Signed Pan: Erwin Panofsky's 1892-1968 the History of Art As a Humanistic Discipline Princeton, 1938 9789042943056, 9789042943063, 904294305X

Citation preview

S T U D I E S I N I CO N O LO G Y 18

Signed  PAN Erwin Panofsky’s (1892-1968) “The History of Art as a Humanistic Discipline” (Princeton, 1938)

Barbara Baert

P EE T ER S

Cover images 1-2. - Readers book log of  Theodore Meyer Greene’s (1897-1969), The Meaning of the Humanities, Princeton-London, 1938 (recto verso). Princeton, Institute for Advanced Study, Library of Historical Studies

SIGNED PAN

SIGNED PAN Erwin Panofsky’s (1892-1968) “The History of Art as a Humanistic Discipline” (Princeton, 1938)

BARBARA BAERT

PEETERS LEUVEN–PARIS–BRISTOL, CT 2020

A catalogue record for this book is available from the Library of Congress.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior permission in writing of the publisher, or as expressly permitted by law, or under terms agreed with the appropriate reprographics rights organization.

ISBN 978-90-429-4305-6 eISBN 978-90-429-4306-3 D/2020/0602/97 © 2020 – Peeters, Bondgenotenlaan 153, B-3000 Leuven (Belgium) copy editing: Sarah Eycken and Stephanie Heremans

Ventures into unknown territory inevitably involve an element of risk, and scientists and scholars are rarely motivated by the thought of an end product. Rather, they are moved by a creative curiosity that is the hallmark of academic inquiry. Abraham Flexner (1866-1959)

Contents 0. Prologue .......................



1. The Transplanted European ................



2. The Essay .......................



3. The Footnotes .....................



4. March 4th 1938 ....................



5. The Background ....................



6. The Humanist .....................



7. Aftermath in Arcadia ..................



8. Faust II .......................



Illustrations..................... Bibliography .................... Index nominum ................... Colophon .....................

   

0 Prologue

 “What are my duties?” I replied: “ You have no duties, only opportunities.” (Abraham Flexner (1866-1959))

T

The idea for this essay originated during my membership of the Institute for Advanced Study (IAS) in Princeton, New Jersey ( January-July 2019). I remember how on 3 February 2019, just before his profoundly mourned death, Irving Lavin (1927-2019) and I discussed the ‘new art history’ that was launched in the United States thanks to Erwin Panofsky (1892-1968).1 Panofsky had arrived in Princeton in 1933 and wrote his essay “The History of Art as a Humanistic Discipline” (1938) there some years later.2 It is thanks to Panofsky that the locus classicus of iconography, as Lavin described the Institute for Advanced Study, received the compelling arguments for an “art history that deserves to be counted among the humanities.” Just like Aby Warburg (1866-1929) had emancipated art history from elite connoisseurs, Panofsky advanced this process in the United States. Lavin wrote the following:3 In his essay on the discipline of art history Panofsky is concerned first of all to define the nature of humanistic study, and to defend the process whereby the study of art in particular had been transformed from an elite form of aesthetic satisfaction into a wide-ranging scholarly enterprise that encompassed the whole gamut of historical materials and methods and came to be accepted without question as a proper and fully accredited academic subject. Panofsky defines the subject of the art historian’s study as an interconnected amalgam of three constituent elements: form, subject matter and content.

Erwin Panofsky left a politically troubled Germany in 1931 to work as a Visiting Professor of Fine Arts at New York University and decided to settle in the United States permanently in 1933. He was appointed at the Graduate Department of Art History at the Institute of Fine Arts, which had been founded at New York University in 1932 by Walter William Spencer Cook (1888-1962).4 It was this Hispanist-medievalist who uttered the famous phrase: “Hitler is my best friend, he shakes the trees and I collect the apples.”5

Fig. 1. Preface of Theodore Meyer Greene’s (1897-1969), The Meaning of the Humanities, Princeton-London, 1938. Princeton, Institute for Advanced Study, Library of Historical Studies

4

signed pan

In 1935, Erwin Panofsky was appointed the first ‘permanent member’ of the School of Humanistic Studies (now the School of Historical Studies),6 a position which he continued to combine with his teaching at New York and Princeton University.7 The Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton had been founded by the American educator Abraham Flexner (1866-1959).8 During his tenure as director of the IAS (1930-1939), Flexner helped numerous scientists whose lives were threatened by the Nazis to make the crossing to the IAS, including Albert Einstein (1879-1955), who was welcomed into the institute in 1933. Abraham Flexner’s motto was “No duties only opportunities”, as he described in his mission statement “The Usefulness of Useless Knowledge”.9 He also ensured that the selection of the IAS members occurred on the basis of scientific merit on the one hand (and thus not based on gender, descent, or race) and on the basis of original and ‘curiosity driven research projects’ on the other.10 “Ventures into unknown territory inevitably involve an element of risk, and scientists and scholars are rarely motivated by the thought of an end product. Rather, they are moved by a creative curiosity that is the hallmark of academic inquiry,” he wrote.11 This volume of Studies in Iconology contributes to the content and context of Panofsky’s essay “The History of Art as a Humanistic Discipline”, which functioned as a manifesto written by an intellectual émigré in the new American context that he was to explore, and in particular the humanistic studies milieu in Princeton.12 With respect to style and genre, the text is somewhat atypical for Panofsky’s oeuvre, and it sheds light on an interesting juncture in his reflection on the discipline of art history and its integration in the humanities. A close reading of the text and an analysis of its impact can still teach us something about the origins and development of the field today. Hence, this essay is neither a tribute nor a rehabilitation; it seeks only to shed light on a wrinkle in time that was caused by one text, which in fact started out as a lecture, and celebrates the origins, joy, and future of the humanities. In Panofsky’s own words, this joy can be expressed as follows:

prologue

5

It may be asked whether the interpretation of meaning (...) apart from satisfying our intellectual curiosity, also contributes to our enjoyment of works of art. I for one am inclined to maintain that it does. Modern psychology has taught us – or rather reminded us of what Thomas Aquinas [1225-1274] already knew – that the senses have their own kind of reason. It may well be that the intellect has its own kind of joys.13

6 1

2

3 4 5

6

signed pan Irving Lavin, American Panofsky, in Migrating Histories of Art. Self-Translations of a Discipline, eds. Maria T. Costa & Hans C. Hönes, (Studien aus dem Warburg-Haus, 19), Berlin-Boston, 2019, p. 91-97. Irving Lavin, Iconography as a Humanistic Discipline (“Iconography at the Crossroads”), in Iconography at the Crossroads. Papers from the Colloquium Sponsored by the Index of Christian Art Princeton University, ed. Brendan Cassidy, Princeton, 1992, p. 32-41; Erwin Panofsky, The History of Art as a Humanistic Discipline, in The Meaning of the Humanities. Five Essays by Ralph Barton Perry, August Charles Krey, Erwin Panofsky, Robert Lowry Calhoun, Gilbert Chinard, ed. Theodore M. Greene, PrincetonLondon-Oxford, 1938, p. 89-118; Erwin Panofsky, The History of Art as a Humanistic Discipline, in Meaning in the Visual Arts, New York, 1955, p. 1-25. Irving Lavin, Iconography as a Humanistic Discipline, op. cit., p. 36. Irving Lavin, American Panofsky, op. cit., p. 93. Quoted after Erwin Panofsky, Three Decades of Art History in the United States. Impressions of a Transplanted European, in Meaning, op. cit., p. 321-446, p. 332; Erwin Panofsky, Three Decades of Art History in the United States. Impressions of a Transplanted European, in College Art Journal, 14, 1, 1954, p. 7-27.- See also: Harry Bober, The Gothic Tower and the Stork Club, in Arts and Sciences, 1, 1962, p. 1-8. Erwin Panofsky said of the institute: “The Institute for Advanced Study (…) owes its reputation to the fact that its members do their research work openly and their teaching surreptitiously,

7

8

9

10

11 12

13

whereas the opposite is true for so many other institutions of learning.” Quoted from Craig H. Smyth, Erwin Panofsky 1892-1968, in A Commemorative Gathering for Erwin Panofsky at the Institute of Fine Arts, Princeton, 1968, p. 7-8, p. 7. Craig H. Smyth, Thoughts on Erwin Panofsky’s First Years in Princeton, in Meaning in the Visual Arts. Views from the Outside. A Centennial Commemoration of Erwin Panofsky (1892-1968), ed. Irving Lavin, Princeton, 1995, p. 353-361, p. 353; William S. Heckscher, Erwin Panofsky. A Curriculum Vitae, in Record of the Art Museum, Princeton University, 28, 1, 1969, p. 4-21, p. 14; IAS, Erwin Panofsky: Life, Work, and Legacy, https://www.ias.edu/ erwin-panofsky-life-work-and-legacy. Thomas N. Bonner, Iconoclast. Abraham Flexner and a Life in Learning, Baltimore, 2002; Steve L. Batterson, Pursuit of Genius. Flexner, Einstein, and the Early Faculty at the Institute for Advanced Study, Wellesley, 2006. Abraham Flexner, The Usefulness of Useless Knowledge, in Harpers, 179, 1939, p. 544-552, p. 551. Abraham Flexner, The Usefulness of Useless Knowledge, op. cit., p. 545: “(…) men and women who were driven not by the desire to be useful but merely the desire to satisfy their curiosity.” Abraham Flexner, Abraham Flexner. An Autobiography, New York, 1960, p. 36. Marilyn A. Lavin, The Eye of the Tiger. The Founding and Development of the Department of Art and Archaeology, 18831923, Princeton, 1983, p. 8-9. Jan A. Emmens & Gary Schwartz, Erwin Panofsky as a Humanist, in Simiolus. Netherlands Quaterly for the History of Art, 2, 3, 1967-1968, p. 109-113, p. 113.

1 The Transplanted European

 Once he dreamt of an ugly old lady and woke up with the untranslatable phrase, „Zum Schauen bestellt.“ (William S. Heckscher, Erwin Panofsky. A Curriculum Vitae, p. 8)

Fig. 2. Erwin Panofsky (1892-1968) between his former students Horst Waldemar Janson (1913-1982) and William S. Heckscher (1904-1999) (Princeton, 1952). Hamburg, Warburg Haus © Warburg-Archiv, Warburg-Haus Hamburg

T

The reception history of Erwin Panofsky’s method has been varied and unpredictable, and the way in which his Neo-Kantian three-step system – pre-iconographic / iconographic / iconological research – is recapitulated today is so heartrendingly impoverished that one might wonder whether scientific research ought not to be conducted into ‘Panofsky-banalization’ as such. This research would be distinct from the necessary methodological debates that advance the evolution of the history of science.14

Panofsky himself would have stayed modest and especially laconic upon hearing these words. “Every six weeks I have a thought. The rest of the time I work,” he was wont to say.15 William S. Heckscher (1904-1999), Panofsky’s faithful assistant in New York and Princeton,16 described him as “witty and incisive, skeptical and warmhearted, possessed of limitless curiosity”.17 And Jan Białostocki (1921-1988) remembered him as follows: He was gifted with such extraordinary personal charm that everybody who once came into the orbit of his influence remained forever under his spell. People who conducted violent polemics against his works became friends of Panofsky’s for life when they got to know his amazing mind and his unexpected receptivity, even to the ideas of young colleagues. Short in stature and far from beautiful, he was attracted in his historical imagination by ‘little great men’, as he called them. We find that idea in his beautiful essay on Abbot Suger [1081-1151],[18] where he gave us a – doubtless autobiographical – account of people for whom ‘an exceptionally small physique seems to be insignificant in the eyes of history’.19

The fact that from its foundation, the School of Humanistic Studies at the Institute for Advanced Study was directed by a ‘transplanted European’ – in Erwin Panofsky’s words – introduced a European, even German form of ‘humane art history’ to the United States.20 Along with others in that country, Panofsky

10

signed pan

was “one of the prominent art historians, most of them refugees from the Nazi regime, who – in the words of Art Journal – ‘made “art history” and “Germanic” interchangeable terms in universities throughout the United States and struggled to reconcile the new culture with the old’.” 21 Panofsky’s importance lies in the fact that he disseminated the conviction in the United States that the discipline of art history requires intellectual erudition and thus forms a methodological part of the ‘arcadian’ landscape of the humanistic discipline along with philosophy, theology, and philology.22 Erwin Panofsky was wont to claim: “In the 1930s the German speaking countries still held the leading position in the history of art, except in the United States of America.”23 It is no coincidence that Panofsky’s “The History of Art as a Humanistic Discipline” (1938) is one of the first essays that he wrote during his stay in Princeton. Panofsky adhered closely to Flexner’s mission statement of scientific freedom, merit, and tolerance. “He represented ‘disinterestedness’ [that he employed in his art historical studies] to divert attention away from politics and from questions of difference, including the one raised by the impossibility of reconciling the circumstances of exile with confidence in humanistic ideals.”24 The essay likewise forms a manifesto as an alternative to art reflection as connoisseurship, as the field was still often perceived around the turn of the century.25 “Erwin Panofsky remarked that connoisseurs as they get older become increasingly narrow-minded and farsighted, while humanists become increasingly fair-minded and nearsighted.”26 ‘Pan’, as he signed his letters, took pride in the fact that he had both a farsighted and a nearsighted eye… Given his German formation, Panofsky was well placed to develop this methodological alternative to connoisseurship.27 Between 1920 and 1933, he taught at the University of Hamburg and conducted research with Aby Warburg, Fritz Saxl (1890-1948), and Edgar Wind (1900-1971) of the Kulturwissenschaftliche Bibliothek Warburg (KBW, 1926) on Heilwigstraße 116, EppendorfHamburg. He also maintained close contacts with the cultural philosopher Ernst Cassirer (1874-1945) of the Neo-Kantian ‘Marburg School’. It was during this Hamburg period that Panofsky’s first major writings on art history appeared.

the transplanted european

11

A significant early work was Idea. Ein Beitrag zur Begriffsgeschichte der älteren Kunstheorie (1924) on the Neo-Platonic concept of eikon,28 which was inspired by Cassirer’s ideas.29 I quote Donald R. Kelley (Columbia University): In general Panofsky set his scholarly work within two frames of reference (as he put it) one defined by philosophy of art and the other by a philosophy of culture. The first of these was a Germanic tradition of Kunstgeschichte, traced back especially to Winckelmann [ Johann Joachim Winckelmann (1717-1768)]. The other was associated with more recent (and also Germanic) ideas of culture, especially the symbolic forms of Ernst Cassirer and the view of the human sciences taken by Wilhelm Dilthey [1833-1911], who situated the specific objects of art-historical inquiry within ‘lived experience’ (Erlebnis) and ‘the encompassing reality of cultural system’ (die umfassendes Wirklichkeit des Kulturzusammenhangs).30

Born in Hannover and schooled in Berlin and Freiburg,31 at the IAS the humanist was immediately (quote from Jan A. Emmens & Gary Schwartz)…: … distinguished from the natural scientist by the object of his study, and from the so-called ‘practical man’ – doctors, lawyers, engineers, stockbrokers – by his whole attitude. They represent the active life, Panofsky’s humanist the contemplative. The early 15th-century humanists tended toward activism. In justifying his own need for an ivory tower, Panofsky identified himself with the humanists of the latter half of the 15th century, especially the Neo-Platonist Marsilio Ficino [1433-1499], the long-time object of his interest. It does not come as a surprise, then, to find Panofsky defending the ivory tower as such, unpopular as the image – and the thing it represents – have become, especially in America. This he did in a lecture delivered in Princeton in 1953. The ivory towers are the sojourning places of artists, writers, composers and humanists, he said. Their task is that of Lynceus der Türmer: ‘Zum Sehen geboren, Zum Schauen bestellt’.32 They inhabit their towers not only to isolate themselves from the crowd in order to meditate, but also to serve as the watch-men of civilization. They espy threats to life and freedom before the men of ‘action’ below, and they are expected to sound the warning in good time.33

