period, namely Fritz Saxl.”35

In those same years, after Warburg’s death, Saxl was working on the posthumousGesammelte Schriften of the scholar, the first two volumes of which were published byTeubner in Berlin in 1932. In this, he was still working on the disposition (Aufstellung)for the four sections of the book and image collections, as proven by the reuse of the1926–1927 plan—from the above-mentioned leaflet—for a text presenting a differentarrangement of the library around 1931 to 1932.36 In 1931, for his lecture on “The Ex-pressive Gestures in Fine Arts,” Saxl discussed some of the same concepts that can benoticed in the 1927 report as well as in the Princeton lecture.37 The photographs andthe work on the system of the photographic collection were also related to the 1931lecture, for which Saxl displayed the very exemplification of his “atlas of gestures”:here, the panels show regular “disjunction-rows” of ancient, medieval, and Renaissanceworks of art; all of the pictures are framed on cardboard and show decontextualized

Figure 5 Boards with photographs displaying “Mänade und Satyr,” “Klage,” and “Conclamatio” (L) and “dietragische Maske in der Physiognomik des Schreins” (R), for Fritz Saxl’s lecture “Die Ausdrucksgebärden der bil-denden Kunst,” 1931, in the Kulturwissenschaftliche Bibliothek Warburg reading room, Hamburg. Photographs:London, Warburg Institute Archive.


details of the works of art recorded; most of the works are exhibited and interpreted asexamples of the dynamics of disjunction of form and content, and of the restitution ofclassical forms (Figure 5). This is indeed an example of an experiment of what wouldlater be called the “Hamburg school” of iconography associated with a peculiar practiceof employing photography—namely, interpretative and rhetorical display of pictures,as well as methodological visual taxonomy.

How far was “the task of exemplifying the methodological consequences of suchinterpretative work” supported, or in some specific respect even presupposed, by thepractice of art documentary photography? In other words, what has been the impactof photography on the praxis of description, interpretation, and classification ofimages as core questions of the early iconographic and/or iconological studies? Arenot photographs themselves descriptions of the work of art, or ekphrasis, in visualterms? Given the interpretative values of framing, multiple shots, and details selected,may we not see the photographs—arranged within the folders of a collection, anarchive, an index, or displayed for exhibition and organized according to a givenidea of the works of art recorded—as visual interpretations, on different levels, ofthe work of art? I will not formulate any conclusive points; alternatively, on the basisof materials discussed here, I will conclude by raising some issues on the question ofclassification of visual content.

The great classifying projects of the past century and of the last decades, linked withthe development of automation and visual databases, and with the shift from analog todigital photography, show us how far the creation of standards of visual quality and ofdescription are carried forward in intellectual projects.38

In comparing the two main iconographic systems of comprehensive iconographicclassification, namely the Index of Christian Art, founded by Charles Rufus Morey(1877–1955) at Princeton University in 1917, and Iconclass, developed by Henri vande Waal (1910–1972) in Leiden, in the Netherlands, in the early 1950s, the auspiceof a compromise between the great virtues of the two has emerged. One of the ques-tions at stake is the meaning of the nonpictorial qualities of a work of art: the worktype, the denotative and functional meaning of the object, the material aspect of histor-ical and intellectual context of production, diffusion, and acquisition. On the one hand,there is the “ad hoc hybridity and Anglo-Saxon positivism, that is, the indissoluble linkforged between the subject of a work of art and its design,” or “behaviorism” of theIndex; on the other, the “logic consistency and comprehensiveness” in approachingsubject matter, or “idealism” of Iconclass.39

Focusing on the indexing practice at the basis of these kinds of systems, originallydeveloped as card indexes associated with paper reproductions, and far from the digitalsystems to come, Anna C. Esmeijer and William S. Heckscher, in a review of the Indexof Christian Art, stated:

There are two types of indexes. One is relatively old and time-honoured: theIndex rerum et nominum.… There is, however, another type: the index thatprecedes the work-to-come or that may be an end in itself.…Many a learnedinstitution has launched a card-file system—most bibliographical or lexico-graphical in nature. Few are useful, fewer have managed to survive.40


