Aby Warburg S Pentimento

$E\:DUEXUJ૷V3HQWLPHQWR
'DYLGH6WLPLOOL
The Yearbook of Comparative Literature, Volume 56, 2010, pp. 140-175

(Article)
3XEOLVKHGE\8QLYHUVLW\RI7RURQWR3UHVV
DOI: 10.1353/cgl.2010.0002
For additional information about this article

http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/cgl/summary/v056/56.stimilli.html
Access provided by Florida Atlantic University (27 Feb 2016 21:20 GMT)
Aby Warburg’s Pentimento
Davide Stimilli
in tenui labor
Georg. 4, 6
A
by Warburg’s1 first teaching engagement after his return from Kreu-
zlingen,2 the 1925 seminar on “The Significance of Antiquity for the
Stylistic Change in the Italian Art of the Early Renaissance” (“Die
Bedeutung der Antike für den stilistischen Wandel in der italienischen Kunst
der Frührenaissance”), was also the first occasion on which he could claim
the title of professor that he had been granted in absentia by the recently
established University of Hamburg.3 The significance of this test can be un-
derstood both as a further confirmation of his full recovery4 and as the in-
1 The research for this essay has been con- 2007) 7-25.
ducted thanks to the award of a Senior 3 The University was founded in 1919;
Saxl Fellowship at the Archive of the War- Warburg was granted the title of professor
burg Institute in London. The author also while still in Kreuzlingen. Cf. Michael Di-
wishes to thank the University of Colo- ers, Warburg aus Briefen. Kommentare zu
rado, Boulder, for its generous support in den Kopierbüchern der Jahren 1905-1918
the form of a Center for Humanities and (Berlin: Akademie-Verlag 1995) 62.
the Arts Graduate Committee on the Arts 4 Ludwig Binswanger had already given his
and Humanities Grant, a Kayden Award, placet once Warburg delivered his first
and a College of Arts & Sciences Dean’s public lecture after his return, the lecture
Fund for Excellence Grant. in memory of Franz Boll, on April 25,
2 Warburg was hospitalized in various insti- 1925: cf. Binswanger’s letter to Warburg
tutions after suffering a nervous break- on August 14, 1925 in Die unendliche
down in November 1918. He was released Heilung 141, and my edition of the lec-
from Ludwig Binswanger’s Bellevue ture in Aby Warburg, “Per Monstra ad
Sanatorium on August 12, 1924. For an Sphaeram”: Sternglaube und Bilddeutung.
overview of Warburg’s clinical history, cf. Vortrag in Gedenken an Franz Boll und an-
my introduction “Tinctura Warburgii,” dere Schriften 1923 bis 1925, ed. Davide
in Aby Warburg-Ludwig Binswanger, Die Stimilli with Claudia Wedepohl (Ham-
unendliche Heilung, ed. Davide Stimilli burg: Dölling und Galitz 2008) 63-127.
and Chantal Marazia (Berlin: diaphanes
Aby Warburg’s Pentimento 141
augural moment of a new phase of his life, the last fruitful years of activity
still granted to him, years he liked to refer to as his “haymaking in a thun-
derstorm” (“Heuernte bei Gewitter”).5 One may also understand how, at the
end of the seminar, he could breathe a sigh of relief at having overcome the
hurdle: “This part of my existence has gone—thus far—as desired.”6
On the opposite end, in preparing its opening meeting on November 25,
1925, Warburg had felt the need to put the proceedings under the auspices
of two “guiding mottoes” (“Leit-Wahlsprüche”) that also served as “guid-
ing principles” (“Leitsätze”) for the entire seminar:7 “[1.] We seek out our
ignorance and attack it wherever we find it 2. God is in the detail” (“Wir
suchen unsere Ignoranz auf und schlagen sie, wo wir sie finden 2. Der liebe
Gott steckt im Detail”).8 On the next page of his notes for that meeting,
Warburg underscores the importance of his idiosyncratic ars nesciendi 9 before
repeating his most famous motto, to which he appends, without elaborating
further, the note: “Improvement of the method 1902” (“Verbesserung der
Methode 1902”).10
As far as I know, Wuttke is the only interpreter who has commented upon
this laconic remark,11 and he has taken it as a programmatic statement in
nuce: in other words, what Warburg was aiming for with his 1925 seminar
would be an improvement over the method of 1902, and the motto would
hence be meant to sum up the new approach. It seems, however, to be more
consistent with the overall retrospective tone of the entries and with the
claim that the second motto had been inspired by the “example of the great
German philologists”—above all Hermann Usener, whose lectures he had
attended in Bonn12—to assume that the improvement of method to which
5 Gertrud Bing’s translation, in her bio- hannes Geffcken, January 16, 1926.
graphical sketch “Fritz Saxl (1890-1948): 8 WIA III.113.9., folder inscribed Einfüh-
A Memoir,” Fritz Saxl (1890-1948): A rung, fol. [2]. Cf. Aby Warburg, Aus-
Volume of Memorial Essays from his friends gewählte Schriften und Würdigungen, ed.
in England, ed. D. J. Gordon (London: Dieter Wuttke, 3rd ed, (Baden-Baden:
Nelson 1957) 17. Koerner 1992) 618.
6 Warburg Institute Archive (henceforth: 9 Max Adolph Warburg, Aby’s son, pointed
WIA) III.113.9., quarto notebook, in- out that its formulation is indebted to
scribed by Warburg on the cover: Kultur- General von Moltke’s maxim: “We seek
wissenschaftliche Bibliothek Warburg W.S. out our enemy and attack him wherever
26/27 Uebungen W.S. – 1925/26. S.S. we find him.” (“Wir suchen den Feind auf
26, 21. As he proudly records, he spoke und schlagen ihn, wo wir ihn finden”).
for two hours and a half with the visual Warburgismen, WIA, III.17.2., fol. 33.
aid of 164 slides to an audience includ- 10 WIA III.113.9., fol. [3].
ing, among others, Ernst Cassirer, Erwin 11 Dieter Wuttke, “Nachwort,” Warburg,
Panofsky, and Paul Ruben (on whom see Ausgewählte Schriften und Würdigungen,
below, 158) and even lead afterwards a 623. Cf. also Wuttke, Aby Warburgs Meth-
tour of the Library. ode als Anregung und Aufgabe (4th ed.,
7 As he claims in a letter to Johannes Gef- Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz 1990).
fcken, WIA, General Correspondence 12 Cf. the letter to Geffcken quoted above,
(henceforth: GC), Aby Warburg to Jo- note 7, and see below, 158.
142 The Yearbook of Comparative Literature, Vol. 56
Warburg is referring actually took place in 1902, and that now, as he was
pulling the threads of his life and activity together again, he would be arch-
ing back to that crucial moment. Either way, as Wuttke recognizes without
attempting to answer, whether it is the improvement on a previously applied
method or the very one that he intended to improve on in 1925, the ques-
tion that begs to be asked is: what is the nature of Warburg’s 1902 method?
Before surmising an answer, it is important to realize that, at this juncture
in which he throws a first retrospective glance over his life, Warburg singles
out that year as marking a turning point. It is, however, a year that has been
largely bypassed in most reconstructions of his activity, dependent as we are
on a still incomplete edition of his writings.13 Two substantial publications of
his were issued in 1902: the essay on The Art of Portraiture and the Florentine
Bourgeoisie, in book form, and the one on “Flemish Art and the Florentine
Early Renaissance,” in the Jahrbuch der Königlich Preussischen Kunstsammlun-
gen,14 which were to be the first in a series of installments meant to supple-
ment Jacob Burckhardt’s posthumous essay on portraiture.15 In spite of their
undeniable importance, however, I will argue that the defining moment that
Warburg was eager to mark in retrospect is the writing of a text that is still
virtually unknown to the public, as Warburg himself seems to have repressed
its memory and neither his literary executors nor his biographers have come
to rescue it from its undeserved oblivion.16
The writing was spurred, as we learn from Warburg himself,17 by the pho-
tograph of an Italian Renaissance painting reproduced in the 1902 volume
13 The ongoing edition of the Gesammelte Renaissance (Los Angeles: Getty Research
Schriften (see next note) is not meant to Institute for the History of Art and the
be complete and is behind schedule: only Humanities 1999) 185-222; “Flandrische
four out of the foreseen thirteen volumes Kunst und florentinische Frührenais-
have been released since its launch in sance,” Jahrbuch der Königlich Preussischen
1998, two of which are simply reprints of Kunstsammlungen 23 (1902) 247-266,
the 1932 edition of Warburg’s published then GS I.1, 185-206; trans. D. Britt,
writings. “Flemish Art and the Florentine Early
14 Bildniskunst und florentinisches Bürgertum Renaissance,” The Renewal of Pagan Antiq-
(Leipzig: Hermann Seeman Nachfolger uity, 281-304.
1902), then in Aby Warburg, Gesammelte 15 Jacob Burckhardt, “Das Porträt in der
Schriften, ed. Gertrud Bing with Fritz italienischen Malerei,” Beiträge zur Kunst-
Rougemont (Leipzig: Teubner 1932) vol. geschichte von Italien (Basel 1898).
1, 89-126, reprinted as vol. I.1 of the 16 But see now the essay by Alessandro Scafi,
Studienausgabe, ed. Horst Bredekamp “L’enigma di un musico: Aby Warburg e
and Michael Diers (Berlin: Akademie l’iconografia musicale”, Musica e Storia
Verlag 1998; henceforth: GS, followed by XV/1 (2007, but: 2009) 163-203, which
number of volume); trans. David Britt, provides a detailed reconstruction of the
“The Art of Portraiture and the Floren- genesis of Warburg’s text, with edition of
tine Bourgeoisie,” in Aby Warburg, The the German original and Italian transla-
Renewal of Pagan Antiquity: Contributions tion on 188-192.
to the Cultural History of the European 17 Cf. translation that follows, 176.
of the journal L’Arte: the portrait of a musician (see fig. 1) in the National
Gallery of Ireland in Dublin, tentatively attributed to “the Ferrara school”
by the author of the article, Herbert Cook.18 Ten years later, in thanking
another scholar for an offprint of an article on the Ferrarese painter Baldas-
sare Estense,19 to whom the portrait was now being attributed, Warburg was
still able to evoke the thrill of the discovery that he had made, and was still
standing behind it:
It occurs to me on this occasion20 that the painting from Dublin kept me