12 14

15

16

signed pan Mieke Bal, Figuration, in PMLA. The Journal of the Modern Language Association of America, 119, 5, 2004, p. 1289-1292; Mieke Bal, Travelling Concepts in the Humanities. A Rough Guide, Toronto, 2012. Quote from November 1946. William S. Heckscher, Erwin Panofsky. A Curriculum Vitae, op. cit., p. 9. William S. Heckscher, The Genesis of Iconology, in Stil und Überlieferung in der Kunst des Abendlandes, (Akten des XXI Internationalen Kongresses für Kunstgeschichte in Bonn, 3), Berlin, 1967, p. 239262; Charlotte Schoell-Glass & Elizabeth Sears, Verzetteln als Methode. Der humanistische Ikonologe William S. Heckscher (1904-1999), (Hamburger Forschungen zur Kunstgeschichte, 6), Hamburg, 2008.- This is the story of Heckscher meeting Panofsky: “Heckscher was commissioned in 1931 to paint a portrait of Gustav Pauli [1866-1938], the director of Kunsthalle Hamburg. While at work in Pauli’s office, they were interrupted by a strange little man unknown to Heckscher. The man, apparently a colleague of Pauli, immediately launched into some Dürer [Albrecht Dürer (1471-1528)] problem that was troubling him. The stranger’s animated discussion with Pauli left Heckscher astounded at the depth of the man’s insight. Intrigued, Heckscher followed Panofsky to his office and all but begged to study under him. Panofsky was thoroughly unimpressed by Heckscher’s education – he had never finished high school – but Heckscher persisted, and Panofsky eventually relented, telling him of a program to support gifted students who had not completed high school. Heckscher passed the rigorous examination and was accepted into the University of Hamburg, but was only grudgingly given a seat in the back of Panofsky’s seminar.” Quoted from Elizabeth Sears, The Life

and Work of William S. Heckscher, in Zeitschrift für Kunstgeschichte, 53, 1, 1990, p. 107-133, p. 116-117; Wikipedia, William S. Heckscher, https://en.wikipedia.org/ wiki/William_S._Heckschercite_ note-7. 17 William S. Heckscher, Erwin Panofsky. A Curriculum Vitae, op. cit., p. 9. 18 Erwin Panofsky, Abbot Suger on the Abbey Church of St.-Denis and Its Art Treasures, in Meaning, op. cit., p. 108-154. 19 Jan Białostocki, Erwin Panofsky (18921968). Thinker, Historian, Human Being, in Simiolus. Netherlands Quarterly for the History of Art, 4, 2, 1970, p. 68-89, p. 87. 20 William S. Heckscher, Erwin Panofsky. A Curriculum Vitae, op. cit., p. 15, nuances this view: “The great American art historians Panofsky regarded as living proof of the fact that the vogue of humanistic scholarship in America was not triggered by European immigrant professors; it originated, he liked to point out, soon after the First World War and experienced its first golden age in the decade 1923-1933. At the same time he did not hide his genuine concern as he noted the undercurrents of barbarism and antiintellectualism in America, favored and cultivated by the intellectual and political libertines who forever menace the very roots of cultural traditions and humane values.” 21 Marion F. Deshmukh, The Visual Arts and Cultural Migration in the 1930s and 1940s. A Literature Review, in Central European History, 41, 4, 2008, p. 569-604, p. 569; David Summers, Meaning in the Visual Arts as a Humanistic Discipline, in Meaning in the Visual Arts. Views from the Outside, op. cit., p. 9-24. 22 I use the term arcadian as in Erwin Panofsky, Et in Arcadia ego. Poussin and the Elegiac Tradition, in Meaning, op. cit., p. 295-320; Erwin Panofsky, Et in Arcadia ego. On the Conception of Transience in Poussin and Watteau, in Philosophy and

the transplanted european History. Essays presented to Ernst Cassirer, Oxford, 1936, p. 223-254.- See also: Andreas Beyer, Stranger in Paradise. Erwin Panofsky’s Expulsion to the Academic Parnassus, in ‘Escape to Life’. German Intellectuals in New York. A Compendium on Exile after 1933, eds. Eckart Goebel & Sigrid Weigel, Berlin-Boston, 2012, p. 429-444. 23 Erwin Panofsky, Meaning, op. cit., p. 324. 24 Kevin Parker, Art History and Exile. Richard Krautheimer and Erwin Panofsky, in Exiles + émigrés, eds. Stephanie Barron & Sabine Eckmann, Los Angeles, 1997, p. 317-325, p. 324.- See also: Andreas W. Daum, Hartmut Lehmann & James J. Sheehan (eds.), The Second Generation. Émigrés from Nazi Germany as Historians, New York, 2016, p. 321-346; William S. Heckscher, Erwin Panofsky. A Curriculum Vitae, op. cit., p. 20-21. 25 Connoisseurs are the ‘laconic art historians’ and ‘art historians are the loquacious connoisseurs’, according to Erwin Panofsky, Meaning, op. cit., p. 20; William S. Heckscher, Erwin Panofsky. A Curriculum Vitae, op. cit., p. 20. 26 William S. Heckscher, Erwin Panofsky. A Curriculum Vitae, op. cit., p. 15-16. 27 Colin Eisler, Kunstgeschichte American Style. A Study in Migration, in The Intellectual Migration. Europe and America. 1930-1960, eds. Donald Fleming & Bernard Bailyn, Cambridge MA, 1969, p. 544-629, p. 618. 28 Erwin Panofsky, Idea. Ein Beitrag zur Begriffsgeschichte der älteren Kunstheorie, Leipzig, 1924; translated into English:

13

Erwin Panofsky, Idea. A Concept in Art Theory, New York, 1968. 29 Panofsky writes in the Vorwort of Idea, op. cit., s.p.: Die vorliegende Studie steht in engem Zusammenhang mit einem von Herrn Prof. E. Cassirer in der Bibliothek Warburg gehaltenen Vortrag der „Die Idee des Schönen in Platos Dialogen“ zum Gegenstand hatte. 30 Donald R. Kelley, Something Happened. Panofsky and Cultural History, in Meaning, op. cit., p. 113-121, p. 115; Wilhelm Dilthey, Einleitung in die Geisteswissenschaften, (Gesammelte Schriften, 1), Stuttgart, 1959, p. 49ff.- See also: Silvia Ferretti, Cassirer, Panofsky and Warburg: Symbol, Art, and History, New Haven, 1989. 31 Gerda Panofsky, Erwin Panofsky von Zehn bis Dreißig und seine jüdischen Wurzeln, (Veröffentlichungen des Zentralinstituts für Kunstgeschichte, 41), Passau, 2017. 32 After Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749-1832), in Faust, II, Act V. 33 Jan A. Emmens & Gary Schwartz, op. cit., p. 112; Erwin Panofsky, In Defense of the Ivory Tower, in The American Institute of Architects, 32, 1, 1959, p. 19-22; Rolf Bergmann, Der elfenbeinerne Turm in der deutschen Literatur, in Zeitschrift für deutsches Altertum und deutsche Literatur, 82, 4, 1964, p. 292-320; Katarzyna Murawska, An Image of Mysterious Wisdom Won by Toil. The Tower as Symbol of Thoughtful Isolation in English Art and Literature from Milton to Yeats, in Artibus et Historiae, 3, 5, 1982, p. 141-162.

2 The Essay

 Das Gefühl für Humanität hat mich noch nicht verlassen. (A dying Immanuel Kant, in Erwin Panofsky, The History of Art as a Humanistic Discipline, p. 1)

I

In the first edition of 1938, Erwin Panofsky’s essay “The History of Art as a Humanistic Discipline” numbered 29 pages and 20 footnotes divided into 5 sections. We encounter an author who thinks very logically, constructs his work systematically, and illustrates his argumentation didactically and with contemporary examples. In the reprinted edition, used as the “Introduction” to Meaning in the Visual Arts (1955), Panofsky did not modify the original text in any way. (I) Panofsky begins with Cicero’s (106-43 BC) definition of the homo humanus who is contrasted with the barbarian who lacks pietas. The Renaissance man contrasts humanitas with classical barbaritas on the one hand and medieval divinitas on the other, Panfosky writes: When Marsilio Ficino defines man as a ‘rational soul participating in the intellect of God, but operating in a body’, he defines him as the one being that is both autonomous and finite. And Pico’s [Giovanni Pico della Mirandola (1463-1494)] famous ‘speech’, ‘On the Dignity of Man’, is anything but a document of paganism. Pico says that God placed man in the center of the universe so that he might be conscious of where he stands, and therefore free to decide ‘where to turn’. He does not say that man is the center of the universe, not even in the sense commonly attributed to the classical phrase, ‘man the measure of all things’.34

For Panofsky, a humanist is one who rejects authority but respects tradition. According to the author, the textbook example of this is Desiderius Erasmus of Rotterdam (1466-1536).35

Fig. 3. Title page of Theodore Meyer Greene’s (1897-1969), The Meaning of the Humanities, Princeton-London, 1938. Princeton-London 1938. Princeton, Institute for Advanced Study, Library of Historical Studies

18

signed pan

(II) The humanist belongs to the sphere of culture, which is interested in the “records left by man”36. Here Panofsky introduces the opposition that forms the central leitmotif of the essay: the sphere of nature (scientist) and the sphere of culture (humanist). The scientist is concerned with whatever is observable by the senses in nature. He writes: The scientist, too, deals with human records, namely with the works of his predecessors. But he deals with them not as something to be investigated, but as something which helps him to investigate. In other words, he is interested in records not in so far as they emerge from the stream of time, but in so far as they are absorbed in it. If a modern scientist reads Newton [Isaac Newton (1663-1727)] or Leonardo da Vinci [1452-1519] in the original, he does so not as a scientist, but as a man interested in the history of science and therefore of human civilization in general.37

Nevertheless, there are methodological similarities between the physicist (referred to as ‘scientist’) and the art historian (referred to as ‘humanist’). Both employ observation and preselection. The scientist makes this preselection by filtering natural phenomena based on instruments and a theory. The humanist filters documents by means of the historical concept and the premise of the questions when and where. This historicity broadens the humanities to a ‘cosmos of culture’ as opposed to the ‘cosmos of nature’ of the natural sciences. Moreover, both scholars will interpret and integrate their observations and ‘examinations’ into a classification or a coherent system of thought ‘that makes sense’.38 In both cases the ‘system that makes sense’ operates as a consistent yet elastic organism, comparable to a living animal as opposed to its single limbs; and what is true of the relationship between monuments, documents and a general historical concept in the humanities is evidently equally true of the relationship between phenomena, instruments and theory in the natural sciences.39

(III) An art historian, then, is a humanist whose ‘primary material’ consists of those records which have come down to us in the form of works of art. But what is a work of art? (…) A work of art always has aesthetic significance (not to be

the essay

19

confused with aesthetic value): whether or not it serves some practical purpose, and whether it is good or bad, it demands to be experienced aesthetically.40

Panofsky says that the intention of the artwork is to be ‘experienced’ as aesthetic, as opposed to objects that lack this intention, and which are thus ‘practical objects’: ‘vehicles of communications’, for example, tools, apparatuses, although both groups are indebted to the notion of ‘form’ and ‘function’, according to the author.41 “Where the sphere of practical objects ends, and that of ‘art’ begins, depends, then, on the ‘intention’ of the creators.”42 The intention is dependent on the norms and standards of the contemporary context, but we may interpret it in a distorted way or give it new content due to our own contemporary perspective. “We have all seen with our own eyes the transference of spoons and fetishes of African tribes from the museums of ethnology into art exhibitions. (…) A spinning machine is perhaps the most impressive manifestation of a functional idea, and an ‘abstract’ painting is perhaps the most expressive manifestation of pure form, but both have a minimum of content.”43 (IV) In defining a work of art as a ‘man-made object demanding to be experienced aesthetically’ we encounter for the first time a basic difference between the humanities and natural science. The scientist, dealing as he does with natural phenomena, can at once proceed to analyze them. The humanist, dealing as he does with human actions and creations, has to engage in a mental process of a synthetic and subjective character: he has mentally to re-enact the actions and to re-create [Erlebnis] the creations.44

“How, then, is it possible to build up art history as a respectable scholarly discipline, if its very objects come into being by an irrational and subjective process?” he wonders.45 Certainly not with X-ray research or technical tools.46 Panofsky considers the task of the art historian as looking with the naked eye and not with instruments with which he can see things that he would not normally see. This seeing occurs in combination with aesthetic intuition and archaeological research.47 Through intuition and research, the art historian distinguishes himself in his visual training and cultural baggage. The art historian-humanist is not a naïve onlooker who can drift away in his own aesthetic appreciations.

20

signed pan

The ‘naïve’ beholder differs from the art historian in that the latter is conscious of the situation. He knows that his cultural equipment, such as it is, would not be in harmony with that of people in another land and of a different period. He tries, therefore, to make adjustments by learning as much as he possibly can of the circumstances under which the objects of his studies were created.48

Who is the art historian-humanist and how will he spend his time? He will read (theology, mythology, etc.); he will study (formal principles and motifs, etc.); he will observe (the interaction between art and literature, etc.); and he will do his best to transport himself into the cultural and literate circumstances of the age that he researches and thus discern and regulate his own historical and aesthetic preconceptions. And therefore, as Panofsky continues in footnote 13, it is not up to the professional art historian to make an a priori distinction between a masterpiece and a lesser work, but the scientific method will identify better work automatically based on the originality of the theme, superior composition, etc. Indeed, aesthetic intuition (‘re-creation’) and archaeological excavation go hand in hand: “Aesthetic re-creation is irrational without archaeological research. Archaeological research is blind and empty without the intuition.”49 This leads Panofsky to a reflection on the difference between ‘appreciationism’, ‘connoisseurship’ and ‘art theory’. The apprecionist is blameworthy. “He who teaches innocent people to understand art without bothering about classical languages, boresome historical methods and dusty old documents, deprives ‘naiveté’ of its charm without correcting its errors.”50 The connoisseur is the collector, museum curator or expert who deliberately limits his contribution to scholarship to identifying works of art with respect to date, provenance and authorship, and to evaluating them with respect to quality and condition. (…) The connoisseur tends to emphasize the re-creative aspect of the complex process which I have tried to describe, and considers the building up of an historical conception as secondary; the art historian in the narrower, or academic, sense is inclined to reverse these accents.51 (…) Art theory, on the other hand – as opposed to the philosophy of art or aesthetics – is to art history as poetics and rhetoric are to the history of literature.52

the essay

21

(V) “But what is the use of the humanities as such? Admittedly they are not practical, and admittedly they concern themselves with the past. Why, it may be asked, should we engage in impractical investigations, and why should we be interested in the past?”53 The answer to the first question is: “Because we are interested in reality.” The answer to the second question is: “Because we are interested in reality.” Panofsky elaborates: There is nothing less real than the present. An hour ago, this lecture belonged to the future. In four minutes, it will belong to the past. When I said that the man who is run over by an automobile is run over by mathematics, physics and chemistry, I could just as well have said that he is run over by Euclid [mid 3rd-mid 4th century BC], Archimedes [287-212 BC] and Lavoisier [the chemist Antoine Lavoisier (1743-1794)].54 The humanities, on the other hand, are not faced by the task of arresting what otherwise would slip away, but of enlivening what otherwise would remain dead. Instead of dealing with temporal phenomena, and causing time to stop, they penetrate into a region where time has stopped of its own accord, and try to reactivate it. Gazing as they do at those frozen, stationary records of which I have said that they ‘emerge from the stream of time’, the humanities endeavor to capture the processes in the course of which those records were produced and became what they are.55 A subtle difference exists in Latin between scientia and eruditio, and in English between knowledge and learning. Scientia and knowledge, denoting a mental possession rather than a mental process, can be identified with the natural sciences; eruditio and learning, denoting a process rather than a possession, with the humanities. The ideal aim of science would seem to be something like mastery, that of the humanities something like wisdom.56

22

signed pan

Erwin Panofsky, The History of Art, op. cit., p. 92 (hereinafter loc. cit.); Erwin Panofsky, Meaning, op. cit., p. 2 (hereinafter loc. cit.). 35 Loc. cit., p. 93-94; loc. cit., p. 4. 36 Loc. cit., p. 96; loc. cit., p. 5. 37 Loc. cit., p. 96; loc. cit., p. 5. 38 Loc. cit., p. 98; loc. cit., p. 7. 39 Moreover, Panofsky nuances the importance of the written document. The human record is as fragile and enigmatic through time, which gives the field a certain inevitable circle reasoning. Here the author borrowed the concept ‘organic situation’ from Theodore M. Greene; Loc. cit., p. 100; loc. cit., p. 9-10. 40 Loc. cit., p. 101; loc. cit., p. 10-11. 41 In footnote 10, Panofsky expands on ‘functionalism’ as a historically elastic concept. Functionalism and aesthetic intention are interchangeable. He gives the example of ‘streamlining’ a functional scientific result related to air resistance. But it also became an intellectual concept (“streamline your mind!”) and an aesthetic principle, for example a beautiful, streamlined sofa; loc. cit., p. 103; loc. cit., p. 11. 42 Loc. cit., p. 104; loc. cit., p. 12. 43 Loc. cit., p. 104-105; loc. cit., p. 13-14. 44 Loc. cit., p. 105; loc. cit., p. 14; In footnote 11, Panofsky underscores yet another 34

nuance. “As a ‘professional man’ he has to separate, as far as possible, the recreative experience of the intentional values imparted to the statue by the artist from the creative experience of the accidental values imparted to a piece of aged stone by the action of nature. And this separation is often not as easy as it might seem.” 45 Loc. cit., p. 106; loc. cit., p. 15. 46 In a letter to Erwin Panofsky dated 3 March 1946, Carl Nordenfalk (19071992) nevertheless hesitantly asked Erwin Panofsky whether he would be allowed to come and see the unique X-rays that Panofsky had of the Adoration of the Mystic Lamb (1432) by Jan van Eyck (c. 1390-1441); Dieter Wuttke (ed.), Erwin Panofsky. Korrespondenz 1937 bis 1949, vol. 2, Wiesbaden, 2003, p. 707. 47 In the sense of the systematic search for documents and objects that explain the artwork; Jan Białostocki, op. cit., p. 81. 48 Loc. cit., p. 108; loc. cit., p. 17. 49 Loc. cit., p. 110; loc. cit., p. 19. 50 Loc. cit., p. 110; loc. cit., p. 19. 51 Loc. cit., p. 111; loc. cit., p. 19. 52 Loc. cit., p. 111-112; loc. cit., p. 20. 53 Loc. cit., p. 112; loc. cit., p. 22. 54 Loc. cit., p. 112; loc. cit., p. 23. 55 Loc. cit., p. 116; loc. cit., p. 24. 56 Loc. cit., p. 117; loc. cit., p. 25.

