Obsessed by Art: Aby Warburg: His Life and His Legacy by Francesca Cernia Slovin

Author:Francesca Cernia Slovin [Slovin, Francesca Cernia]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Art, Autobiography, Biography, History, Non-Fiction
ISBN: 9781425739157
Google: IvxdYNUsp_IC
Amazon: 1425739156
Publisher: Xlibris, Corp.
Published: 2006-11-28T00:00:00+00:00

After a few polite phrases and an exchange of customary complaints about the climate of Hamburg, Aby picked up Boll’s book and indicated it to Saxl, looking long into his eyes. In a slow, studied cadence, he then began talking about Palazzo Schifanoia and the Sala dei mesi: in describing the architectural structure, the layout, the technique of fresco, and the various restorations, his tone of voice slowly warmed up while the rhythm of his words accelerated. When he got to his favorite subject, the image of the black man with the two-edged axe and rope in hand, he paused a moment, raised his eyebrows, and in a single breath launched into a dizzying series of references, allusions, connections, hypotheses, and interpretations. He compared descriptions of the Classical Prometheus with the Deacon of Abu Ma’shar, evoked pagan deities and signs of the Zodiac, compared Greek astronomy and Medieval astrology, tied together Eastern mysteries and Western symbols, linked ancient myths and superstitious beliefs.

To catch his breath and allow his interlocutor a brief respite, he then grabbed a large, rolled-up map, unwound it on the desk with a conspiratorial air, fixed the four corners with small crystal paperweights, and began to explain its significance. This was the Wanderkarte, the first map ever drafted that traced the peregrinations and metamorphoses of the pagan gods from antiquity to the modern age. Marked in tiny, almost illegible lettering was an infinity of names and signs following one after another like notes in a baroque fugue and indicating everything from the columns of Hercules to Scylla and Charybdis, from the plateau of Anatolia to the palatinates of Bohemia, from the sacred waters of the Nile to the profane waters of the Tiber. He continued his explanation, carefully selecting his terms and definitions; he described in broad strokes the face of Venus asleep under the horns of Taurus, Apollo’s face sundered between the twins of Gemini, Mercury’s face compressed inside the crab-shell of Cancer; he cited their names in the various mythological versions—Greek, Egyptian, Arab, Indian, Jewish, Spanish; he explained how the same stories and names underwent transformations in the different translations, changing their identities over the course of the centuries.

The timid Saxl, who at first had pulled out, with a certain pride, a number of mediocre reproductions, hastily reclosed his portfolio with a mixture of embarrassment and surrender. His shoulders seemed visibly to droop a few centimeters under the uneven padding of his jacket; his mustache, meanwhile, which upon his arrival had looked fresh and youthful, now seemed suddenly to have wilted. He hadn’t had a chance to tell Warburg about his first astrological discovery regarding a statue of Mercury, nor about his studies of the planets carved in the pedestals of sculptures of the later Roman Empire, nor about his research on medieval woodcuts and manuscripts. In fact, he told him in a bewildered tone to take his material, since he would certainly make better use of it than he; indeed, by then he felt

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