excited for months ten years ago, as I believed to recognize in the portrait the
musician Attalante Migliorati (1466-after 1535). The three roses in the coat
of arms, which are repeated on his lute (lira da braccio with a drone string).21
[sic] I still hold on to this identification and consider it quite interesting, since
Attalante Migliorati played a significant role as “opera singer” in the earliest
performances of the Orfeo in Mantua in 1490.22
There is no consensus yet on the identity of the sitter, as art historians have
remained unaware thus far of Warburg’s proposal, and none other seems
to have been advanced. Most recently, the painting has been attributed to
18 Herbert Cook, “Pitture italiane esposte a 22 WIA, GC, Aby Warburg to Walter Gräff,
Burlington House,” L’Arte 5 (1902) 114- June 9, 1913. Cf. also the letter to the
122. The portrait is reproduced in the library assistant Hans Volmer from Rome,
article as fig. 11, “Ritratto di violinista.” on March 8, 1929 (WIA, GC), asking
19 Walter Gräff, “Ein Familienbildnis des him to find the photo of the painting:
Baldassare Estense in der Alten Pina- “Many years ago I have spent months to
kothek,” Münchener Jahrbuch 2 (1912) identify a painting in Dublin that repre-
208-224: 219-220. The offprint in the WI sents a beardless man, who plays a lute
Library is dedicated to “Herrn Prof. War- with a drone string, ca. 1490. On his in-
burg verehrungsvoll D.[er] V.[erfasser]”. struments there are heraldic roses, through
Next to the reproduction of the painting which I believed to identify him with
on 220, Warburg wrote in pencil: “Unt- an Attalante Migliore [sic], who was one
ers.[ucht] 1902 ob nicht Attalante Miglio- of the first performers of the Orfeo. The
rati (Wappen drei Rosen im Bildrand)”. photo should be filed as ‘peculiar com-
20 A glaring example of Warburg’s involun- bination’ in the Heraldica.” (“Vor vielen
tary memory vis-à-vis his text. Jahren habe ich Monate darauf verwendet,
21 The interruption here and the truncated um ein Bild in Dublin zu identifizieren,
ending seem to suggest that this is a das einen bartlosen Mann darstellt, der
draft, rather than a copy of the actual let- eine Laute spielt mit einer abstehenden
ter. On the lira da braccio, see Emanuel Saite, ca. 1490. Auf seinem Instrument
Winternitz, Musical Instruments and Their sind heraldische Rosen angegeben, durch
Symbolism in Western Art: Studies in Musi- die ich ihn mit einem Attalante Migliore
cal Iconology (1967; New Haven: Yale identifiziert zu haben glaubte, der einer
University Press 1979) 86-98. In addition der ersten Darsteller des Orfeo war. Die
to establishing the identity of the sitter, Photographie müsste sich in der Abteilung
for which see below, Warburg was equally Sonderzusammenstellung bei Heraldica
keen to pursue the identity of the instru- finden.”)
ment (cf. translation below, 176).
Fig. 1. F. Lippi, Ritratto di musico, 1483-85 ca., Dublin, National Gallery of Ireland, as
reproduced in H. Cook, “Pitture italiane esposte a Burlington House,” L’Arte 5 (1902),
114-122, fig. 11, with the caption: Scuola ferrarese, “Ritratto di violinista”. — Dublino,
Galleria Nazionale (photo courtesy Warburg Institute, London).
Filippino Lippi, but the sitter remains anonymous and is still identified by
the obvious evidence of the instrument that he holds in his hands, however
qualified by a question mark: “Portrait of Musician?”23
Warburg’s interest in the painting was reawakened in 1929 during his
last trip to Italy by an apparently casual circumstance. The director of the
23 Patrizia Zambrano and Jonathan Katz that time.” As Warburg did not reveal
Nelson, “Ritratto di musico?,” Filippino the identity of the sitter, the authors find
Lippi (Milano: Electa, 2004) 342. Zam- further evidence for their attribution of
brano and Katz Nelson publish an excerpt the painting to Lippi in his hypothesis
from a letter in English addressed by War- that the sitter may be a Florentine musi-
burg to the National Gallery of Ireland in cian (343-44). In the text on the painting
April 1929 (343) asking for information for the catalogue Botticelli e Filippino.
about the painting; it is likely that, while L’inquietudine e la grazia nella pittura
waiting for the materials he had requested fiorentina del Quattrocento (Milano: Skira
from Hamburg, Warburg thought to 2004) 228-30, in which Katz Nelson
contact the Gallery directly. He claimed identifies the Petrarchean source of the
in the letter to be able “to identify the inscription on the lira (see below, 165), he
young man portrayed, he being to my also tentatively points to Serafino Aqui-
belief a certain well-known musician of lano as a possible candidate (230).
Sopraintendenza alle Gallerie e ai Musei in Rome, Federico Hermanin, asked
him to help Italian authorities “in the preparations of a performance of Po-
liziano’s Orfeo in the Villa d’Este,”24 scheduled to take place in June of that
year, to which he probably contributed iconographic material that he had
requested from Hamburg for that purpose (see fig. 2).25 In the journal of the
Library we find a reminder on May 1 “to go after the Dublin lute player,”26
and a letter to Hermanin from Napoli on May 22 accompanies the shipment
of his “material on the painting from Dublin,” including the “transcription
of what the art historical and historical literature has to say on him.” Warburg
let the committee in charge of the festivities decide what use to make of these
materials, with the final request, however, “to please kindly acknowledge as
source the Kulturwissenschaftliche Bibliothek Warburg in Hamburg.”27 Even at
this late stage, he reiterates his identification and does not seem to have ever
relinquished or fundamentally questioned it. By mid-June he returned to
Hamburg, where he died on October 26, 1929.
Thus Warburg’s interest in this portrait spanned almost three decades of
his activity, from 1902 until his death. What were the reasons for his long-
lasting devotion? On the other hand, and especially in view of his steadfast
belief in the correctness of the identification, why did he not publish the text
that is presented below and which seems polished enough and ready to print?
These are further questions that my essay will try to answer while investigat-
ing Warburg’s method and its “improvement.”
The quest after the identity of the sitter, rather than the identity of the
artist, lay at the heart of Warburg’s projects in those years, as the two es-
says that were published in 1902 prove and the unpublished one confirms.
These works are the outpouring of an intense “prosopographic passion,”28
if only temporary, but above all represent the manifesto of a “critique of
connoisseurship”29 that Warburg had undertaken in his Florence years. The
clues to his identifications are provided by what Warburg calls “methodi-
24 GS VII: Tagebuch der Kulturwissenschaftli- May 22, 1929.
chen Bibliothek Warburg, ed. Karen Mi- 28 Georges Didi-Huberman, “The Portrait,
chels and Charlotte Schoell-Glass (Berlin: the Individual and the Singular: Remarks
Akademie Verlag, 2001) 410. on the Legacy of Aby Warburg,” The
25 Cf. WIA, GC, Warburg to Hermanin, Image of the Individual: Portraits in the
March 5, 1929. Fig. 2 (WIA III.105.2.) Renaissance, ed. N. Mann and L. Syson
reproduces a screen that Warburg had (London: British Museum Press, 1998)
arranged while in Rome, with the Dublin 167.
painting recognisible in the center, sur- 29 Cf. Edgar Wind’s homonymous chapter
rounded by other representations of Or- in his Art and Anarchy, 3rd ed. (Evanston,
pheus, but also by the Ghirlandaio nymph Ill.: Northwestern University Press, 1985)
(see below). 30-46. Wind had been Warburg’s student
26 GS VII, 448. in Hamburg before emigrating to England
27 Cf. WIA, GC, Warburg to Hermanin, along with the Library.
Fig. 2. WIA, III.105.2., Panel, probably set up and photographed in Rome, February 1929
(photo courtesy Warburg Institute, London).
cal aids (‘methodische Hilfsmittel’) to the art history of the Renaissance,”

and include “coats of arm, genealogical trees, and inventories” (“Wappen,
Stammbäume und Inventare”).30 The wish “to help so much mute liveliness
to express itself ” (“so viel stummer Lebendigkeit zur Aussprache verhelfen zu
dürfen”) and “to lend back tone and timbre to those inaudible voices” (“d’en
unhörbaren Stimmen wieder Klangfarbe zu verleihen”),31 in other words to
return the names to now anonymous faces, is what links the essay on por-
traiture and that on Flanders, as well as the Migliorati essay. In fulfilling his
wish, Warburg finds help in “that remarkable sign language, thanks to which
the mute can still make a statement in effigy, even centuries after their death,
over their real position in the earthly context: the language of their coat of
30 He retitled the essay on Flemish art family trees, old chronicles and taxation
“Wappen, Stammbäume und Inventare lists” (“vermittels Studium von Münzen,
als methodische Hilfsmittel der Kunstge- Stammbäumen, alten Chroniken und
schichte der Renaissance” when he deliv- Steuerlisten”), quoted in E. H. Gombrich,
ered it as a lecture at the 1902 art histori- Aby Warburg: An Intellectual Biography
cal congress in Innsbruck (cf. Wuttke, 2nd ed. (Chicago: University of Chicago
“Aby M. Warburg-Bibliographie,” Aus- Press, 1986) 129.
gewählte Schriften und Würdigungen, 525.) 31 Bildniskunst und florentinisches Bürgertum,
A slightly different list is contained in a GS I.1, 103, 96; “The Art of Portraiture
June 1900 letter, illustrating to his brother and the Florentine Bourgeoisie,” The Re-
Max his project of “identifying people on newal of Pagan Antiquity, 193, 187, trans-
a fresco by Ghirlandaio by means of coins, lation modified.
arms.”32 Warburg’s own language here is that of the “Prefatory Note” to the
Bildniskunst essay; the model is that provided by Burckhardt’s posthumous
Beiträge: a call to investigate “the individual work of art within the immediate
context of the contemporary background” (“dem einzelnen Kunstwerke in
seinem direkten Zusammenhange mit dem zeitgenössischen Hintergrunde
nachzuforschen”).33
Instead of the “accessories in motion” (“bewegtes Beiwerk”), which had
been the focus of his dissertation and would return to the center of his
thought in later years,34 here it is the “heraldic accessories” (“heraldisches
Beiwerk”) that lie unmoved next to the immobile sitters that attract War-
burg’s attention—whether the sitters are staring directly at the viewer, such
as Attalante, or turned away and absorbed in prayer, such as the donors of
the Memling altarpiece in Danzig.35 In the former case, the coat of arms
that Warburg recognized on the hardly legible photograph of the Dublin
painting, both on its frame and on the peg box of the instrument that the
musician is holding, provides the help he was hoping for; the coat of arms,
which he defines as a “connecting link between graphic sign and free work
of art,”36 thereby anticipating the definition of the impresa—another Hilfs-
mittel that Warburg was instrumental in rediscovering and interpreting—as
“an intermediary stage between the sign and the image” (“ein Mittelglied
zwischen Zeichen und Bild”) in the 1907 essay on “Francesco Sassetti’s Last
Injunctions to His Sons.”37
Warburg’s approach here is emphatically in opposition to the method of
connoisseurship, which had already been his main polemical target two years
earlier in the famous correspondence on the Nympha with André Jolles.38 In
the first tentative installment of that fictional dialogue, dated April 13, 1900,
Jolles had tried to explain the fascination that the nymph they recognized in
the striding maid of Ghirlandaio’s fresco in the Cappella Tornabuoni exerted
on them, and had directly linked her discovery to his friend’s methodological
32 Cf. translation below, 178. Renewal of Pagan Antiquity 240.

33 GS I.1, 94; The Renewal of Pagan Antiq- 38 First edited, translated and commented
uity, 186. by Gombrich, Aby Warburg, 105-27,
34 Cf. Gombrich, Aby Warburg, 58. though not in its entirety; also partially
35 Cf. “Flandrische Kunst und florentinische reproduced in André Jolles, “Gebildeter
Frührenaissance,” GS I.1, 192-193; Vagant.” Brieven en documenten, ed.
“Flemish Art and the Florentine Early Walter Thys (Amsterdam-Leipzig:
Renaissance,” The Renewal of Pagan Antiq- Amsterdam University Press-Leipziger
uity, 285-87. Universitäsverlag, 2000), and in Aby War-
36 Cf. translation below, 178. burg, Werke in einem Band, ed. Martin
37 “Francesco Sassettis letztwillige Verfü- Treml, Sigrid Weigel, and Perdita Ladwig
gung,” first published in Kunstwissen- (Frankfurt/M.: Suhrkamp, 2010). All
schaftliche Beiträge August Schmarsow transcriptions have been checked against
gewidmet (Leipzig: Hiersemann, 1907) the manuscripts (WIA III.55.1. and 2.)
129-152, GS I.1 146; “Francesco Sas- and supplemented where necessary.
setti’s Last Injunctions to His Sons,” The
stance, and especially his rejection of the Morellian method. In Jolles’s words,
Warburg did not want to be ein Morellianer, that is, a critic in the mold
of Giovanni Morelli, the Italian dilettante who had recently revolutionized
art history through advocating a mechanical method to detect authorship,
based upon the accurate cataloguing and comparison of hitherto neglected
details.39 For Warburg, Jolles quips, the point of view of such critics
is too nearsighted, they do not see the artist’s hand by focusing instead on the
fingernails, and in the best case have only accomplished for art history what
diplomatics has for history: the pure sorting out of the material, however
necessary that may be.40
There is an implicit indictment that, to such a critic, the nymph herself

would have remained invisible, as it were, even as she stood unmistakably
out in the crowded birth chamber, in contrast “with the aloof distance of all
the other figures.”41
To use the example in question, the shortcomings of the Morellian meth-
od are painfully evident in Adolfo Venturi’s appraisal of the Dublin painting.
The leading Italian art critic of Warburg’s generation recognized it at first
sight, one may aptly say, as a work by Cosmè Tura, on the sole strength of the
musician’s hands: “Not even when he is making a portrait, Cosmè abandons
the peculiar shape of the hands with the big, protruding knuckles.”42 Ven-
turi later revised his judgment and attributed the portrait to Lorenzo Costa,
while still relying on the odd shape of the fingers “to decipher the enigma
of the singular portrait”; the only difference, according to Venturi, is that
Cosmè’s contours are here “altered, weakened by a less precise, less rigorous
sign, which reveals, even in its harshness, an inclination toward a sweeter
and softer manner (‘maniera’).”43 The Morellian critic, in other words, does
39 For an influential discussion of Morelli’s 107-8).

