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 S O M M A RIO

Marco Bertozzi, Andrea Pinotti, Presentazione 9

la “ melencolia ” di albrecht dürer

cinquecento anni dopo (1514-2014)
Atti del Convegno internazionale
xvii Settimana di Alti Studi Rinascimentali
(Ferrara, 4-6 dicembre 2014)

parte prima
Marco Bertozzi, Metamorfosi di Saturno: la “Melencolia” di Albrecht Dürer 13
Massimo Cacciari, Melencolia I: un simbolo 21
Claudia Wedepohl, Warburg, Saxl, Panofsky and Dürer’s Melencolia I 27
Saverio Campanini, Melencolia II. Gershom Scholem e l’Istituto Warburg. Un’indagine di
storia delle fonti e dei tipi 45
Elena Filippi, Melancholia, stupor, philosophia: Dürer, la sua Melencolia e l’inizio del pen-
siero come arte 63
Giovanni Maria Fara, Melencolia I di Albrecht Dürer nell’arte e nella letteratura italiana
tra xvi e xvii secolo 77
Alice Barale, «Collectione et quasi compressione»: Warburg e Benjamin in dialogo con Panof-
sky e Saxl 87

parte seconda
Stefania Santoni, Melancholia al femminile 97
Laura Antonella Piras, Effigies melancholiae: la poesia di Petrarca 105
Felice Gambin, Riscritture malinconiche in Spagna tra Cinque e Seicento. Da Andrés Velásquez
a Tomás de Murillo y Velarde 115
Stefania Iurilli, La Melencolia di Dürer. Dal quadro prospettico allo spazio tridimensionale 123
Tommaso Ranfagni, «Sublimium daemonum receptaculum». Proposta per un’iconografia
dell’anima nella Melencolia I di Albrecht Dürer 139
Donato Verardi, Il diavolo e Saturno. Due note a margine di Melencolia I di Albrecht Dürer:
Lutero ed Erasmo 149
Giacomo Mercuriali, Figura dell’inoperosità. La Melencolia I di Albrecht Dürer nel pensiero
di Giorgio Agamben 155

Indice dei nomi, a cura di Angela Ghinato 163

 WAR BURG, SAXL, PAN OFS KY
A N D D Ü RE R ’ S MELEN CO LIA I*
Clau di a Wed epohl
Questo articolo analizza le critiche mosse da Aby Warburg a Dürer’s Melencolia I. Eine quellen- und typenge-
schichtliche Untersuchung, il famoso saggio scritto a quattro mani da Erwin Panofsky e Fritz Saxl tra il 1921 e il
1922, poi pubblicato l’anno seguente. Secondo Warburg, lo studio di Panofsky e Saxl aveva evitato di inserire nell’a-
nalisi due tipi essenzialmente melancolici, Amleto e Faust. Partendo da tali rilievi critici, in questo saggio intendo
esaminare il particolare interesse dimostrato da Warburg per la storia della rappresentazione della sindrome melan-
colica e la sua idea di una fondamentale ambivalenza all’interno della personalità melancolica. Mentre Warburg de-
cise di perseguire il fenomeno della melancolia da un punto di vista psicologico, muovendo dalla presunta duplice
natura del dio planetare Saturno per risalire quindi alla psicopatologia moderna, Panofsky e Saxl accentrarono il
loro esame tanto sulla storia intellettuale, quanto sulla morfologia della rappresentazione del melancolico.

I n a letter of 30 January 1924 Fritz Saxl, at the time acting director of the Bibliothek Warburg,
let Aby Warburg almost casually know that «the “Melencolia I” had come out». Warburg
would of course have known about the appearance of the subsequently seminal second vol-
ume in the series of Studien der Bibliothek Warburg, had he not been hospitalized far away from
Hamburg, in Ludwig Binswanger’s sanatorium in Kreuzlingen in Switzerland. After almost
two and a half years of care, partly at home and partly in various German institutions, Warburg
had been transferred to Bellevue in April 1921 where he was treated for a psychosis, triggered
by the events following the German defeat in the First World War. Only a few months later, in
August of the same year, Warburg was finally able to return to Hamburg. Remarkably, Saxl –
who kept Warburg informed about all events in his library – added something about the aim
and the ethos of the study that had just been published under Erwin Panofsky’s and his own
name: «It has become a rather melancholic book in which not many people will rejoice», he
writes, «but you know well that we both feel like very humble followers.1 We don’t believe to
have found a particular solution to the problem; we have only carried further what is written
in the study on “Luther”». The latter is a reference to Warburg’s Pagan-Antique Prophecy in Words
and Images at the Age of Luther of 1920, a study on propaganda and imagery whose first version
was delivered as a lecture to mark the fifth hundred anniversary of the Reformation in 1917.2
Saxl’s metaphorical play on his own study’s subject went even further. Not only did he call the

Claudia Wedepohl, Archivist The Warburg Institute - School of Advanced Study, University of London,
claudia.wedepohl@sas.ac.uk
* My sincere thanks are due to Christopher Johnson for correcting my English. Unless quoted after a printed edition,
all translations into English are mine.
1 A similar statement can be found in the Introduction of Erwin Panofsky, Fritz Saxl, Dürers ‘Melencolia I’. Eine
quellen- und typengeschichtliche Untersuchung, Leipzig-Berlin, Teubner, 1923 (“Studien der Bibliothek Warburg”, 2), p. 2.
2 Warburg Institute Archive (= wia), General Correspondence (= gc ), Fritz Saxl to Aby Warburg, 30 January 1924: «Auch
die Melencolia I ist nun erschienen. Sie ist ein recht melancholisches Buch geworden, von [sic] dem nicht viel Leute Freude
haben werden. Aber ich bin doch menschlich sehr zufrieden, dass es gelungen ist, mit Panofsky zusammen die Arbeit zu
einem glücklichen Ende zu bringen. Sie wissen ja, wie wir beide uns nur als sehr bescheidene Fortsetzer fühlen, dass wir
beide eigentlich nur das Gefühl haben, nicht eine besondere Lösung gefunden zu haben, sondern nur das, was im “Lu-
ther” steht, weiter auszuführen». See also Aby Warburg, The Renewal of Pagan Antiquity. Contributions to the Cultural His-
tory of the European Renaissance, introduction Kurt W. Forster, translation David Britt, Los Angeles, ca, Getty Research In-
stitute for the History of Art and the Humanities, 1999, pp. 597-775 and Aby Warburg, Die Erneuerung der heidnischen
Antike. Kulturwissenschaftliche Beiträge zur Geschichte der europäischen Renaissance, Berlin-Leipzig, Teubner, 1932 (“Gesam-
melte Schriften” = gs, ii), pp. 487-565.
28 claudia wedepohl

Fig. 1. Fritz Saxl, Personal dedication to Warburg, in Erwin Panofsky, Fritz Saxl, Dürers ‘Melencolia I’.
Eine quellen- und typengeschichtliche Untersuchung, Leipzig-Berlin, Teubner, 1923
(“Studien der Bibliothek Warburg”, 2), The Warburg Institute Archive, London, section iii.3.

tenor of the just published book «melancholic», during a stay in Kreuzlingen he dedicates a
copy of the book to Warburg, his so-called master, «in the sign of the healing Jupiter» («Im
Zeichen des heilenden Jupiter» - Fig. 1).1
Saxl’s letter not only confirms the date of the first distribution of the study Dürers ‘Melencolia
I’. Eine quellen- und typengeschichtliche Untersuchung, it also sheds light on the co-author’s relation-
ship with Warburg, both personally and professionally. Yet more importantly, Saxl’s statement
relates to their respective methods. It proves that he was convinced the book – predominantly
written by Erwin Panofsky – broadened and deepened Warburg’s own notion of the meaning
of Dürer’s master etching by tracing and reconstructing its literary sources and its iconography.
Since 1905 Warburg had been developing his personal reading of the Melencolia I, inspired by
Karl Giehlow’s seminal study on the print, published in three parts in 1903 and 1904.2 Giehlow
had been able to demonstrate that Dürer invented a personification of melancholy as being
subject to saturnine influences. Although Warburg’s own interpretation was built on Giehlow’s
reconstruction of the literary tradition, Peter Klaus Schuster has stressed in his monumental
historiographical study of 1991 that Warburg’s interpretation stands out from the historiogra-
phy of the masterpiece by taking the ambivalent depiction of saturnine melancholy as «starting
point for a singular and thus entirely unique optimistic interpretation of Dürer’s invention».3
Giehlow and Warburg had indeed been the first to recognise the print’s allusion to the pseudo-
Aristotelian notion of melancholy as an ambivalent mental state in relation to the ambivalence
of the Greco-Roman god Kronos-Saturn. Only Warburg had however interpreted Dürer’s rep-
resentation of the interchanging states of «sterile gloom» and «human genius» as an appraisal
of the latter: the «liberation of the fear of Saturn», that is, the transformation of the malevolent
planetary ruler into a patron of creativity through «spiritualisation» («Vergeistigung»).4