3 The Footnotes

 Let’s say we both study earthenware. Broken pottery. One looks at these pots, cleans them meticulously, catalogs and sorts them, measures them in a scientific and accurate fashion, tries to figure out their period and maker, and if he is successful, then he did his job well, and his research will be used for generations to come! The other looks at the broken pots for a couple of seconds, sees that they have the same colour, more or less, and immediately constructs a vase out of them. He doesn’t care that they might come from different periods, that they don’t quite fit, as long as you have a vase! (Dialogue between Talmud scholar Eliezer Shkolnik and his son Uriel in the movie Footnote, Joseph Cedar, 2011)

I

In contrast to his otherwise densely populated footnotes, Erwin Panofsky barely dialogues with other voices in this essay. This is presumably related to the genre – the published version of an oral lecture that was intended for a broad audience – and the function of the essay, which both present a contemporary manifesto and an almost scholastic apology for a specific intellectual position among likeminded academics (cf. infra). In the first instance,57 he shows himself to be methodologically inspired by and indebted to Jacques Maritain (1882-1973) (“Sign and Symbol”),58 Edgar Wind (Das Experiment und die Metaphysik; “Some points of Contact between History and Natural Science”; Aesthetischer und Kunstwisschenschaftlicher Gegenstand),59 the phenomenologist Moritz Geiger (1880-1937) (“Beiträge zur Phänomenologie des ästhetischen Genusses”),60 and the Austrian art historian Hans Sedlmayr (1896-1984) (“Zu einer strengen Kunstwissenschaft”).61 Erwin Panofsky quotes Jacques Maritain, a French Catholic philosopher, Neo-Scholastic and Thomas Aquinas expert, in the context of the difference between humans and animals.62 The human is the only creature that uses signs and signification. Humans thus produce written sources and art. It is in this article that Maritain expresses the ambition to make a comprehensive study of signs and symbols (which, incidentally, was also the objective of his great inspiration Ernst Cassirer).63 No problems are more complex or more fundamental to the concerns of man and civilization than those regarding signs. The sign is relevant to the whole extent of knowledge and of human life; it is a universal instrument in the world of human beings, like motion in the world of physical nature. A study of signs and symbols of the kind we should like one day to achieve would set itself in the first place to recapture the essentials of that extensive and detailed intellectual system which mediaeval thinkers attained on this question, above all in logic

Fig. 4. First page of Erwin Panofsky’ (1892-1968), The History of Art as a Humanistic Discipline, in Theodore M. Greene, The Meaning of the Humanities, Princeton-London, 1938, p. 89-118. Princeton, Institute for Advanced Study, Library of Historical Studies

26

signed pan

(of the theory of the concept and the judgement) and in theology (of the theory of the sacraments). Such a study would in the second place seek to make use of the Denkmittel thus prepared for linking up the preoccupations of present-day science with that vast mass of problems whose importance was so rightly recognized by Warburg and his successors – problems concerning symbolism, its rôle in primitive civilizations, in magic, in the art and science of our developed civilizations, etc.64

Edgar Wind had shown Panofsky the way, bringing the relationship between the humanities and the natural sciences into sharp relief. He refers to Wind’s essay in the Cassirer Festschrift in which he attempted to elaborate on the analogies between the two disciplines.65 Wind’s terminology bears many similarities with the Princeton lecture. Wind discusses ‘circular arguments’, which Panofsky developed as ‘organic situations’.66 Wind likewise mentions the art historian “who consults his documents in order to interpret some political event, that can judge the value of these documents” as opposed to the art connoisseur “who examines the reasons for attributing this work to this particular master”.67 Wind leans on Wilhelm Dilthey’s Geisteswissenschaft,68 from which Panofsky took the term Erlebnis in note 11. Wind also treats the difference between art, apparatuses and instruments.69 And Wind reflects on the relativity of scientific perspective or so-called ‘intrusions’. This intrusion, of which every investigator must be guilty if he wishes to make any sort of contact with his material and to test the rules of his procedure, is a thoroughly real event (…) The physicist disturbs the atoms whose composition he wants to study. The historian disturbs the sleep of the document that he drags forth from a dusty archive. This word ‘disturbance’ is not to be taken as a metaphor, but is meant literally.70

Finally, in his section on “The Self-Transformation of Man”, Wind adopts a position concerning the ivory tower mentality. “Until recently, the study of nature and history was considered a ‘contemplative occupation’, confined to men wo locked themselves up in their libraries and laboratories, where they escaped from the turmoil of the world into the quiet and seclusion of their thoughts. To-day,

the footnotes

27

intentionally or not, they threaten the world by their ‘discoveries’.”71 Here, at the end of his exposé, Wind refers to his own age. In an age when not only reformers but despots as well often base their prestige less on ‘God’ than on a limited knowledge of nature and history, experimental and documentary evidence mould the destiny which controls our lives for better or for worse. But even those scholars who desire, now as before, to safeguard their work from the tumults of the moment, cannot ignore the fact that apparently independent lines of study converge to-day in one point: this point is the self-transformation of man who has become lord and victim of his own cognitions; in the study of this self-transformation, scientific and historical research have worked too long independently. It is time that they should be combined.72

In his Beiträge zur Phänomenologie des ästhetischen Genusses, Moritz Geiger, a pupil of Edmund Husserl (1859-1938), discusses the phenomenological categories of aesthetic pleasure and advocates researching the experience of beauty distinct from other ethical-aesthetic values,73 so that a research niche might be created that delineates reflection on art from other pleasurable phenomena, such as eroticism or feelings of lust.74 Panofsky attaches this insight to his laconic remark: “Only he who simply and wholly abandons himself to the object of his perception will experience it aesthetically.”75 The person who cannot control himself is the person who watches a horse race and only appreciates it for the wager he has placed on it. Panofsky refers to Hans Sedlmayr’s ‘strict art history’ in the category of art theory, in which he included Gestalt psychology.76 In the context of the younger generation of the Wiener Schule, Sedlmayr sought an epistemologically ‘strong’ art science that was associated with psychology and distanced itself from art history. Sedlmayr called this Kunstwissenschaft I and Kunstwissenschaft II. “Sedlmayr rejected what he saw as the empirical minutia of art history [the first group]: attribution, patronage and social history, and iconography. Instead, he posited an interpretative technique claimed to discern the aesthetic intent of the work. This he contended was the key to learning the art’s relationship to society and its importance in the world.” 77

28

signed pan

During the 1930s and 1940s, the undeniable links between several members of the Vienna School and the politics of the Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei or NSDAP, turned many researchers in German-speaking countries off their legacy. The main representative of this compromised group of art historians was Hans Sedlmayr, whose sympathy for Nazism cast a shadow not only over his later research but over almost the entire Vienna School.78

the footnotes 57

I make abstraction of the references in footnote 3: Erwin Panofsky & Fritz Saxl, Classical Mythology in Mediaeval Art, in The Metropolitan Museum Studies, 4, 2, 1933, p. 228-280, p. 228; William S. Heckscher, Relics of Pagan Antiquity in Mediæval Settings, in Journal of the Warburg Institute, 1, 3, 1938, p. 204-220; These are not intended methodologically, but are an invitation to further reading; “Impossible to evolve an idea of historical disciplines based on the realization of a fixed distance between the present and the classical past.” Erwin Panofsky connects this incapacity to the medieval incapacity for perspective; “Based on the realization of a fixed distance between the present and the classical past.” Quoted from loc. cit., p. 94. 58 Jacques Maritain, Sign and Symbol, in Journal of the Warburg Institute, 1, 1937, p. 1-11. 59 Edgar Wind, Das Experiment und die Metaphysik, Tübingen, 1934; Edgar Wind, Some Points of Contact between History and Natural Science, in Philosophy and History, op. cit., p. 255-264; Edgar Wind, Aesthetischer und Kunstwisschenschaftlicher Gegenstand, (diss.), Hamburg, 1923; Edgar Wind, Zur Systematik der künstlerischen Probleme, in Zeitschrift für Aesthetik und Allgemeine Kunstwissenschaft, 18, 1925, p. 438-486. 60 Moritz Geiger, Beiträge zur Phänomenologie des ästhetischen Genusses, in Jahrbuch für Philosophie und phänomenologische Forschung, 1, 2, 1913, p. 567-684. 61 Hans Sedlmayr, Zu einer strengen Kunstwissenschaft, in Kunstwissenschaftliche Forschungen, 1, 1931, p. 7-32, p. 7. 62 Loc. cit., p. 95.

63 64 65 66 67 68

69 70 71 72 73 74 75 76

77

78

29

Strangely enough, Erwin Panofsky does not refer to Ernst Cassirer in this essay. Jacques Maritain, op. cit., p. 1. Loc. cit., p. 96. Edgar Wind, Some Points, op. cit., p. 257. Loc. cit., p. 256. Loc. cit., p. 256-258; Wilhelm Dilthey, op. cit., passim. Dilthey saw understanding as the key for the human sciences (Geisteswissenschaften) in contrast to the natural sciences. The natural sciences observe and explain nature, but the humanities understand human expressions of life; Richard Palmer, Hermeneutics: Interpretation Theory in Schleiermacher, Dilthey, Heidegger, and Gadamer, Evanston, 1969, p. 105. Dilthey wants to emphasize the ‘intrinsic temporality of all understanding’, that man’s understanding is dependent on past worldviews, interpretations, and a shared world; Richard Palmer, op. cit., p. 117-118. Edgar Wind, Some Points, op. cit., p. 258. Loc. cit., p. 261. Loc. cit., p. 264. Loc. cit., p. 264. Loc. cit., p. 574. Loc. cit., p. 575. Loc. cit., p. 102. Maria Männig, Hans Sedlmayrs Kunstgeschichte. Eine kritische Studie, CologneWeimar-Vienna, 2017. Eberhard Hempel, Ist “eine strenge Kunstwissenschaft” möglich?, in Zeitschrift für Kunstgeschichte, 3, 3, 1934, p. 155-163, p. 156. Tomáš Murár, Recenze knihy Marie Männig [Review of Maria Männig’s book] ‘Hans Sedlmayrs Kunstgeschichte. Eine kritische Studie’, Böhlau Verlag 2017, in Umění Art, 5/6, 2017, p. 573-575, p. 573.

4 March 4th 1938



O

On 4 March 1938, a week after hearing Panofsky’s lecture, his colleague Sherley Warner Morgan (1893-1979),79 an architect at the Princeton School of Architecture, wrote the speaker the following letter. March 4, 1938

Dear Dr. Panofsky: Permit me to congratulate you on your lecture last week in the series on the Humanities [cf. infra]. I had hoped before this to have an opportunity of telling you in person how brilliantly I thought that you presented the point of view and the ideals of the Historian of Art. I also wanted to ask you three questions which were suggested to me by your lecture: I. Can a young man, trained in the history of art as you have expounded it, ever become a creative artist? II. In your conception of the history of art, do you admit any abstract values, such as beauty? I got the impression that the analysis you made of Dürer’s “Melancholia” would have been equally effective if applied to a second-rate work of the period. III. Is the humanistic discipline which you advocate purely individualistic, i.e., is it solely for the cultivation and inner satisfaction of the individual, or does it include any service to others? I realize that these questions involve matters more fit for an evening’s discussion, than for a categoric reply, and that they have far-reaching connotations. Perhaps we could talk them over at one of the Department luncheons. Yours sincerely Sherley W. Morgan [autograph] Sherley W. Morgan80 Fig. 5. “Sherley W. Morgan, architect, is dead” (1893-1979), in The New York Times, February 6 1979, section C, p. 15.

34

signed pan

No answer to this collegial letter has been preserved, but comparing the three questions to the critical edition of the essay in Theodore Meyer Greene’s (18971969) volume (there is no record of the text as it was delivered orally), Panofsky may have integrated the second remark in footnote 13, in which he nuances that his method can expose quality distinctions between artworks. Question 3 on the ‘service’ of Panofsky’s definition of the art historical humanistic discipline finds a possible response in the following passage: “Philosophical and psychological theories, historical doctrines and all sorts of speculations and discoveries have changes, and keep changing, the lives of countless millions. Even he who merely transmits knowledge or learning participates, in his modest way, in the process of shaping reality – of which fact the enemies of humanism are perhaps more keenly aware than its friends.”81 Panofsky then assumes a political position in note 18: “Needless to say, the works of ‘Plato and other Philosophers’ also play an antifascist role ‘in such circumstances’, and fascists, too, ‘recognize this fact’.”82 I have not found any evidence of a response to the first remark in this essay. It is a question to which I assume Panofsky would have answered laconically. We can, however, contextualize this question in the fact that as an architect, Morgan produced both academic research and artistic drawings.83 Or does Morgan wonder whether an artist might consider the exposé about this humanistic discipline to be too confining? The fact that the imaginary artist – whether a prospective or established figure – would feel paralyzed by such excessive methodological ethics and creative restriction? Or ought the artist to conceal him or herself in the role of the ‘naive observer’?

march th  Joan Cook, Sherley W. Morgan, Architect, is Dead, in New York Times, February 6 1979, p. 15 (online). 80 Dieter Wuttke (ed.), Erwin Panofsky. Korrespondenz 1937 bis 1949, op. cit., p. 96, nr. 687. 81 Dieter Wuttke (ed.), Erwin Panofsky. Korrespondenz 1937 bis 1949, op. cit., p. 96, note 2; Loc cit., p. 115. 82 Based on the letter to The New Statesman and Nation, XIII, 1937, June 19 from Mr. Pat Sloan, who defended the dismissal of professors in the Soviet Union for academics who “advocate an antiquated prescientific philosophy as against a scientific one may be as powerful a reactionary force as a soldier in an army of intervention.” This applies to both the struggle against totalitarian Marxism and against fascism; Pat Sloan, Soviet Democracy, London, 1937. For further reading: 79

83

35

Stuart Samuels, The Left Book Club, in Journal of Contemporary History, 1, 2, 1966, p. 65-86. See: Sherley W. Morgan, American Architecture and its Critics, Princeton University. Program of the Eighteenth Annual Meeting College Art Association of America, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York December 27th, 28th, 29th, 1928, in Parnassus, 1, 1, 1929, p. 1-2, p. 1; He was the co-designer of The Museum of Historic Art and McCormick Hall on the campus, c. 1923-1928; Sara E. Bush, Architectural History of the Art Museum, in Record of the Art Museum, Princeton University (An Art Museum for Princeton: The Early Years), 55, 1/2, 1996, p. 77-106, p. 88. Morgan’s drawings were published in: Sherley W. Morgan, Architectural Drawing: Perspective, Light and Shadow, Rendering, New York, 1950.