method, see Wind, cited above. 42 Adolfo Venturi, Storia dell’arte italiana
40 This fragment (WIA III.55.1., ff. [50-2] vol. VII (Milano: Hoepli, 1914) 3, 542:
is in Jolles’s hand with Warburg’s glosses; “Neppure facendo un ritratto Cosmè
on ff. [53-55] the same text in Warburg’s (Tura!!) lascia la forma particolare delle
hand, but with an added paragraph that I mani con le grosse nocche sporgenti”
quote below, cf. note 53) is transcribed in (the painting is reproduced as fig. 410). I
André Jolles 211-12. quote the passage as transcribed on a card
41 “Hell, is this the way to visit a sickroom, (WIA III.120.4) by Gertrud Bing, hence
even with congratulations? This lively, probably in 1929, with the added pa-
lightfooted and rapid gait, this irresistible renthesis and exclamation points, clearly
energy, this striding step, which contrasts signaling her and Warburg’s dismay.
with the aloof distance of all the other 43 Adolfo Venturi, Studi dal vero (Milano:
figures, what is the meaning of it all?... Hoepli 1927) 166, where the painting is
It sometimes looks to me as if the servant reproduced as fig. 98, and the inscription
girl rushed with winged feet through the deciphered for the first time, as far as I
clear ether instead of running on the real can tell. The passage is transcribed in WIA
ground. . . .” (Gombrich, Aby Warburg, III.120.3.
not hesitate to establish both mano and maniera of the artists by relying
metonymically on the painted hands of the sitters,44 as if the compulsion to
repeat that Leonardo had denounced in the making of faces also applied to
the hands themselves and all the other anatomical details.45
Jolles attributes contempt for such “exact art historians, the Morellians” to
Warburg, but proceeds to mock his friend in turn for what he calls “his deli-
cate soul,” which would like to rejuvenate itself and regain its “primitivity” in
“the fountain of youth of the early Renaissance.”46 Jolles, who plays the role of
Warburg’s critical conscience, asks rhetorically whether water is there “to pro-
vide a mirror or to wash oneself with,” and polemically suggests that the Mo-
rellians, whom he also labels with Morelli’s pseudonym, Lermoliaffen, are still
preferable to the Narcissist types.47 He stigmatizes Warburg as the “sensitively
thinking art friend,” who would like to keep the sacrilegious crowd from the
place of worship devoted to the “ideal,”48 what he calls wittily the “unrea-
sonable island of the blessed in an otherwise well-ordered cosmos, where a
discreet capability to abandon oneself to the joys of the Land of cockaygne is
left even to those bodies that are freed from the laws of gravity.”49 In this con-
text, tinged with irony, Warburg’s correspondent invokes for the first time
the microscope as the figure of hyperbolic vision—a move that will return
at a crucial juncture of the Migliorati essay—in order to criticize those “that
regard as explained everything [that takes the shape of ever smaller question
marks] under the microscope or in nutrient gelatin.”50 The two criticisms
that Jolles is leveling at Warburg, on the one hand of being too idealistic, on
the other of looking at art as if it were a medical preparation to be examined
under the microscope,51 seem hardly reconcilable. But the dilemma is due
more to the friends’ postures than to an actual contradiction: Jolles presents
44 Marco Treves’s observation, in an essay WIA III.55.1., fol. [50v].)

begun “under the direction of Prof. Erwin 48 WIA III.55.1., fol. [51].
Panofsky in a seminar at the Institute of 49 WIA III.55.1., fol. [52].
Fine Arts,” that “no awareness of any con- 50 The words in square brackets added in
nection of manner with the hands” sur- Warburg’s hand.
vives in the Romance languages, is obvi- 51 This view is perhaps best summed up
ously inadequate to capture contemporary in a letter Johann Jakob Bachofen wrote
usage and historical semantics of the term. (in English) to Lewis Morgan on May
Treves, “Maniera. The History of a Word,” 14, 1878, cf. Gesammelte Werke, vol. 10
Marsyas 1 (1941), 82 (Basel: Schwabe, 1967) 480: “Historical
45 Cf. Davide Stimilli, The Face of Immortal- inquiries do not admit of being treated as
ity: Physiognomy and Criticism (Albany: cases in a court of strict justice, by reason-
SUNY Press, 2005) 50-51. ing of a barrister. They are mere matter
46 WIA III.55.1., foll. [50r-50v]. of observation, and the observation of a
47 “Mir eigentlich sind die Lermoliaffen naturalist, who devotes himself entirely to
noch lieber als die Narcisse” (passage the facts presented to his microscope.”
crossed over, and not transcribed by Thys,
himself as an art lover, whose expertise is “too antiquated and philological,”52
but not one to be confused with Aby’s “hated Morellians, who, to use your
grotesque expression, snoop (‘schnuppern’) their way around art history on
both hands and feet: you do not want to direct your eyes nearsightedly on the
ground like”53 them, or to name names—the sentence breaks up here—like
“Bayersdorfer, Bode, Morelli, Venturi, Berenson, and the whole nosy tribe”
(“das schuppernde Gelichter”) that Warburg mentions in a 1903 letter to
Adolph Goldschmidt, in which he tries, if only jocularly, to classify trends
in contemporary art history. Such critics, whom he labels the “enthusiastic
art historians,” pursue a merely “biographical art history,” while Warburg
embraces, in Burckhardt’s wake, the method of stylistic history,” aiming at
an investigation of “the social conditions, the universally existing inhibitions
against which the heroic individual has to assert himself.”54
The same image that is left abruptly unfinished in this draft returns in
Warburg’s later letter to Jolles,55 but the reversal in the roles played by the
two friends confirms the artificiality of their postures. It is now Warburg who
mocks Jolles for being too easily seduced by the nymph “to follow her like a
winged idea through all the spheres in a Platonic frenzy of love,” while he feels
compelled by her precisely “to turn his philological gaze to the ground from
which she rose and to ask with surprise: ‘Is this strangely delicate plant really
rooted in the sober Florentine soil?’”56 No further confirmation is needed
that the fictional epistolary is meant as a psychomachy taking place within
Warburg’s own conscience, and that Jolles is, literally, playing the maieutic
role of a Hilfsmittel in order to facilitate Warburg’s discovery.
The image returns yet again in the Migliorati essay, and with the same
pathos, in what is the most theoretical, as well as textually tormented part of
52 Perhaps to be identified with the “philo- ton Magazine 13 (1908) 84.
logical historian of art,” described by Lio- 53 “Es macht nichts, daß ich Dir als Kun-
nello Venturi, Adolfo’s son, in his History stgelehrte nicht so ganz sympatisch bin;
of Art Criticism, trans. Charles Marriott Du respektirst mich als kriegsführende
(New York: Dutton, 1936) 221, as the Macht aber meine Armirung und Taktik
prototype of the positivist art historians, ist dir zu alterthümlich und philolo-
who abstain from thought and devote gisch; wenigstens bin ich keiner von den
themselves to the establishment of mere Dir verhaßten Morellianern, für die die
facts. (There is, however, a true type of Kunstgeschichte nach Deinem grotesken
philological critic, the one who displays Ausdruck [sic] die sich auf Händen und
“virtuosity in attribution,” 222). In a Füssen durch die Kunstgeschichte schnup-
similar vein, Roger Fry wrote on Herbert pern; Du willst nicht nahsichtig Deine
Horne’s Botticelli monograph, which Augen [corrected from: Kopf ] auf den
Warburg regarded highly, that “no fact Boden richten und Dich wie” [breaks up
seems to Mr. Horne too minute to merit here] (WIA III.55.1., fol. [55]).
our attention, too insignificant to help to- 54 Gombrich, 141-144.
wards the complete reconstruction of the 55 Without date, but after Jolles’s Epistula
past of Florence of which he perpetually prima, which is dated 23 November 1900.
dreams . . . Mr. Horne never abbreviates.” 56 WIA III.55.2., fol. [2], trans. Gombrich,
“Mr Horne’s Book on Botticelli,” Burling- slightly modified, 113.
the text. After extolling the value of the coat of arms as a means to identify
the sitter in the passage quoted above, Warburg expands into his most sus-
tained methodological statement to date and, to my mind, the best clue to
answer the question of the 1902 method and its improvement, be it real or
merely wished for:
How different, however, is the effect of this sign on the empirically oriented
art historian: his reward for having kept his eyes directed on the things of this
world, instead of letting his fantasy float freely, is precisely the discovery of the
heraldic accessories, and he is even strengthened by the correct deciphering of
a coat of arms in the secret and wavering hope that microscopic observation
will one day lead to microcosmic vision.57
This is the final version of the text, written on a small piece of paper that
Warburg then glued over an earlier version (see fig. 3); he had first referred to
himself as a “more solid art historian,” rather than an “empirically oriented”
one, and to his way of looking as a mere “eyeing” (“Beäugen”), even humbler
than the plain “observing” (“Beobachten”) that replaces it:
How different, however, is the effect of this sign on the more solid art his-
torian: instead of letting his fantasy float freely, he keeps the eyes dutifully
directed on the art object itself, in order to establish ever subtler characters of
the classification, not without hope that his microscopic eyeing will one day
transform itself in macrocosmic vision.58
The critic is all eyes, as it were, but only “the better trained eye” (“das geübtere
Auge”), as the continuation of the text makes explicit, is capable of turning
the critic’s dutiful “attention” into the object’s own “perceptibility” (to use
Novalis’s terms59) and of identifying “even from the mediocre reproduction
of the musician’s portrait” the coat of arms with the three roses.60 The men-
tion of “classification” in the former version seems to suggest that Warburg
was still, as much as he ridiculed the Morellian critics, or even hated them,
enthralled by their success. At the same time, it is hard to overlook Warburg’s
satisfaction, later on in the essay, at the failure of “the experts in stylistic anal-
ysis” in identifying the hand of the artist, and also his mockery, still phrased
in almost exactly the same terms as in the Nympha correspondence, of “the
friend of art who enjoys it in a pure fashion,” to whom the coat of arms is
“only a grotesquely shaped mark of ownership, which threatens to draw him
down from free-floating self-empathy to the undesirable prose of real life.”61
57 Cf. translation below, 178. (Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchge-

58 Cf. translation below, 178. sellschaft, 1965) 238.
59 Novalis, “Fichte-Studien” [437], Schriften, 60 Cf. translation below, 178.
vol. II, ed. Richard Samuel with Hans- 61 Cf. translation below, 178.
Joachim Mahl and Gerhard Schulz
It is the ability to transcend both the nearsightedness of the “attribution-
ists”62 and the naive idealism of the aesthetes, and thus to gain access to the
“prose of real life,” that Warburg is advocating in his paperole.63 But burying
the earlier version under its reformulation was clearly not enough for War-
burg, as he intervened once more and modified “macrocosmic” into “micro-
cosmic.” At first, or so it seems from a close-up of the manuscript (see fig. 4),
he had kept the “macrocosmic” in the last clause from his previous version,
and it is only as the result of a pentimento that “microscopic observation”
is now hoped to lead to “microcosmic vision.” While the rewriting implies
a transformation of observation into vision, even if they both remain on
the same scale, the earlier version implied a leap from the microscopic to
the macrocosmic that was apparently problematic to Warburg and induced
his afterthought-correction. He is clearly struggling to reconcile the discord
between historical knowledge of the context and stylistic judgment of the
“artistic handwriting.”64 As he writes in more explicit terms in a variant to
the text:
Our knowledge of the accompanying historical circumstances, as natural and

desirable it may be as a helpful act in favor of the man in the painting, threat-
ens, however, our stylistic judgment, i.e. it distracts our attention from the
comparative study of the artistic handwriting itself in favor of a harmonizing
background phantasy.65
While the “knowledge of the accompanying historical circumstances” sug-