1 Warburg’s personal copy of the study with the dedication is held in the Warburg Institute Archive.
2 Carl Giehlow, Dürers Stich Melencolia I und der maximilianische Humanistenkreis, «Mitteilungen der Gesellschaft für
vervielfältigende Kunst», vol. ii, 1903, pp. 29-41 (Ein Gutachten Conrad Peutingers über die Melancholie des Herkules Ae-
gypticus), vol. iv, 1904, pp. 6-18 (Konrad Celtis’ Verhalten gegenüber Ficinos Lehre vom melancholischen Temperament)
and pp. 57-78 (Die Stellung Maximilians zu den neuen Theorien vom Wesen der Melancholie).
3 Peter-Klaus Schuster, Melencolia I. Dürers Denkbild, Berlin, Gebrüder Mann Verlag, 1991, p. 32: «[D]em gegenüber
[hat] Warburg gerade Giehlows Gedanken eines ambivalenten Melancholiebildes zum Ausgangspunkt einer völlig
vereinzelt dastehenden optimistischen Deutung des Dürerschen Melancholiestichs gemacht».
4 Warburg, The Renewal of Pagan Antiquity, cit., pp. 641-644 and gs, ii, p. 530: «Die fratzenhaften Dämonen sind
verschwunden, der finstere Trübsinn des Saturn ist humanistich vergeistigt in menschliche Nachdenklichkeit».
 warburg, saxl, panofsky and dürer ’ s melencolia i 29
In the following I shall take up Schuster’s claim and challenge Saxl’s statement that Panof-
sky’s and his 1923-study was indeed partly a continuation or expansion of Warburg’s work.
My intention is to demonstrate that what Warburg tried to show through his reading of
Dürer’s Melencolia I differed significantly from the goal Panofsky and Saxl were pursuing,
although all three scholars based their analyses on the results of Giehlow’s research. In
addition to the philosophical tradition, for all three authors the German term ‘Typus’ – an
abstraction that has materialised in a concrete form and is as such relating to morphology –
is highly significant. Yet the same term and the concept for which it stands is also the clue
for naming the difference in their approaches. It will thus be necessary to look closer not
only at the different meanings of this term and its denotation in various contexts, but also
at unpublished and published documents, among the latter, once again, the few crucial lines
on Dürer’s print in Warburg’s well-known study on superstition and imagery in the age of
Luther of 1920.
Published only four years after Warburg’s interpretation, Panofsky’s and Saxl’s book was to
become the nucleus of the most seminal study to this day of the history of the idea of melan-
choly in Western culture: Saturn and Melancholy. Studies in the History of Natural Philosophy,
Religion and Art, published after a prolonged genesis in 1964 under the names of Raymond
Klibansky, Erwin Panofsky and Fritz Saxl.1 The earlier work, conceived by Panofsky in collab-
oration with Saxl and written down in just over one year by Panofsky, had also an unusual
genesis: It was based on materials gathered for a class («Übung») on Dürer Panofsky had
taught in the Winter Semester 1920/21. Saxl had contributed a one-hour lecture on the topic of
melancholy,2 hoping, as he wrote to Warburg, this would give him an opportunity to «intro-
duce a number of art history students to the problem» of the Kulturwissenschaftliche Biblio-
thek Warburg.3 This statement proves how essential the topic was for the propagation of War-
burg’s ideas and the apparent success of the lecture surely encouraged both scholars to pursue
their collaboration. Initially they planned to co-write an appendix to a posthumous publica-
tion, Giehlow’s unfinished book with the title «Dürers Stich Melencholia I und der maximi-
lianische Humanistenkreis». This book would have offered a new interpretation of the print
by taking the results of Giehlow’s essays of 1903 and 1904 a decisive step further, namely to
relate Dürer’s symbolism to Horapollo’s hieroglyphs. It had first been Warburg’s own idea to
edit Giehlow’s abandoned fragment, but only Panofsky and Saxl succeeded in getting access to
the materials. Yet they came to the conclusion that since what had already been set and print-
ed before Giehlow’s death in 1913 was not convincing, they had to transform their own texts
into an entirely independent study; but they still used Giehlow’s materials and 40 of his illus-
trations for the iconographic apparatus.4 The resulting study thus remained a compromise
that also went soon out of print. This situation sparked the desire to revise and expand this
study. In 1927, encouraged by the brilliant, young historian of philosophy, Raymond Klibansky,
Panofsky and Saxl embarked on the re-writing.

1 Raymond Klibansky, Erwin Panofsky, Fritz Saxl, Saturn and Melancholy. Studies in the History of Natural Philo-
sophy, Religion and Art, London, Nelson, 1964. Both historical and personal circumstances had delayed the publication of
this work: the forced move of the Kulturwissenschaftliche Bibliothek Warburg to London in 1933, the loss of the complete
typeset during the war, Saxl’s death in 1948, the revision and translation of the set of proofs into English, and Panofsky’s
reluctance to firstly release a study whose results were out-dated and secondly accept Klibansky as co-author with his
name appearing before his own as main author on the cover.
2 See wia, gc , Fritz Saxl to Aby Warburg, 21 January 1921 in which Saxl informs Warburg about his lecture of 17 January
1921.
3 wia, gc , Fritz Saxl to Aby Warburg, 8 January 1921: «Ich tue es gern, weil ich dadurch die Gelegenheit bekomme,
eine ganze Anzahl von Studenten der Kunstgeschichte an unser Problem heranzuführen».
4 See my introduction to the forthcoming Italian edition of Erwin Panofsky, Fritz Saxl, Albrecht Dürers Melencolia
I. Eine quellen- und typengeschichtliche Untersuchung, edited by Marco Bertozzi, Andrea Pinotti.
30 claudia wedepohl

Fig. 2. Reproductions of Dürers’s Hieronymus in His Studio and Melencolia I in Aby and Mary Warburg’s
apartment in Florence, detail, 1897, The Warburg Institute Archive, London, section ii.

The Genesis of Warburg ’ s Ideas

Even before knowing Giehlow’s work on Dürer, Warburg had apparently chosen the Melencolia
I as personal ‘incunabula’. Together with the related print depicting Hieronymus in his study,
the engraving is clearly visible on a photograph of the first apartment the Warburg couple had
rented in Florence (Fig. 2). In this period – from 1897 to 1902/1904 – Warburg was, as it is mean-
while known, struggling with episodes of depression.1 His serious art historical interest in Al-
brecht Dürer’s master print can be traced back to 1905 when he began researching the influence
of Italian ‘all’antica’ compositions in the Northern master’s inventions. The year before Karl
Giehlow had published his new interpretation of Dürer’s several depictions of the frantic Her-
cules which also led to a fundamentally new reading of the Melencolia I. As the first to recognise
the reference to Marsilio Ficino’s treatise De vita (c. 1482/1489) in which the humanist and physi-
cian advocates three different therapies against the negative effects of melancholy, Giehlow in-
terpreted Dürer’s iconography (most prominently the magical square behind the seated figure)
as alluding to each of these therapies. Giehlow’s main objective was to prove a link between
Ficino and Dürer by highlighting the vivid interest in Ficino’s work by a group of humanists

1 Bernd Roeck, Florence 1900. The Quest for Arcadia (2001), translation Steward Spencer, New Haven - London, Yale
University Press, 2009, pp. 139-140 and 234-239.
 warburg, saxl, panofsky and dürer ’ s melencolia i 31
that was associated with the court of Emperor Maximilian I, Dürer’s patron. The fact that one
of them, Conrad Peutinger, had translated Ficino’s De vita and advised the allegedly melan-
cholic Emperor on effective therapies seemed to prove this link.
Already in 1905, when demonstrating his new theory that Dürer used a repertoire of so-called
‘Pathosformeln’, Warburg referred to Dürer’s fundamentally different types of «images of
temperaments» («Temperamentsbilder»).1 Indeed, he had coined the term ‘Pathosformel’ – the
capturing of a specific codified expression – precisely for Dürer’s adoption of Italian copies of
ancient prototypes. He also maintained that Dürer’s art (and perhaps even the artist himself )
underwent a transformation from the earlier expression of frantic pathos ‘all’antica’ to forms
of melancholic pathos in his mature years. This notion of a diachronic development stood,
moreover, at the same time for a synchronic polarity between typical Southern and Northern
European personalities, inspired by Nietzsche’s idea of a Apollonian-Dionysian duplicity.
In his lecture entitled «The Gods of Antiquity and the Early Renaissance in Southern and
Northern Europe» of 1908, Warburg addressed for the first time the ingenious nature of the
melancholic type. According to him melancholy enabled the introverted personality to discover
the laws of nature and thus to overcome the superstitious belief in the power of celestial
deities.2 Only a year later, he stated in another lecture that Dürer had created «a self-absorbed,
humane symbol of a person in deep concentration».3 Meanwhile Dürer’s creation had become
a symbol of Warburg’s idea of modern man: someone who was capable of critical thinking, a
creator who would soon invent the means to discover the physical laws of the universe. In
addition to this allegorical interpretation, in 1910 Warburg suggested in a letter to the health
educator Otto Neustätter, the master print to be included in the new historical section of the
Hygienemuseum in Dresden as it illustrated the «psychiatric knowledge» of Dürer’s time.4
Warburg’s only published remarks on Dürer’s Melencolia I occur in his study on propaganda
in Luther’s age; there he summarise his earlier statements, but omits any description of the en-
graving. The author postulates his readers’ familiarity with Giehlow’s interpretation when he
modifies it in order to read Dürer’s iconography as quintessentially optimistic. Almost in pass-
ing and without explicit reference he alludes to Ficino’s citation of Ptolemaeus. Ptolemaeus
had interpreted dryness and coolness, the attributes of the element earth and as such related
to Saturn (that is,the planet that rules over the melancholic type) as a consequence of an im-
manent ability to centre oneself. Only this ability would, Warburg stresses, provide the power
to turn passive suffering into active thinking. Quoting Ficino’s «remedies» he goes on to write
that they «included mental focussing that enables the melancholic to transmute his sterile
gloom into human genius».5 Although he still regarded Dürer’s representation of the magical
‘tavola Iovis’ in the background of the scenery as alluding to an astrological explanation of the
state of melancholy (transmitted through Arabic sciences, namely the Picatrix, an eleventh-
century compendium of Hellenistic-oriental magical practices),Warburg saw the table as trans-
formed into a symbol and thus as having undergone a distancing abstraction. He was thus con-
vinced that Dürer had documented precisely the moment when the belief in cosmological
causation was overcome by a transformation of the malignant Saturn into the image of the
thinking human being. Quoting Melanchthon who regarded Dürer’s own genius as the most

