Vierundzwanzig Beine! Carts, chariots, carriages and other (image-)media in Warburg’s Mnemosyne
Katia Mazzucco
research: Seminar
Vierundzwanzig Beine! Carts, chariots, carriages and other (image-)media in Warburg’s Mnemosyne
Katia Mazzucco
When Aby Warburg died in October 1929 he and his assistants were working on his last scientific project, Mnemosyne. Planned as a publication that included a monumental atlas and volumes of essays, documents, and a bibliography, the work was left uncomplete and is documented in drafted texts, diaries, and pictures.
The photographs of the work in progress for the plates of the atlas were taken during different stages of the project. These photographs document a very original system for drafting the layout of the publication: each picture for the plates of the atlas was first displayed on large scale mobile panels and composed, along with other pictures, into provisional visual systems. Each draft plate was displayed on a panel in this way, photographed, and then dismantled until the next stage of work.
The example of plate 77 of the so-called “last version” of the Atlas Mnemosyne, dedicated to certain types of “modern” image-media, may help in tracing the complex system of relations established between the single pictures planned to be included in the whole atlas. The discussion of panel 77 may furthermore shed some light on the meaning of the term “Bildträger” in Warburg’s works.
Biography
Katia Mazzucco
Katia Mazzucco studied Preservation of Cultural Heritage at the Ca’ Foscari University in Venice and received her PhD degree in 2006 from the University of Siena. She has been a postdoctoral Fellow at the IUAV University in Venice (2008-2009), a short term fellow at the Photothek of the Kunsthistorisches Institut in Florenz-Max Planck Institut and at the Warburg Institute in London (2010), British Academy Visiting Scholar at the SAS in London (2011), and Visiting Scholar of the Istituto Veneto per i Beni Culturali in Venice at the KHI (2014). She taught Venice Renaissance Art History at the Programs of Boston University Italy (2018- 2023). In 2022 she was the scientific coordinator of the exhibition Rooms with a view. Aby Warburg, Florence and the Laboratory of Images and is currently engaged with the catalogue and preservation project of the KHI Archive. Her research and publications are devoted to the epistemological impact of photography in early Art History methodologies, documentary photography in relation to art historical publishing, and the Warburg Bildersammlung in Hamburg and in London. Among her recent publications are: Rooms with a view. Aby Warburg, Florence and the Laboratory of Images (2023) and Lessico warburghiano. I prestiti delle scienze negli scritti d’arte di Aby Warburg (2022).
research: seminar
Vierundzwanzig Beine! Carts, chariots, carriages and other (image-)media in Warburg’s Mnemosyne
Katia Mazzucco
When Aby Warburg died in October 1929 he and his assistants were working on his last scientific project, Mnemosyne. Planned as a publication that included a monumental atlas and volumes of essays, documents, and a bibliography, the work was left uncomplete and is documented in drafted texts, diaries, and pictures.
The photographs of the work in progress for the plates of the atlas were taken during different stages of the project. These photographs document a very original system for drafting the layout of the publication: each picture for the plates of the atlas was first displayed on large scale mobile panels and composed, along with other pictures, into provisional visual systems. Each draft plate was displayed on a panel in this way, photographed, and then dismantled until the next stage of work.
The example of plate 77 of the so-called “last version” of the Atlas Mnemosyne, dedicated to certain types of “modern” image-media, may help in tracing the complex system of relations established between the single pictures planned to be included in the whole atlas. The discussion of panel 77 may furthermore shed some light on the meaning of the term “Bildträger” in Warburg’s works.