gests that the painter must be looked for in the Mantuan circle, hence
Warburg’s proposal of Lorenzo Costa, “the comparative study of the artis-
tic handwriting itself ” suggests otherwise, and here Warburg proceeds very
much in the footsteps of the Morellian connoisseur: “The position of the
figure, especially that of the head against the background, the graphic treat-
ment of the anatomical details and the mimic interplay of head and hands
62 Gombrich, Aby Warburg, 142. this usage: “the ‘paperoles’ were never
63 At this crucial juncture in the manu- pasted into the exercise books containing
script—and the only instance, as far as I the manuscripts. They were just notes—a
am aware, in his literary output—he de- passing phrase or idea,” whereas the addi-
ploys the same technique of composition tions “glued into the exercise books when
that the author of the Recherche indulged there was no more room left on a page for
in, Proust’s “habit to stick together with further corrections” were the “‘paste-ons’
paste” the pages of his writing, which his (béquets), as printers call them.” Monsieur
maid Françoise christens with the neolo- Proust, ed. Georges Belmont (Paris: Laf-
gism that the English translation approxi- font 1973) 324; trans. Barbara Bray (New
mately renders with “paperies:” Marcel York: McGraw-Hill, 1976) 273.
Proust, In Search of Lost Time, vol. 6: Time 64 One should note than in German Hand-
Regained, trans. C.K. Scott Moncrieff and schrift is both the handwriting and the re-
Terence Kilmartin, rev. by D. J. Enright sulting manufacture, i.e. the manuscript.
(London: Vintage 1996) 271, 432. The 65 Cf. translation below, 181.
testimony of Céleste Albaret contradicts
Fig. 3. WIA, III.120.1., Das Bildnis eines italienischen Liraspielers in Dublin: Attalante Mi-
gliorati, 4-5 (photo courtesy Warburg Institute, London).
are all fully consistent” with Raffaellino del Garbo.66 History thus works as a
distraction, by drawing attention away from the “artistic handwriting” onto
the “harmonizing background fantasy”; instead of providing a foil against
which to highlight the stylistic peculiarities of the individual artist, the back-
ground ends up overshadowing the figure in front. Paradoxically, when it
comes to establishing autography, what counts is only autopsy, as Warburg
refrains “from a definitive stylistic judgment without having seen the paint-
ing,”67 even as he does not shy away from a bold identification of the sitter as
Leonardo’s friend,68 based upon the microscopic inspection of a blurry repro-
66 Cf. translation below, 180. under Leonardo’s supervision a most ex-
67 Cf. translation below, 180. cellent lira player, that when he was about
68 Warburg refers for Attalante’s biography sixteen followed him to Milan, where he
to Gaetano Milanesi’s commentary to entered the service of Ludovico il Moro,
Vasari’s life of Leonardo: Le vite de’ più and that he was called to Mantua in 1490
eccellenti pittori, scultori ed architettori, to act the role of the protagonist in Poliz-
Sansoni,, vol. 4 (Firenze, 1880) 53: there iano’s Orfeo” (“un altro suo discepolo fu
he could learn that “another of his disci- Atalante, il quale sappiamo che nacque
ples was Atalante, of whom we know that nel 1466, figliuolo illegittimo di Manetto
he was born in 1466, illegitimate son of Migliorotti, e che sotto la disciplina di
Manetto Migliorotti, and that he became Lionardo riuscì eccellentissimo sonatore di
Fig. 4. WIA, III.120.1., Das Bildnis eines italienischen Liraspielers in Dublin: Attalante Mi-
gliorati 4, detail (photo courtesy Warburg Institute, London).
duction. But the hope to turn the results thereby achieved into macrocosmic
vision is put aside, at least temporarily, and the mise-en-abyme at the heart of
the manuscript can but maladroitly hide what appears to be a real caesura in
Warburg’s thinking.
Gide’s technical term is well-suited here, not only because he borrowed
it from the vocabulary of heraldry,69 but more so because, in order to read
the text and between the lines, one has to heed its advice and literally put it
under the microscope,70 going beneath the surface and digging through its
many “layers,” arguably a better translation for paperoles than the neologism
lira, che di circa sedici anni fu da lui con- 29-30: “what I strove for in my Cahiers,
dotto a Milano, allorché andò a’ servigi in my Narcisse, and the Tentative, is a
di Lodovico il Moro, e che fu chiamato comparison with the device of heraldry
a Mantova nel 1490, perché nella recita that consist in setting in the escutcheon
dell’Orfeo del Poliziano facesse la parte del a smaller one “en abyme,” at the heart-
protagonista”). point.”)
69 Cf. André Gide’s 1893 entry, Journal 70 Or blow it up, as Ian Jones, photographer
1889-1939 (Paris: Gallimard 1948) 41; of the Warburg Institute, did for our
trans. Justin O’Brien, The Journals of An- picture.
dré Gide, vol. 1 (New York: Knopf, 1947)
“paperies.”71 In a masterful essay on Proust’s semi-technical term and the
pitfalls encountered by his interpreters, Gianfranco Contini wrote that, in
reading the Recherche, it would be highly misleading to surrender to the “ex-
egetical oversights (‘le sviste esegetiche’) that Proust used to complain about”
and detect in his work “a minutiose and microscopic view of reality” instead
of what he calls “a telescopic, hence legislating, view.”72 Contini is here para-
phrasing Proust himself, and his disappointment at the realization, in the
final pages of Le temps retrouvé, that “even those who commended” his “per-
ceptions of the truths” (“perceptions des vérités”) did so on the assumption
that he had discovered them
“with a microscope,” when on the contrary it was a telescope that he had used
to observe things which were indeed very small to the naked eye, but only
because they were situated at a great distance, and which were each one of
them in itself a world,
and that while he was looking for “the grand laws,” he was misnamed a “dig-
ger of details” (“là où je cherchais les grandes lois, on m’appellait fouilleur de
détails.”)73 The word telescopic does not belong to Warburg’s lexicon,74 but
Contini’s (and Proust’s) cautionary words apply to him, as well. If anything,
rather than a collector and cataloguer, or even a “digger” of minute details,
Warburg was a surveyor and analyst of the petites perceptions that allowed
him to detect such details, as William Heckscher has suggested in the best
essay to date on Warburg’s method.75 What follows aims to supplement his
insights, and look for models of Warburg’s still tentative 1902 method in a
discipline that had substantially, though perhaps unexpectedly, contributed
to train his eye.
Warburg had not been a student of Hermann Usener in vain, from whom
he had learned, as has been pointed out, “to direct the philological gaze on
the ground,”76 namely, to practice the “devotion to the insignificant” (“An-
71 Alison Winton, Proust’s Additions: The of a concordance of his works (a desidera-

Making of ‘A la recherche du temps perdu’, tum far removed in the future, while we
vol. 1 (Cambridge: Cambridge University still lack a complete edition of his writ-
Press, 1977) 20. ings.)
72 Gianfranco Contini, “Proust” in Varianti 75 William S. Heckscher, “Petites percep-
e altra linguistica (Torino: Einaudi, 1971) tions: an account of sortes Warburgianae,”
73: “una visione minuziosa e microscopica in Art and Literature (Durham: Duke
della realtà (anziché una visione telescopi- University Press, 1985) 435-79.
ca e perciò legislativa).” 76 Cf. Wuttke, Anregung, 54-55; Roland
73 The English translation is not serviceable Kany, Mnemosyne als Programm. Ge-
here: “Those passages in which I was try- schichte, Erinnerung und die Andacht zum
ing to arrive at general laws were described Unbedeutenden im Werk von Usener, War-
as so much pedantic investigation of de- burg und Benjamin (Tübingen: Niemeyer,
tail” (Proust, TR, 442.) 1987) 173.
74 As far as I can tell without the Hilfsmittel
dacht zum Unbedeutenden”)77 or “the small” (“Kleinen”) that is the heritage
of the great German philological tradition78 (to which Warburg referred al-
ways with great reverence as the “hermeneutics” or interpretatio more majo-
rum)79 from Jacob Grimm to Ernst Robert Curtius.80
Even before getting into the historical and theoretical considerations that
recommend such a conclusion, I would like to offer an example of the sharp-
ness of Usener’s philological gaze, which is not chosen at random.81 Usener
proposes the Greek word pathos as the solution for an apparently illegible
word, a so-called crux, in the text of a letter by Cicero to his brother Quintus
(see fig. 5), and his solution will appear convincing, I dare say, even to those
who have never seen a Greek word in a Latin manuscript:
The emendation is at hand and evident for anybody who has ever seen how
Greek words used to be played with in a Latin manuscript: what Quintus is
missing in the products of his quickness is pathos.82
Yet other reasons suggest taking Warburg’s metaphor literally, if one consid-
ers that his teacher, whom he calls still in 1929 “our Usener,”83 had compared
the philologist, in the 1882 programmatic lecture “Philology and History,”
with Antaeus, who regained “new strength in his struggle with Herakles
whenever he touched the motherly earth.”84 The earth, whose contact prom-
77 Originally used in a negative sense by Sul- “The Gods have alas denied to his learning
piz Boisserée as a formula for the scathing the gift of probability,” quoted in William
criticism to which Schlegel had subjected M. Calder III’s “Epilogue” to Hermann
the Grimm brothers, then onwards in a Usener and Ulrich von Wilamowitz, Ein
positive sense (cf. Kany, Mnemosyne als Briefwechsel (Stuttgart: Teubner 1994)
Programm, 234-235). 74, from Wilamowitz’s Erinnerungen. Cf.
78 But also of the great German novel of the Arnaldo Momigliano, “Premesse per una
nineteenth century, from Stifter, to whom discussione su Hermann Usener,” Aspetti
the winged word Andacht zum Kleinen is di Hermann Usener filologo della religione
often attributed, to Fontane, who coined (Pisa: Giardini 1982) 14-15.
a sentence that is almost identical to 82 Hermann Usener, “Ein Graecum in Ci-
Warburg’s motto: “Der Zauber steckt im ceros Briefen” (1867), Kleine Schriften,
Detail” (cf. Wuttke, “Nachwort,” 624), vol. II (Leipzig: Teubner 1913), 169-71.
although contained in a letter that was 83 WIA, GC, Aby Warburg to Paul Ruben,
only published after Warburg’s death. January 25, 1929, from Rome, which
79 Cf. for instance WIA III.133.1., ringbook contains an account of his lecture in the
titled Zwischen den Erbmassen, fol. [9]: Bibliotheca Hertziana a few days earlier,
“Interpretatio more majorum philologi- on January 19; reproduced in Björn Bies-
ca,” dated August 23, 1927. ter, Der innere Beruf zur Wissenschaft: Paul
80 Cf. E. R. Curtius, Europäische Literatur Ruben (1866-1943). Studien zur deutsch-
und lateinisches Mittelalter (Bern: Francke jüdischen Wissenschaftsgeschichte (Berlin:
1948), who refers in turn to Warburg’s Dietrich Reimer Verlag, 2001) 224.
motto (43, 386) in support of his own 84 Hermann Usener, “Philologie und Ge-
methodological stance. schichtswissenschaft,” Vorträge und Aufsä-
81 Notwithstanding Otto Jahn’s damnatio: tze, 2nd ed., (Leipzig: Teubner, 1914) 28.
Fig. 5. Hermann Usener, “Ein Graecum in Ciceros Briefen” (1867), Kleine Schriften, vol. II
(Leipzig: Teubner 1913) 170.
Fig. 6. Examples from two 10th century manuscripts, Bern Burgerbibliothek, MS. 212 and
234, in Hermann Usener, “Ein Graecum in Ciceros Briefen” (1867), Kleine Schriften,
vol. II (Leipzig: Teubner 1913) 170.
ises renewed strength to the philologists, is the “letter” (“Wortlaut”), the

ground in which they must descend, in order to draw new and expanded
knowledge from the sources.85 Or, to use another related metaphor, which
Warburg adopted in his introduction to a lecture by the paleographer Paul
Lehmann shortly after his return from Kreuzlingen: “authentically ancient
sources” gush forth under the philologist’s dowsing-rod.86 It is not surprising,
therefore, that in the February 17, 1926 meeting of his seminar, Warburg
refers to the superlatives of gestural language, the pathos formulas that he is
striving to define, as “mnemic antaeic gestures” (“mnemische Antaeusgeste”),
and that, shortly after his return from Italy in 1929, he proposes as an overall
title for his Italian journey: “The antaeic journey of discovery to the sources
of European enthusiasm.”87 But Usener had further narrowed down what
85 “To the philological student of history (“Nüchternheit meiner Combinationen”)