One of the authors of this quote, the scholar William Heckscher (1904–1999), wasa second generation hagiographer of iconography.41 The text of the review helps as wellin identifying at least two critical questions in the early praxis of classification of visualcontent. First, the physical separation and different arrangement of cards (verbal dataarranged according to iconography) from photographs (visual data arranged accordingto material and/or technique and further subdivided by their current location)—whilemost of the time, not only in medieval art, word and image are “closely allied, if notinseparable.”42 Second, a reductive treatment of verbal data (as for instance inscrip-tions) integrated into the images. Furthermore, in the reviewers’ conclusion, the textcomes back to the Hamburg school, underlining the possibility of a more comprehen-sive panorama of content categories, which might include, in addiction to “Scenes,”“Figures,” “Objects,” “Nature,” “Personifications of abstract concepts,” “symbolicalmeaning,” also a Warburgian invention, that of the “Pathos formulae” (“rhetoricalforms…which keep their freshness through the ages” and their range of meaning).43

The case presented above could then be discussed within the framework of com-petencies of library science, theory of visual documentation, and, in a wider perspec-tive, of epistemology. When further scrutinized, the question represents a point ofview, within the disciplinary context of art history, on the position of photographybetween the visual sphere and the verbal analytical approach to images. In theirturn, art historical practices of analog photographs, in their different methodologicaldeclinations, may contribute to redefining the nature or essence of photography, assomething in between different formats of sediments of vision, and a hermeneuticaldevice for images. Within this critical frame are certainly some illustrious membersof the “Hamburg School” of art history, who, in the first decades of the twentiethcentury, successfully applied analog photography to the documentation of works ofart, which also coincided with the early debate on photographic reproduction ofworks of art.44

Acknowledgments

This paper collects some results of a research-in-progress essay on the history of theWarburg Institute Photographic Collection. The work with Clare Hills Nova and JasElsner for the publication of my last paper on this topic has been extremely valuableand thought provoking as well as the discussion with all the participants at the confer-ence and round table, “Classifying Content Photographic Collections and Theories ofThematic Ordering,” held at the Warburg Institute on May 20, 2013. I would like tothank the academic staff of the Warburg Institute Photographic Collection andArchive and of the Photothek of the Kunsthistorisches Insitut in Florenz for supportand valuable comments on research during my visits. I would extend my gratitudefor English editing to Henry Kerney and Christine Sundt.

KATIA MAZZUCCO is a researcher specializing in history of art and photography. Sheholds a PhD in art history and classical tradition from the University of Siena (2006),and has been a post-doctoral fellow at the IUAV University in Venice (2008–2009),post-doctoral short-term fellow at the Photothek of the Kunsthistorisches Institut inFlorenz, and at the Warburg Institute in London (2010). She has been British Academy


Visiting Scholar 2011–2012 and she is currently working on restoration and photography atthe Kunsthistorisches Institut in Florenz thanks the support of the Istituto Veneto per iBeni Culturali di Venezia “Progetto Europa Restauro.”

1 Unless otherwise noted, all information on the Kulturwissenschaftliche BibliothekWarburg (KBW) series of images and exhibitions (1925–1943) and on the visualatlas Mnemosyne are taken from my PhD thesis “Il progetto Mnemosyne di AbyWarburg,” University of Siena, June 2006, and from my articles: “Mnemosyne, ilnome della memoria. Bilderdemonstration, Bilderreihen, Bilderatlas: Una cronologiadocumentaria del progetto warburghiano,”Quaderni del Centro Warburg Italia III, no.4–6 (2006–2008): 139–203 (rev. “Mnemosyne: Chronologiczna prezentacjadokumentów zwiazanych z Atlasem Warburga,” Konteksty LXV, nos. 2–3 (2011):120–42); “Quarant’anni di bibliofilia e iconofilia. Osservazioni sul montaggiodel libro Mnemosyne di Aby Warburg,” Rivista di Storia della Filosofia 2 (2011):303–38.

2 Among the essays on Warburg’s mental illness and his years in the clinic in Kreuzlin-gen directed by Ludwig Binswanger, see: Michael Diers, “Kreuzlingen Passion,” Kriti-sche Berichte 7 (1979): 5–14; Ludwig Binswanger and Aby Warburg, La guarigioneinfinita: Storia clinica di Aby Warburg, ed. Davide Stimilli (Vicenza: Neri Pozza, 2005).

3 Warburg Institute Archive (WIA) III.98.6.1, 67–80.4 WIA III.108.12, 14–43. Introductory text and conclusion, as well as pictures of the di-

agrams, are included in Aby Warburg, Gesammelte Schriften—Studienausgabe: Bilder-reihen und Ausstellungen, ed. Uwe Fleckner and Isabella Woldt (Berlin: AkademieVerlag, 2012), 235–73.

5 WIA III.113.6, working papers for a seminar, November 1927–February 1928, 118:“Über die Methode einer kunstgeschichtlichen Kulturwissenschaft.”