1 wia, iii.61.6.1 («Dürer und die italienische Antike»), ff. 46, 47.
2 wia, iii.73.1.2.3 («Die antike Götterwelt und die Frührenaissance im Norden und im Süden»), f. 4: «Hier trifft Dürer
mit Leonardo – Norden und Süden – zusammen, auch als Vorläufer des modernen forschenden Menschens, dem die
Melancholie nicht nur die quälenden Fragen absurder Zahlenspielerei bringt, sondern auch den Zirkel brauchen lehrt,
um die neue Weltanschauung vom Gesetz zu schaffen».
3 wia, iii.75.7.2 («Einführung in die Kultur der florentinischen Frührenaissance»), ff. 50-51: «ein innerlich vertieftes,
humanes Symbol des sinnenden, auf sich concentrirten Menschen» / «ein Sinnbild der “Contemplation”».
4 wia, gc , Aby Warburg to Otto Neustätter, 1 June 1910: «So sieht die Psychiatrie der Uebergangszeit aus».
5 Warburg, The Renewal of Pagan Antiquity, cit., p. 641; also gs ii, pp. 526-527: «Seine Mittel sind innere geistige
Konzentration auf der einen Seite; durch diese kann der Melancholische seinen unfruchtbaren Trübsinn umgestalten zum
menschlichen Genie».
32 claudia wedepohl
sublime type of melancholy, a so-called ‘melancholia generosa’ which is spiritualised («vergeis-
tigt») by the influence of a favourable planetary constellation,1 he concludes:
Here the cosmic conflict is echoed in a process that takes place within man himself. The daemonic
grotesques have disappeared; and saturnine gloom has been spiritualised into human, humanistic con-
templation. […] Dürer shows the spirit of Saturn neutralized by the individual mental efforts of the think-
ing creature against whom its rays are directed. Menaced by the “most ignoble complex”, the Child of
Saturn seeks to elude the baneful planetary influence through contemplative activity. Melancholy holds
in her hand not a base shovel, but the compasses of genius.2
In Warburg’s preparatory notes for the essay we find a sentence that did not make it into the
text, but is important for understanding the essence of his thoughts: «In northern Europe ma-
nia becomes both orphic gesticulation and genial melancholy».3 This idea of the distinct, yet
connected forms of the same complexion became indeed a leitmotiv of the cultural-theoretical
speculations of Warburg’s later years. It also leads into the centre of Warburg’s criticism of
Panofsky’s and Saxl’s work.

Warburg ’ s criticism
An exchange between Warburg and Saxl one year before the study Dürers ‘Melencolia I’ came
out is indicative of their different approaches to the topic. After skimming through the proofs,
Warburg expressed his admiration, but also disclosed a significant objection: he missed an ex-
ploration and discussion of two quintessentially melancholic types: Shakespeare’s Hamlet and
Goethe’s Faust.4 Already in his Pagan-Antique Prophecy he had mentioned Hamlet briefly in a
passage on representations of the Children of Saturn. After explaining that the god Saturn’s
presumed idleness (which was a projection of the slow movement of the correspondent planet
and a reference to the related capital sin of ‘acedia’) Warburg states laconically that Hamlet
«too, was a child of Saturn».5 His proof for this claim is a reference to Rochus von Liliencron’s
short novel Die siebte Todsünde of 1903.6 It is perhaps surprising that Warburg quotes a novel
rather than a scholarly text, but Liliencron claims in his preface that the chapter quoted by
Warburg relies entirely on a historic text: Lucifers Königreich und Seelengejaid of 1616 by Aegidius

1 Warburg, The Renewal of Pagan Antiquity, cit., p. 644; also gs ii, p. 529.
2 The Renewal of Pagan Antiquity, cit., p. 645; gs ii, p. 530: «Der kosmische Konflikt klingt als Vorgang im Innern des
Menschen selbst wieder. Die fratzenhaften Dämonen sind verschwunden, der finstere Trübsinn des Saturn ist humanis-
tisch vergeistigt in menschliche Nachdenklichkeit. […] Bei Dürer wird der Saturndämon unschädlich gemacht durch den-
kende Eigentätigkeit der angestrahlten Kreatur; das Planetenkind versucht sich durch eigene kontemplierende Tätigkeit
dem mit der “unedest complex” drohenden Fluch des dämonischen Gestirns zu entziehen. Der Zirkel des Genies, kein
niedriges Grabscheit, ist in der Hand der Melancholie».
3 wia, iii.90.4.2 («Luther»), f. 77/29: «Die Mania wird im Norden zu orphischer Gestikulation und zur genialen Me-
lancholie».
4 wia, gc , Aby Warburg to Fritz Saxl, 19 February 1923: «Soweit ich beim Durchfliegen sah – ich bin unter Opium und
leide sehr, unsäglich – beziehen [Sie] zwei Typen nicht in ihre Studie mit ein: Hamlet und Faust». See also iii.2.1, Zettel-
kasten (= zk ) 31/017214: «Zur Melancholie. / Mit Faust gemeinsam. / Der Widerstand des aktiv denkenden Menschen ge-
gen die Dumpf heit, Energielosigkeit, das fatalische <…?> brüten. / Widerstand des tüchtigen Erfindergenies (gegen die
endzeitlich drohende Wassernot). / Zugleich Anwendung der Magie (Zahlentafel)».
5 Warburg, The Renewal of Pagan Antiquity, cit., p. 615 and gs ii, s. 507: «Das allzu deutsche oder allzu italienische Auf-
treten darf uns eben nicht darüber hinwegtäuschen, daß die wesentlichen Züge des unheimlichen alten Dämons [Saturn]
im Bilde lebendig fortdauern, und dass sie dadurch verstärkt worden waren, daß sein Name auf jenen Planeten übertragen
worden war, der durch seine größte Erdferne, das matte Licht und die langsame Bewegung am rätselhaftesten erschien.
Von diesem Stern erhielt er rückwirkend noch einen Zusatz von schwerer Trägheit; die christliche Todsünde der Acedia
verknüpft sich deshalb mit ihm. Hamlet ist auch ein Saturnkind».
6 Rochus Freiherr von Liliencron, Wie man in Amwald Musik macht. Die siebte Todsünde, Leipzig, Duncker &
Humblot, 1903, p. 158. See also wia, gc, Aby Warburg to Heinrich Weizsäcker, 29 June 1927: «Von einer ganz anderen Seite
her ist die Doppelheit vom saturnischen Menschen und mittelalterlicher acedia schon lange klar gesehen und anschaulich
dargestellt worden[,] von Rochus von Lilienkron [recte Liliencron] in seiner Novelle: Die sieben Todsünden [recte: Die sieb-
te Todsünde] (1903 erschienen). Von der belletristisch schillernden Art darf man sich freilich nicht irritieren lassen, es liegt
dennoch die richtige Version von der saturnischen Acedia zu Grunde».
 warburg, saxl, panofsky and dürer ’ s melencolia i 33
Albertinus.1 Liliencron himself had edited this popular-scientific seventeenth-century book
two decades earlier and Warburg owned a copy of this edition.2
In his novel Die siebte Todsünde Liliencron lets a «master» («Magister») of William Shake-
speare, indeed a kind of mage, teach the poet the nature of the seventh deadly sin, that is, ‘ace-
dia’. The advice this master has to offer is based on Albertinus’s seventh chapter («Lucifers
Sibendes Seelengejaidt. Von der Trägheit ins gemein») which, as Liliencron believed, followed
Thomas Aquinas’s Summa Theologica faithfully.3 It seems unlikely that Warburg studied Albert-
inus’s original text, but he repeatedly refers to Liliencron in whose phantasy Shakespeare’s
«master» was responsible for the poet’s turning an unfinished play into a masterpiece.4 The
German author surely invented Shakespeare’s being taught the doctrine of ‘acedia’; yet for
Warburg he was the only author who had recognized the afterlife of Saturn’s supposed twofold
benign-intransigent nature in Shakespeare’s concept of ‘acedia’.
In Warburg’s letter of 19 February 1923, addressed to Saxl, the cursory justification for his re-
quest to include the two dramatic characters, Hamlet and Faust, in the forthcoming study was
no less enigmatic than the short reference to Hamlet in his essay. Firstly, with regard to the Dan-
ish prince, Warburg quotes Liliencron once again and points to the author’s discussion of the
impact of the spell of melancholy, supposedly to the effect of carrying out a notional rather
than a real act of revenge. Secondly, with regard to Faust, Warburg mentions a series of seven-
teenth-century Dutch prints, supposedly in Goethe’s possession. These prints (whose author
Warburg cannot recall) were representing saturnine types, among them a gravedigger.5 Both
these putative clues made Warburg believe that firstly Hamlet’s famous dialogue with the
gravedigger should be read as a monologue with one side of his own twofold saturnine nature,
and secondly that in his Faust II Goethe had transformed the base shovel into an instrument of
salvation. Only Goethe’s genius, Warburg was convinced, had enabled the saturnine brooder
Faust to ennoble the gruesome instrument. By quoting some well-known lines from chapter
60 of Goethe’s Faust II Warburg claimed that the transformation of the shovel into an instru-
ment of revival was expressed through the analogy of gaining land from the sea:
With what delight I hear the clink and clank of spades!
It is the multitude who toil for me:
They give the earth peace with herself at last,
To the proud waves they set their limits fast,
And put a mighty barrier around the sea.
(Wie das Geklirr der Spaten mich ergetzt!
Es ist die Menge, die mir frönet,
Die Erde mit sich selbst versöhnet,
Den Wellen ihre Grenze setzt,
Das Meer mit strengem Band umzieht).6