(‘Geschichtsforscher’), every descent in (a recurring concern, see below, 167):
the letter of the sources (‘Vertiefung in “the question . . . is, on the one hand,
den Wortlaut der Quellen’) brings new fully understandable on a human level;
and expanded knowledge.” Usener 28. on the other, however, it proves that he
86 WIA III.12.4.1., fol. [26]. does not realize what actually made my
87 GS VII, 467: “Die antaeische Entdeck- sickness uncannily wonderful: I had never
ungsreise zu den Quellen des europäisch- stopped, under whichever circumstances,
en Enthusiasmus.” Cf. the entry on to think critically, to combine clearly, and
August 18, 1928 (Tagebuch, 332), looking to dispose in a souveraign manner over
back at the Kreuzlingen years in reply to a my memory faculty as far as scientific
query by his brother Max to Gertrud Bing questions were concerned, and now I
on the “sobriety of my combinations” only continue to pursue normally that
he meant with “letter of the sources”: “The philological descent in the detail
(‘die philologische Vertiefung in das Detail’) leads to the vantage point from
which new insights in the life and work of the nations can be gained.”88 And
Warburg openly acknowledged his indebtedness when he wrote to Johannes
Geffcken on January 16, 1926 that it had been “not in the least the example
of the great German philologists,” particularly Usener, which he had been
privileged to experience “in person, if only from a spiritual distance,” that
had lead him to the formulation of his motto, “Der liebe Gott steckt im
Detail.”89
Warburg summons “our Usener” in a letter to his friend Paul Ruben. As
Björn Biester has shown,90 Ruben played a particularly important role in
Warburg’s cultural milieu, not only as “trustee”91 of the legacy of his Doktor-
vater Usener, with whom Ruben remained on close terms until the latter’s
death in 1905, but also as a philosophical interlocutor. It was Ruben who
introduced Warburg to Hegel’s philosophy when they were just sixteen,92 and
which was only temporarily inhibited, German philologists, in particular that of

but not destroyed. To turn towards the Usener, which I could experience if only
surrounding chaos has always been for from a spiritual distance, that has led me
me an antaeic movement” (“die Frage . . . to the formulation of the second maxim.
ist zwar menschlich durchaus begreiflich, It sets the style of the struggle against our
zeugt aber davon, daß er, das eigentlich ignorance, which I pleaded for ad 1 [Es ist
unheimlich Wunderbare meiner dama- nicht zum wenigsten das Beispiel der grossen
ligen Erkrankung nicht kennt: ich hatte deutschen Philologen, besonders Useners, den
nie, unter welchen Mitteln auch immer, ich persönlich, wenn auch nur aus geistiger
aufgehört, kritisch zu denken, klar zu Ferne erleben durfte, dass mich zur For-
combinieren und souverän über meinen mulierung der zweiten Maxime führte. Sie
Erinnerunsbestand zu verfügen soweit bedingt den Stil des Kampfes gegen unsere
Wissenschaftliches in Betracht kam und Ignoranz, den ich ad 1 forderte].” Warburg
fahre jetzt nur normal fort in dem fort attended Usener’s lectures on mythology
worin ich zeitweilig gehemmt, aber nicht at the University of Bonn in the winter
zerstört war. Sich dem Chaos der Mitwelt semester 1886-1887 (cf. Gombrich, Aby
zuzuwenden, war für mich immer eine Warburg, 33-34, and Bernd Roeck, Der
antaeische Bewegung.”) See also Tagebuch, junge Warburg (München: Beck 1997)
452, 492. 51-53).
88 Usener, “Philologie und Geschichtswis- 90 Björn Biester, Der innere Beruf zur Wissen-
senschaft,” 27. schaft: Paul Ruben (1866-1943). Studien
89 In the letter to Geffcken I just quoted, zur deutsch-jüdischen Wissenschaftsgeschich-
Warburg suggests that Usener’s example te (Berlin: Dietrich Reimer Verlag 2001).
led him to formulate the second maxim, 91 The term (“Erbverwalter unseres Usener”)
thus confirming the hypothesis advanced is used by Warburg in reference to Rich-
by Maria Michela Sassi, “Dalla scienza ard Reitzenstein in the January 25, 1929,
delle religioni di Usener ad Aby Warburg,” letter to Ruben quoted above, but applies
in Aspetti di Hermann Usener filologo della equally well to its recipient.
religione, 86-91, with no need, on the 92 Cf. “Zweites autobiographisches Frag-
other hand, to take it as a literal quote: “It ment,” Die unendliche Heilung 104.
is not in the least the example of the great
he remained for his entire life the mediator with regard to Warburg’s access
to the exegesis of the Scriptures and the faith of his ancestors. As Anne Ma-
rie Meyer observed, Ruben “probably taught Warburg more about Judaism
and its history than anyone else.”93 But Ruben, who remained Privatgelehrter
and lived in Hamburg as last representative of the Bibliothek Warburg until
1943, was Warburg’s mentor, or better, Nestor, above all in philological mat-
ters. “Of course, the cat cannot let go of mouse-hunting, i. e. the scriptures
provoke textual criticism” (“Natürlich kann die Katze das Mausen nicht las-
sen, d.h. die Schrift treibt Textkritik”);94 this statement in a letter to Warburg
may serve as the ultimate profession of Ruben’s passionate philological faith.
He was the author of only one work, published in 1936, after Warburg’s
death, even though it was already completed in 1930. One can assume that
Warburg was aware and indeed well informed on the contents of this book.95
Even with its title does Recensio und Restitutio lead us straightforwardly into
the midst of the technical language of textual criticism. However, Ruben uses
the word recensio not only in its usual sense, in order to refer to the activity of
textual criticism proper, but also to evoke a preliminary stage of the recensio
as practised in modern philology, “a somehow primitive recensio,”96 namely,
the process of gathering variants, “the juxtaposition of different readings”
produced by the hands of eager copyists, whose result is no critical text, but
rather yet another corruption, for in the course of time one simply forgot the
original, merely “documentary value” of the groups of letters that were so in-
serted. The restitutio thus intervenes at the level of an already corrupted text:
It so happened that men of exegetic inclination, the restitutors, felt tempted

to give a sense to these groups of letters, in the more or less sound belief that
they would conjure up this way the words of the ancient authors. They har-
monized, instead of separating and emendating.97
93 Anne Marie Meyer, “Aby Warburg in Testament (London, 1896). In a letter

His Early Correspondence,” American to his friend accompanying the essay, he
Scholar 57 (1988) 447. Just a day before mentions specifically his (however partial)
his death, Warburg asked Ruben where indebtedness to Warburg (WIA, GC,
he could find “something monographic Ruben to Warburg, August 20, 1896,
on Sabbatai Zvi” (GS VII.) Momigliano reproduced in Biester, Der innere Beruf
suggested a possible influence of Usener zur Wissenschaft 213.)
on Scholem’s interpretation of cabbalistic 96 Paul Ruben, Recensio und Restitutio. Eine
language (“Premesse per una discussione Vermuthung über die früheste Geschichte der
su Hermann Usener,” 19). alttestamentlichen Texte (London: Probst-
94 WIA, GC, Warburg to Ruben, September hain, 1936) 2.
24, 1895, reproduced in Biester, Der in- 97 Ibid. The Greek technical term for such
nere Beruf zur Wissenschaft 210. “Emendationsversuche der Schreiber”
95 Ruben had already anticipated some would be paradiorthosis. Cf. Theodor Birt,
results of his investigation as early as Kritik und Hermeneutik (München: Beck,
1896 in an English publication: Critical 1913) 152.
Remarks upon Some Passages of the Old
Restitutio is a category that Ruben himself invented to describe the “attempts

to give a sense to an unknown quantity, let’s say x.”98 One can regard it as a
direct parody of any kind of harmonizing and generalizing criticism, against
which he turns forcefully in his preface:
There is no serious engagement with these sacred texts and with the religious
and profane life that stands behind them, without the continuous and tense
activation of that noble tool, a trained textual criticism; and there are no gen-
eral principles . . . on which one could rely when facing difficult cases. One
should instead in each individual case try to reach a likely reading or interpre-
tation, through observations of material, formal, graphic nature; if one does
not succeed, then one should put the passage aside. The boundary between
good and bad does not run only between explanation and conjecture, but
rather between likely and unlikely explanation, likely and unlikely conjec-
ture; and one is a bad philologist if one rejects a good conjecture, as much as
when one accepts a bad one. No right textual criticism would therefore isolate
itself and not make an effort to consider in full alertness the exegetical data
and all that “higher” criticism can contribute to the interpretation of a given
passage.99
One may consider this preface as a manifesto of a praxis of textual criticism,

which is fundamentally indebted to the “Bonn spirit” (“Bonner Geist”).100
Explanation and conjecture, or, to use the corresponding Latin terms, inter-
pretatio and divinatio, are inseparable, as Ruben writes in a letter to Warburg
in which he tries to differentiate the methods of philology and art history on
the basis of the antiquity of the documents the philologist has to deal with.
The speciousness of his argument reveals itself when he claims universal valid-
ity for his opinion: “one quickly despairs to reach real, overdocumentary and
overconjectural knowledge in the study of ‘antiquities’ and returns quickly to
the exegetic intention.”101 In other words, namely, Nietzsche’s (who was also
a product of the Bonn school): “there are no facts, only interpretations,”102
hence there cannot be a mechanical recensio, either. The separation between
“higher” and “lower” criticism also proves itself unfounded if one examines it
more closely. In the essay I have already quoted, Usener distinguishes
two elementary operations, which philology performs, recensio and interpre-

tatio, establishment of the facts that are given through tradition and their
98 Recensio und Restitutio 1. 1917, reproduced in Biester, Der innere

99 Recensio und Restitutio I-II. Beruf zur Wissenschaft 221.
100 Warburg’s own expression in the Janu- 102 Friedrich Nietzsche, Sämtliche Werke:
ary 25, 1929 letter to Ruben, previously kritische Studienausgabe, 15 vols. (Berlin:
quoted. de Gruyter, 1999) vol. 12: Nachgelassene
101 WIA, GC, Ruben to Warburg, July 2, Fragmente 1885-1887, nr. 7 [60].
spiritual compenetration, their comprehension. One could list as a third op-
eration criticism, if it were not present in equal measure in both and did
not provide overall the indispensable salt: the so-called diplomatic criticism
coincides with recensio, the creative or divinatory criticism is nothing else
than transcendental interpretation, which reaches well beyond the mere fact
of tradition.103
It is evident that Usener acknowledged a fully legitimate scientific dignity to

the kind of criticism he calls “divinatory” (“divinatorisch”),104 and he goes so
far as to compare “critical divination” to the “spiritual creative act of the liter-
ary work itself.”105 Usener appears here immune from the feeling of discom-
fort to which philologists are exposed whenever they abandon “the ground
of tradition” (“den Boden der Überlieferung”) and dare to take the “leap in
the dark” (“Schritt ins Leere”) of conjecture;106 perhaps he would have simply
advised Hermann Fränkel, who expressed his doubts in such a way a genera-
tion later, to keep his eyes turned to the ground.
The bridge between observation and vision, to return to Warburg’s dis-
tinction, is thus provided by “good conjecturing,” which Jacob Bernays, an-
other illustrious representative of the Bonn school, defines as “a microcosm
of all spiritual powers” (“ein Mikrokosmos aller Geisteskräfte”),107 and which
cannot be confused with any attempts at restitution, in Ruben’s sense. In
his later years, Warburg repeatedly made reference to being supported by
the fictional Kollegium der kleinen Brückenbauer,108 or, in the Latin version
that Eduard Fränkel recorded, “the order of the pontifices minimi.”109 He
did not know Ludwig Traube in person, like Usener, but could experience
his influence, if only “from a spiritual distance,” through the mediation of
Franz Boll, the great historian of ancient astrology, who had been Traube’s
colleague in Munich.110 In the introduction to the lecture already quoted,
103 Usener, “Philologie und Geschichtswis- Karlfried Gründer, in Jacob Bernays. Un