6 Kunsthistorisches Institut in Florenz. Jahresbericht (1927–1928): 3–4, 17.7 Baltasar de Beaujoyeulx, Balet comique de la royne, faict aux nopces de Monsieur le duc

de Joyeuse & Madamoyselle de Vaudemont sa soeur (Paris: par Adrian le Roy, RobertBallard, & Mamert Patisson, 1582); available online at http://gallica.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/btv1b86083002/f9.image.r=.langEN.

8 WIA III.108.12, 29.9 This following might be read as an account of photo-archival research experience; I

would here recall the issues raised by Christine L. Sundt in “Materials and Objects:Challenging Art History,” Visual Resources 29, no. 3 (September 2013): 147–50. In awider perspective, these arguments also touch the question of documentary value ofimages (or visual objects) and the historical method. On “objectuality” of photographsand historical studies, see among her recent contributions: Elizabeth Edwards, TheCamera as Historian: Amateur Photographers and Historical Imagination, 1885–1918(Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2012).

10 WIA III.98.6.1, 81.11 WIA I 4.3.2 Fritz Saxl, report on his trip to Berlin, January 13–15, 1925.12 WIA, General Correspondence (GC), Aby Warburg to Gerhard Langmaak, May 21,

1926; cf. WIA I.4.4, correspondence with Langmaak.13 WIA III.15.1.1, “Tagebücher der KBW” (TB, Working diaries) 1, Saxl, September

1,1926; cf. WIA III.15.3.3, TB 9, Bing, September 9, 1929. Aby Warburg, GesammelteSchriften—Studienausgabe: Tagebücher der KBW, ed. Karen Michels and CharlotteSchoell-Glass (Berlin: Akademie Verlag, 2001).


14 I am not going to recall this question, except in a few specific aspects. This document isincluded and commented in: Katia Mazzucco “Images on the Move: Some Notes onthe Bibliothek Warburg Bildersammlung (Hamburg) and the Warburg Institute Pho-tographic Collection (London),” Art Libraries Journal 38, no. 4 (2013): 16–24; andKatia Mazzucco “L’iconoteca Warburg di Amburgo: Documenti per una storia dellaPhotographic Collection del Warburg Institute,” Quaderni Storici, no. 3 (December2012): 857–87.

15 The question of the KBW Aufstellung has been largely debated; among the recentcontributions, see those collected in Common Knowledge 18, no. 1 (2012) and therelated bibliography.

16 Jill Kraye, “Unpacking the Warburg Library,” Common Knowledge 18, no. 1 (2012):117–27.

17 WIA III.104.1, “Mnemosyne,” Gertrud Bing, synopsis of the plates.18 WIA Ia 1.7, “Annual Report,” Fritz Saxl, TS draft with some MS annotations, dated

November 15, 1927, 19 fols; cf. WIA, GC, Fritz Saxl to Aby Warburg, November15, 1927.

19 Bibliothek Warburg, Kulturwissenschaftliche Bibliographie zum Nachleben der Antike.Bd. 1, Die Erscheinungen des Jahres 1931, ed. Hans Meier, Richard Newald, andEdgar Wind (Leipzig: Teubner, 1934); cf. Warburg Institute, A Bibliography on the Sur-vival of the Classics (London: Cassell, 1938).

20 WIA Ia 1.7, “Annual Report,” Fritz Saxl, 13.The full outline of subjects is reproducedin translation in the Appendix at the end of this article.

21 Aby Warburg, “Dürer und die italienische Antike,” Verhandlungen der 48: Versamm-lung deutscher Philologen und Schulmänner in Hamburg 1905 (Leipzig: 1906), 55–60; cf.Marcus Andrew Hurttig, Thomas Ketelsen, Ulrich Rehm, and Claudia Wedepohl,eds., Die entfesselte Antike: Aby Warburg und die Geburt der Pathosformel (Köln:Verlag der Buchhandlung Walther König, 2012).

22 Cf. the translation of the index here in the Appendix.23 Aby Warburg, Gesammelte Schriften—Studienausgabe: Der Bilderatlas Mnemosyne, ed.

Martin Warnke and Claudia Brink (Berlin: Akademie Verlag, [2000] 2008).24 Erwin Panofsky, “Zum Problem der Beschreibung und Inhaltsdeutung von Werken

der bildenden Kunst,” Logos 21 (1932): 103–19; “On the Problem of Describing andInterpreting Works of the Visual Arts,” tr. Jas Elsner and Katharina Lorenz, CriticalInquiry 38, no. 3 (Spring 2012): 467–82.

25 “Introductory,” in Erwin Panofsky, Studies in Iconology: Humanistic Themes in the Artof the Renaissance (New York: Oxford University Press, 1939), 3–17.