5 The Background

 The humanist, I shall argue, is uniquely defined in terms of his allegiance to the ideal of cultural or historico-philosophical synthesis, whose attainment constitutes, as he believes, man’s true ambition as a human being. (Theodore M. Greene, Introduction to The Meaning of the Humanities, p. xix)

Fig. 6. Theodore Meyer Greene (1897-1969) participating in the LIFE discussion group on the pursuit of happiness (1948)

T

In his essay, Erwin Panofsky treats the term humanitas as a value, as an ‘attitude defined’, as a ‘conviction of the dignity of man’, with two axioms: responsibility and tolerance. In addition, it was Erwin Panofsky’s intention to demonstrate that the interpretation of art is a specific science. His desire to furnish it with a systematic methodology – iconology84 – is sufficiently well-known. Aby Warburg and Fritz Saxl were his predecessors; Edgar Wind and Ernst Cassirer his guides.85

Indeed, when he arrived at the IAS, Panofsky had already written his fundamental methodological works and the soil for his 1938 lecture in Princeton was fertile and ripe for the tilling.86 To mention only a few of the early hermeneutical essays, many of which were published in the Zeitschrift für Ästhetik und allgemeine Kunstwissenschaft that had been founded in 1906 by the philosopher, doctor and psychologist Max Dessauer (alias Dessoir, 1867-1967) (Das Problem der Stils in der Bildende Künste;87 Der Begriff des Kunstwollens;88 the aforementioned Idea. Ein Beitrag zur Begriffsgeschichte der älteren Kunsttheorie and Über das Verhältnis der Kunstgeschichte zur Kunsttheorie.89) In his chapter “Aprioristic Concepts of Art History,” Jan Białostocki writes saliently about how Panofsky’s system of thought can be traced to three major approaches and their respective godfathers. Heinrich Wölfflin (1864-1945) and Alois Riegl (1858-1905) as the polemic inspirations of Panofsky’s Kantian ideas about form, style and Kunstwollen.90 Aby Warburg for the methodological perspective on art, the term iconology and Nachleben of antiquity,91 and Ernst Cassirer for the cultural approach of the term ‘symbol’.92 “Cassirer’s ‘philosophy of man’ would therefore be a philosophy, which would give us insight into the fundamental structure of each of these human activities, and which at the same time would enable us to understand them as an organic whole. Language, art, myth, religion are no isolated, random creations. They are held together by

40

signed pan

a common bond.”93 “Panofsky’s ‘Idea’, intended as a sequel to Cassirer’s lecture above mentioned [‚Eidos und Eidolon: Das Problem des Schönen und der Kunst in Platons Dialogen‘], gives a clear and interesting account of the variations through the centuries in the use (and abuse) of this Platonic term in connection with fine art,” a reviewer wrote in 1926.94 Was this not the very philosophy Panofsky needed in order to develop a concept of the intrinsic meaning of a work of art, a period, or a field of culture? The philosophy of symbolic forms, which conceived the link between various fields of human endeavor in a functional or structural way, appeared to be similar to the system of concepts developed by Panofsky. This may be due to Panofsky’s and Cassirer’s common Kantian background.95

Panofsky himself considered his methodological achievements as a modest form of eclecticism (he described himself as “vain but not conceited”).96 In a letter dated 1 April 1962 to his German colleague Herbert von Einem (1905-1983) in Göttingen, he wrote: Was ich mir vornahm, war nicht sowohl etwas ‘Originelles’ zu leisten, als vielmehr unter Vermeidung der Einseitigkeit so viel von der Großen Tradition des 19. Jahrhunderts (Vgl. Riegl, Goldschmidt [Adolph Goldschmidt (1863-1944)], Warburg, sogar ein bisschen Wölfflin und Friedlander [Max Jakob Friedländer (1867-1958)] in das 20. Jahrhundert herüberzuretten, als es in meinen Kräften stand. Aber es muss auch Eklektiker geben in der Wissenschaft wie in der Kunst.97

Craig Hugh Smyth (1915-2006), a classicist by education, but later trained in the art history by Charles Rufus Morey (1877-1955), the founder of The Index of Christian Art (1917, now The Index of Medieval Art) at Princeton,98 has discussed the specific academic background of the essay “The History of Art as a Humanistic Discipline” in the volume Meaning in the Visual Arts, which was edited in 1995 by Irving Lavin, in memory of Panofsky.99 In 1937, Theodore Meyer Greene100 had invited Panofsky to deliver the public Spencer Trask Lectures101 (named after the New York philanthropist, 1844-1909),102 which are still organized at Princeton University to this day. Theodore Meyer Greene was born in Istanbul as the child of missionaries and he moved to Princeton after

the background

41

studying philosophy in Edinburgh (1924). The 1937-1938 edition of the lectures was devoted to the humanities. These five lectures were later to be published as The Meaning of the Humanities with texts by the philosopher Ralph Barton Perry (1876-1957) (“A Definition of the Humanities”), the medievalist August Charles Krey (1887-1961) (“History and the Humanities”), Erwin Panofsky (“The History of Art as a Humanistic Discipline”), the theologian Robert Lowry Calhoun (1896-1983) (“Theology and the Humanities”) and the literary historian Gilbert Chinard (1881-1972) (“Literature and the Humanities”).103 In the preface, the then dean of the faculty, Robert Kilburn Root (1877-1950), wrote: “To further this discipline of humane interpretation is still one of the primary duties of a university, and a duty which those responsible for university policy must never forget.”104 As is evident from the table of contents, the volume covers most of the fields in the humanities, though Panofsky’s contribution deviates from the other titles. He apparently sought to emphasize his methodological approach to the discipline itself. Greene describes his contribution as follows: “Professor Panofsky and Chinard, in turn consider more in detail the peculiar methods and problems of art and literature criticism, with special reference to the nature of their respective subjects, their relation to other disciplines, and their contributions to human culture.” He continues: “Each of these five essays, finally, deals, either explicitly or implicitly, with the requirements of a liberal education and considers the deficiencies of contemporary educational ventures.”105 The lecture series was part of the so-called ‘Special Program in the Humanities’ which had at that point been running for one year. The initiative for this program had been taken by the philosopher Greene but was originally an idea from the inspirer Paul Elmer More (1864-1937) and is documented in a 1987 article for The Princeton Alumni Weekly.106 Greene believed in programs for unity but it was a new idea of Program as he developed it, a guide to serve free and independent minds who would then ‘do it themselves’. The Special Program in the Humanities was successful. The students found that they really enjoyed a freedom directed through the controls of a ‘program’. They learned therein that ideas had connections with each other in

42

signed pan

fact or in nature, and they deemed it a rare privilege to have been allowed to spend their final years at college working in that Program.107

According to the literary critic William Lyon Phelps of Yale (1865-1943), the fellow initiator Paul Elmer More was “one of the most learned men in the world, a scholar in Sanskrit and some other Oriental languages” and “a first-class scholar in Greek and Latin”.108 In other words, along with Greene, the erudite philologist founded an interdisciplinary program in the humanities that “enhanced one’s capacity to make responsible choices”,109 and which championed freedom, purpose and responsibility.110 More and Panofsky shared a philological interest in ancient humanist languages, and they cherished the importance of literary expertise for the discipline. Greene and Panofsky shared the philosophical attitude of looking at the visual medium from a broad cultural perspective. Both trained in philosophy – Panofsky had studied it in Freiburg between 1910-1914 – they both loved logical and systematic thought, which was to interpret the arts in an enlightening historical (Neo-Kantian) method, without suffocating the arts and robbing them of their unmistakably aesthetic intentions. These likeminded scholars were very critical of the ‘apprecionist’, inspired as they were by empiricism, erudition, humanist values and a will to establish an overarching reflection on art and culture.111 The preface of Theodore Meyer Greene’s extensive, almost 700-page standard work The Arts and the Art of Criticism, published in 1940, states: “The present volume should be regarded as a propaedeutic to more formal philosophical speculation, for it investigates what most philosophers ignore and stops where most philosophers begin their philosophical inquiries.”112 And also: “The work of art as an object of delight, a vehicle of communication, and at least potentially, a record of significant insight.”113 We also read a ‘vehicle of communication’ in Panofsky, who had in turn borrowed the term ‘organic situation’ from Greene.114 Greene’s book comprises four large parts: “The Artistic Categories and the Matter of Art” (I), “Artistic Form” (II), “Artistic Content” (III), and “Principles of Criticism” (IV). In an almost Hegelian way, it seeks to bring all the arts under one umbrella, from music to the visual arts, but also dance and the decorative

the background

43

arts. The striking thing is that in his systematic analysis of the branches of art, Greene makes a distinction between ‘raw material’, which he considers ‘pure’, and the enrichment of it that makes the raw material ‘artistic material’.115 Smyth writes: Greene’s work is philosophy applied to the arts and humanities in collaboration with humanists of deep conviction who gave from their several disciplines to his. By no means least, it is systematic. (…) Greene the Kant scholar, Panofsky devoted to Cassirer: they had much to talk about and views to exchange: van aesthetic experience tot expressive vehicle, van interpretation of contexts tot the understanding that the work of art is not an end in itself.116

The other influencer and stakeholder of Panofsky’s lecture and essay in Princeton was undoubtedly the aforementioned Charles Rufus Morey, who had been appointed the head of the Department of the Arts in Princeton in 1924 and had published the standard works Early Christian Art in 1942 and Medieval Art in the same year.117 Morey was not only a pioneer of the taxonomic iconographic method,118 but just like Panofsky interpreted the arts in their cultural and ideological context. Morey, moreover, had recommended Panofsky to Flexner for an appointment at the IAS.119 As is evident from the obituary he wrote for The American Philosophical Society, Panofsky always remained grateful to Morey for having done this. “With Morey the love of humanism came first and the choice of profession afterward.”120 “He was enthusiastically a mediaevalist but even more enthusiastically an art historian tout court encouraging and going to battle wherever the future of the discipline was at stake. He was loyal to Princeton University but no less loyal at the cause of humanism as such, giving wise counsel and active cooperation to other institutions.”121 In his Princeton bicentennial celebration lecture after the war “Scholarship in the Arts: Past and Future”, Morey spoke about humanism in bold terms: For groups such as this, and for all humanists, the responsibility is plain; the mission clear. The humanists have the task of the Benedictines in the early Middle Ages: to keep the light of humanistic learning burning throughout the world until these times can turn from materialistic delusions to enlightened

44

signed pan

common sense. In this endeavor the art historians should be out in front; they speak the language of art, the only international language the world has ever known, and they are the humanists at large.122

In short, as Craig Hugh Smyth writes: “[Panofsky’s] lecture for Greene was framed, as it were, in agreement with Morey’s circle’s creed.” One might say that Panofsky was definitively baptized as a ‘Princeton native’ through his lecture and essay. “But to Responsibility Panofsky added Tolerance. Princeton surely meant Tolerance to him after Nazi Germany.”123 In a letter dated 9 March 1933 to the art historian Margaret Barr (1901-1987), who had been one of his assistants in New York, and who was living in Stuttgart at the time and was the wife of Alfred Barr (1902-1981), the founding director of the Museum of Modern Art in New York, Panofsky reveals something about this in the context of the New York Fine Arts Lectures that he was to give at the Metropolitan Museum of Art (1932-1933):124 Dear Lady Margaret, (…) Thus what happens in Italy, Germany and other countries is nothing but the death-struggle of a dying period of history (namely the Renaissance which now is to be replaced by another era, more similar to the Middle Ages inasmuch as it will be determined by internationalisms, collectivism, and so forth). Only, unfortunately enough, the death struggle of a whole period of history takes much more time than the life of a human individual, thus we shall ‘be in for it’ as long as we live. You can imagine that I didn’t enjoy particularly my prospective return to a Hitlerian Germany (unless there should be a chance of your coming to Hamburg after the 5th of May), but I enjoy so much the more the amenities of my life in this country. You must not worry about my loneness, for although a big city [new York, 25 East 67th Street] is always a lonely spot for certain moments, on the whole the number (and also quality of my friends and pupils here are increased rather than diminished, and since my stay is much shorter this time, I live much more comfortable. (…).125

the background 84

The term was first used in Warburg’s lecture at the Hertziana in Rome about the affreschi in Ferrara; Aby Warburg, Italienische Kunst und internationale Astrologie im Palazzo Schifanoja zu Ferrara (1912), in Gesammelte Schriften, ed. Gertrud Bring, vol. 2, Leipzig-Berlin, 1932, p. 459-481, p. 467; I quote from: Aby Warburg, The Renewal of Pagan Antiquity. Contributions to the Cultural History of the Renaissance, ed. Kurt W. Forster & transl. David Britt, Los Angeles, 1999, p. 585-586, and quoted in full in Ernst H. Gombrich, Aby Warburg. His Aims and Methods. An Anniversary Lecture, in Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes, 62, 1999, p. 268-282, p. 270: “Until now, a lack of adequate general evolutionary categories has impeded art history in placing its materials at the disposal of the – still unwritten – ‘historical psychology of human expression’. By adopting either an unduly materialistic or an unduly mystical stance, our young discipline blocks its own panoramic view of history. It gropes toward an evolutionary history of his own, somewhere between the schematisms of political history and the dogmatic faith in genius. In attempting to elucidate the frescoes in the Palazzo Schifanoia in Ferrara, I hope to have shown how an iconological analysis [my emphasis] that can range freely, with no fear of border guards, and can treat the ancient, medieval, and modern worlds as a coherent historical unity – an analysis that can scrutinize the purest and the most utilitarian of arts as equivalent documents of expressions – how such a method, by taking pains to illuminate one single obscurity, can cast light on great and universal evolutionary processes in all their interconnectedness. I have not tried to find a neat solution so much as to present a new problem, which I would formulate as follows: ‘To what extent can

85 86

87

88

89

90

91 92

45

the stylistic shift in the presentation of human beings in Italian art be regarded as part of an international process of dialectical engagement with the surviving imagery of Eastern Mediterranean pagan culture?’” William S. Heckscher, Erwin Panofsky. A Curriculum Vitae, op. cit., p. 12. This would lead us too far from our primary focus; on Erwin Panofsky’s early work, see: Karen Lang, Points of View in Panofsky’s Early Theoretical Essays, in Chaos and Cosmos. On the Image in Aesthetics and Art History, Ithaca NY, 2006, p. 12-40. Erwin Panofsky, Das Problem der Stils in der Bildende Künste, in Zeitschrift für Ästhetik und allgemeine Kunstwissenschaft, 10, 1915, p. 460-467. Erwin Panofsky, Der Begriff des Kunstwollens, in Zeitschrift für Ästhetik und allgemeine Kunstwissenschaft, 14, 1920, p. 321-339. Erwin Panofsky, Über das Verhältnis der Kunstgeschichte zur Kunsttheorie, in Zeitschrift für Ästhetik und Allgemeine Kunstwissenschaft, 18, 1925, p. 129-161 (In the same volume: Edgar Wind, Zur Systematik der künstlerischen Probleme, op. cit., p. 438-486.) Heinrich Wölfflin, Das Problem des Stils in der Bildenden Kunst, in Sitzungsberichte des königlichen Preussischen Akademie der Wissenschaften, 31, 1912, p. 572-578, p. 572ff; Heinrich Wölfflin, Kunstgeschichtliche Grundbegriffe. Das Problem der Stilentwicklung in der neueren Kunst, Munich, 1915; Hans Sedlmayr, Die Quintessence der lehren Riegls, in Alois Riegl. Gesammelte Aufsätze, Augsburg-Vienna, 1929, p. xiixxxiv. William S. Heckscher, The Genesis of Iconology, op. cit., p. 260, p. 262. Ernst Cassirer, The Philosophy of Symbolic Forms, 3 vols., New Haven, 1923-1929; Erwin Panofsky, Perspektive als symbolische Form, Leipzig, 1927; Ernst Cassirer,