senschaft” 30. philologue juif, ed. John Glucker and An-
104 “Among all the historical methods only dré Laks (Lille: Presses Universitaires du
the philological can lay claim to a self-re- Septentrion, 1995) 247.
lying certainty. The interpretation of writ- 108 Cf. the introduction to Karl Reinhardt’s
ten signs, transmitted through tradition, lecture on “Ovids Metamorphosen” in the
which we practice in divinatory criticism, Warburg Library on October 24, 1924, in
lifts itself up to the level of mathematical Warburg, “Per Monstra ad Sphaeram”, 60.
evidence” (Usener, “Philologie und Ge- 109 Eduard Fränkel, “Aby Warburg,” obitu-
schichtswissenschaft” 32.) ary first published in Gnomon 5 (1929),
105 Usener, “Philologie und Geschichtswis- reprinted in Kleine Beiträge zur klassischen
senschaft,” 23. Philologie, 2 vols. (Roma: Edizioni di Sto-
106 Hermann Fränkel, Einleitung zur kri- ria e Letteratura 1964) vol. 2, 578.
tischen Ausgabe der Argonautika des Apol- 110 Also literary executor of his Nachlass,
lonios (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Rupre- published in three volumes: Vorlesungen
cht 1964) 141. und Abhandlungen (München: Beck,
107 Jacob Bernays, “Aphorismen,” ed. 1909-1920).
Warburg fondly remembers Paul Lehmann’s teacher, along with the recently
deceased Boll, both high examples of “the simple loyalty to the transmitted
word” (“die einfache Treue zum überlieferten Wort”) and “the incorrupt-
ible sense for the authentic document” (“der unbestechliche Sinn für das
echte Dokument”) that are, as he emphatically puts it, “applied Kant without
words” (“angewandter Kant ohne Worte”).111 According to Gertrud Bing’s
testimony, Warburg referred to Traube as the “Grandmaster of our Order,”112
and it is in all likelihood the invisible “Order of the Small Bridge Builders”
that he was alluding to.
Traube had proposed, first in his 1900 essay on “The Age of the Codex
Romanus of Virgil” and then in his masterpiece Nomina sacra (his last work,
which appeared posthumously in 1907), a revolutionary theory of the ab-
breviation in manuscripts, according to which the Christian contraction of
the nomina sacra (a technicism introduced by the same Traube)113 was not in-
tended to spare space and time, as one had supposed until then, but originat-
ed “precisely through the translation of the sacred scriptures and . . . precisely
through the obligation to oppose to the tetragrammaton a homogeneous for-
mulation.”114 Traube contended that this kind of abbreviation was an original
Jewish invention, since there was no similar pattern in older classical Greek.
Abbreviations looked totally different then. They worked through elimina-
tion of the ending, so that when using this method, which he calls suspen-
sion, for the most part only the initial letters remain. The shortened forms,
produced when the inner part of the word falls away and, aside from the first
letter, at minimum the last is left, which are therefore the result of elision or
of so-called contraction—these forms are missing at an earlier time.115 Traube
concedes that one scholar before him had foreseen the true explanation: no
less than Luther himself:
It was Luther, who hit on the same problem while translating the old Testa-
ment, that had originally caused . . . the shortening of the Nomina sacra.
How must one render the Hebrew tetragrammaton? The German translator
asked himself the same question, as the first Greek translators. He formulated
the answer he found in the introduction to the Old Testament of 1523. One
must acknowledge a divinatory stroke in the graphic device that Luther found
necessary in order to be equal to his task,116
111 WIA III.12.4.1., fol. [29]. einer Geschichte der christlichen Kürzung
112 Gertrud Bing, “A. M. Warburg” (1964), (München: Beck, 1907) 17.
in Wuttke, Ausgewählte Schriften und Wür- 114 Traube, Nomina sacra, 31.
digungen, 447. 115 Traube, Nomina sacra, 31.
113 Ludwig Traube, Nomina sacra. Versuch 116 Traube, Nomina sacra, 285.
Fig. 7. Martin Luther’s introduction to his translation of the Old Testament (1523), from
Ludwig Traube, Nomina sacra. Versuch einer Geschichte der christlichen Kürzung (München:
Beck, 1907) 285
which is the different capitalization of the word Herr: HERR for the tetra-
grammaton and HErr for Adonai (see fig. 7). The interpretation of the no-
mina sacra thus provided a decisive impulse to the Renaissance of German
philology in the age of Luther,117 although Warburg himself remarks in his
Luther essay that the “critico-philological sense” of a Melanchthon is hard
to reconcile with “that harmonizing world view of the ancients,” which sur-
vived for practical purposes in the astrological method.118 But it is precisely
the “harmonizing,” as we have seen, that is in contradiction with the spirit of
authentic philology, and not astrology per se.
On the other hand, since the real observation of the relative position of
the stars, as Warburg underscores in his Schifanoia essay, withdrew in favour
of a “primitive cult of the names of the stars,” and astrology survived in the
Renaissance and “until our own days” only as “a name fetishism projected
into the future,”119 it can provide a particularly rich treasury of names to
the philologist. While still in Kreuzlingen, Warburg saw himself as member
117 Cf. Novalis’s criticism of Luther for of Luther,” The Renewal of Pagan Antiquity
having contaminated theology with the 602-3.
“highly foreign and mundane science” of 119 “Italienische Kunst und internationale
philology (“Christenheit oder Europa,” Astrologie im Palazzo Schifanoja zu Fer-
Schriften, III: 512). rara,” Atti del X. Congresso internazionale
118 “Heidnisch-antike Weissagung im Wort di Storia dell’Arte. L’Italia e l’arte stra-
und Bild zu Luthers Zeiten,” Sitzungs- niera (Roma 1922); reprinted in GS I.2:
berichte der Heidelberger Akademie der 464; trans. David Britt, “Italian Art and
Wissenschaften 26 (1920), reprint, GS I.2, International Astrology in the Palazzo
496; trans. David Britt, “Pagan-Antique Schifanoia, Ferrara,” The Renewal of Pagan
Prophecy in Words and Images in the Age Antiquity, 566.
of a “higher unity” with Boll and Ernst Cassirer:120 in this triad, Boll was
the representative of philology, which had provided Warburg the key to the
Schifanoia frescoes in 1908.121 But the key to an enigma—a “pictorial riddle”
(“Bilderrätsel”)122—can only be a linguistic one.123 It is instructive to con-
sider how Ruben reacted to a reading of the essay: “I am enough of a philolo-
gist to rejoice over the solution to a pictorial riddle.”124 Warburg found the
solution to Schifanoia’s riddle in no less than in the catalogue of the names of
constellations that Boll had gathered in his Sphaera.125
In the case of the Dublin portrait, too, Warburg found the solution to the
riddle in a catalogue of names: the Armorial Général, the handbook of her-
aldry, or, much more emphatically, “the supreme regulator of historical phan-
tasy,” as Warburg hails it with enthusiasm, in which the Migliorati lineage is
assigned the coat of arms with the three roses.126 However, it is hard to deny
a degree of arbitrariness in Warburg’s handling of this source: perhaps here
lies a possible reason for his abandonment of the essay. The family name of
Leonardo’s friend is spelled uniformly in the sources that Warburg relied
upon as Migliorotti,127 and it was probably just a patronymic, according to
120 Cf. Warburg, “Per monstra ad sphaeram”, vol. 2, 361-364, spell the name Miglio-
42. rotti. Milanesi’s earlier edition of the life
121 Cf. Warburg, “Per monstra ad sphaeram”, of Leonardo by the Anonimo Gaddiano,
68-69. “Documenti risguardanti Leonardo da
122 Though not exclusively, as Warburg is Vinci,” Archivio Storico Italiano, serie III,
careful to point out in his conclusion: 16 (1872) 219-230, has also the same
“Italienische Kunst und internationale As- spelling both in text and footnote (222),
trologie,” GS I.2, 478; trans. David Britt, as well as Cornelius von Fabrickzy’s later
“Italian Art and International Astrology,” edition, “Il codice dell’Anonimo Gaddia-
The Renewal of Pagan Antiquity, 585. no (Cod. Magliabechiano XVII, 17) nella
123 Cf. Walter Benjamin’s “Riddle and Biblioteca Nazionale di Firenze,” Archivio
Mystery” (“Über das Rätsel und das Ge- storico italiano serie V, 12 (1893) 15-94,
heimnis”), Gesammelte Schriften, ed. Rolf 275-334: 87, 89, with a variation, how-
Tiedemann and Hermann Schweppen- ever, between Migliorittj and Migliorottj
häuser, vol. 6 (Frankfurt/M.: Suhrkamp that is, probably, just a typo: cf. the edi-
1985) 16-17. tion by Carlo Vecce in the appendix to his
124 WIA, GC, Ruben to Warburg, June 2, biography of Leonardo (Roma: Salerno
1924. 1998) 360-361. Cf. the letters addressed
125 Franz Boll, Sphaera. Neue griechische to ‘Athalanti [or ‘Atalanti’] de Miglioroc-
Texte und Untersuchungen zur Geschichte tis’ and offering him the office of “per-
der Sternbilder (Leipzig: Teubner, 1903). petuo cytharedo” in the Medici Academy,
126 J. B. Rietstap, Armorial Général, 2nd reproduced in Paul Kristeller, “Francesco
ed., Gouda 1884-1887, vol. 2, 223. Cf. da Diacceto and Florentine Platonism in
translation below, 4. the Sixteenth Century,” Studies in Renais-
127 Both sources he quotes in his note sance Thought and Letters [Roma: Edizioni
10: Milanesi’s edition of Vasari’s Vite di Storia e Letteratura 1956], 287-336:
(see above, note 68) and Alessandro 334-335). As we have seen, Warburg’s
D’Ancona, Origini del Teatro Italiano, 2 usage is casual throughout: see the spell-
vols. (2nd ed.: Torino: Loescher 1891) ing ‘Migliore’ in the 1929 letter to Volmer
Fig. 8. WIA, III.120.2., detail of the inscription on the back of the lira da braccio (photo
courtesy Warburg Institute, London).
a well-attested usage in Renaissance Florence that Warburg had to be aware

of.128 This has troubling implications for Warburg’s conjecture, as the mispel-
ling of the name would seem to affect the identification of the family shield.
I will focus, however, on another reason, and a more likely one: the inability
to read, literally, a detail of the painting that, on the other hand, as we learn
from Warburg’s letter to Gräff, he had not overlooked:
An inscription that has not yet been deciphered finds itself on the back of the
lute, which I attach in the included photograph, with the request of a return
at your earliest convenience [see fig. 8]. One wanted to read it as follows
(‘Man wollte sie folgendermassen lesen’):
The typescript breaks up here and the rest of the letter is missing. Warburg
was in all likelihood going to quote here the deciphering that is found on
a slip of paper (see fig. 9) included with the rest of the Attalante Miglio-
quoted above, note 22. On Migliorotti cf. Early Cinquecento,” Musica Franca: Essays
Emanuel Winternitz, Leonardo da Vinci as in Honor of Frank A. D’Accone (Stuyves-
a Musician (New Haven: Yale University ant, NY: Pendragon Press 1996) 45-78;
Press 1982) xxii-xxiii and 22; H. Colin Vecce, Leonardo, 73-77.
Slim, “The Lutenist’s Hand,” Achademia 128 Cf. Isidoro Del Lungo, Florentia (Fi-
Leonardi Vinci 1 (1988) 32; Anthony M. renze 1897), a book Warburg certainly
Cummings, “The Sacred Academy of the knew, on the origins of Poliziano’s family
Medici and Florentine Musical Life of the name, 31-32.
Fig. 9. WIA, III.120.2., transcription of the inscription (photo courtesy Warburg Institute,
London).
Fig. 10 WIA, III.120.2., transcription of the inscription (photo courtesy Warburg Institute,
London) WIA, III.2.1., ZK 048/026416, alternative transcription (photo courtesy War-
burg Institute, London).
rati material, and that corresponds to the reading later published by Adolfo
Venturi in his Studi dal vero: “el chomençar non fia per tempo mai.”129 The
inscription is actually a quote, as it turns out, of a Petrarchean verse that
has been identified only recently,130 though in a slightly different spelling
from the canonical reading of the canzone that opens the second part of the
Canzoniere, in morte di madonna Laura: “e ‘l cominciar non fia per tempo
omai.”131 It is thus tantalizing that the letter breaks up at this point, as the
subjunctive hints that Warburg would have probably suggested an alternative
to the standard reading of the inscription, perhaps the one that is preserved
on a slip in one of his Zettelkästen: “I begin but do not complete for lack of
time,” chomincio ma no(n) p[er]feci per tempo man(cante) (see fig. 8). Instead
of the constant belatedness or deferral that the other reading seems to decry,
as a possible motto of the musician in question, Warburg’s reading amounts
to an admission of impotence, or a lament against the strictures of time that
conspire against the fulfillment of one’s task, if not perfection itself. In light
of the circumstances that accompanied the drafting of the essay, the conclu-
sion that Warburg’s reading was meant as a motto for his own consumption
is almost unavoidable. The writing of the essay took indeed place in the
midst of the writing of another, more ambitious project, his essay on “Flem-
ish Art and the Florentine Early Renaissance,” and got very much in the way
of its completion.
We may exactly date the “excitement” Warburg refers to in his letter to Gräff,
as we know from his journal that he had identified the sitter “in the last days
of May 1902.”132 Trouble immediately ensued in dealing with the editor of
the Jahrbuch, Ferdinand Laban, in which his Memling essay was to be pub-
lished. On June 5, 1902, Laban urged Warburg to send the manuscript with-
out further delay, but in response Warburg suggested instead, for the first
commentario all’edizione in fac-simile

