DOI Artikel:
Kuusamo, Altti: Aby Warburg’s missing ladies: The exclusion of mid-16th century nymphs
DOI Seite / Zitierlink: https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.59426#0064
Folia Historiae Artium
Seria Nowa, t. 19: 2021/PL ISSN 0071-6723
ALTTI KUUSAMO
University of Turku
ABY WARBURG’S MISSING LADIES:
THE EXCLUSION OF MID-16th CENTURY NYMPHS
As many art historians know, Aby Warburg returned over
and over again to the subject of a striding nymph, the mo-
tif of an antique-looking maenad with her fluttering drap-
ery which so often played the role of a pagan accessory
figure in some significant Renaissance paintings from the
late 15th century
Finally Warburg introduced this famous figure in his
last big enterprise, Mnemosyne-Atlas, in screen number
46 which is devoted to the Nymph. In this panel there is
a matrix of the visual motifs of a striding woman. The
screen shows the ways to domesticate an Antique nymph
in the Renaissance birth chamber - with some pictures
as Urformen of the figure. It is important to note that the
Ninfa here, as Georges Didi-Huberman says, is a kind of
héroïne impersonelle1 which took the role of a semi-pro-
tagonist in Warburgs studies and imagery.
When wondering how to apply or test the ideas War-
burg put in use in his famous research around ninfa fio-
rentina of Quattrocento, we have to admit that there has
been a stagnation in the recent research. Lately there
have been published interesting studies on this “laufende
Frau”, on the maenad-looking canefora of Ghirlandaio,
Botticelli, Filippo Lippi, Pollaiuolo and others - studies
of great precision, like those of Georges Didi-Huberman
(2002, 2015), Charles Burroughs (2016) and Barbara Baert
(2014)2, just to name a few, but they do not touch the
1 G. Didi-Huberman, L’image survivante. Histoire de l’art et temps
des fantômes selon Aby Warburg, Paris, 2002, p. 256. Cf. G. Agam-
ben, Ninfe, Torino, 2007, p. 168: Ninfa is something between the
original and the copy.
2 See G. Didi-Huberman, Ninfa fluida. Essai sur le drapé-désir, Pa-
ris, 2015; В. Baert, Nymph: Motif, Phantom, Affect. A Contribu-
tion to the Study of Aby Warburg (1866-1929), Leuven-Paris-Bris-
tol 2014; Ch. Burroughs, ‘The Nymph in the Doorway: Revisi-
ting a Central Motif of Aby Warburg’s Study of Culture’, Califor-
nia Italian Studies, 6, 2016.
problem of the Nachleben of this bold nymph after Quat-
trocento, although the 16th century art would have given
plenty of good examples of its appearances with a slight-
ly different “costume”. Especially in the mid-i6th century,
many interesting cases appear in Central Italian, and es-
pecially in Roman, imagery, which could give some food
for the hypothesis of a new kind of striding maenad. By
saying this I don’t only mean the examples Parmigiani-
no has given us - and that are so often referred to. There
is even more to come - examples which also raise some
methodological questions.
We know that Warburg didn’t have much interest in
the imagery of Michelangelo and his “miserable imita-
tors” (cattiva pratica), as Ludovio Dolce (1557) called
them. This was not only due to the fact that Warburg had
no taste for - or interest in - Michelangelo’s art,3 but also
because he didn’t like the “Muskelrhetorik” of Mannerism
and Baroque art and its “theatralisches Pathos”.4 In his late
“Einleitung” for Mnemosyne-Atlas panels, Warburg was
sceptical about art after Raphael and Michelangelo. For
him there existed a kind of idling (Leerlauf) in art after
Raphael. Warburg also referred to the “kanonische For-
mensprache” of the European Renaissance from the late
15th century up to the 17th century.5
Probably Michelangelo’s “bad imitators” weren’t bad
enough! So, Warburg must have been sceptical also of
an artist as a virtuoso, although in his time for example
3 Cf. J. Imorde, ‘Warburg und die Hochkunst. Das Problem Mi-
chelangelo’, in Ekstatische Kunst - Besonnenes Wort. Aby War-
burg und die Denkräume der Ekphrasis, ed. P. Kofler, Bozen, 2009,
pp. 242, 245.
4 A. Warburg, Gesammelte Schriften, ed. G. Bing, Nendeln/Lich-
tenstein, 1969, pp. 445, 447, 448-449.
5 A. Warburg, ‘Einleitung zum Mnemosyne-Atlas (1929)’, in Die
Beredsamkeit des Leibes. Zur Körpersprache in der Kunst, ed.