26 “Iconography and Iconology: An Introduction to the Study of Renaissance Art,” inErwin Panofsky, Meaning in the Visual Arts: Papers in and on Art History (GardenCity, NY: Doubleday, 1955), 26–54.

27 Among the vast bibliography on the argument, I would here indicate: one contributionlinked to the topics of this special issue: Roelof van Straten, “Panofsky and Iconclass,”Artibus et Historiae 7, no. 13 (1986): 165–81; and one recent essay on the question by theEnglish translators of the 1932 essay by Panofsky: Jas Elsner andKatharina Lorenz, “TheGenesis of Iconology,” Critical Inquiry 38, no. 3 (Spring 2012): 483–512.

28 Erwin Panofsky, “Über das Verhältnis der Kunstgeschichte zur Kunsttheorie,”Zeitschrift für Ästhetik und allgemeine Kunstwissenschaft 18 (1925): 129–61; KatharinaLorenz and Jas Elsner, trans., “On the Relationship of Art History and Art Theory:


Towards the Possibility of a Fundamental System of Concepts for a Science of Art,”Critical Inquiry 35 (Autumn 2008): 43–71.

29 Erwin Panofsky and Fritz Saxl, “Classical Mythology in Mediaeval Art,” MetropolitanMuseum Studies 4, no. 2 (March 1933): 228–80. In the first footnote, Panofsky also stress-es that the text “resulted, however, from the common endeavour of the two authors, whoin their research were assisted by the Hamburg students of art history,” and that he felt“indebted to Mrs. Margaret Barr for her participation in the English wording.”

30 Erwin Panofsky, Renaissance and Renascences in Western Art (New York: Harper &Row, 1969).

31 Panofsky and Saxl, “Classical Mythology,” 229.32 Georges Didi-Huberman, “Artistic Survival: Panofsky vs. Warburg and the Exorcism

of Impure Time,” Common Knowledge 9, no. 2 (Spring 2003): 273–85.33 Panofsky and Saxl, “Classical Mythology,” 270.34 Panofsky and Saxl, “Classical Mythology,” 272.35 Jas Elsner and Claire Hills-Nova, “Viewpoint: Exiles and Émigrés, Libraries and Image

Collections: The Intellectual Legacy,” in Jas Elsner and Claire Hills-Nova, eds., “Exilesand Émigrés, Libraries and Image Collections: the Intellectual Legacy,” Art LibrariesJournal 38, no. 4 (2013): 4.

36 WIA, I.9.14.3, “Kulturwissenschaftliche Bibliothek Warburg. Grundriß der Bücher-aufstellung und Bildersammlung,” ca. 1931–1932; on this document and the relativebibliography, cf. Mazzucco, “L’iconoteca Warburg.”

37 Fritz Saxl, “Die Ausdrucksgebärden der bildenden Kunst,” in Bericht über den XII.Kongreß der Deutschen Gesellschaft für Psychologie in Hamburg, April 12–16, 1931, inAuftrage der Deutschen Gesellschaft für Psychologie, ed. Gustav Kafka (Jena: Verlagvon Gustav Fischer, 1932), 13–25; rpt. in Fritz Saxl, Gebärde, Form, Ausdruck: ZweiUntersuchungen, ed. Pablo Schneider (Zurich: Diaphanes, 2012). A first differentinterpretation of these panels is in Ilsebill Barta Fliedl and Christoph Geissmar,eds., Die Beredsamkeit des Leibes. Zur Körpersprache in der Kunst, Veröffentlichungder Albertina 31 (Salzburg-Vienna: Residenz Verlag, 1992).

38 Laura Corti and Marilyn Schmidt, eds., Automatic Processing of Art History Data andDocuments, Scuola Normale Superiore, Pisa, J. Paul Getty Trust, Los Angeles, interna-tional conference proceedings (Florence: Regione Toscana, 1984); Murtha Baca andPatricia Harpring, eds., “Art Information Task Force: Categories for the Descriptionof Works of Art,” Visual Resources 11, no. 3–4 (1996).

39 Irvin Lavin, “Iconography as a Humanistic Discipline (Iconography at the Cross-roads),” in Brendan Cassidy, ed., Iconography at the Crossroads (Princeton, NJ:Index of Christian Art, Princeton University, 1993), 33–42. “Behaviourist” and“Idealist” are the terms suggested to Lavin for this distinction by LeendertD. Couprie, who was then director of Iconclass. It is interesting to stress that thecontext of a first discussion of these questions had been the Automatic Processing con-ference, cf. Irvin Lavin “Iconography,” in Corti and Schmidt, Automatic Processing,323–31.