129 Cf. above, note 43. (Padova: Antenore, 2004) 335, as well as
130 By Jonathan Katz Nelson (see above, the 1905 facsimile L’originale del Canzo-
note 23). niere di Francesco Petrarca Codice Vaticano
131 CCLXIV, 36. This is the reading ad- Latino 3195, riprodotto in fototipia, a cura
opted by all modern editors, based as it della Biblioteca Vaticana (Milano: Hoepli,
is on the autograph manuscript in the 1905). In conjunction with the previous
Vatican Library, f. 53r., cf. Il Canzoniere di line: “ché dubbioso è ‘l tardar come tu
Francesco Petrarca riprodotto letteralmente sai,” the lines are an invitation no longer
dal Cod. Vat. Lat. 3195, ed. Ettore Modi- to postpone and embrace the “happier
gliani (Roma: Società Filologica Romana hope (più beata spene)” (l. 48) that no
1904) 121, reproduced in Rerum Vul- mundane glory can match.
garium Fragmenta Codice Vat. Lat. 3195,
time, the publication of the essay on the Dublin portrait. Laban replies on
June 13 that he would be in principle ready to accept it, but with the jovial
advice: “one does not exclude the other!” which does not seem to have paci-
fied Warburg.133 In spite of delaying his work on the Memling essay, Warburg
clearly devoted the rest of the month to writing the Migliorati essay,134 which
must have been completed by the beginning of July, before the birth of his
son Max Adolph on July 10. This distraction cost him a rather traumatic
exchange of accusations with his brother Max and the Dutch painter and
critic Jan Veth, who was at the time guest of the family while he was painting
a portrait of his parents, commissioned by Aby himself.135 Another reason
he did not pursue the matter further is perhaps due to the doubts about his
methodological approach, or lack thereof, that came to a boiling point with
the criticisms presented to him at that time. Max wrote to Aby on June 28
that, while they both were convinced of Aby’s huge scholarship and talent for
discovering connections (Kombinationsgabe), they were also convinced that
he did not work as he ought to, and that he lacked systematic application.136
But it was especially the interference between the new and the old project
that sparked their criticisms. In reply to this attack, Warburg defended his
working habits vehemently in a letter on June 30 to his pregnant wife Mary,
who knew very well how “systematically” and “methodically” he went about
tormenting himself, if nothing else, and he asked rhetorically whether the
investigation of the violin player was not consistent with, and part of, the
larger investigation “on portraiture and Flemish influence.”137 Yet the very
vehemence of Warburg’s response is undoubtedly a sign that his critics had
touched upon a sensitive spot, and that the relationship between the two
projects was not so symbiotic as he wanted his relatives and friends to believe.
Indeed, the new essay contains an implicit criticism of the work in progress,
as we have seen, or at least casts doubt on its reach, precisely at the juncture
that is its most tormented place. It is in the transition from the first to the
second hand that the crucial part of the essay is hidden, and literally, for that
132 WIA III.10.3., Tagebuch II 1897-1902, tion über d. Raffaellino del Garbo-Por-
fol. [71v]. traet geht weiter.”
133 WIA, GC, Laban to Warburg, June 13, 135 A friend of Jolles, Veth plays an equally
1902. Laban also reminded his intractable important role in this period of Warburg’s
author of the logistical efforts that the life.
photographs of the Memling trypticon in 136 WIA, Family Correspondence (hence-
Danzig had cost, while he emphatically forth: FC), Max to Aby Warburg, June
denied owning a picture of the Dublin 28, 1902.
painting. 137 WIA, FC, Aby to Mary Warburg, June
134 Cf. WIA III.10.3., Tagebuch II 1897- 30, 1902.
1902, fol. [72]: “Ende Juni die Specula-
matter. The invocation of this correspondence is therefore not immaterial,
also because Mary played a role in the transcription of the essay as its second
scribe, and somehow acted as Proust’s Françoise, even as the role of the mid-
wife does not become her. In her reply, Mary voiced the fear that her baby
would arrive sooner than his article on Flanders, as was indeed the case, since
Max Adolph was born on July 10, 1902.138 One will have to remember that
the nymph appears against the backdrop of a birth chamber, and is ill suited
to that harmonious background, as Jolles and Warburg both underscore.
Warburg’s continuing interest in the painting, beyond the enigma of the sit-
ter’s identity, which he was sure he had solved, must have been due therefore
to the enigma of the inscription, which clearly had far-ranging implications
for him on both a biographical and methodological level.139 As another result
of the “improvement of method 1902,” the interest for the inscription super-
sedes from now on that for the coats of arm, and the impresa, the quintes-
sential combination of word and image, becomes almost naturally the focus
of his subsequent work and his favorite Hilfsmittel. While he had celebrated,
in the wake of Vasari and Lessing, the disappearance of the scroll as a sign
of Renaissance naturalism in his Leonardo lectures of 1899,140 he now sees
his task as precisely that of restoring “the scroll which issues from the mouth
of medieval figures to the joyful personages of the Renaissance, brimming
with life.”141 In the notes for the 1925 seminar we find the reformulation
138 WIA, FC, Mary to Aby Warburg, June Sixten Ringbom, “Actions and Reports:
30, 1902. The Problem of Indirect Narration in the
139 In one of his notecards the date of birth Academic Theory of Painting,” Journal of
of Attalante, 1466, is underlined, and it is the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes 52
certainly not inconsistent with Warburg’s (1989) 38-39.
own sensibility to assume that the coin- 141 Gombrich, Aby Warburg, 120. This also
cidence with his year of birth, 1866, may entails a criticism of Karl Lamprecht’s
have been a further motive of interest for views, from whose lectures on cultural
him (WIA, Zettelkasten 048/026419). history in Bonn Warburg had learnt “the
140 “Medieval art stood in need of tradition- distinction between the pictographic
al gestures or even of inscribed scrolls to symbolism of early medieval art and the
make the figures in a picture intelligible. expressiveness of later styles. It was in the
The art of the Renaissance emancipates period between 1100 and 1300, we read
itself from the service of theological il- [in Warburg’s notes of those lectures], that
lustrations. To understand the Virgin of art overcame the need for written scrolls
the Rocks we require only this of tradi- coming out of the mouths of the acting
tion: a human heart and eyes which can personages. Now gestures, facial expres-
see” (quoted in Gombrich, Aby Warburg, sions, the ‘language of passion’ came to
102). Warburg takes up an argument the fore” (Gombrich, Aby Warburg, 36).
that goes back to Vasari and Lessing: cf.
of another motto of his: “das Wort zum Bild,” a “fundamental principle”
of Warburg’s methodology, which inspired his activity from its very begin-
ning. As he explained in a letter to his brother Max of June 13, 1928,142 it
becomes here “das eigene Wort zum eigenen Bild,” whereby he also hints to
have gained “a new dimension.”143 But that is why the lack of a connection
between the inscription and Attalante’s life must have remained unacceptable
to Warburg; how does the sitter’s “own word,” and not just his proper name,
match his “own image”?
In its broader version, “das Wort zum Bild,” for which he claims “the gen-
eral meaning” of a “heuristic method ‘in itself ’” (“die allgemeine Bedeutung
des von mir seit den Anfängen meiner Tätigkeit vertretenen Grundsatzes ‘das
Wort zum Bild’ als heuristische Methode ‘an sich’”),144 means, of course, first
of all: the word must supplement the image, but also: the image must speak
for and by itself. In one of the first occurrences of the word “Mnemosyne” I
am aware of in his writings, found in the annual report on the Library for the
year 1925, Warburg identifies Mnemosyne not as the goddess of Memory
and mother of the Muses but rather as “the great Sphynx,” out of whom he
hopes “to unlock, if not her secret, at least the formulation of her riddle”
(“der grossen Sphynx Mnemosyne, wenn auch nicht ihr Geheimnis, so doch
die Formulierung ihrer Rätselfrage zu entlocken”).145 In the case of Atta-
lante’s portrait, Warburg had unlocked the name out of the image and solved
again a Bilderrätsel thanks to an ingenuous prosopopeia. Once completed
the essay, however, he must have realized that the “prosopographic passion”
does not solve anything at all when it declares itself satisfied with the mere
discovery of “the names of the guilty.”146
Yet the ultimate reason of Warburg’s loyalty to the Dublin musician and his
return to him late in life is to be looked for in the name that he had him-
self imposed upon that anonymous face. The given name of the musician,
certainly not a Christian name,147 is spelled inconsistently in the literature
142 WIA, GC, Aby to Max Warburg, June 147 In addition to his better-known mytho-
13, 1928. logical pedigree (for which cf. my essay
143 WIA III.113.9., folder inscribed Einfüh- “L’impresa di Warburg,” to which what
rung, fol. [7]. follows is indebted), Atlas is also locally
144 WIA, GC, Aby to Max Warburg, June remembered as the mythical founder of
13, 1928. Fiesole, according to a widespread aetio-
145 WIA, III.133.3.3, 5 (annual report on logical legend (Villani, Cronica I, vii) that
the Library for 1925, December 1925). Boccaccio takes up in his Ninfale fiesolano
146 Didi-Huberman, “The Portrait, the In- (stanzas 436 ff.), a text Warburg was very
dividual and the Singular,” 182. familiar with.
Fig. 11. Frontispiece from Gerardus Mercator, Atlas sive cosmographicae meditationes de fab-
rica mundi et fabricati figura (Duisburg, 1595).
Warburg had access to, more so than the family name, but a number of his
sources attest the syncopated form:148 a letter by Girolamo Stanga of October
29, 1471, for instance, calls him Athlante,149 and Naldus Naldius addressed
two of his Epigrammata to Athlas Meliorottus.150
“Atlas” was, of course, the shorthand for the final project of Warburg’s last
years, but it is a question not yet fully investigated why his Bilderbuch should
have been called an atlas in the first place. As in the case of Mercator’s atlas,
148 It may be interesting to remember the rather balances it on his shoulders.
unusual etimology proposed by Usener in 149 D’Ancona, Origini del Teatro Italiano,
his Götternamen: Versuch einer Lehre von vol. 2, 359. WIA III.120.3. also preserves
der religiösen Begriffsbildung (Bonn: Cohen a transcription of Antonino Bertolotti,
1896) 40, according to whom ‘Atlaß is Musici alla corte dei Gonzaga in Mantova
not formed by adding, for reasons of eu- dal secolo XV al XVIII (Milano 1890)
phony, the prefix a to the participle tláß, 15-16 and 24-25, quoting a letter by
“he who carries,” but is rather related to, the Marchesa Isabella on June 22, 1493,
and differs only for a syncope from the which makes reference to Atlante Cithare-
adjective hatálantoß, properly said of the do florentino.
arms of a scale that hold an equal weight. 150 Cf. the entries in Paul Kristeller, Iter ita-
From this point of view, then, Atlas does licum (London: Warburg Institute 1963)
not support the sky like a column, but vol. 1, 130, 265.
Fig. 12. WIA, III.118, fol. 28 (photo courtesy Warburg Institute, London).
there was no necessity behind the naming: it is largely due to chance, as an
historian of geography has rightly observed, that a book of maps is today
called an “atlas” rather than a “theatre.”151 At the end of the 16th century,
the great cartographer, who had exchanged his German name, Krämer, for
its Latin translation,152 turned the proper name of a mythological figure into
a common noun by prefacing his collection of maps with a frontispiece de-
picting Atlas (see fig. 11).153 What we now commonly refer to as an atlas is
therefore so called by antonomasia. The decay of a mythological name to a
common noun that Warburg was able to prevent in the case of Nestor, which
a tobacco company wanted to use for a new brand of cigarettes,154 occurred
in the case of Atlas so successfully that even Warburg seems to have been
unaware of its original dignity. Yet Warburg could not ignore that, before it
decayed to a proper name of a mythical king, and then even lower to com-
mon noun of a collection of maps, and eventually of any tables or plates
whatsoever, the name “Atlas” had been indeed a divine name—and as such
had been discussed by Usener in his masterpiece, On the Divine Names;155
it is therefore certainly not unworthy to figure, beneath the title Mnemo-
syne,156 on the frontispiece of Warburg’s “so-called lifework” (the litotes is
151 Peter v. d. Krogt, “Mercators Atlas: tectura VI.7.6), preferred to use another
Geschichte, Editionen, Inhalt,” in Hans transliterated Greek term, “telamones.”
H. Blotevogel and Rienk Vermij, Gerhard 154 Cf. K. Berger, “Erinnerungen an Aby
Mercator und die geistigen Strömungen Warburg,” in Mnemosyne: Beiträge zum
des 16. und 17. Jahrhunderts (Bochum: 50. Todestag von Aby M. Warburg, ed.
Brockmeyer 1995) 49-64: 55, to which I Stephan Füssel (Göttingen: Gratia-Verlag,
refer for a discussion of the editorial vicis- 1979) 53.
situdes of Mercator’s work. 155 Cf. Usener, Götternamen 39-40.
152 On Mercator’s biography, see Nicholas 156 Even if Warburg himself does not seem
Crane, Mercator: The Man who Mapped to have used it alone in the numerous
the Planet (New York: Henry Holt 2002). versions of the title of the work, for which
153 Atlas sive cosmographicae meditationes see Martin Warnke, “Der Leidschatz der
de fabrica mundi et fabricati figura (Duis- Menschheit wird humaner Besitz,” in
burg 1595). In another sense, already in Werner Hofmann, Georg Syamken, Mar-
antiquity Atlas had been multiplied in tin Warnke, Die Menschenrechte des Auges.
the figures of the “atlases” that served as Über Aby Warburg (Frankfurt a.M.: Eu-
architectural elements and that the Greeks ropäische Verlagsanstalt 1980) 168-169.
already called by that name, whereas the It will be useful to remember that the
Romans, according to Vitruvius (De archi- translation “atlas” often erases that which
Warburg’s).157 At least on one important occasion, however, he called the
word by its name: on a folio-sized sheet dated April 8, 1925, which served
as a “table for the organization of material” in preparation of his lecture in
memory of Franz Boll,158 we find the word mentioned in quotation marks.
Warburg writes: “vom Lobus – zum Globus – vom Globus zum ‘Atlas’,”
which he glosses immediately below: “vom Globus – über das Monstrum –
zur Sphaera” (see fig. 12).159 The sphere is here, literally, the celestial sphere
that Atlas carries on his shoulders, though the carrier’s name has become by
way of metonymy the name of the burden he carries. The formula pregnantly
captures the movement from microscopic to microcosmic and from micro-
cosmic to macrocosmic that Warburg had only hinted at in the Attalante es-
say, as we have seen. The first half, “vom Lobus zum Globus,“ which is typical
of Warburg’s linguistic talent and, above all, of his late “gnomic style,”160 was
taken up expressis verbis in the text of the Boll lecture itself,161 where it sums
up in an epigrammatic manner the result of one of his fundamental inter-
ests in those years: the intensive study of hepatoscopy, and in particular of
Etruscan haruspicy. Warburg meant it to comprehend the development that,
from the more primitive divination through the liver, had led to the more
abstract and scientific astrological system, which Franz Cumont had gone so
far as to define as a “scientific theology.”162 Hepatoscopy was to have been at
the center of Franz Boll’s memorial, as we know from the original program
for the evening, which included, besides Warburg’s lecture, a never-delivered
talk by Boll’s brother-in-law, Gustav Herbig, on the Piacenza bronze liver, a
still recent archeological find and the subject of a debate in which Boll him-
self had taken part.163 Another witticism of Warburg’s late years is that on
in German is a plurality of terms, as in 239.

