Warburg Institute Archive (/archive)
Archive Collections (/archive/archive-collections)
Verknüpfungszwang (/archive/archive-collections/verkn%C3%BCpfungszwang-exhibition)
Bilderreihe Hertziana
The Bilderreihe for Warburg’s lecture at the Bibliotheca Hertziana in
Rome 1929
1. Towards the end of his life, Warburg spent half a year in Rome, accompanied by his academic
assistant Gertrud Bing and personal assistant Franz Alber.
2. It was in the preparation of a lecture at the Bibliotheca Hertziana that Warburg assembled one of his
last Bilderreihen. The lecture on 19 January 1929 was titled “Roman Antiquity in the Workshop of
Domenico Ghirlandaio”, it was well attended and highly influential. These documents trace and
illustrate some of the preparatory stages of the display: from the draft sketches via an emergency
photo order from Hamburg, to the photographed panel. The latter reappears in the image, taken in April
1929, of Warburg and his two assistants in his Roman hotel-suite.
3. For the display of more than 300 images, Warburg received large numbers of reproductions from
Hamburg, many made specifically for the occasion. Nine days before the lecture, on 11 January, Bing
sends a telegram to Hamburg ordering yet more images. She acknowledges the enormous effort
undertaken on both sides: “it is bad at your end; here it is worse”.
4. The letters ‘C’ and ‘N’ that appear on the sketch and the photographic reproduction of the panel
relate to different versions Warburg had developed consecutively, the number 1 in the photograph
indicates that this was the first panel in the (final) version N.
Verknüpfungszwang
Aby Warburg: A Life in Photographs
Continue the exhibition
Mnemosyne Atlas (/archive/verknupfungszwang-exhibition/mnemosyne-atlas)