I. Barta, Ch. Geissmar, Wien, 1992, pp. 172-173.
Publikacja jest udostępniona na licencji Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0 PL).
Seria Nowa, t. 19: 2021/PL ISSN 0071-6723
ALTTI KUUSAMO
University of Turku
ABY WARBURG’S MISSING LADIES:
THE EXCLUSION OF MID-16th CENTURY NYMPHS
As many art historians know, Aby Warburg returned over
and over again to the subject of a striding nymph, the mo-
tif of an antique-looking maenad with her fluttering drap-
ery which so often played the role of a pagan accessory
figure in some significant Renaissance paintings from the
late 15th century
Finally Warburg introduced this famous figure in his
last big enterprise, Mnemosyne-Atlas, in screen number
46 which is devoted to the Nymph. In this panel there is
a matrix of the visual motifs of a striding woman. The
screen shows the ways to domesticate an Antique nymph
in the Renaissance birth chamber - with some pictures
as Urformen of the figure. It is important to note that the
Ninfa here, as Georges Didi-Huberman says, is a kind of
héroïne impersonelle1 which took the role of a semi-pro-
tagonist in Warburgs studies and imagery.
When wondering how to apply or test the ideas War-
burg put in use in his famous research around ninfa fio-
rentina of Quattrocento, we have to admit that there has
been a stagnation in the recent research. Lately there
have been published interesting studies on this “laufende
Frau”, on the maenad-looking canefora of Ghirlandaio,
Botticelli, Filippo Lippi, Pollaiuolo and others - studies
of great precision, like those of Georges Didi-Huberman
(2002, 2015), Charles Burroughs (2016) and Barbara Baert
(2014)2, just to name a few, but they do not touch the
1 G. Didi-Huberman, L’image survivante. Histoire de l’art et temps
des fantômes selon Aby Warburg, Paris, 2002, p. 256. Cf. G. Agam-
ben, Ninfe, Torino, 2007, p. 168: Ninfa is something between the
original and the copy.
2 See G. Didi-Huberman, Ninfa fluida. Essai sur le drapé-désir, Pa-
ris, 2015; В. Baert, Nymph: Motif, Phantom, Affect. A Contribu-
tion to the Study of Aby Warburg (1866-1929), Leuven-Paris-Bris-
tol 2014; Ch. Burroughs, ‘The Nymph in the Doorway: Revisi-
ting a Central Motif of Aby Warburg’s Study of Culture’, Califor-
nia Italian Studies, 6, 2016.
problem of the Nachleben of this bold nymph after Quat-
trocento, although the 16th century art would have given
plenty of good examples of its appearances with a slight-
ly different “costume”. Especially in the mid-i6th century,
many interesting cases appear in Central Italian, and es-
pecially in Roman, imagery, which could give some food
for the hypothesis of a new kind of striding maenad. By
saying this I don’t only mean the examples Parmigiani-
no has given us - and that are so often referred to. There
is even more to come - examples which also raise some
methodological questions.
We know that Warburg didn’t have much interest in
the imagery of Michelangelo and his “miserable imita-
tors” (cattiva pratica), as Ludovio Dolce (1557) called
them. This was not only due to the fact that Warburg had
no taste for - or interest in - Michelangelo’s art,3 but also
because he didn’t like the “Muskelrhetorik” of Mannerism
and Baroque art and its “theatralisches Pathos”.4 In his late
“Einleitung” for Mnemosyne-Atlas panels, Warburg was
sceptical about art after Raphael and Michelangelo. For
him there existed a kind of idling (Leerlauf) in art after
Raphael. Warburg also referred to the “kanonische For-
mensprache” of the European Renaissance from the late
15th century up to the 17th century.5
Probably Michelangelo’s “bad imitators” weren’t bad
enough! So, Warburg must have been sceptical also of
an artist as a virtuoso, although in his time for example
3 Cf. J. Imorde, ‘Warburg und die Hochkunst. Das Problem Mi-
chelangelo’, in Ekstatische Kunst - Besonnenes Wort. Aby War-
burg und die Denkräume der Ekphrasis, ed. P. Kofler, Bozen, 2009,
pp. 242, 245.
4 A. Warburg, Gesammelte Schriften, ed. G. Bing, Nendeln/Lich-
tenstein, 1969, pp. 445, 447, 448-449.
5 A. Warburg, ‘Einleitung zum Mnemosyne-Atlas (1929)’, in Die
Beredsamkeit des Leibes. Zur Körpersprache in der Kunst, ed.
I. Barta, Ch. Geissmar, Wien, 1992, pp. 172-173.
Publikacja jest udostępniona na licencji Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0 PL).