Ad oculos: Ways of Seeing, Reading, and Collecting
Ad oculos: Ways of Seeing, Reading, and Collecting
This chapter engages Ernst Gombrich's essay “Icones symbolicae” and Michael Baxandall's interpretation of Leon Battista Alberti's debts to the rhetorical tradition to examine the iconology of Warburg's early essays in the context of Italian humanism and Dominico Ghirlandaio's Adoration of the Shepherds. It returns to Warburg's concept of the “metaphoric distance” characterizing the manner in which the Adoration's rhetorical qualities, its copia (eloquent abundance) and varietas (variety), help to balance competing forces and themes. It then rehearses Warburg's cardinal notion of the Pathosformel (pathos formula) and finds analogies with E. R. Curtius's notion of literary topoi. The chapter also compares the aims and organization of Warburg's famous Library in Hamburg with those of the Bilderatlas.
Keywords: Icones symbolicae, rhetorical tradition, iconology, Italian humanism, Adoration of the Shepherds, copia, varietas, metaphoric distance, Pathosformel
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