46

93 94

95

96

97

98

99

100

101

102 103

signed pan Sprache und Mythos. Ein Beitrag zum Problem der Götternamen, Leipzig, 1925; Ernst Cassirer, An Essay on Man. An Introduction to a Philosophy of Human Culture, New Haven, 1944. Jan Białostocki, op. cit., p. 76. John L. Stocks, Review. The Warburg Library, in The Classical Review, 40, 2, 1926, p. 76. Michael A. Holly, Panofsky and the Foundations of Art History, Ithaka-London, 1984, p. 114-157. Ernst H. Gombrich, Obituary. Erwin Panofsky (30th March 1892-14th March 1968), in The Burlington Magazine, 110, 783, 1968, p. 356-360, p. 359. Herbert von Einem, Obituary, in Der Wallraf-Richartz Jahrbuch, 30, 1969, p. 72; Jan Białostocki, op. cit., p. 71. Colum Hourihane, Classifying Subject Matter in Medieval Art. The Index of Christian Art at Princeton University, in Visual Resources, 30, 3, 2014, p. 255-262. Craig H. Smyth, op. cit., p. 353-361.- See also: Elizabeth Cropper, Craig Hugh Smyth, in Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society, 153, 4, 2009, p. 495-500. Charles W. Hendel, Theodore Meyer Greene. 1897-1969, in Proceedings and Addresses of the American Philosophical Association, 44, 1970-1971, p. 214-216. Princeton University Public Lectures, Spencer Trask Lectures, http://lectures. princeton.edu/category/lectures/spencertrask-lectures/. David S. Worth, Spencer Trask. Enigmatic Titan, New York, 2008. H.T.C., Review. The Meaning of the Humanities by Ralph Barton Perry, August Charles Krey, Erwin Panofsky, Robert Lowry Calhoun, Gilbert Chinard and Theodore Meyer Greene, in The Journal of Philosophy, 36, 2, 1939, p. 52-53, is not so positive: They seem not “to agree exactly concerning what they mean by the humanities and humanism”. And later:

104 105 106

107 108 109 110 111 112

113 114 115

116

117

118

“Too scattered and the present reviewer did not get so much out of the last two lectures.” Robert Kilburn Root, Preface, in The Meaning, op. cit., p. v-vii, p. v. Loc. cit., p. xxxix. Wallace Irwin Jr., The Legacy of SPH. Or How a Small Program in the Humanities Changed Princeton’s Entire Curriculum, in The Princeton Alumni Weekly, 14, 1987, p. 12-19. Charles W. Hendel, op. cit., p. 215. Craig H. Smyth, Thoughts on Erwin Panofsky, op. cit., p. 354. Wallace Irwin Jr., op. cit., p. 16, p. 19. Theodore M. Greene, Introduction, in The Meaning, op. cit., p. xii-xxxix, p. xiv. Michael A. Holly, op. cit., p. 159. Theodore M. Greene, The Arts and the Art of Criticism, Princeton, 1940, p. x; Edna A. Shearer, Review. The Arts and the Art of Criticism, in Mind, 51, 201, 1942, p. 76-82; The copy in the IAS Historical Studies Library is signed “To Erwin Panofsky with best regards Theodore M. Greene.” Theodore M. Greene, The Arts, op. cit., p. vii. Cf. note supra. Theodore M. Greene, The Arts, op. cit., p. 63-71, for example dance that has added luster thanks to sets and costumes. Craig H. Smyth, Thoughts on Erwin Panofsky, op. cit., p. 357; Michael A. Holly, op. cit., p. 114. Charles R. Morey, Early Christian Art. An Outline of the Evolution of Style and Iconography in Sculpture and Painting from Antiquity to the Eighth Century, Princeton, 1942; Inslee A. Hopper, Review. Christian Art by Charles Rufus Morey, in The American Magazine of Art, 29, 3, 1936, p. 200; Charles R. Morey, Medieval Art, New York, 1942. Rensselaer W. Lee, Charles Rufus Morey, 1877-1955, in The Art Bulletin, 37, 4, 1955, p. iii-vii.

the background 119 In an unpublished document found by Irving Lavin and consulted by Craig H. Smyth in 1986, Erwin Panofsky, op. cit., note 28. 120 Erwin Panofsky, Charles Rufus Morey (1877-1955), in The American Philosophical Society Year Book, 1955, p. 482-491, p. 483. 121 Rensselaer W. Lee, op. cit., in The American, op. cit., p. 487. 122 Loc. cit., p. iv. 123 Craig H. Smyth, Thoughts on Erwin Panofsky, op. cit., p. 355.

47

124 Which resulted in the publication Classical Mythology in Medieval Art (1933) in cooperation with Fritz Saxl. 125 Dieter Wuttke (ed.), Erwin Panofsky. Korrespondenz 1910 bis 1936, vol. 1, Wiesbaden, 2001, p. 574-581, p. 574, nr. 357, p. 575-577, pictures of the official announcement: “February 1933 Principles of Baroque art; Origins of Flemish Painting; Seminar. Special Problem in the History of Art (graduate students only).”

6 The Humanist

 In the continuous mobility of the spirit, all sight (…) passes into contemplation, all contemplation into speculation, all speculation into combination, is that every attentive glance into the world we are theorizing. (…) The most important thing is to recognize that all fact is in itself theory. (Ernst Cassirer, The Phenomenology of Knowledge, p. 16, p. 25)

Fig. 7. Philip Pearlstein (°1924), Portrait of Erwin Panofsky, oil on canvas, 1993. Princeton, Institute for Advanced Study, Library of Historical Studies

T

The New Dictionary of the History of Ideas, published in 2005, provides three definitions of the term ‘humanism’.126 First, humanism means the reading and studying of the ancient classics. This definition of the term was first proposed by the German educational scientist Friedrich Immanuel Niethammer (1766-1848).127 A humanist or umanista was consequently a person who studied ancient culture and its revival in word and image during the Renaissance. Humanism and the humanist also echo the Latin ideal of humanitas, the virtuous person, as in Cicero. Philosopher Paul Oskar Kristeller (1905-1999) narrows the definition to the study of Renaissance values as such, and in particular how these spread from the Florence of the quattrocento across the rest of Europe.128 Other definitions maintain a broader spectrum, such as that of Joel L. Kramer, who defines humanism as the human capacity for ethical formation and behavior (paideia), and to translate these into philanthropy and respect for humanity.129 A third definition opens the term up to the intrinsic values of human activities, which equip people to compare and value different cultures globally and across time.130 The humanist Panofsky manifested all three of the above definitions. Panofsky was an admirer of Ancient culture and considered it necessary to understand history. Panofsky also held fast to ethical values and the aesthetic experience of beauty. And Panofsky also – especially in the wake of the year 1933, when he left Germany but continued to observe developments there with pained horror – sought to act with responsibility and tolerance towards the intrinsic humanity of every race and every culture. In the America of the twentieth century, the term ‘humanism’ was also aligned with the ideology and philosophy of secular humanism. These Enlightenment-based convictions defended a “nontheistic belief system that upholds the prime importance of rationality, human autonomy, and democracy”.131

52

signed pan

The Spencer Trask lectures endorse all these values. In the introduction, Greene writes: “The humanistic edifice will be secure, meanwhile, only in proportion as it rests on the firm foundation of well-defined principles and clearly envisaged ends. To discover these principles and ends, in the spirit not of blinding indoctrination but a liberal education, is the humanist’s traditional and immediate responsibility.”132 As a humanist, he also takes a position concerning ‘the specialist’ who becomes self-absorbed and no longer disseminates to society and neglects humanist values within it. “The specialist, in short, limited as he is cuts himself off from many of the vital interests and achievements of mankind, loses a sense of more fundamental values and ultimate objectives, and lapses into a spitous and insolent self-sufficiency which is finally disastrous not only to his own well-being but to that of the society in which he lives.”133 Ralph Barton Perry specifies the characteristics of humanists by comparing them with their opposite: Here, then, is that freedom, or exercise of enlightened choice, by which I define that which is variously called ‘humane’, ‘humanist’, ‘humanistic’, ‘humanism’ or ‘liberal culture’. Its specifications are: learning, imagination, sympathy, dignity and civility. You may recognize them by their opposites. The man who lacks freedom is ignorant, narrow, indoctrinated or dogmatic, through lack of learning; literal-minded, pedantic, habituated or vulgar, through lack of imagination; insensible, apathetic; prejudiced, censorious, opportunistic, sordid or self-absorbed, through lack of sympathy; base, ascetic, trivial, or snobbish through lack of dignity; dull, boorish or brutal, through lack of civility.134

According to Emmens and Schwartz, a similarly incisive analysis of the humanist ‘elite’ was not foreign to Panofsky: Humanitas, Panofsky felt, was under attack from two opposite camps sharing a common aversion to the ideas of responsibility and tolerance. Entrenched in one of these camps are those who deny human values: the determinists, whether they believe in divine, physical or social predestination, the authoritarians, and those ‘insectolatrists’ who profess the all-importance of the hive, whether the hive be called group, class, nation or race. In the other camp are those who deny human

the humanist

53

limitations in favor of some sort of intellectual or political libertinism, such as aestheticists, vitalists, intuitionists and hero-worshippers. From the point of view of determinism, the humanist is either a lost soul or an ideologist. From the point of view of authoritarianism, he is either a heretic or a revolutionary (or a counterrevolutionary). From the point of view of ‘insectolatry’, he is a useless individualist. And from the point of view of libertinism he is a timid bourgeois.135

Erwin Panofsky also referred to himself as a humanist. On 16 July 1938, he wrote from Bancroft House in Maine to Abraham Flexner who was holidaying in Magnetawan, (Ontario) in Canada:136 Dear Doctor Flexner, Please accept my cordial thanks for your kind letter of July 12th. It is more than good of you to think of my little book [studies in Iconology]137 in the middle of what we all hope to be a most pleasant and undisturbed vacation. In point of fact, if something goes wrong with the linguistic and typographical aspects of the book it will be due to an excess, rather than to be absence of ‘native’ assistance. The typescript has been revised by Mrs. Margaret Barr (wife of the Director of the Museum of Modern Art)138 and by a nice young man of the Oxford Press whom I have met several times, but whose name I cannot remember. The galley proofs are being read by our excellent Miss Cutter139 and by Dr. Helen Franc who is Miss Greene’s140 assistant and, by a curious, presumably Masochistic, perversion loves to read proof. And the whole thing will be subjected to the house-rules of the Oxford Press which includes such unfathomable peculiarities as the use of single quotes for normal quotations, and of double quotes for quotations within quotations. Thus all possible precautions have been taken, and the main danger consists of a disagreement between the various experts, even within the Oxford Press itself. Thus far no agreement has been reached as to the spelling of the Neoplatonics, or Neo-Platonics, or neo-Platonics, but somebody will put his foot down in the end. A really serious problem is, of course, that of my English as such. I am absolutely certain that ‘foreign’ and perhaps basically Un-English flavor. But the other alternative could have been to write the whole thing in German and to have it translated by an American scholar. And this, it seems to me and to several friends with whom I have discussed the question on principle, would have been even worse. Translations, even if ‘correct’ from a purely factual

54

signed pan

point of view, always change the meaning, however subtly, and either destroy the personal character of the original altogether or replace I by a different one. Please forgive my loquaciousness. But the problem of English has worried me, and keeps worrying me, a good deal. To a physicist or to a mathematician it does not matter so much as to a humanist, who finds himself in real quandary [my emphasis]. With him the stylistic formulation is an integral part of the meaning he tries to convey. Consequently, when he writes himself in a language other than his own, he will hurt his reader’s ear by unfamiliar words, rhythms and constructions; when he has his text translated, he will address his audience wearing a wig and a false nose. With the very best wishes from all of us, Ever respectfully and gratefully yours, Erwin Panofsky

In his autobiographical essay – “Three Decades of Art History in The United States. Impressions of a Transplanted European” – Panofsky writes the following about the humanist-lecturer: The academic teacher must have the confidence of his students. They must be sure that, in his professional capacity, he will not say anything which to the best of his belief he cannot answer for, nor leave anything unsaid which to the best of his belief he ought to say. A teacher who, as a private individual, has permitted himself to be frightened into signing a statement repugnant to his moral sense and his intellect, or, even worse, into remaining silent where he knows he ought to have spoken, feels in his heart that he has forfeited the right to demand this confidence. He faces his students with a clouded con-science, and a man with a clouded conscience is like a man diseased. Let us listen to Sebastian Castellio [1515-1563], the brave theologian and humanist who broke with Calvin [1509-1564] because he could not dissimulate; who for many years supported his wife and children as a common laborer rather than be disloyal to what he believed to be true; and who, by the force of his indignation, compelled posterity to remember what Calvin had done to Michael Servetus [1509 of 1511-1553]. ‘To force conscience’, Castellio says, ‘is worse than cruelly to kill a man. For to deny one’s convictions destroys the soul’.141

the humanist 126 Cary J. Nederman, Humanism. Europe and the Middle East, in New Dictionary of the History of Ideas, ed. Maryanne C. Horowitz, vol. 3, New York, 2005, p. 1026-1029. 127 Friedrich I. Niethammer, Der Streit des Philanthropinismus und des Humanismus in der Theorie des Erziehungs-Unterrichts unsrer Zeit, Jena, 1808. 128 Paul O. Kristeller, Renaissance Thought. The Classic, Scholastic, and Humanist Strains, New York, 1961. 129 Joel L. Kraemer, Humanism in the Renaissance Islam. The Cultural Revival during the Buyid Age, Leiden, 1992. 130 Cary J. Nederman, op. cit., p. 1026. 131 Stephen Weldon, Secular Humanism in the United States, in New Dictionary of the History of Ideas, op. cit., p. 1033-1035. 132 Theodore M. Greene, Introduction, in The Meaning, op. cit., p. xvii. 133 Loc. cit., p. xxx; The copy at the Historical Studies Library at the IAS is a gift from one of the authors, Edward M. Earle. On the first folio he ironically writes “The specialist” in pencil.

55

134 Ralph B. Perry, A Definition of the Humanities, in The Meaning, op. cit., p. 3-42, p. 16. 135 Jan A. Emmens & Gary Schwartz, op. cit., p. 111. 136 Dieter Wuttke (ed.), Erwin Panofsky. Korrespondenz 1937 bis 1949, op. cit., p. 118-120, nr. 707. 137 Erwin Panofsky, Studies in Iconology. Humanistic Themes in the Art of the Renaissance, New York-Oxford, 1939. 138 Loc. cit., p. vi: “The writer wishes to thank (…) Miss M. Scolari for her most helpful participation in the wording of the English text.” 139 Margot Cutter (dates unknown), assistant at the School of Humanistic Studies between 1937-1943. 140 Bella da Costa Greene (1883-1950), director of the Pierpont Morgan Library in New York at the time. 141 Erwin Panofsky, Three Decades of Art History, op. cit., p. 26.

