Warburg

Einleitung (Introduction to Mnemosyne, 1929)

The introduction to Mnemosyne is Warburg's only completed article for the Bilderatlas project. Warburg wrote Einleitung in 1929 as an editorial presentation to the Atlas. It would appear that the author did not revise this brief essay, which was typed up by Gertrud Bing.
The text is published here in the language it was originally written in, following the edition edited by Martin Warnke (in collaboration with Claudia Brink), Akademie Verlag, Berlin 2000, pp. 3-6.
An Italian version of the text, reduced and commented on, has already been published in Engramma (Giulia Bordignon, Lettura dell'Introduzione all'Atlante di Aby Warburg).

Bibliographic survey of critical studies on Aby Warburg and publications of his works

Updated to october 2003
(by Giulia Bordignon, Katia Mazzucco and Linda Selmin)

Essays

Salvatore Settis, The Satyr of Mazara del Vallo and its models

Salvatore Settis takes a critical stance in the debate caused by the presumed discovery of the iconographic source for a Greek vase depicting a dancing satyr in front of a seated Dionysus (reproduced in a photograph in the archives in the University of Catania) - the famous statue of the dancing satyr from Mazara.
The acceptance of the Satyr of Mazara as the iconographic model for the Greek vase implies a series of significant inferences including a later date for the Satyr; that the statue would also have included a statue of Dionysus in front of the Satyr, and the inevitable increased financial value of the vase.
According to Settis, a definite inference cannot be considered accurate: what is not taken into account is the extremely wide-spread use of the motif of the dancing figure in ancient Greek vase painting, in accordance with a defined and codified iconograpohic scheme that was part of a common legacy of sources for artists, and vase painters in particular, who worked without creating a faithful copy, dal vivo, of an original set up as a model.

Marianna Gelussi, Epiphanies of the Dancing Satyr from the Renaissance to Antiquity (and back)

Another image of a satyr, appearing among the naked dancers painted by Antonio del Pollaiolo in Villa Gallina, Arcetri, Florence, echoes the debate arising from the rediscovery of the Satyr of Mazara. Pollaiolo's dancer is the faithful manifestation of a Pathosformel deduced from the figurative heritage of antiquity and resemanticised during the Renaissance.
The acknowledgement that the precise model for the posture for Pollaiolo's satyr may have been drawn from a first century BC cameo, does not go counter to the necessary acknowledgement that the image belongs to a typological series, and does not make it possible to argue for a definitive model, an unambiguous source for more than one work, copies or deductions of it. One has to recognise each work, and place it within the intricate warp and weft of the continuum of the transmission of tradition, and the betrayals of those traditions that occur in the process.

The Satyr of Mazara del Vallo: information and interpretation (by Luana Lovisetto)