1 Aegidius Albertinus (1560-1620) was a Dutch Jesuit who since 1593 was employed as chancellor in the state of Bavaria
and advocated for the Counterreformation.
2 Aegidius Albertinus, Lucifers Königreich und Seelengejaid, ed. Rochus von Liliencron, Berlin, Spemann [1884], War-
burg Institute Library shelf mark bch 1965.
3 Liliencron, Wie man in Amwald Musik macht, cit., pp. 93-94. 4 Ivi, p. 164.
5 wia, gc, Aby Warburg to Fritz Saxl, 19 February 1923: «Die Studie von Liliencron über d[ie] Acedia ist Ihnen bekannt,
das Gebanntsein in der Melancholie, die selbst zu Rache unfähig ist und schließlich versucht [sic] durch die imaginäre That
zu handeln versucht – wenn Hamlet mit dem Totengräber spricht – so spricht er mit der einen Seite seines fatalen satur-
nischen Wesens. – Goethe besaß eine Folge von niederländischen Planetenblättern aus d[em] Ende des 17. Jahrh[underts].
Schuchhardt nachsehen, de Vries? Ich sah sie in Weimar und besitze, glaube ich, selbst die Folge. Leider fehlt mir d[er]
Name (Opium und Veronal!). Sehen Sie meine Kästen durch! Mit den Notizen über d[ie] Planeten. Auf diesem Blatt sind
alle die bekannten Typen der Melancholie vereinigt. Auch der Leichenbestatter oder Totengräber. Das Grabscheit
wandelt sich aber im Faust – der dem Meere Boden abgewinnt – zum Erlöser-Werkzeug. Der saturnische Grübler adelt
die Totenschaufel durch Goethes Genie zum Instrument des wiederauferstehenden Lebens: das Land, das dem Meere
abgewonnen wird; trägt und bringt Menschleben neuen Boden». Saxl should check this in Schuchardt’s description of
Goethe’s art collections, i.e. Johann Christian Schuchardt, Goethes Kunstsammlungen, Jena, Frommann, 1848-49.
6 Goethe, Faust II, 11539-11543. Translation Florence Melian Stawell, Goldsworthy Lowes Dickinson.
34 claudia wedepohl

For Warburg these cursorily presented examples were proof of the survival of ancient myth in
Early Modern psychology. The assumption of such survival surely goes back to his studying
the ideas of the Italian evolutionist thinker Tito Vignoli whose description of the significance
of Greek poetry as well as Greek philosophy in the process of a rationalisation of myth (that
is, the genesis of classical mythology and its allegorical exegesis) and its afterlife in poetical
metaphors had a major impact on Warburg’s own epistemological ideas.1 This aspect cannot
be addressed here in detail;2 yet it is worth mentioning that also the philologist Hermann
Usener, who, as Warburg’s teacher at Bonn, had introduced the young student to Vignoli’s
study, held that only the language of the poets had maintained the original human tendency
to perceive the world as an animated entity – being the very nature of mythical thinking –
beyond the Enlightenment.3 Another of Warburg’s favoured authors, the theorist of literature
Alfred Biese, was arguing along the very same lines that the metaphorical language of the poet
reflects one of the basic forms of thinking.4
When Saxl had not replied after a few days to his objections Warburg wrote again and de-
manded a response to the idea of a «spiritualisation of the base shovel in the last part of
Goethe’s Faust» with the implication that Goethe had spiritualised the gravedigger and turned
him into a «dying-and-rising-demon» («Saatendaemon»).5 Three days later, still without an
answer, in a letter to his wife Mary, Warburg repeated his lament that Panofsky and Saxl had
generally disregarded the grafting of the Greek myth of Chronos onto a Latin «dying-and-ris-
ing-god» («Saatengott»). The latter, he stressed, was both a chthonic deity and a god of regen-
eration; and he went on to explain:
The terrible deed of burying of the seed is not only an act of destruction but also of revitalisation. Grain
is man’s main nutrient. That is why Saturn eats his children after harvesting them with a sickle. Yet only
seeds undergo a revitalisation; men – “seeded” in analogy – remain beneath the surface. This is the endless
revival of sowing and harvest. The spring bow in the hand [of Dürer’s personification of Melencolia] –
the symbol of an either calculated or imagined continuous recurrence of things (Kreislauf ) – spiritualises
the sickle.6

In an earlier letter he had stressed the symbolic role of physical labour with a spade as the tri-
umph of the human being, expelled from paradise and condemned to work: «“With what de-
light I hear the clink and clank of spades!” Terrible resignation instead of music of the spheres
– rhythm of work. I’m missing the emphasis on the reason for a reformation of Saturn in Panof-

1 Warburg read the German translation of Tito Vignoli, Mito e scienza. Saggio, Milano, Fratelli Dumolard, 1879, al-
ready at university.
2 For a more in-depth discussion see Claudia Wedepohl, Mnemosyne, the Muses and Apollo. Mythology as Epistemology
in Aby Warburg’s Bilderatlas, in The Muses and their Afterlife in post-classical Europe, eds. Kathleen W. Christian, Clare E.L.
Guest, Claudia Wedepohl, London, The Warburg Institute, 2014 (“Warburg Institute Colloquia”, 26), pp. 211-270: 217-223.
3 Hermann Usener, Mythologie (1904), in Idem, Vorträge und Aufsätze, Berlin-Leipzig, Teubner, 1907, pp. 37-65: 46, 63.
4 Alfred Biese, Das Metaphorische in der dichterischen Phantasie. Ein Beitrag zur vergleichenden Poetik, Berlin, Haak, 1889;
Idem, Das Associationsprincip und der Anthropomorphismus in der Aesthetik. Ein Beitrag zur Aesthetik des Naturschönen, Kiel,
Schmidt & Klaunig, 1890; Idem, Die Philosophie des Metaphorischen in Grundlinien dargestellt, Hamburg-Leipzig, Voss, 1893.
5 wia, gc , Aby Warburg to Fritz Saxl, 19 February 1923: «Haben Sie die nachträglichen Saturnbemerkungen erhalten?
Hamlet und Faust! Die Vergeistigung des Grabscheites im letzten Theil des Faust, Boden – ergänzend kein Totengräber
mehr – der uralte Saatendaemon schlägt durch!».
6 wia, Family Correspondence (= fc ), Aby to Mary Warburg, 22 February 1923: «S[axl] u[nd] P[anofsky] haben viel zu
wenig berücksichtigt, daß die griechische Kronosmythe auf eine lateinische Saatengottheit, die zugleich “chtonisch”[,]
das heißt [das] unterirdisch-irdisch-andere ist[,] aufgepfropft ist. Das Grabscheit der Saturnkinder ist das Instrument des
Zerstörens der Erde, aber auch des Erschaffens für die Saat, die wie das Leben immer wieder das junge Korn heraustreibt.
Das fürchterliche Begraben der Saat ist aber Zerstörung und Wiedererweckung beim Korn, der Hauptnahrung des
Menschen. Darum ißt Saturn seine Kinder, die er mit der Sichel mäht. Nur die Saat aber kommt wieder, die Menschen,
die nach Analogie “gesät” werden, bleiben unten – das ist die ewige Wiederkehr durch die Aussaat und Ernte der Zirkel
in der Hand vergeistigt die Sichel – das Symbol des mathematisch festgestellten oder erschauten Kreislaufs».
 warburg, saxl, panofsky and dürer ’ s melencolia i 35
sky’s and Saxl’s study».1 As opaque as Warburg’s jotted ideas remain, they obviously allude to
an observation crucial to him: the conversion from the real to the symbolic act, that is, from
practice to theory or from the factual to the spiritual. In this sense he assumed a relation be-
tween shovel and spring bow in the hand of the creature being under the influence of Saturn.
Symbolically this transformation (which he called reformation) also alluded to the interchang-
ing of manic-depressed episodes, supposedly typical for the genius who is always hoping for
overcoming gloom. Warburg was evidently fascinated by melancholy as a manifestation of op-
posites. In other words, at this stage of his life-long research in the patterns that determine the
forms of a human being’s expression Warburg’s interest had shifted from morphological to
psychological phenomena. For precisely this reason and at a time when he was focussing on his
own state of mind he saw Faust and Hamlet as prototypically ambivalent characters of the trag-
ic drama. They were incarnations of ‘types’ in as much as their behaviour was driven by an am-
bivalent psychological pattern.2
A week after receiving Warburg’s ideas Saxl replied that he was looking forward to dis-
cussing the dying-and-rising-god with him in person, and he may have well done so a few
weeks later; yet we know that a year later, holding the bound book in his hands, Warburg
kept insisting that the most important element was missing: the afterlife of Chronos’s typical
twofold character in Goethe’s Faust who speaks the famous line: «With what delight I hear
the clink and clank of spades!» («Wie das Geklirr der Spaten mich ergetzt!»).Warburg re-
mained convinced that Goethe’s interpretation of the digging had been inspired by a visual
source, namely the mentioned seventeenth-century Dutch series of engravings representing
the activities of the Children of Saturn. Although he maintained having seen this sequence
in Weimar, it proved impossible to trace it, and it remains unclear which images he had in
mind.3

‘Typenlehre’, ‘Typenkunde’ and ‘Typengeschichte’

Warburg was doubtlessly impressed by Panofsky’s and Saxl’s work. All three scholars had a
deep shared interest in the same literary and iconographic traditions: firstly the origin, trans-
mission and transformation of the natural-philosophical doctrine of the four humours, in par-
ticular melancholy, secondly, the role of Saturn as astrological ruler over those born in his
sign, and thirdly the representation of introversion through the gesture of the resting chin. I
have already mentioned that these traditions have one particular aspect in common: their
transmission relies on a phenomenon which is usually called ‘Typus’ or type, that is, an ‘a pri-
ori’ or ‘Urform’, in itself immaterial though determining the material form of its derivatives.
Yet both term and concept of ‘Typus’ seem to be the key for understanding not only the com-
mon nature of these different phenomena and the resulting definition of a new methodology
of art history, but also for the differences between Warburg’s approach and that of the two
younger scholars.
The term type was common in late nineteenth-century scholarship. ‘Typenkunde’ or
‘Typenlehre’, a combination of an empirical method (inspired by the sciences) and the search
for a system (rooted in philosophy), were applied to two fields of specific interest here:
psychology and archaeology. The fact that the origin of the terminology lay in the natural sci-
ences, namely in Goethe’s and Alexander von Humboldt’s morphological studies, made it par-