7 Aftermath in Arcadia

 Hic tua vicinis ludit lasciva sub umbris,/ iamdudum nostril captarix carminis, Echo. (Angelo Poliziano (1454-1494), Sylva in scabiem, 1475)

Fig. 8. The Education of Pan, Luca Signorelli (c. 1450-1523), tempera on canvas, c. 1490. Berlin, Kaiser-Friedrich-Museum, destroyed in a fire in May 1945

I

In his obituary for Erwin Panofsky, who died on 14 March 1968, Ernst H. Gombrich (1909-2001) writes: May be [sic] this enjoyment of the virtuosities of erudition has sometimes tended to impede a more widespread appreciation of Panofsky’s true intellectual aims and aspirations. To generations who increasingly looked upon the mastery of Greek and Latin as upon a miracle of learning, it was this humanistic knowledge which appeared to be the distinctive feature of his approach to art history. From this reputation there was only a short step to the misunderstanding that Panofsky was mainly interested in texts explaining the meaning of symbols and images, and that he did not respond to the formal qualities of art. I remember the re- action of his older colleague Walter Friedländer [1873-1966] to the assertion that Panofsky was tremendously learned, but had no eye. ‘I think it is just the other way round’, Friedländer retorted. ‘He is not as learned as all that, but he has a wonderful eye’. Not that Friedländer (who had started his life as a Sanskrit scholar) seriously wanted to challenge Panofsky’s reputation as a humanist; he merely wanted to redress the balance, for to think of his contribution as principally confined to iconography means indeed to miss the historical position and the true purpose of Panofsky’s great oeuvre.142

It is said that Erwin Panofsky had his idiosyncrasies and was wont to vent certain strong opinions.143 We owe this information to oral reports, such as those of his assistant Heckscher: He spoke, for example, of Modigliani [Amedeo Modigliani (1884-1920)] (who of all modern artists was nearest to him) as one ‘who had produced the kind of human beings that are a race by themselves-very much like Michelangelo’ [1475-1564]. He was fascinated by Mondrian [Piet Mondrian (1872-1944)], whom

60

signed pan

he called ‘slave of the square on which he worked, and that is to say slave of his self-imposed restrictions’. Doughnuts, Emmenthaler, and Henry Moore [1898-1986] all shared a common element, ‘the activation of holes in matter’. He disliked “unreliable” people. Of William Blake [1757-1827] he said, ‘I can’t stand him. I don’t mind if a man is really mad, like Hölderlin [Friedrich Hölderlin (1770-1843)]. True madness may yield poetical flowers. But I don’t like mad geniuses walking all the time at the brink of an abyss. Blake is all negative and unreliable’. Van Gogh [Vincent van Gogh (1822-1885)] was to him ‘a genius without talent’.144

He was short of stature. Walter Friedländer related how to Erwin Panofsky’s cradle in Hannover there hurried two fairies, Wealth and Intelligence. The third, Good Looks, didn’t make it. In her stead came a fairy who said: “Whichever book you open, you will find precisely the passage you need.”145 He did not like children. He once said to me [Heckscher]: “Shall I tell you the most repulsive sentence in creation? ‘Have you ever seen a child’s hair in the sun’?” His proud motto was, Es gibt mehr Dinge in unserer Schul- Weisheit als Erde und Himmel sich träumen lassen. At the end of an electrifying evening with Ernst Kantorowicz (1895-1964) in which the topic of discussion had been man’s innate sense of the Sublime, EKa [sic: Ernst Kantorowicz], stepping out of the house on Battle Road, remarked, ‘looking at the stars, I feel my own futility’. To which Panofsky replied, ‘all I feel is the futility of the stars’ (February 18, 1952).146

He did like cinema.147 And detectives. Especially Sherlock Holmes and to a lesser extent also our own Belgian Georges Simenon (1903-1989). Old-fashioned sleuthing. Not too much psychologizing. ‘The moment you inject psychology or rather psychopathology into a story of that kind’, he said, ‘you take the onus of responsibility off the hero’s shoulders… A good detective or mystery story is, at present, the only category of literature where man is responsible – neither mother complex nor glandular disturbance can be used as an excuse… this genre represents the only relic of the pre-Freudian and the pre-Marxist past. Roman psychologique in the sense of Georges Simenon is acceptable; not, however, roman pathologique’.148

aftermath in arcadia

61

Perhaps William Heckscher tries just a little too hard not to present him as particularly sexist.149 When Rosa Schapire (1874-1954), whom he did admire, told him that upon her arrival in Greece for a conference, she had kissed the ground (der Boden), Panofsky apparently mumbled in reply: Er könnte sich ja nicht weren!150 Immediately the humanist corrected this scornful remark with a quote from Ovid (43 BC-17 AD): Cadmus agit grates, peregrinaeque oscula terra/ figit, et ignotos montes agrosque salutat.151 In his interviews with Elizabeth Sears in 1987, Heckscher entrusted her with many other anecdotes. One day, Heckscher had a conversation in Panofsky’s office. Afterwards he realized that he had forgotten to ask one more question. He hesitated but decided to knock on the door again after all. At this, Panofsky, as though seeing him for the first time, said: Since you had the impudence to stand outside my office door – and here he interrupted himself and put his left-hand digit under his left eye so that it protruded even more – I am an avid reader of detective stories and realized that there was no sound of receding footsteps. Since all this happened unavoidably, he continued, I’ve been thinking about you. The State of Hamburg has adopted a law that was promulgated by the Communists and they worked out what is now known as das Begabtenabitur which is designed to serve unfortunate proletarians and other indigents to help them get into academic studies at an advanced age. He looked at the ceiling and said: And that is you.152

* Eduard Hüttinger (1926-1998) associates Aby Warburg’s legacy with Erwin Panofsky. Nicht Warburgs Denkstil – er wurzelte, unwiederholbar, inkommensurabel, im Geheimnis der genialen Persönlichkeit –, wohl aber Warburgs Arbeitsmethode hat Erwin Panofsky virtuos ausgebaut, weiterentwickelt, systematisiert, mit dem Resultat, dass Formanalyse, ikonographische Deutung und Quellen-Exegese organisch sich vereinigten. Erstmals was dies der Fall in dem Band ‚Hercules am Scheidewege‘.153

62

signed pan

And Irving Lavin has now also received a eulogy at the IAS.154 I quote his wise words from Iconography at the Crossroads, published in 1992. “Still, there is a fundamental difference: Warburg was ultimately concerned with psychic truth whereas Panofsky was after intellectual meaning. For Warburg art history was a means toward a ‘psychology of culture’; for Panofsky it was a humanistic discipline.”155 In his eulogy for Aby Warburg, Erwin Panofsky himself wrote: Bei allem, was er tat und was er andere zu tun veranlasste, dachte er nicht an sich: er hat nie Diener für seine Person gewollt, sondern nur Mannschaft für sein Kolombusschiff; und die vielen, denen er die innere und äussere Möglichkeit zu wissenschaftlicher Arbeit gab, erlebten an ihm eine Humanität, die nur bei starken und strengen Naturen möglich ist.156

In his contribution to the volume Relire Panofsky, Georges Didi-Huberman (°1953) also compares Aby Warburg and Erwin Panofsky. But Didi-Huberman is much more severe… Panofsky n’a pas compris que l’image – comme tout ce qui relève de la psyché humaine – exige de nous un rationalisme, non des Lumières, mais du ‘Clair-Obscur’, si je puis dire: rationalisme tragique exprimé par Warburg face à ce qu’il nommait le ‘malaise dans la culture’. Mais Panofsky, contexte anglo-saxon aidant, a désiré que l’inconscient ne soit qu’une erreur: moyennant quoi il a exorcisé toute la part obscure – mais efficace et anthropologiquement cruciale – des images. Telle est, sans doute, la limite principale du savoir dont il nous a fait don. Ce n’est pas une raison, bien évidemment, pour exorciser Panofsky lui-même: seulement une incitation à le lire et à le relire – mais de façon critique, ainsi que l’exige l’admiration elle-même. (…) Là où Warburg a déconstruit tout l’historicisme du XIXe siècle en montrant que la Geschichte der Kunst est une histoire de fantômes qui nous collent à la peau, Panofsky a voulu reconstruire sa Kunstgeschichte comme une histoire d’exorcismes, de garde-fous et de mises à distance raisonnables. Ici, la parabole doit refaire place à l’examen précis de quelques textes.157

In 1921, with an almost identical and therefore somewhat rivalling title, Warburg’s “Dürer und die italienische Antike” became Panofsky’s “Dürers Stellung zur Antike”.158 And now Pathos becomes typos and Nachleben Erbteil des Altertums of Rezeptionsgeschichte. First in 1921 and then in 1933, according to

aftermath in arcadia

63

Didi-Huberman, this is not only where a (conscious or unconscious) break occurred with the ‘demonic’ master of Dionysus and Apollo, but also a crucial methodological Wendepunkt in the approach to artistic expression as such. Didi-Huberman thinks that Panofsky, with his all-pervading rationalism, sought to eradicate the image as pharmakon – impenetrable intoxicant and solace… Si l’image et si l’imagination (sensible) est un obstacle à la connaissance (intelligible), comment, alors connaître une image?159 Tel est le paradoxe à interroger: pour constituer l’iconologie en «science objective», il aura fallu que Panofsky, littéralement, exorcise [my emphasis] quelque chose d’inhérent aux pouvoirs mêmes de l’objet qu’il tentait de circonvenir par une telle ‘science’.

Panofsky, the exorcist. Panofsky, the adversary of the dibbouk. Panofsky, the rational hero who dared empirically to embrace the unstable image without a name.160 In Hebrew, dibbouk literally means ‘attachment’ and in the Kabbala, it is a spirit that takes possession of someone’s body. The dibbouk is considered to be the soul of the tormented dead that transmigrates to living people. The dibbouk can be driven out or it can continue its journey of its own accord. It is in this infinite transmigration and taking possession that Didi-Huberman see the ur-meaning of the Nachleben of images. Une image survivante [my emphasis] est une image qui, ayant perdu sa valeur d’usage et sa signification de départ, fait cependant retour, comme un fantôme, à un certain moment de l’histoire: moment de ‘crise’, moment où elle démontre sa latence, sa ténacité, sa vivacité et son ‘adhérence anthropologique’, si l’on peut dire.161

But nevertheless… Panofsky is also pan: “all-inclusive, especially in relation to the whole of a continent, racial group, religion.” And Pan: the satyr who lives in Arcadia, the god of nature, the wild, shepherds, flocks, of mountain wilds, and often associated with sexuality. Friend of nymphs and satyrs. The guardian of bees. In 1924, the German philologist Hermann Collitz (1855-1935) discovered that Pan is derived from the proto-Indo-European Péhausōn, an important

64

signed pan

shepherding god. In the Greek ὀπάων (opaõn), “pan” means a partner, someone who accompanies people. And in the poems of Pindar (517-438 BC), Pan is worshipped along with the mother goddess Rhea or Kybele.162 And behold: serendipities. Collitz was, just, a contemporary of Panofsky and likewise an émigré. He was appointed at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore in 1907. They, the art historian and the philologist, the humanist and the Indo-Europeanist, probably did not know of one another that they both had a particular interest in Saturn.163 And in the bibliographic appendix to Gnomon, issue 6, published in 1930, they are mentioned together: “Studies in honour of Hermann Collitz”164 and Erwin Panofsky, Hercules am Scheidewege.165 Panofsky was fascinated by Pan and the dual power of Arcadia. Both charming and dangerous at the same time. In the Arcadia of the Romans, human sacrifice was still practiced. But as Panofsky understood, the Renaissance man placed a veil of intellectual melancholy over this wild, ‘primitive’ and lost world of this shepherd soul.166 And here Panofsky encountered Aby Warburg after all. Strolling through the deep forest where Echo melted and enjoying a moment of repose at the waterfall with the sleeping nymph. * Arcadia knows love, but also death. “As he showed with philological perspicuity, it was Death who in fact must be understood to have uttered the ominous words of the title: ‘Even in Arcadia, there am I [Death].’ (…) A poem which he composed sub umbra mortis will help to hint at that ‘sweetness and bitterness intermingled’ that those last years held for Erwin Panofsky:”167 Dulcia sane et amara simul praebere senectus Cernitur, atque mihi munus utrumque placet. Pallescunt frondes; stellae tamen usque manebunt. Lucet, non urit Sole cadente Venus.168

Old age brings both sweetness and bitterness, and both please me. The leaves begin to wither, but the stars endure forever. As the sun sets, Venus shines – she does not burn.169

aftermath in arcadia

65

Fig. 9. Erwin Panofsky (1892-1968) working on Ovide moralisé in verse in the Public Library of Stockholm. Private collection Gerda Panofsky, Princeton

66

signed pan

142 Ernst H. Gombrich, Obituary, op. cit., p. 359. 143 The most exhaustive collection of these dicta by Panofsky was made by William S. Heckscher and is now archived in the Warburg Haus Hamburg. 144 William S. Heckscher, Erwin Panofsky. A Curriculum Vitae, op. cit., p. 7. 145 Irving Lavin, American Panofsky, op. cit., p. 8; Ook in Maurizio Ghelardi, La violence de l’interprète, in Relire Panofsky, Paris, 2008, p. 91-101, p. 93. 146 William S. Heckscher, Erwin Panofsky. A Curriculum Vitae, op. cit., p. 19. 147 Erwin Panofsky, On Movies, in Bulletin of the Department of Art and Archaeology of Princeton University, June, 1936, p. 5-15; Erwin Panofsky, Style and Medium in the Moving Pictures, in Transition, 26, 1937, p. 121-133; Erwin Panofsky, Style and Medium in the Motion Pictures, in Critique. A Review of Contemporary Art, 1, 3, 1947, p. 5-28; Erwin Panofsky, Style and Medium in the Motion Pictures, in Three Essays on Style, ed. Irving Lavin, Cambridge MA, 1997, p. 91-126; Regine Prange, Stil und Medium. Panofsky ‘On Movies’, in Erwin Panofsky, ed. Bruno Reudenbach, Berlin, 1994, p. 171-190. 148 William S. Heckscher, Erwin Panofsky. A Curriculum Vitae, op. cit., p. 19. 149 Loc. cit., p. 15. 150 Irving Lavin, Panofsky’s Humor, in Erwin Panofsky, Die ideologischen Vorläufer des Rolls Royce Kühlers & Stil und Medium im Film, Frankfurt am Main, 1993, p. 7-15. 151 Metamorphoses, 3, 24-25. 152 Elizabeth Sears, op. cit., p. 116. 153 Eduard Hüttinger, Erwin Panofsky (1968), in Porträts und Profile. Zur Geschichte der Kunstgeschichte, SanktGallen, 1992, p. 126-134, p. 131; Hüttinger refers to the crucial essay: Erwin Panofsky, Hercules am Scheidewege und andere antike Bildstoffe in der neueren Kunst, (Studien der Bibliothek Warburg, XVIII), Leipzig-Berlin, 1930; See also:

154 155 156

157

158

159 160

161 162 163

Dieter Wuttke, Panofsky et Warburg. “L’Hercule à la croisée des chemins” d’Erwin Panofsky. L’ouvrage et son importance pour l’histoire des sciences de l’art, transl. Aude Virey-Wallon, in Artibus et Historiae, 28, 56, Part 2, 2007, p. 49-72. https://www.ias.edu/news/2019/ irving-lavin Irving Lavin, Iconography as a Humanistic Discipline, op. cit., p. 35, note 2. Erwin Panofsky, A. Warburg, in Mnemosyne. Zum 50. Todestag von Aby M. Warburg, ed. Stephan Füssel, Göttingen, 1979, p. 29-33, p. 33, Originally in: Erwin Panofsky, A. Warburg, in Repertorium für Kunstwissenschaft, 51, 1930, p. 1-4. Georges Didi-Huberman, L’exorciste, in Relire Panofsky, op. cit., p. 67-87, p. 82-83. Georges Didi-Huberman, L’exorciste, op. cit., p. 77; Aby Warburg, Dürer und die italienische Antike, in Verhandlungen der 48. Versammlung deutscher Philologen und Schulmänner in Hamburg vom 3. bis 6. Oktober 1905, Leipzig, 1906, p. 55-60; Erwin Panofsky, Dürers Stellung zur Antike, in Wiener Jahrbuch für Kunstgeschichte, 1, 1921-1922, p. 43-92. Georges Didi-Huberman, L’exorciste, op. cit., p. 70. Georges Didi-Huberman, L’exorciste, op. cit., p. 74-75; Georges Didi-Huberman, Notre dibbouk. Aby Warburg et l’autre temps de l’histoire, in La part de l’œil, 15-16, 1999-2000, p. 219-235. Georges Didi-Huberman, L’exorciste, op. cit., p. 76. Ode iii, 78. Hermann Collitz, König Yima und Saturn, in Oriental Studies in Honor of Cursetji E. Pavry, ed. Jal Dastur Cursetji Pavry, London, 1933; Erwin Panofsky, Fritz Saxl & Raymond Klibansky, Saturn and Melancholy: Studies in the History of Natural Philosophy, Religion and Art, London, 1964.

aftermath in arcadia 164 Bibliographische Beilage, in Gnomon, 6, 12, 1930, p. 1-48; Studies in Honour of Hermann Collitz. Presented by a group pupils and friends on the occasion of his seventy-fifth birthday, Baltimore, 1930 (Gnomon, op. cit., p. 37). 165 Erwin Panofsky, Hercules am Scheidewege, op. cit. (Gnomon, op. cit., p. 21). 166 Erwin Panofsky, Et in Arcadia ego. Poussin and the Elegiac Tradition, in Meaning, op. cit., p. 303: “At the height of the Quattrocento an attempt was made to bridge the gap between the present and the past by means of an allegorical fiction, Lorenzo the Magnificent and Politian metaphorically identified the Medici villa at Fiesole with Arcady and their own circle with the Arcadian shepherds; and it is this alluring fiction which underlies Signorelli’s famous picture now, unhappily, destroyed [my emphasis] which used to be admired as the Realm of Pan.” This refers to Luca Signorelli’s (14451523) work for Lorenzo de Medici, which

67

was destroyed in 1944. The destruction of the work was added here to the third edition of Et in Arcadia ego (cf. supra). In note 24, p. 303, Panofsky refers to: Fritz Saxl, Antike Götter in der Spätrenaissance. Ein Freskenzyklus und ein Discorso des Jacopo Zucchi, Berlin, 1927, p. 22-25.- Luba Freedman, Once More Luca Signorelli’s Pan Deus Arcadiae, in Konsthistorisk Tidskrift, 54, 1985, p. 152-159. Freedman does not refer to Fritz Saxl, whose interpretation is in my opinion still the most comprehensive. 167 William S. Heckscher, Erwin Panofsky. A Curriculum Vitae, op. cit., p. 21. 168 Loc. cit., p. 20-21. With an autograph of this poem by Panofsky; For Erwin Panofsky’s Latin poems, see: Gereon Becht-Jördens (ed. & transl.), Ewig die Liebe allein. Erwin Panofskys lateinische Gedichte, Würzburg, 2018. 169 With gratitude to Prof. Dr. Han Lamers, (Oslo/Leuven) for his advice with the Latin text.