40 Anna C. Esmeijer andWilliam S. Heckscher, “The Index of Christian Art,” The Indexer3, no. 4 (1962–1963): 97–119.

41 See Charlotte Schoell-Glass and Elizabeth L. Sears, Verzetteln als Methode: Der human-istische Ikonologe William S. Heckscher (1904–1999), Hamburger Forschungen zurKunstgeschichte 6 (Berlin: Akademie Verlag, 2008).

42 Esmeijer and Heckscher, “Index of Christian Art,” 116.


43 Esmeijer and Heckscher, “Index of Christian Art,” 118.44 For a critical overview on art history and photography, see Costanza Caraffa, ed., Photo

Archives and the Photographic Memory of Art History (Berlin: Deutscher Kunstverlag,2011).

45 WIA Ia 1.7, “Annual Report,” Fritz Saxl, 13–18. The purpose of this provisional trans-lation of the German text is to provide the reader with the complete list of categoriesand subcategories outlined by Saxl for the index. I will discuss the full report and otherrelated documents in a forthcoming essay.

Appendix

Fritz Saxl’s Index for the Material of the Mnemosyne Atlas, November 192745

In my estimate, the Atlas includes, in its actual formulation, 550 images, arranged according tothree groups:

1) The reformulation (Gestaltwandel) of the ancient gods as Olympians and demons in theMiddle Ages and the restitution (Restitution) of their ancient forms in the Reinassance

2) Tradition and reception (Rezeption) of the ancient Pathos formulae in the Middle Agesand in the Renaissance

3) Transformation (Formwandel) of individual ancient figures (antiker Gestalten) into pic-torial forms (Bildformen) in the Middle Ages and Renaissance

First main groupI Apollo1) as an archer2) Musagetes of the Mount of the Muses

II Neptune1) standing, with the trident2) charioteer

III Bacchus1) with the cup2) Bacchus and Ariadne

IV Pan1) as a rider2) as god of all things (Allgott) and god of the music

V Venus1) Venus Pudica2) resting Venus (alone and with Mars)3) birth of Venus

VI PallasVII Saturn

1) ancient shape (antikisierend)2) in medieval costume (Verkleidung)3) devouring children4) on the dragon chariot

VIII Sol1) the chariot, frontal2) the chariot, in profile


IX Mercury1) late ancient tradition2) Cyriacus’s Mercury

X AtlasXI Hercules1) killing the boar2) wrestling with the lion3) resting

XII Fortuna1) with the wheel2) with the cornucopia3) with the sail4) with the forelock

XIII The Sphinx

The second main group includes collections of Pathos formulae, and namely:I Pain—Laocoon1) the posthumous life (Nachleben) of the book illustrations2) the ancient wall paintings3) an ancient sculptural relief4) the recovered group

II Infanticide—MedeaIII Human sacrifice1) sacrifice of Iphigenia2) sacrifice of Polyxena

IV Death of the god1) Orpheus2) Pentheus3) Sebastian—Marsyas4) Amor—Sebastian5) Moresca and battle for the breeches

V Dying1) Tornabuoni—Alcestis2) Sassetti—Meleagaer3) Christ—Adonis4) transportation of the body5) Niobide—David

VI Mourning1) the dead Christ2) antique private tombs3) mourning figures; entombment by Giotto and Donatello4) the grieving genre figures (trauernde Genrefiguren) of the early Renaissance and their

modelsVII Abduction

1) Proserpina, the progression (Fortschreiten)2) Helena, the carrying off (Forttragen)

VIII Pursuit1) Hercules and Dejanira2) Daphne


IX TriumphX Grasping the head1) Perseus with Medusa—Gul-head2) Hercules with the Medusa head3) the ancient Maenad4) Judith5) the ancient battle group with the laid down- rushed- figure (Amazonomachy, battle

with the centaurs)6) Pallas and the centaur

The third main group includes individual figures and single scene, namely:

I The Nymph1) dancing figure

a) individual: Judithb) dancing couplec) dancing group

2) the Musesa) Playerb) Pensive

3) the Bearera) carrying the basket with the handb) carrying the basket on the head

4) the Ninfa with the sail-like veil5) Flying

a) Spesb) the Angel of the Annunciationc) the Angel carrying the mandorla

6) Fleeing, with loose hairII The Thinker1) portrait of Aristotle2) representation of the philosophical dialogue3) the philosophers’ school

III Man and the Environment1) man and beast

a) Meleager huntb) temptation of St. Anthony

2) the landscape formulae (Landschaftsformeln)3) the image (Bildnis) of Rome


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