1 wia, fc , Aby to Mary Warburg, 26/27 January 1924: «“[W]ie das Geklirr der Spaten mich ergötzt”. Furchtbare
Resignation anstatt der Sphaerenmusik – Rhythmus der Arbeit. Mir fehlt bei der Saxl Panofsky Studie die Heraushebung
des Sinnes der Reformation des Saturn».
2 Only in the deeply revised new version of their study, Saturn and Melancholy of 1964, Panofsky, Saxl and Klibansky
dedicated a whole part to melancholy as a poetical phenomenon. Hamlet’s and Faust’s being driven by emotions, how-
ever, were only mentioned in passing, see Klibansky, Panofsky, Saxl, Saturn and Melancholy, cit., pp. 235 and 365, n. 283.
3 wia, fc , Aby to Mary Warburg, 3/4 March 1923; gc , Gertrud Bing to Fritz Saxl, 19 March 1923.
36 claudia wedepohl
ticularly suitable for an explicitly natural-scientific approach to phenomena of expression.1 A
type in the strictly morphological sense can therefore not be ambivalent.
When the term type relates to physiognomy – since the eighteenth century defined as the
unchangeable expression of the face and thus different from mimicry – it refers to the person-
ality theories of classical philosophy.2 A revival of these theories in the eighteenth century had
sparked a new generation of treatises on both character and affections. The subsequently
growing interest in the presumed link between the physical and the mental initiated specula-
tions about its anthropological as well as its biological implications, a field which for Warburg
seemed productive for a new theory of expression in art.
The conflation of morphology with psychology is the basis of the phenomenon Warburg
called ‘Pathosformel’. As a number of extant lists with classifications of ancient and Renais-
sance sculpture imply, his concept was originally shaped by the methods of contemporary ar-
chaeology. The classification of ancient sculpture according to certain types was common prac-
tice among archaeologists, but Warburg’s contemporaries went beyond stereotypical
classification and began to identify various forms of the agitated body in neo-Attic sculpture
and to sketch related ‘Typenreihen’.3 Yet, like the two late-nineteenth-century archaeologists
Friedrich Hauser and Franz Winter to whom he repeatedly refers, Warburg had not been in-
terested in outward signs that were traditionally defined as typical attributes; instead he fo-
cussed on the characteristic postures, gestures and sometimes facial expressions which index
the figure’s state of agitation. By adopting the term empathy («Einfühlung») from another con-
temporary, the art historian Robert Vischer, Warburg also took over the belief in an analogy
between subjective and objective expressions.4 He was convinced that through empathy, a kind
of re-living of a typical situation, a pre-codified form of expression (the immaterial ‘a priori’ or
‘Urform’) would materialize through an innate force to form matter.5 Hence a type of this kind
combines the image arising in the individual’s imagination with one drawn from the collective
memory of human experience. Artists would accordingly have sought to translate subjective
impressions into typical forms whose general understanding is based on social memory.6
Distinct from Goethe’s morphology, the ‘Typenreihen’ Warburg reconstructed and the ‘Bilder-
atlas’ he frequently called ‘Typenatlas’7 thus show anthropological continuities whose creation
is not controlled by natural law, but by conscious selection.

1 See Andrea Pinotti, Memorie del neutro. Morfologia dell’immagine in Aby Warburg, Milano, Mimesis, 2001 (“Itinerari
filosofici”); Idem, Nympha zwischen Eidos und Formel. Phänomenologische Aspekte in Warburgs Ikonologie, in Phänomenalität des
Kunstwerks, eds. Hans R. Sepp, Jürgen Trinks, Wien, Turia & Kant, 2006 (“Mesotes. Jahrbuch für philosophischen Ost-
West-Dialog”), pp. 222-232: 228-229.
2 Cornelia Zumbusch, Wissenschaft in Bildern. Symbol und dialektisches Bild in Aby Warburgs Mnemosyne-Atlas und
Walter Benjamins Passagen-Werk, Berlin, Akademie Verlag, 2004 (“Studien aus dem Warburg-Haus”, 8), p. 176.
3 See Claudia Wedepohl, Von der Pathosformel zum Gebärdensprachatlas. Dürers Tod des Orpheus und Warburgs Arbeit
an einer ausdruckstheoretisch begründeten Kulturgeschichte, in Die entfesselte Antike. Aby Warburg und die Geburt der Pathos-
formel, eds. Marcus Andrew Hurttig in collaboration with Thomas Ketelsen, Cologne, Walter König, 2012 (Exhibition
Catalogue, Wallraf-Richartz-Museum & Foundation Corboud»), pp. 33-50: 37-40, where I try to demonstrate the
influence of Friedrich Hauser, Verzeichnis der neu-attischen Reliefs, Stuttgart, Wittwer, 1889, and Franz Winter, Ueber ein
Vorbild neu-attischer Reliefs, «Winckelmanns-Programm der Archäologischen Gesellschaft zu Berlin», vol. l, 1890, pp.
97-153.
4 Robert Vischer, On the Optical Sense of Form. A Contribution to Aesthetics, translation Harry Francis Mallgrave and
Eleftherios Ikonomou, in Empathy, Form and Space. Problems in German Aesthetics, 1873-1893, Santa Monica, Getty Center for
the Arts and Humanities, 1994, pp. 89-123. Warburg read the original, Robert Vischer, Über das optische Formgefühl. Ein
Beitrag zur Aesthetik, Leipzig, Credner, 1873, before 1891.
5 Pinotti, Nympha zwischen Eidos und Formel, cit., p. 227.
6 Cf. Thomas Schindler, Zwischen Empfinden und Denken. Aspekte zur Kulturpsychologie von Aby Warburg, Münster, Lit,
2000 (“Kunstgeschichte”, 65), pp. 117-119 who compares Warburg’s approach with Wilhelm Dilthey’s.
7 Ivi; see e.g. wia, fc , Aby to Max Warburg, 13 June 1928: «jetzt, wo ich mit Hilfe von Fräulein Bing das sogenannte
Lebenswerk in Gestalt eines Typenatlas herausstelle». See also Dieter Wuttke, Aby M. Warburgs Methode als Anregung
und Aufgabe. Mit einem Briefwechsel zum Kunstverständnis, Wiesbaden, Harrassowitz, 1990 (“Gratia”, 2), pp. 41-51.
 warburg, saxl, panofsky and dürer ’ s melencolia i 37
When on 30 October, 1888, the student Warburg had been asked to prepare a presentation
on Masaccio’s «characters, types or portraits» in the Brancacci Chapel,1 he must have wanted
to substantiate the morphological approach to artefacts he saw practised by contemporary ar-
chaeologists. His idea was to revert to evolutionist anthropology, namely – as it is well known –
Charles Darwin’ The Expression of Emotions in Man and Animals of 1872, but he also read Johann
Caspar Lavater’s seminal work on physiognomy (Physiognomische Fragmente, 1775-1778) as well
as the studies of the German physician Theodor Piderit.2 Piderit had published two books on
mimicry and physiognomy (in 1858 and in 1867) in which he developed his own thesis of an anal-
ogy between the activities of the soul («Seelentätigkeit»), the brain («Gehirnfunktion») and the
body.3 Different from Darwin’s linking of expression and habits Piderit assumed a connection
between physical and emotional activities via the nerves of the spinal cord. He thus came to
the conclusion that mimic traits are reflexes of a so-called brain of the soul, triggered in re-
sponse to a stimulus. Reading Piderit in 1888 had doubtlessly made Warburg receptive for Vis-
cher’s theory of empathy in which the impact of the individual’s experience on the formation
of certain expressions is emphasised.
Piderit’s was a modern approach to the phenomenon of expression compared to Lavater’s
attempt to link physiognomy and character through ancient pathology, namely the doctrine of
the four humours. Hippocratic in its origin and further developed by Galen, this doctrine is
based on the idea of preponderance of one of the four body fluids, blood, phlegm, yellow or
black bile. Such preponderance presumably caused an illness that was later considered as psy-
chopathological condition with effect on the formation of a person’s temperament: either a
strong tendency to seek pleasure (in the so-called sanguine type), or to indulge in laziness (in
the so-called phlegmatic type), or to behave in a self-centred, ambitious, impulsive and aggres-
sive manner (in the so-called choleric type), or to be introverted, sad and depressed (in the so-
called melancholic type). With regard to the latter, Hippocrates defines this condition for the
first time around 400 BC by writing: «If fear and sadness last for a long time this is a sign of
melancholy».4 While Hippocrates describes the symptoms, scholars have stressed the differ-
ence between the proper illness and episodes of depression in the melancholic type.5 Such type
is in principle able to influence his or her quintessentially ambivalent complexion. The origin,
transmission and representation of precisely this conception of melancholy had increasingly
come to the fore of Warburg’s interest.
Since the Early Modern period melancholic introversion was captured in the motive of a
seated figure with the chin propped on his or her elbow. Supporting the head with the hand
had already in ancient sculpture been indicating pain, mourning, sadness and deep thought;
Hercules and Ajax were occasionally represented in such posture.6 Driven by his interest in an-
tique origins and their afterlife, Warburg was keen to identify the ancient source for not only
the resting chin, but also the reclining body, leaning on an elbow. Evidence of this search ap-
pears in his study on paganism in the age of Luther. Buried in a footnote Warburg addresses
Dürer’s reshaping of motives from the medieval tradition into the «classical language of forms»
(«klassische Formensprache»):

1 wia, iii.9.4 («Tagebuch»), entries of 30 October: «Charaktere, Typen oder Bildnisse» and 16, 26, 27, 29, 30 November
1888; 3 December 1888. Later Warburg studied the characterology of the philosopher Ludwig Klages, too, but not earlier
than 1911 when his basic theoretical notions regarding the ‘Pathosformel’ had already been formed.
2 wia, i.10.1 («Vom Arsenal zum Laboratorium»), f. 4.
3 Theodor Piderit, Grundsätze der Mimik und Physiognomik, Braunschweig, Vieweg, 1858; Idem, Wissenschaftliches
System der Mimik und Physiognomik, Detmold, Klingenberg, 1867. 4 Hippocrates, Aphorism 6.23.
5 Hubert Tellenbach, Melancholie. Zur Problemgeschichte, Typologie, Pathogenese und Klinik, Berlin-Göttingen-Heidel-
berg, Springer, 1961, pp. 4-6.
6 See Alain Pasquier, Trauer und Melancholie und ihre Darstellung in der griechischen Kunst, in Melancholie, Genie und
Wahnsinn, ed. Jean Clair, Ostfildern-Ruit, Hatje Cantz, 2005 (Exhibition Catalogue, Deutsche Nationalgalerie, Berlin,
2006), pp. 38-43.
38 claudia wedepohl

Fig. 4. Detail of a reclining figure in Albrecht Dürer,

The Holy Family with two Angels, 1503-1504.
The illustrated Bartsch, no. vii, 135.100
© The Warburg Institute.