8 Faust II



Fig. 10. William S. Heckscher (1904-1999), Portrait of Erwin Panofsky, drawing, 1933. Private collection Gerda Panofsky, Princeton

Zum Sehen geboren, Zum Schauen bestellt, Dem Turme geschworen Gefällt mir die Welt. Ich blick‘ in die Ferne, Ich seh‘ in der Näh‘ Den Mond und die Sterne, Den Wald und das Reh. So seh‘ ich in allen Die ewige Zier, Und wie mir‘s gefallen, Gefall‘ ich auch mir. Ihr glücklichen Augen, Was je ihr gesehn, Es sei, was es wolle, Es war doch so schön!170

170 Gesprochene Deutsche Lyrik, Türmerlied, https://www.deutschelyrik.de/tuermerlied-1832. html; Paul Weigand, Problems in Translating the Song of the Chorus Mysticus, in Goethe’s Faust II, in The German Quarterly, 33, 1, 1960, p. 22-27.

Illustrations Cover image 1. Readers book log of Theodore Meyer Greene’s (1897-1969), The Meaning of the Humanities, Princeton-London, 1938 (recto). Princeton, Institute for Advanced Study, Library of Historical Studies Cover image 2. Readers book log of Theodore Meyer Greene’s (1897-1969), The Meaning of the Humanities, Princeton-London, 1938 (verso). Princeton, Institute for Advanced Study, Library of Historical Studies Fig. 1. Preface of Theodore Meyer Greene’s (1897-1969), The Meaning of the Humanities, Princeton-London, 1938. Princeton, Institute for Advanced Study, Library of Historical Studies Fig. 2. Erwin Panofsky (1892-1968) between his former students Horst Waldemar Janson (1913-1982) and William S. Heckscher (1904-1999) (Princeton, 1952). Hamburg, Warburg Haus © Warburg-Archiv, Warburg-Haus Hamburg Fig. 3. Title page of Theodore Meyer Greene’s (1897-1969), The Meaning of the Humanities, Princeton-London, 1938. Princeton, Institute for Advanced Study, Library of Historical Studies Fig. 4. First page of Erwin Panofsky’ (1892-1968), The History of Art as a Humanistic Discipline, in Theodore M. Greene, The Meaning of the Humanities, Princeton-London, 1938, p. 89-118. Princeton, Institute for Advanced Study, Library of Historical Studies Fig. 5. “Sherley W. Morgan, architect, is dead” (1893-1979), in The New York Times, February 6 1979, section C, p. 15. Fig. 6. Theodore Meyer Greene (1897-1969) participating in the LIFE discussion group on the pursuit of happiness (1948) Fig. 7. Philip Pearlstein (°1924), Portrait of Erwin Panofsky, oil on canvas, 1993. Princeton, Institute for Advanced Study, Library of Historical Studies Fig. 8. The Education of Pan, Luca Signorelli (c. 1450-1523), tempera on canvas, c. 1490. Berlin, Kaiser-Friedrich-Museum, destroyed in a fire in May 1945 Fig. 9. Erwin Panofsky (1892-1968) working on Ovide moralisé in verse in the Public Library of Stockholm. Private collection Gerda Panofsky, Princeton Fig. 10. William S. Heckscher (1904-1999), Portrait of Erwin Panofsky, drawing, 1933. Private collection Gerda Panofsky, Princeton

Bibliography BAL, Mieke, Figuration, in PMLA. The Journal of the Modern Language Association of America, 119, 5, 2004, p. 1289-1292. BAL, Mieke, Travelling Concepts in the Humanities. A Rough Guide, Toronto, 2012. BATTERSON, Steve L., Pursuit of Genius. Flexner, Einstein, and the Early Faculty at the Institute for Advanced Study, Wellesley, 2006. BECHT-JÖRDENS, Gereon (ed. & transl.), Ewig die Liebe allein. Erwin Panofskys lateinische Gedichte, Würzburg, 2018. BERGMANN, Rolf, Der elfenbeinerne Turm in der deutschen Literatur, in Zeitschrift für deutsches Altertum und deutsche Literatur, 82, 4, 1964, p. 292-320. BEYER, Andreas, Stranger in Paradise. Erwin Panofsky’s Expulsion to the Academic Parnassus, in ‘Escape to Life’. German Intellectuals in New York. A Compendium on Exile after 1933, eds. Eckart Goebel & Sigrid Weigel, Berlin-Boston, 2012, p. 429-444. BIAŁOSTOCKI, Jan, Erwin Panofsky (1892-1968). Thinker, Historian, Human Being, in Simiolus. Netherlands Quarterly for the History of Art, 4, 2, 1970, p. 68-89. Bibliographische Beilage, in Gnomon, 6, 12, 1930, p. 1-48. BOBER, Harry, The Gothic Tower and the Stork Club, in Arts and Sciences, 1, 1962, p. 1-8. BONNER, Thomas N., Iconoclast. Abraham Flexner and a Life in Learning, Baltimore, 2002. BUSH, Sara E., Architectural History of the Art Museum, in Record of the Art Museum, Princeton University (An Art Museum for Princeton: The Early Years), 55, 1/2, 1996, p. 77-106. C., H.T., Review. The Meaning of the Humanities by Ralph Barton Perry, August Charles Krey, Erwin Panofsky, Robert Lowry

Calhoun, Gilbert Chinard and Theodore Meyer Greene, in The Journal of Philosophy, 36, 2, 1939, p. 52-53. CASSIRER, Ernst, An Essay on Man. An Introduction to a Philosophy of Human Culture, New Haven, 1944. CASSIRER, Ernst, Sprache und Mythos. Ein Beitrag zum Problem der Götternamen, Leipzig, 1925. CASSIRER, Ernst, The Philosophy of Symbolic Forms, 3 vols., New Haven, 1923-1929. COLLITZ, Hermann, König Yima und Saturn, in Oriental Studies in Honor of Cursetji E. Pavry, ed. Jal Dastur Cursetji Pavry, London, 1933. COOK, Joan, Sherley W. Morgan, Architect, is Dead, in New York Times, February 6 1979, p. 15 (online). CROPPER, Elizabeth, Craig Hugh Smyth, in Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society, 153, 4, 2009, p. 495-500. DAUM, Andreas W., Hartmut Lehmann & James J. Sheehan (eds.), The Second Generation. Émigrés from Nazi Germany as Historians, New York, 2016. DESHMUKH, Marion F., The Visual Arts and Cultural Migration in the 1930s and 1940s. A Literature Review, in Central European History, 41, 4, 2008, p. 569-604. DIDI-HUBERMAN, Georges, L’exorciste, in Relire Panofsky, Paris, 2008, p. 67-87. DIDI-HUBERMAN, Georges, Notre dibbouk. Aby Warburg et l’autre temps de l’histoire, in La part de l’œil, 15-16, 1999-2000, p. 219-235. DILTHEY, Wilhelm, Einleitung in die Geisteswissenschaften, (Gesammelte Schriften, 1), Stuttgart, 1959. EINEM, Herbert von, Obituary, in Der Wallraf-Richartz Jahrbuch, 30, 1969, p. 72.

76

signed pan

EISLER, Colin, Kunstgeschichte American Style. A Study in Migration, in The Intellectual Migration. Europe and America. 1930-1960, eds. Donald Fleming & Bernard Bailyn, Cambridge MA, 1969, p. 544-629. EMMENS, Jan A. & Gary SCHWARTZ, Erwin Panofsky as a Humanist, in Simiolus. Netherlands Quaterly for the History of Art, 2, 3, 1967-1968, p. 109-113. FERRETTI, Silvia, Cassirer, Panofsky and Warburg: Symbol, Art, and History, New Haven, 1989. F LEXNER, Abraham, Abraham Flexner. An Autobiography, New York, 1960. FlEXNER, Abraham, The Usefulness of Useless Knowledge, in Harpers, 179, 1939, p. 544-552. FREEDMAN, Luba, Once More Luca Signorelli’s Pan Deus Arcadiae, in Konsthistorisk Tidskrift, 54, 1985, p. 152-159. GEIGER, Moritz, Beiträge zur Phänomenologie des ästhetischen Genusses, in Jahrbuch für Philosophie und phänomenologische Forschung, 1, 2, 1913, p. 567-684. GHELARDI, Maurizio, La violence de l’interprète, in Relire Panofsky, Paris, 2008, p. 91-101. GOMBRICH, Ernst H., Aby Warburg. His Aims and Methods. An Anniversary Lecture, in Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes, 62, 1999, p. 268-282. GOMBRICH, Ernst H., Obituary. Erwin Panofsky (30th March 1892-14th March 1968), in The Burlington Magazine, 110, 783, 1968, p. 356-360. GREENE, Theodore M., Introduction, in The Meaning of the Humanities. Five Essays by Ralph Barton Perry, August Charles Krey, Erwin Panofsky, Robert Lowry Calhoun, Gilbert Chinard, ed. Theodore M. Greene, Princeton-London-Oxford, 1938, p. xiixxxix. GREENE, Theodore M., The Arts and the Art of Criticism, Princeton, 1940. HECKSCHER, William S., Erwin Panofsky. A Curriculum Vitae, in Record of the Art

Museum, Princeton University, 28, 1, 1969, p. 4-21. HECKSCHER, William S., Relics of Pagan Antiquity in Mediæval Settings, in Journal of the Warburg Institute, 1, 3, 1938, p. 204-220. HECKSCHER, William S., The Genesis of Iconology, in Stil und Überlieferung in der Kunst des Abendlandes, (Akten des XXI Internationalen Kongresses für Kunstgeschichte in Bonn, 3), Berlin, 1967, p. 239-262. HEMPEL, Eberhard, Ist “eine strenge Kunstwissenschaft” möglich?, in Zeitschrift für Kunstgeschichte, 3, 3, 1934, p. 155-163. HENDEL, Charles W., Theodore Meyer Greene 1897-1969, in Proceedings and Addresses of the American Philosophical Association, 44, 19701971, p. 214-216. HOLLY, Michael A., Panofsky and the Foundations of Art History, Ithaka-London, 1984. HOPPER, Inslee A., Review. Christian Art by Charles Rufus Morey, in The American Magazine of Art, 29, 3, 1936, p. 200. HOURIHANE, Colum P., Classifying Subject Matter in Medieval Art. The Index of Christian Art at Princeton University, in Visual Resources, 30, 3, 2014, p. 255-262. HÜTTINGER, Eduard, Erwin Panofsky (1968), in Porträts und Profile. Zur Geschichte der Kunstgeschichte, Sankt-Gallen, 1992, p. 126134. IRWIN JR., Wallace, The Legacy of SPH. Or How a Small Program in the Humanities Changed Princeton’s Entire Curriculum, in The Princeton Alumni Weekly, 14, 1987, p. 12-19. KELLEY, Donald R., Something Happened. Panofsky and Cultural History, in Meaning in the Visual Arts. Views from the Outside. A Centennial Commemoration of Erwin Panofsky (1892-1968), ed. Irving Lavin, Princeton, 1995, p. 113-121. KRAEMER, Joel L., Humanism in the Renaissance Islam. The Cultural Revival during the Buyid Age, Leiden, 1992.

bibliography KRISTELLER, Paul O., Renaissance Thought. The Classic, Scholastic, and Humanist Strains, New York, 1961. LANG, Karen, Points of View in Panofsky’s Early Theoretical Essays, in Chaos and Cosmos. On the Image in Aesthetics and Art History, Ithaca NY, 2006, p. 12-40. LAVIN, Irving, American Panofsky, in Migrating Histories of Art. Self-Translations of a Discipline, eds. Maria T. Costa & Hans C. Hönes, (Studien aus dem Warburg-Haus, 19), Berlin-Boston, 2019, p. 91-97. LAVIN, Irving, Iconography as a Humanistic Discipline (“Iconography at the Crossroads”), in Iconography at the Crossroads. Papers from the Colloquium Sponsored by the Index of Christian Art Princeton University, ed. Brendan Cassidy, Princeton, 1992, p. 32-41. LAVIN, Irving, Panofsky’s Humor, in Erwin Panofsky, Die ideologischen Vorläufer des Rolls Royce Kühlers & Stil und Medium im Film, Frankfurt am Main, 1993, p. 7-15. LAVIN, Marilyn A., The Eye of the Tiger. The Founding and Development of the Department of Art and Archaeology, 1883-1923, Princeton, 1983. L EE, Rensselaer W., Charles Rufus Morey, 1877-1955, in The Art Bulletin, 37, 4, 1955, p. iii-vii. MÄNNIG, Maria, Hans Sedlmayrs Kunstgeschichte. Eine kritische Studie, Cologne-WeimarVienna, 2017. MARITAIN, Jacques, Sign and Symbol, in Journal of the Warburg Institute, 1, 1937, p. 1-11. MOREY, Charles R., Early Christian Art. An Outline of the Evolution of Style and Iconography in Sculpture and Painting from Antiquity to the Eighth Century, Princeton, 1942. MOREY, Charles R., Medieval Art, New York, 1942. MORGAN, Sherley W., American Architecture and its Critics, Princeton University. Program

77

of the Eighteenth Annual Meeting College Art Association of America, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York December 27th, 28th, 29th, 1928, in Parnassus, 1, 1, 1929, p. 1-2. MORGAN, Sherley W., Architectural Drawing: Perspective, Light and Shadow, Rendering, New York, 1950. MURÁR, Tomáš, Recenze knihy Marie Männig [Review of Maria Männig’s book] ‘Hans Sedlmayrs Kunstgeschichte. Eine kritische Studie’, Böhlau Verlag 2017, in Umění Art, 5/6, 2017, p. 573-575. MURAWSKA, Katarzyna, An Image of Mysterious Wisdom Won by Toil. The Tower as Symbol of Thoughtful Isolation in English Art and Literature from Milton to Yeats, in Artibus et Historiae, 3, 5, 1982, p. 141-162. NEDERMAN, Cary J., Humanism. Europe and the Middle East, in New Dictionary of the History of Ideas, ed. Maryanne C. Horowitz, vol. 3, New York, 2005, p. 1026-1029. NIETHAMMER, Friedrich I., Der Streit des Philanthropinismus und des Humanismus in der Theorie des Erziehungs-Unterrichts unsrer Zeit, Jena, 1808. PALMER, Richard, Hermeneutics: Interpretation Theory in Schleiermacher, Dilthey, Heidegger, and Gadamer, Evanston, 1969. PANOFSKY, Erwin, A. Warburg, in Mnemosyne. Zum 50. Todestag von Aby M. Warburg, ed. Stephan Füssel, Göttingen, 1979, p. 29-33. PANOFSKY, Erwin, A. Warburg, in Repertorium für Kunstwissenschaft, 51, 1930, p. 1-4. PANOFSKY, Erwin, Abbot Suger on the Abbey Church of St.-Denis and Its Art Treasures, in Meaning in the Visual Arts, New York, 1955, p. 108-154. PANOFSKY, Erwin, Charles Rufus Morey (18771955), in The American Philosophical Society Year Book, 1955, p. 482-491. PANOFSKY, Erwin, Das Problem der Stils in der Bildende Künste, in Zeitschrift für Ästhetik und allgemeine Kunstwissenschaft, 10, 1915, p. 460-467.