the case of Adolf Bastian’s “atlas” (Gom- 163 In the invitation to Karl Reinhardt’s
brich, Aby Warburg, 242), which is, more lecture on Ovid’s Metamorphoses (WIA
modestly, an Ethnologisches Bilderbuch for I.9.8.5., fol. [2], which must have there-
“more mature youth” (Berlin 1887). fore been sent out before October 24,
157 WIA, GC, Aby to Max Warburg, 13 1924, and contains a list of events for
June 1928. the forthcoming year), Warburg’s lecture
158 According to Gertrud Bing’s correct is listed under the title “Per monstra ad
description: several tables from the period sphaeram,” while the overall title of the
1919-1929 have been collected under the event is “Gedächtnisfeier für Franz Boll,”
signature WIA, III.118. and still includes Herbig’s lecture “Die
159 WIA, III.118, fol. 28. Bronzeleber von Piacenza — Zur Frage
160 The fitting characterization is Gom- nach der Herkunft der etruskischen Re-
brich’s, Aby Warburg, 288. ligion und Magie.” The liver had been
161 Even if the typewritten words were later discovered in 1877. Boll had contributed
crossed over by Warburg: cf. “Per Monstra to Carl Thulin’s volume, Die Götter des
ad Sphaeram,” 113. Martianus Capella und der Bronzeleber von
162 F. Cumont, Les religions orientales dans Piacenza, Töpelmann, Giessen 1906.
le paganisme romain (Paris: Leroux, 1906)
the Bollwerk (literally, bulwark, but also: Boll’s work)164 erected by Boll with
his Sphaera for the study of astrological iconography.165 Warburg’s atlas was
meant to provide equally unshakable support for the study of the “dialectic
of the image.”166 We would be wrong, therefore, in considering Mnemosyne
just an atlas in the now common sense or just another collection of im-
ages: the globe unbinds itself in its plates,167 and Dante’s expression is not
out of place if one considers that the ultimate ambition of Warburg’s atlas
is no less that to gather “into one volume,” literally, “what, in the universe,
is unbound” (“ciò che per l’universo si squaderna”) (Par. XXXIII 85-87).168
In a 1896 letter to Jacques Mesnil, Warburg had written after a reading of
D’Annunzio’s novel L’innocente: “I don’t permit anyone to drag me through
an Inferno whom I do not also believe capable of leading me across the
Purgatorio to the Paradiso. But this is precisely what the moderns are lack-
ing.”169 When he wrote these lines, Warburg could only have in mind Dante’s
Paradiso as an ideal, and I do not consider it a hyperbole to see in Mnemosyne
his Paradise, after the “Kreuzlingen Inferno”170 and the Purgatory of his last
years (the formula he preferred, as we have seen, is that of the “haymaking in
a thunderstorm.”) With his atlas, “that recherche du temps perdu of Western
imagery,” as Didi-Huberman has aptly defined it,171 but also of his private
imagery, Warburg strove to achieve a goal that he had envisaged as early as
1902, namely, the sublation, the Aufhebung in Hegel’s sense, of microscopic
observation into a vision that aspires to be at the same time microcosmic
164 It appears, for instance, in the conclu- the gigantic page of a book (als Riesen-
sion of the Boll lecture (Warburg, “Per Buchseite) for the prediction of fate,” and
Monstra ad Sphaeram,” 125). 23a: “To leaf though a book as a reading
165 Franz Boll, Sphaera. Neue griechische of the universe (Buchblättern als Lesen
Texte und Untersuchungen zur Geschichte des Universums)” (Mnemosyne, 36, 38.)
der Sternbilder, (Leipzig: Teubner 1903). Frank Kermode is rightly paraphrasing
166 “Beiträge zur ‘Dialektik des Bildes’” was Dante in his Forms of Attention (Chicago:
to have been the subtitle of the atlas, ac- University of Chicago Press 1985) 90: “if
cording to an annotation of September 2, the world is a book, gathered, when right-
1928 (WIA, III.105.1.3, fol. [11]), dic- ly seen, into one volume, then the book is
tated by Warburg to his assistant, Walter a world, capable of being exfoliated into a
Solmitz. universe.”
167 Or is “transposed onto the surface 169 WIA, GC, Warburg to Mesnil, June 26,
(Übertragung des Globus auf die Fläche)” 1896, cit. in Gombrich, Warburg 322.
of its plates (caption to plate 3, in Martin 170 As Warburg refers to Binswanger’s
Warnke’s edition of the Bilderatlas Mne- sanatorium in a book inscription to Carl
mosyne [Berlin: Akademie Verlag 2000], Georg Heise on his visit to Kreuzlingen
18.) on April 25, 1922, reproduced in Michael
168 One ought to read in this light also the Diers, “Kreuzlinger Passion,” Kritische
captions to plates 23 (which features a Berichte 7 (1979) 5.
diagram of Dante’s cosmos): “The Salone 171 Didi-Huberman, “The Portrait, the In-
[of the Palazzo della Ragione in Padua] as dividual and the Singular” 175.
and macrocosmic—even though, in the end, force failed Warburg’s “high
fantasy,” too, as Dante’s.172
University of Colorado at Boulder
172 That Warburg revisited the same prob- ines life in its subterranean roots” (“diese
lem with the atlas may be proven by a Engramme leidenschaftlicher Erfahrung
dense passage in its introduction that als gedächtnisbewahrtes Erbgut überleben
clearly arches back to his early polemical und vorbildlich den Umriß bestimmen,
statements against connoisseurship: “these den die Künstlerhand schafft, sobald
engrams of the experience of suffering Höchstwerte der Gebärdensprache durch
passion survive as a heritage stored in the Künstlerhand im tageslicht der Gestal-
memory. They become the exemplars, tung hervortreten wollen. Hedonistische
determining the outline created by the Ästheten gewinnen die wohlfeile Zustim-
artist’s hand as soon as maximal values of mung des kunstgeniessenden Publikums,
expressive movement desire to come to wenn sie solchen Formenwechsel aus der
light in the artist’s creative handiwork. Pläsierlichkeit der dekorativen grösseren
Hedonistic aesthetes can easily gain the Linie erklären. Mag wer will sich mit einer
cheap favours of an art-loving public Flora der wohlriechenden und schönsten
when they explain this change of form Pflanzen begnügen, eine Pflanzenphysi-
by the greater sensuous appeal of far- ologie des Kreislaufs und des Säftesteigens
sweeping decorative lines. May he who kann sich aus ihr nicht entwickeln, denn
wants be satisfied with a flora of the most diese erschließt sich nur dem, der das
odorous and beautiful plants; that will Leben im unterirdischen Wurzelwerk
never lead to a botanical physiology ex- untersucht”) (Mnemosyne, “Einleitung,” 3,
plaining the rising of the sap, for this will trans. Gombrich, Aby Warburg, 245).
only yield its secrets to those who exam-

Aby Warburg S Pentimento

Uploaded by

Copyright:

Available Formats

Aby Warburg S Pentimento

Uploaded by

Document Information

Original Description:

Original Title

Copyright

Available Formats

Share this document

Share or Embed Document

Sharing Options

Did you find this document useful?

Is this content inappropriate?

Copyright:

Available Formats

Aby Warburg S Pentimento

Uploaded by

Copyright:

Available Formats

$E\:DUEXUJ૷V3HQWLPHQWR

The Yearbook of Comparative Literature, Volume 56, 2010, pp. 140-175

For additional information about this article

It occurs to me on this occasion20 that the painting from Dublin kept me

cal aids (‘methodische Hilfsmittel’) to the art history of the Renaissance,”

32 Cf. translation below, 178. Renewal of Pagan Antiquity 240.

There is an implicit indictment that, to such a critic, the nymph herself

39 For an influential discussion of Morelli’s 107-8).

44 Marco Treves’s observation, in an essay WIA III.55.1., fol. [50v].)

57 Cf. translation below, 178. (Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchge-

Our knowledge of the accompanying historical circumstances, as natural and

While the “knowledge of the accompanying historical circumstances” sug-

71 Alison Winton, Proust’s Additions: The of a concordance of his works (a desidera-

ises renewed strength to the philologists, is the “letter” (“Wortlaut”), the

85 “To the philological student of history (“Nüchternheit meiner Combinationen”)

which was only temporarily inhibited, German philologists, in particular that of

It so happened that men of exegetic inclination, the restitutors, felt tempted

93 Anne Marie Meyer, “Aby Warburg in Testament (London, 1896). In a letter

Restitutio is a category that Ruben himself invented to describe the “attempts

One may consider this preface as a manifesto of a praxis of textual criticism,

two elementary operations, which philology performs, recensio and interpre-

98 Recensio und Restitutio 1. 1917, reproduced in Biester, Der innere

It is evident that Usener acknowledged a fully legitimate scientific dignity to

103 Usener, “Philologie und Geschichtswis- Karlfried Gründer, in Jacob Bernays. Un

a well-attested usage in Renaissance Florence that Warburg had to be aware

commentario all’edizione in fac-simile

in German is a plurality of terms, as in 239.

University of Colorado at Boulder

You might also like

Pfad - The Proxy pFad of © 2024 Garber Painting. All rights reserved.