It is worth emphasizing that Melencolia I also con-

tains a number of purely formal echoes of the tra-
dition of antiquity. This is exemplified by one of
Fig. 3. Eridanus in Lapidario del Rey D. Alfonso X, the decan figures in the lapidary of Alfonso the
facsimile of the manuscript in the library Wise [produced in the second half of the thir-
of the Escorial. Introduction and transcription teenth century]. […] In form and content this is a
by José Fernandez Montaña, [Madrid, transposition of a reclining river god, with head
Imprenta de la Iberia 1881], f. 99v, copy with supported on the one hand, he is identified as Eri-
Warburg’s notes, held in the Warburg Institute,
classmark foh 2090.
danus, described as a star rising in company with
the watery Pisces, ruled by Saturn […]. A similar
posture is adopted by the antique male spandrel
figure whom Dürer depicts, with a female counterpart, on the arch of a gateway in an early woodcut
[that is a scene of the Life of Mary depicting the Birth of Christ].1
For the first time Warburg states here that the iconography of the reclining figure must be
based on the classical depiction of river gods. One of Ptolemy’s 48 constellations, the river god
Eridanus, Greek for the river Po, would subsequently have influenced the depiction of Saturn
as a star deity (Figs. 3, 4). In Warburg’s collection of notes and images we can find a number
of examples for the revival of an original antique iconography, an earth-bound figure in a pos-
ture that was associated with saturnine melancholy, presumably known by Dürer (Fig. 5). Dür-
er’s reception of this iconography was, Warburg believed, the turning point when lethargy be-
came one of the characteristics of the melancholic type. Yet it is important to note that
Warburg writes of «purely formal echoes of the tradition of classical antiquity». He was appar-
ently referring exclusively to the typical posture of the mythological figure; in other words he
refers to the «Ausdrucksbewegung» («expression through motion») of an entire body which de-
fines the «Umfang» («circumference») of the figure.2
The tone for an emphasis on both the morphological and historical aspect of the phenom-
enon called melancholy is already announced in the subtitle (i.e. typengeschichtliche Untersuchun-
gen) of Panofsky’s and Saxl’s study. The two authors report at length and in great detail the com-

1 Warburg, The Renewal of Pagan Antiquity, cit., p. 691; gs ii, p. 530, n. 1: «Es sei hervorgehoben, daß in der “Melencolia
I” auch rein “formal” antike Überlieferung nachklingt. Das zeigt das Sternsymbol eines Dekans zu den Fischen im Stein-
buch des Alfonso (Lapidario del rey Alfonso X., [Madrid 1883], B. 99v). Dieses Dekangestirnbild ist in Form und Inhalt die
transponierte Figur eines liegenden Flußgottes mit aufgestütztem Kopf, der eben als “Eridanos” (vgl. Abu Ma‘sar bei Boll,
Sphaera, s. 537) als mit aufgehender Stern zum Zeichen der saturnbeherrschten, wässrigen Fische gehört. Eine ganz ähn-
liche Stellung weist nun die männliche antike Zwickelfigur auf, die – mit einer weiblichen zusammen – Dürer auf einem
frühen Holzschnitt in einem Torbogen angebracht hat (Die heilige Familie, Holzschnitt B. 100 Abb. Bei Val. Scherer,
Dürer, Klass. Der Kunst, Bd. iv, s. 189 [4. Aufl. 1928, S. 238])».
2 Cf. Zumbusch, Wissenschaft in Bildern, cit., pp. 176-187.
 warburg, saxl, panofsky and dürer ’ s melencolia i 39

Fig. 5. Aby Warburg, Manet und die italienische Antike, (Manet and Italian Antiquity), Panel 3,
Rome 1929, detail, © The Warburg Institute.

plex intellectual tradition of both illness and temperament; as a matter of course this includes
the ambiguity of melancholic complexion due to the merging of contradicting elements in the
personification of the planet Saturn. Yet, as Warburg observed, they do not discuss the trans-
lation of this ambiguity into either the poetic or the iconographic representation of the typical
melancholic character. Instead, their text culminates in an analysis of Dürer’s invention, tracing
the iconographic tradition of all its elements and motives including the central figures posture
and gesture. This analysis seems indeed the very first and in this respect a paradigmatic analysis
of its kind in twentieth-century art history. Dieter Wuttke, the editor of Panofsky’s correspon-
dence, states explicitly that the method known as «iconology and iconography» had initially
been called ‘Typenlehre’,1 a term Panofsky used synonymously with ‘Typengeschichte’, but

1 Erwin Panofsky, Korrespondenz 1910-1968. Eine kommentierte Auswahl in fünf Bänden, i: Korrespondenz 1910-1936, ed.
Dieter Wuttke, Wiesbaden, Harrassowitz, 2001, p. xxii: «die zunächst vom ihm Typenlehre, bald aber Ikonologie und
Ikonographie genannte Untersuchungsrichtung».
40 claudia wedepohl
mainly with reference to iconography. The essay in which it appears for the first time is his
Dürers Stellung zur Antike of 1921-22.1 The title has a striking resemblance with Warburg’s Dürer
und die italienische Antike of 1905 where Warburg had introduced both term and concept of the
‘Pathosformel’ by demonstrating the influence of pathos-laden classical imagery on fifteenth
and sixteenth-century ‘all’antica’ works. Along the very same lines Panofsky discusses Dürer’s
adoption of motives of «tragic unrest» – handed down from Greek art by Early Italian Renais-
sance artists – but he focuses more on the phenomenon of «classical calm».2 His very first
methodological reflection on the terminology, though, appears only ten years later, in Panof-
sky’s Zum Problem der Beschreibung und Inhaltsdeutung von Werken der bildenden Kunst of 1932. In
this essay he calls both ‘Typenlehre’ and ‘Typengeschichte’ a «corrective» for the determination
of a ‘Bedeutungssinn’, a method later named «Ikonographie» («iconography»),3 and in another
famous essay, now with the terms iconography and iconology in its title, he defines the same
‘Typengeschichte’ as «controlling principle of interpretation» of «conventional subject matter,
constituting the world of images, stories and allegories» throughout history. In contrast, Panof-
sky uses the terms «symptom» and «symbol» to define «essential tendencies of the human
mind» being «expressed by specific themes and concepts» whose meaning varies under different
historical conditions; the method for their interpretation is called iconology.4 Both «symptom»
and «symbol» are thus for Panofsky much more complex phenomena than a type. This com-
plexity seems to point to Warburg’s specific criticism of Panofsky’s and Saxl’s study. Warburg’s
own definition of iconology refers to the consideration of both text and image – a method
whose contemporary co-pioneer in the history of art had been no other that Karl Giehlow.5

Melancholy - Acedia - Bipolarity

According to Warburg’s, Panofsky’s and Saxl’s account, fatalistic astrology had infiltrated the
Mediterranean culture through the spread of Middle Eastern cults in late antiquity. This astrol-
ogy – as recorded in the ninth century in Abu Mash‘ar’s Introductorium major – ruled that the
planet Saturn shared his qualities with the element earth as whose metabolic agent in the hu-
man body Aristotelian humoral pathology considered the complexion of melancholy. Accord-
ingly children born in the sign of Saturn were inevitably believed to become melancholic types.
Yet the humours were not only connected with the four different qualities of the four elements
(wet, dry, warm and cold), but also with the originally Pythagorean joining of the four ages of
men (childhood, youth, advanced and old age) and the four seasons. Melancholy was associated
with autumn and old age, and Saturn therefore usually represented as an old man.6 In Greek