78

signed pan

PANOFSKY, Erwin, Der Begriff des Kunstwollens, in Zeitschrift für Ästhetik und allgemeine Kunstwissenschaft, 14, 1920, p. 321-339. PANOFSKY, Erwin, Dürers Stellung zur Antike, in Wiener Jahrbuch für Kunstgeschichte, 1, 1921-1922, p. 43-92. PANOFSKY, Erwin, Et in Arcadia ego. On the Conception of Transience in Poussin and Watteau, in Philosophy and History. Essays presented to Ernst Cassirer, Oxford, 1936, p. 223-254. PANOFSKY, Erwin, Et in Arcadia ego. Poussin and the Elegiac Tradition, in Meaning in the Visual Arts, New York, 1955, p. 295-320. PANOFSKY, Erwin, Hercules am Scheidewege und andere antike Bildstoffe in der neueren Kunst, (Studien der Bibliothek Warburg, XVIII), Leipzig-Berlin, 1930. PANOFSKY, Erwin, Idea. A Concept in Art Theory, New York, 1968. PANOFSKY, Erwin, Idea. Ein Beitrag zur Begriffsgeschichte der älteren Kunstheorie, Leipzig, 1924. PANOFSKY, Erwin, In Defense of the Ivory Tower, in The American Institute of Architects, 32, 1, 1959, p. 19-22. PANOFSKY, Erwin, On Movies, in Bulletin of the Department of Art and Archaeology of Princeton University, June, 1936, p. 5-15. PANOFSKY, Erwin, Perspektive als symbolische Form, Leipzig, 1927. PANOFSKY, Erwin, Studies in Iconology. Humanistic Themes in the Art of the Renaissance, New York-Oxford, 1939. PANOFSKY, Erwin, Style and Medium in the Motion Pictures, in Critique. A Review of Contemporary Art, 1, 3, 1947, p. 5-28. PANOFSKY, Erwin, Style and Medium in the Motion Pictures, in Three Essays on Style, ed. Irving Lavin, Cambridge MA, 1997, p. 91-126. PANOFSKY, Erwin, Style and Medium in the Moving Pictures, in Transition, 26, 1937, p. 121-133.

PANOFSKY, Erwin, The History of Art as a Humanistic Discipline, in The Meaning of the Humanities. Five Essays by Ralph Barton Perry, August Charles Krey, Erwin Panofsky, Robert Lowry Calhoun, Gilbert Chinard, ed. Theodore M. Greene, PrincetonLondon-Oxford, 1938, p. 89-118. PANOFSKY, Erwin, The History of Art as a Humanistic Discipline, in Meaning in the Visual Arts, New York, 1955, p. 1-25. PANOFSKY, Erwin, Three Decades of Art History in the United States. Impressions of a Transplanted European, in Meaning in the Visual Arts, New York, 1955, p. 321-446. PANOFSKY, Erwin, Three Decades of Art History in the United States. Impressions of a Transplanted European, in College Art Journal, 14, 1, 1954, p. 7-27. PANOFSKY, Erwin, Über das Verhältnis der Kunstgeschichte zur Kunsttheorie, in Zeitschrift für Ästhetik und Allgemeine Kunstwissenschaft, 18, 1925, p. 129-161. PANOFSKY, Erwin & Fritz SAXL, Classical Mythology in Mediaeval Art, in The Metropolitan Museum Studies, 4, 2, 1933, p. 228-280. PANOFSKY, Erwin, Fritz SAXL & Raymond KLIBANSKY, Saturn and Melancholy: Studies in the History of Natural Philosophy, Religion and Art, London, 1964. PANOFSKY, Gerda, Erwin Panofsky von Zehn bis Dreißig und seine jüdischen Wurzeln, (Veröffentlichungen des Zentralinstituts für Kunstgeschichte, 41), Passau, 2017. PARKER, Kevin, Art History and Exile. Richard Krautheimer and Erwin Panofsky, in Exiles + émigrés, eds. Stephanie Barron & Sabine Eckmann, Los Angeles, 1997, p. 317-325. PERRY, Ralph B., A Definition of the Humanities, in The Meaning of the Humanities. Five Essays by Ralph Barton Perry, August Charles Krey, Erwin Panofsky, Robert Lowry Calhoun, Gilbert Chinard, ed. Theodore M. Greene, Princeton-London-Oxford, 1938, p. 3-42.

bibliography PRANGE, Regine, Stil und Medium. Panofsky ‘On Movies’, in Erwin Panofsky, ed. Bruno Reudenbach, Berlin, 1994, p. 171-190. ROOT, Robert Kilburn, Preface, in The Meaning of the Humanities. Five Essays by Ralph Barton Perry, August Charles Krey, Erwin Panofsky, Robert Lowry Calhoun, Gilbert Chinard, ed. Theodore M. Greene, Princeton-London-Oxford, 1938, p. v-vii. SAMUELS, Stuart, The Left Book Club, in Journal of Contemporary History, 1, 2, 1966, p. 65-86. SAXL, Fritz, Antike Götter in der Spätrenaissance. Ein Freskenzyklus und ein Discorso des Jacopo Zucchi, Berlin, 1927. SCHOELL-GLASS, Charlotte & Elizabeth SEARS, Verzetteln als Methode. Der humanistische Ikonologe William S. Heckscher (19041999), (Hamburger Forschungen zur Kunstgeschichte, 6), Hamburg, 2008. SEARS, Elizabeth, The Life and Work of William S. Heckscher, in Zeitschrift für Kunstgeschichte, 53, 1, 1990, p. 107-133. SEDLMAYR, Hans, Die Quintessence der lehren Riegls, in Alois Riegl. Gesammelte Aufsätze, Augsburg-Vienna, 1929, p. xii-xxxiv. SEDLMAYR, Hans, Zu einer strengen Kunstwissenschaft, in Kunstwissenschaftliche Forschungen, 1, 1931, p. 7-32. SHEARER, Edna A., Review. The Arts and the Art of Criticism, in Mind, 51, 201, 1942, p. 76-82. SLOAN, Pat, Soviet Democracy, London, 1937. SMYTH, Craig H., Erwin Panofsky 1892-1968, in A Commemorative Gathering for Erwin Panofsky at the Institute of Fine Arts, Princeton, 1968, p. 7-8. SMYTH, Craig H., Thoughts on Erwin Panofsky’s First Years in Princeton, in Meaning in the Visual Arts. Views from the Outside. A Centennial Commemoration of Erwin Panofsky (1892-1968), ed. Irving Lavin, Princeton, 1995, p. 353-361. STOCKS, John L., Review. The Warburg Library, in The Classical Review, 40, 2, 1926, p. 76.

79

Studies in Honour of Hermann Collitz. Presented by a group pupils and friends on the occasion of his seventy-fifth birthday, Baltimore, 1930. SUMMERS, David, Meaning in the Visual Arts as a Humanistic Discipline, in Meaning in the Visual Arts. Views from the Outside. A Centennial Commemoration of Erwin Panofsky (1892-1968), ed. Irving Lavin, Princeton, 1995, p. 9-24. WARBURG, Aby, Dürer und die italienische Antike, in Verhandlungen der 48. Versammlung deutscher Philologen und Schulmänner in Hamburg vom 3. bis 6. Oktober 1905, Leipzig, 1906, p. 55-60. WARBURG, Aby, Italienische Kunst und internationale Astrologie im Palazzo Schifanoja zu Ferrara (1912), in Gesammelte Schriften, ed. Gertrud Bring, vol. 2, Leipzig-Berlin, 1932, p. 459-481. WARBURG, Aby, The Renewal of Pagan Antiquity. Contributions to the Cultural History of the Renaissance, ed. Kurt W. Forster & transl. David Britt, Los Angeles, 1999. WEIGAND, Paul, Problems in Translating the Song of the Chorus Mysticus, in Goethe’s Faust II, in The German Quarterly, 33, 1, 1960, p. 22-27. WELDON, Stephen, Secular Humanism in the United States, in New Dictionary of the History of Ideas, ed. Maryanne Cline Horowitz, vol. 3, New York, 2005, p. 1033-1035. W IND, Edgar, Aesthetischer und Kunstwisschenschaftlicher Gegenstand, (diss.), Hamburg, 1923. W IND, Edgar, Das Experiment und die Metaphysik, Tübingen, 1934. WIND, Edgar, Some Points of Contact between History and Natural Science, in Philosophy and History. Essays presented to Ernst Cassirer, Oxford, 1936, p. 255-264. W IND, Edgar, Zur Systematik der künstlerischen Probleme, in Zeitschrift für Aesthetik und Allgemeine Kunstwissenschaft, 18, 1925, p. 438-486.

80

signed pan

WÖLFFLIN, Heinrich, Das Problem des Stils in der Bildenden Kunst, in Sitzungsberichte des königlichen Preussischen Akademie der Wissenschaften, 31, 1912, p. 572-578. WÖLFFLIN, Heinrich, Kunstgeschichtliche Grundbegriffe. Das Problem der Stilentwicklung in der neueren Kunst, Munich, 1915. WORTH, David S., Spencer Trask. Enigmatic Titan, New York, 2008. WUTTKE, Dieter (ed.), Erwin Panofsky. Korrespondenz 1910 bis 1936, vol. 1, Wiesbaden, 2001. WUTTKE, Dieter (ed.), Erwin Panofsky. Korrespondenz 1937 bis 1949, vol. 2, Wiesbaden, 2003. WUTTKE, Dieter, Panofsky et Warburg. “L’Hercule à la croisée des chemins” d’Erwin Panofsky. L’ouvrage et son importance pour l’histoire des sciences de l’art, transl. Aude Virey-Wallon, in Artibus et Historiae, 28, 56, Part 2, 2007, p. 49-72.

Internet sources Gesprochene Deutsche Lyrik, Türmerlied, https:// www.deutschelyrik.de/tuermerlied-1832. html. IAS, Erwin Panofsky: Life, Work, and Legacy, https://www.ias.edu/erwin-panofsky-lifework-and-legacy. IAS, Irving Lavin, https://www.ias.edu/ news/2019/irving-lavin. Princeton University Public Lectures, Spencer Trask Lectures, http://lectures.princeton. edu/category/lectures/spencer-trask-lectures/. Wikipedia, William S. Heckscher, https://en. wikipedia.org/wiki/William_S._Heckschercite_note-7.

Index Nominum A Abbot Suger, 9 Apollo, 63 Aquinas, Thomas, 5, 25 Archimedes, 21 B Barr, Alfred, 44 Barr, Margaret, 44, 53 Białostocki, Jan, 9, 39 Blake, William, 60 C Calhoun, Robert Lowry, 41 Calvin, 54 Cassirer, Ernst, 10-11, 25-26, 39-40, 43, 49 Castellio, Sebastian, 54 Cedar, Joseph, 23 Chinard, Gilbert, 41 Cicero, 17, 51 Collitz, Hermann, 63-64 Cook, Walter William Spencer, 3 Cutter, Margot, 53 D Da Vinci, Leonardo, 18 Dessauer, Max (alias Dessoir), 39 Didi-Huberman, Georges, 62-63 Dilthey, Wilhelm, 11, 26 Dionysus, 63 Dürer, Albrecht, 33, 62 E Echo, 57, 64 Einem, Herbert von, 40 Einstein, Albert, 4 Erasmus, Desiderius, 17 Euclid, 21

F Faust, 69 Ficino, Marsilio, 11, 17 Flexner, Abraham, 1, 4, 10, 43, 53 Franc, Helen, 53 Friedländer, Max Jakob, 40 Friedländer, Walter, 59-60 G Geiger, Moritz, 25 God, 17, 27 Goldschmidt, Adolph, 40 Gombrich, Ernst H., 59 Greene, Bella da Costa, 53 Greene, Theodore Meyer, 3, 17, 25, 34, 37-38, 40-44, 52 H Heckscher, William S., 7-9, 59-61, 70 Hercules, 61, 64 Hitler, Adolf, 3, 44 Hölderlin, Friedrich, 60 Holmes, Sherlock, 60 Husserl, Edmund, 27 Hüttinger, Eduard, 61 K Kant, Immanuel, 9-10, 15, 39-40, 42-43 Kantorowicz, Ernst, 60 Kelley, Donald R., 11 Kramer, Joel L., 51 Krey, August Charles, 41 Kristeller, Paul Oskar, 51 Kybele, 64 L Lavin, Irving, 3, 40, 62 Lavoisier, Antoine, 21 Lynceus der Türmer, 11

82 M Maritain, Jacques, 25 Michelangelo, 59 Mirandola, Giovanni Pico della, 17 Modigliani, Amedeo, 59 Mondrian, Piet, 59 Moore, Henry, 60 More, Paul Elmer, 41-42 Morey, Charles Rufus, 40, 43-44 Morgan, Sherley Warner, 33-34 N Newton, Isaac, 18 Niethammer, Friedrich Immanuel, 51 O Ovid, 61, 65 P Pan, 10, 58, 63-64 Pearlstein, Philip, 50 Perry, Ralph Barton, 41, 52 Phelps, William Lyon, 42 Pindar, 64 Plato, 11, 34, 40, 53 Poliziano, Angelo, 57 R Rhea, 64 Riegl, Alois, 39-40 Root, Robert Kilburn, 41

signed pan S Saturn, 64 Saxl, Fritz, 10, 39 Schapire, Rosa, 61 Sears, Elizabeth, 61 Sedlmayr, Hans, 25, 27-28 Servetus, Michael, 54 Shkolnik, Eliezer, 23 Shkolnik, Uriel, 23 Signorelli, Luca, 58 Simenon, Georges, 60 Smyth, Craig Hugh, 40, 43-44 T Trask, Spencer, 40, 52 V Van Gogh, Vincent, 60 Venus, 64 W Waldemar Janson, Horst, 8 Warburg, Aby M., 3, 10, 26, 39-40, 61-62, 64 Winckelmann, Johann Joachim, 11 Wind, Edgar, 10, 25-27, 39 Wölfflin, Heinrich, 39-40

Colophon Studies in Iconology accepts original and interdisciplinary contributions in the broader field of art theory and art history. The series addresses an audience that seeks to understand any aspect and any deeper meaning of the visual medium along the history of mankind in the fields of philosophy, art history, theology and cultural anthropology. Studies in Iconology is founded by Professor Dr. Barbara Baert, KU Leuven – Illuminare. Centre for the Study of Medieval Art: www.illuminare.be. Editorial Board: Iconology Research Group This essay can be read independently or as a dialogue with Adi Efal, Habitus as Method. Revisiting a Scholastic Theory of Art, (Studies in Iconology, 9), LeuvenWalpole, 2017. With gratitude to Gerda Panofsky (Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton) for her trust, her friendship, her recollections and her copy-rights. With gratitude to Marcia Tucker and Kirstie Venanzi of the Historical Studies Library at the Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton. With special thanks for the pictures to Laura Weigert, Princeton University. With gratitude to John Arblaster (translations), Sarah Eycken (editing), Stephanie Heremans (editing), Han Lamers and Stéphane Symons. Princeton, June 28th, 2019. Leuven, April 30th, 2020.

Studies in Iconology

 1. Barbara Baert, Nymph. Motif, Phantom, Affect. A Contribution to the Study of Aby Warburg (1866-1929), 2014, viii-134 p. 2. Barbara Baert, Late Medieval Enclosed Gardens of the Low Countries. Contributions to Gender and Artistic Expression, 2015, viii-112 p. 3. Barbara Baert, Locus Amoenus and the Sleeping Nymph. Ekphrasis, Silence and Genius Loci, 2016, VIII-118 p. 4. Barbara Baert, Nymph. Motif, Phantom, Affect. Part II. Aby Warburg’s (1866-1929) Butterflies as Art Historical Paradigms, 2016, X-105 p. 5. Barbara Baert, Kairos or Occasion as Paradigm in the Visual Medium “Nachleben”, Iconography, Hermeneutics, 2016, VIII-133 p. 6. Barbara Baert, In Response to Echo. Beyond Mimesis or Dissolution as Scopic Regime (With Special Attention to Camouflage), 2016, VIII- 104 p. 7. Barbara Baert, Revisiting Salome’s Dance in Medieval and Early Modern Iconology, 2016, VIII-92 p. 8. Joseph IMORDE, Carlo Dolci. A Refreshment, 2016, VIII-108 p. 9. Adi EFAL-LAUTENSCHLÄGER, Habitus as Method. Revisiting a Scholastic Theory of Art, 2017, VI-110 p. 10. Barbara BAERT, About Stains or the Image as Residue, 2017, X-118 p. 11. Larry SILVER, Rembrandt and the Divine, 2018, XIII-106 p. 12. Dominique BAUER, Place – Text – Trace. The Fragility of the Spatial Image, 2018, VIII-109 p. 13. Barbara BAERT, What about Enthusiasm? A Rehabilitation. Pentecost, Pygmalion, “Pathosformel”, 2019, X-139 p. 14. Barbara BAERT, Fragments, 2018, X-402 p. 15. Han LAMERS, Afterlife of Antiquity. Anton Springer (1825-1891) on the Classical Tradition, 2019, XII-130 p. 16. Laura TACK, The Fortune of Gertrud Bing (1892-1964). A Fragmented Memoir of a Phantomlike Muse, 2020, XVI-109 p. 17. Barbara BAERT, The Weeping Rock. Revisiting Niobe through “Paragone”, “Pathosformel” and Petrification, 2020, VIII-117 p.