ABSTRACT

aby warburg’s last project, the picture atlas “Mnemosyne,” unfinished at Warburg’s death in 1929, is still not available today 2 and, dealing as it does mainly with mythological imagery, has itself now attained the status of a myth. Much has been written about the picture-atlas, and much of it in metaphors: It was described as a symphony, 3 as a collection of loci classici, as an assemblage of constellations, as a laboratory of the history of images—this last metaphor has at least the merit of being Warburg’s own—and in similar comparative ways. Often, scholars have analysed the Bilderatlas in terms of aesthetics, that is, as if it were an art-work rather than a scholarly endeavor. Attention was drawn to the fact that Warburg’s plates are close in time to the invention of collage and may be inspired by similar intentions; 4 it was also suggested that the plates of the atlas may have been intended as a purely visual text. 5 These observations would seem to have to be qualified by what we know today about Warburg’s last project.