1 Erwin Panofsky, Dürers Stellung zur Antike (1921), in Idem, Deutschsprachige Aufsätze, i, eds. Karen Michels, Martin
Warnke, Berlin, Akademie Verlag, 1998, pp. 254-255. This essay originated in the same class on Dürer that gave rise to the
collaboration with Saxl.
2 Panofsky quotes the terms «tragische Unruhe» and «klassische Ruhe» from Warburg’s unpublished lecture, delivered
in Florence in November 1914 and refers to the results of his «Botticellis “Geburt der Venus” und “Frühling”» and «Dürer
und die italienische Antike», see ivi, pp. 249 and 253 and 259-261.
3 Erwin Panofsky, Zum Problem der Beschreibung und Inhaltsdeutung von Werken der bildenden Kunst, «Logos», 21, 1932,
pp. 103-119: 114: «daß das, was diesen subjektiven Erkenntnisquellen als objektives Korrektiv gegenübertritt, […] nichts
anderes ist als etwas, was wir “Überlieferungsgeschichte” nennen können, und was uns im Fall des Phänomensinns als
“Gestaltungsgeschichte”, im Fall des Bedeutungssinns als “Typenschichte” begegnet ist».
4 Erwin Panofsky, Iconography and Iconology. An Introduction to the Study of Renaissance Art, in Idem, Meaning in the Vi-
sual Arts. Papers in and on Art History, Garden City, ny, Doubleday, 1955 (“Doubleday anchor books”, a59), pp. 26-54: 40-41.
Elsewhere Panofsky states, somehow differently, that the linking of a transmission of texts («Worttradition») and images
(«Bildüberlieferung») enables the recipient to gain «iconological» insights by means of philology and ‘Typengeschichte’,
see Panofsky, Korrespondenz, cit., p. 382.
5 Martin Warnke, Aby Warburg (1866-1929), Altmeister moderner Kunstgeschichte, ed. Heinrich Dilly, Berlin, Reimer,
19992 (“Kunstgeschichte. Zur Einführung”), pp. 117-130: 122. Warnke however speaks of «modern iconography» («moderne
Ikonographie»).
6 See Franz Boll, Die Lebensalter. Ein Beitrag zur antiken Ethologie und zur Geschichte der Zahlen, mit einem Anhang über
die Schrift von der Siebenzahl, Berlin-Leipzig, Teubner, 1913, pp. 16-17 and 40-41, one of Warburg’s other sources on this topic:
 warburg, saxl, panofsky and dürer ’ s melencolia i 41
mythology the same Saturn had been the children-devouring Chronos and in Roman mythol-
ogy the god of agriculture, civilizations and civil order. Subsequently Saturn had accumulated
a number of qualities, most importantly, though, he maintained Chronos’s fundamental du-
plicity. Macrobius, for example, quotes in his commentary on Cicero’s Somnium Scipionis Pro-
clus’s attribution of the most noble gift a person can receive to Saturn’s influence: «in Saturni
ratiocinationem et intellegentiam» – in the sphere of Saturn the descending soul received ra-
tional and divinely-inspired thinking.1
Another astronomical quality of the most distant of the seven known planets was its slow
movement. Due to this quality the planet’s influence was associated with idleness or sloth,
which in the Christian tradition is called ‘acedia’ and one of the seven deadly sins.2 In other
words, idleness as characteristic of the melancholic type was not an original quality of this
complexion but acquired it through the linking with Saturn. The concept of ‘acedia’, from the
Greek àÎˉ›·, literally numbness, is older than the doctrine of the seven deadly sins. In the
post-classical age it was first connected with the solitude of the eremites and was seen as being
a form of despair of the belief in salvation. Due to this tradition we can often find anchorites
represented among the Children of Saturn. Only during the fifth century did both term and
concept spread throughout Europe to become perceived as a sin, the illness of inactivity and
thus an illness of the soul rather than the body.
The association of melancholy and ‘acedia’ fascinated Warburg. For him ‘acedia’ was an
«ethical form of melancholy» which as such had found its entry in the Christian doctrine.3
Liliencron, repeatedly quoted by Warburg, had suggested a way in which the ancient notion
could have been transmitted from the Christian doctrine to an Early Modern conception of a
complex personality. Not only stressing the diffusiveness of the doctrine of the «seven types of
self-destruction of the souls» through literature and practice, Liliencron calls these seven sins
a «mirror of the psychology» of the time.4 Very similarly, Warburg writes that one would in his
days call ‘acedia’ a «manic-depressive insanity» and that it «symbolises the duplicity of insanity
which the ancients had already discovered».5 He therefore slightly revises the view that the Ital-
ian Neo-Platonist and physician Marsilio Ficino (who was undisputedly the first to ennoble the
complexion), had rediscovered melancholy’s duplicity – a personal view to which he also al-
ludes in his study on the age of Luther by writing about the breathing of «new life into the
mummified acedia of the Middle Ages».6
Ficino had certainly revived and endorsed the ancient idea of a link between melancholy and
genius that had been transmitted in chapter xxx, 1 of the pseudo-Aristotelian treatise Problema-
ta. The treatise’s author – possibly Theophrastus – argues that all gifted personalities in history,
those who excelled in arts, sciences, politics and philosophy were melancholic types. In physi-
ological terms he holds that black bile can either be heated or cooled resulting in two different

«Dann kommt das letzte Alter, das dem lichtschwächsten, langsamsten Planeten untersteht, dem Saturn. Das ist die letzte
Stufe des abwärtsschreitenden Lebens: da erkalten und erlahmen alle Bewegungskräfte des Leibes und der Seele; Triebe,
Genüsse, Wünsche – alles schwächt sich ab, Mutlosigkeit, Mattigkeit, Unlust zu allem nimmt überhand, bis das Leben
vollends erstarrt». See also Jean Starobinski, Geschichte der Melancholiebehandlung von den Anfängen bis 1900, Basle, Geigy,
1960 (“Documenta Geigy. Acta psychosomatica. Deutsche Ausgabe”, 4), p. 14.
1 Macrobius, In somnium Scipionis, i.12.14. Cf. Panofsky, Saxl, Dürers ‘Melencolia I’, cit., pp. 12-14; wia, iii.2.1, zk ,
031/17218 where Warburg copies and corrects Panofsky.
2 Cf. Boll, Die Lebensalter, cit., p. 34. 3 wia, iii.2.1, zk 031/017229-37: «Melancholie ethisch Accedia».
4 Liliencron, Wie man in Amwald Musik macht, cit., p. 94: «die allgemeinen psychologischen Anschauungen jener
Jahrhunderte» and p. 95: «die Lehre von den sieben Typen tragischer Selbstzerstörung der Seelen».
5 wia, gc , Aby Warburg to Heinrich Weizsäcker, 3 June 1927: «Die mittelalterliche Acedia nimmt in christlicher
Denkweise die Idee des saturnisch-melancholischen Menschen auf – des manisch-depressiven Irreseins, wie wir heute
sagen würden, und versinnbildlicht so die von der Antike längst erkannte Doppelheit des Irreseins, die der eigentlich sehr
vielsinnigen Doktrin von der schwarzen und weißen Galle zu Grunde liegt».
6 Warburg, The Renewal of Pagan Antiquity, cit, p. 644; also gs ii, p. 529: «Die mummifizierte Acedia des Mittelalters
wird wiederbelebt».
42 claudia wedepohl
types of symptoms, moodiness and anxiety or a euphoric state, even manic ecstasy – a descrip-
tion that seems to imply having recognised the cyclical character or episodic quality of a bipolar
condition. The cold, dry and earthbound black bile was thus associated with depression but be-
lieved to be reversible into hot, yellow bile that triggered ‘mania’, Plato’s enthusiasm; for the
author of Problem xxx, 1 this was however a natural disposition, not a divine gift.1 He propa-
gates the ideal of the right measure, a temperate but constantly labile state, typical for the men-
tioned «best man» («ÂÚÈÙÙÔ›»). Cicero later translated «ÂÚÈÙÙÔ›» as «ingeniosi», and this trans-
lation marks not only the introduction of the term ‘genius’, but sparked the Platonic discourse
on genius and madness.
Marsilio Ficino had supported the idea – disseminated by Rufus and his commentator Con-
stantinus Africanus – that scholars are not only susceptible to melancholy, but that the com-
plexion was even a prerequisite for intellectual achievement.2 He advocated a therapy against
the worst effects of an excess of black bile aiming to convert it. The recommended therapy con-
sisted of a combination of diet, herbal medicine to temper the black vile, and occult practices
to moderate the destructive influence of Saturn and turn this influence into the gift of a
prophetic talent. Accordingly, ‘mania’, that is, Ficino’s ‘furor divinus’, the enthusiasm of inspi-
ration, was considered the highest form of contemplation.
Since around 1800 the mental illness that the ancients called melancholy has been identified
as depression; yet until Freud’s time its clinical picture was still named melancholy. The
aethiopathology of this illness is often characterized by periodic mood changes between states
of enthusiasm and depression. Both affections are believed to be caused be the same underlying
mental condition. Periodically, the patient falls either victim to his or her condition, or is able
to control and overcome it. The same clinical picture is recorded in the medical history Ludwig
Binswanger compiled for Aby Warburg. For the enthusiastic state, also called ‘mania’ or re-
ferred to as obsession, Binswanger used the term «flight of ideas» («Ideenflucht») synonymous-
ly, referring to a lack of coherence and continuity in thinking. The eminent psychiatrist Emil
Kraepelin had diagnosed Warburg’s general condition as episodic manic-depressive states,3 a
condition nowadays in all likelihood called bipolarity.

Inner Tension: the Hamlet-Problem

Warburg’s fascination for Shakespeare’s invention of Hamlet is beyond the single line in his
long essay on Luther only traceable in his notes and correspondences, as is the case for any ref-
erence to the poet in general. Despite the infrequent quotations, we can assume that Shake-
speare (whom Boll called the greatest and Liliencron the greatest of all psychologists) and his
play (which according to the same Boll was deeply rooted in Renaissance culture and would re-
main impenetrable without the knowledge of antiquity) was very much on Warburg’s mind as
a household name.4 Now and again he mentions the supposedly well-known «Hamlet prob-
lem» («das Hamlet-Problem»), for example, in his lecture on «Rembrandt and Italian Antiquity»
of May 1926. Here he uses the expression as synonym for a «moral conflict» («Gewissensqual»)
whose experience, he thinks, shaped Rembrandt’s work:

1 Tellenbach, Melancholie, cit., p. 10.

2 Thomas Rütten, ad v. Melancholy, in The Classical Tradition, eds. Anthony Grafton, Glen W. Most, Salvatore Settis,
Cambridge, ma - London, Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2010, p. 580.
3 Ludwig Binswanger, Aby Warburg, Die unendliche Heilung. Aby Warburgs Krankengeschichte, ed. Chantal Marazia,
Davide Stimilli, Berlin, Diaphanes, 2007.
4 Boll, Die Lebensalter, cit., p. 4; Liliencron, Wie man in Amwald Musik macht, cit., p. 95. Shakespeare is quoted several
times in Aby Warburg, Tagebuch der Kulturwissenschaftlichen Bibliothek Warburg, mit Beiträgen von Fritz Saxl und
Gertrud Bing, eds. Karen Michels, Charlotte Schoell-Glass, Berlin, Akademie Verlag, 2001 (“Gesammelte Schriften,
Studienausgabe”, vii), also with regard to the representation of ‘mania’ (p. 453) and Cassirer’s research on ‘synderesis’ the
Scholastic term for moral conscience (p. 484).
 warburg, saxl, panofsky and dürer ’ s melencolia i 43

Whoever asks supporters of the arts to share, inwardly, a despaired inner composure that prepares itself
for an uncertain, dangerous future, that is, compassion with the eternal Hamlet problem of moral con-
flict between reflex («Reflexbewegung») and reflection («reflexives Handeln») – it might be posed as an
example in either the Medea or the Claudius Civilis as a cult image – is in danger of being defeated by the
producers of triumphal praise of the presence».1

This complex conclusion of Warburg’s might be reduced to its nucleus: the opposition of reflex
and reflection. The pair is a variation of his many examples of oppositional terms that had epis-
temological value for Warburg. Both these terms mark the extremes in a behavioural spectrum
between an instinct-driven and a calculated reaction, as, for example, the belief in magic and
rational reasoning. In the context of Warburg’s lecture on Rembrandt they refer to an antago-
nism of artistic styles, co-existing in seventeenth-century Holland, one represented by Rem-
brandt’s work, the other by Rubens’s highly popular Baroque art (as for Warburg this type of
expression manifests uncontrolled emotions). The quoted «Hamlet problem» thus refers to
Rembrandt’s presumed inner tension, triggered by his opposition to a so-called Italian Antiq-
uity, that is, how an influx of highly animated ‘all’antica’ inventions from Italy met with popular
taste. Warburg compares this tension – also called «Hamlet tension» («Hamlet-Spannung») –
with the electrical charge of the famous ‘Leyden jar’, the very first device to store static elec-
tricity, invented by Pieter van Musschenbroek in Leyden in 1745/46.2 But, of course, the ‘Leyden
jar’ is just another metaphor for a phenomenon Warburg called ‘engram’ (‘Engramm’) or ‘dy-
namogram’(‘Dynamogramm’): a container of psychic energy, latent in its potential, whose
charge is released through the revival of a primordial experience, but this release can be regu-
lated by will.
Warburg’s linking of Hamlet’s tragic dilemma («To be or not to be? That is the question – /
Whether ’tis nobler in the mind to suffer / The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune, / Or to
take arms against a sea of troubles, / And, by opposing, end them?») with Faust’s («Two souls,
alas, are dwelling in my breast / And one is striving to forsake its brother») was by no means as
original as was his reading of Hamlet through Liliencron;3 shortly afterwards the same connec-
tion was quoted by Walter Benjamin.4 Yet while Benjamin was interested in the Lutheran un-
dertones of Liliencron’s interpretation of Shakespeare,5 for Warburg the obvious parallels in

1 wia, iii.101.2.1 («Rembrandt und die italienische Antike»), fol. 106: «Wer verzweifelte innere Zusammenfassung, die
sich auf ungewisse gefahrvolle Zukunft vorbereitet, innerlich von den Kunstfreunden verlangt, Mitleiden mit dem ewigen
Hamletproblem der Gewissensqual zwischen Reflexbewegung und reflexivem Verhalten – es mag nun in der Medea oder
im Claudius Civilis als sittlich forderndes Kultbild aufgerichtet werden –, der wird immer Gefahr laufen, von den Liefe-
ranten triumphaler Gegenwartsbejahung aus dem Felde geschlagen zu werden».
2 See wia, iii.102.5.3 («Grisalle, Mantegna»), fol. 17; Warburg, Tagebuch, cit., pp. 253 and 543.
3 Hamlet, iii.1, 56-60; Faust, i, 1112-1117. Warburg’s interest in the psychology of Goethe’s Faust was neither new, nor
did it go far beyond any general interest in German classics. He wanted to find out from where Goethe had taken his
inspiration, presuming the poet hat been inspired by either a particular classical or post-classical source, perhaps even by
visual material. Warburg’s attention for the historical Dr. Johannes Faustus is first traceable in his study on the German
Reformation, initially prepared for the Luther anniversary in 1917. Yet it is well known that Warburg elaborated on his
lecture of 1917 and delivered a profoundly revised version in Berlin in April 1918; this is the version on which the publication
of 1920 is based. In this lecture and again in the published essay he mentions Dr. Faustus as a contemporary of Luther
who, like others he quotes, e.g. Melanchthon, Carion, Camerarius, Gauricus and Sebastian Brant, practised necromancy
(magic), wrote horoscopes and prognostica and was thus a practising ‘augur’, see Warburg, The Renewal of Pagan Antiq-
uity, cit., pp. 648-649 and gs ii, p. 533. See also wia, fc , Aby to Mary Warburg, 22 April 1918.
4 Walter Benjamin, Der Ursprung des deutschen Trauerspiels (1928), Frankfurt/M, Suhrkamp, 19692, p. 173: «Shake-
speare allein vermochte aus der barocken, unstoischen wie unchristlichen, pseudoantiken wie pseudopietistischen Starre
des Melancholikers den christlichen Funken zu schlagen. Wenn anders der Tief blick, mit dem Rochus von Liliencron
Saturnkindschaft und Male der Acedia in Hamlets Zügen las, um seinen besten Gegenstand nicht betrogen sein soll, wird
er in diesem Drama das einzigartige Schauspiel ihrer Überwindung im christlichen Geiste erblicken. Nur in diesem
Prinzen kommt die melancholische Versenkung zur Christlichkeit».
5 Jane Newman interprets Benjamin’s attention for Liliencron’s novel as attention to the fact that it was written in the
sprit of propagating a Pan-Germanic confessional unity in which Warburg was not interested. See Jane O. Newman,
Benjamin’s Library. Modernity, Nation and the Baroque, Ithaca-New York, Cornell, 2011 (“Signale”), p. 140.
44 claudia wedepohl
the make-up of two fictive characters were manifestations of the afterlife of an archetypical
problem of human existence: the being driven by a continuous search for transcendence.
When Panofsky’s and Saxl’s study was finally printed, bound and distributed, Warburg ac-
knowledged its historicising character and called the presumed allusion to a conjunction of
Jupiter and Saturn in Dürer’s print a «metamorphosis of Saturn into the genius», a symbol of
the elevation of «the human being’s fate and destiny» («heimarmene») embodied by a «Faust à
la Hamlet».1 Perhaps the most concise summary of the same idea with its optimistic under-
tones can however be found among his notes relating to the classical literary tradition of melan-
choly: «Out of these roots grows the Northern doctrine of the genius as the morally con-
demned Saturnine nature is taken away from the idle personality: the ‘Weltschmerz’
canonizes».2

Mourning River Gods

After the appearance of Panofsky’s and Saxl’s study Warburg continued to develop his own
ideas about the nature of melancholy. Not surprisingly, he pursued a different path than his
younger colleagues. The result, however, was never written down in a coherent text. As ever
so often, one has to reconstruct Warburg’s notions from letters, fragments, journal entries and
notes. These documents prove once again that his very own concept of a structural polarity of
the human mind also counted as model for mental ambivalence and inner conflicts. One could
perhaps even say that Warburg tried to capture an innate bipolarity in the melancholic type.
Historically, this inner conflict was for him an emblematic symbol of the battles between irra-
tional belief and the rational thinking in the proto-enlightened period. Dürer’s Melencolia I be-
came, accordingly, a prefiguration of the Enlightenment. Psychologically this inner conflict
was something he had not only experienced himself, he had also recognised the same conflict
in the famous fictive characters discussed above.
As always, Warburg attempted to link this notion with the iconographic tradition, tracing it
back to the images of classical mythology. In this case, the figuration of the reclining, according
to Warburg «mourning» («trauernd») river god seemed to provide an answer. This semi-divine
creature is supposedly grieving his earthbound existence that prevents him from ascent into su-
pernatural spheres, following one’s innate heliotropism and longing for transcendence. In his
text known as the fragment on Manet and Italian Antiquity, describing a scene on one of the two
Roman sarcophagi he analysed, Warburg writes:
Doomed to remain on river-banks and mountains they raise themselves, whether in awe or longing, to
spheres of light never to be their own. Their eyes, completely absorbed by the fearful spectacle of the di-
vine epiphany, speak of nostalgia and the burden of still-corporal existence – the fate of the non-
Olympians».3

In this role the river god was part of Warburg’s model of a structural interconnection between
the human psyche and the history of civilisation.

1 wia, fc , Aby Warburg letter draft to Erwin Panofsky, 21 January 1924: «Ich bin doch der Meinung, daß man die Me-
tamorphose des Saturn ins Genie durch das [Jupiter] Amulett belegen kann. Bis zum Faust alla Hamlet: Adel der <…?>
Heimarmene zum Symbol seelischer, produktivster Ergriffenheit».
2 wia, iii.2.1, zk 030/017232: «Aus diesen Wurzeln nordische Doctrin v[om] Genie indem d[em] Unthätigen das
moralisch sträfliche des Saturn-Menschen genommen wird: der Weltschmerz canonisiert».
3 Aby Warburg, Manet and Italian Antiquity, translation Henriette Frankfort, ed. Claudia Wedepohl, «Bruniana &
Campanelliana», a. xx, 2, 2014, pp. 455-476: 465.
composto in car attere dante monotype dalla
fabrizio serr a editore, pisa · roma.
stampato e rilegato nella
t i p o gr a f i a d i agna n o, ag na no pisa no (pisa ).

*
Gennaio 2016
(cz 2 · fg 21)