Description & History

The Warburg Institute of the University of London exists principally to further the study of the classical tradition, that is of those elements of European thought, literature, art and institutions which derive from the ancient world. It houses an Archive, a Library and a Photographic Collection.

The classical tradition is conceived as the theme which unifies the history of Western civilization. The bias is not towards 'classical' values in art and literature: students and scholars will find represented all the strands that link medieval and modern civilization with its origins in the ancient cultures of the Near East and the Mediterranean. It is this element of continuity that is stressed in the arrangement of the Library: the tenacity of symbols and images in European art and architecture, the persistence of motifs and forms in Western languages and literatures, the gradual transition, in Western thought, from magical beliefs to religion, science and philosophy, and the survival and transformation of ancient patterns in social customs and political institutions.

The Institute stems from the personal library of the Hamburg scholar Aby Warburg (1866-1929), whose research centred on the intellectual and social context of Renaissance art. In 1921 this library became a research institute in cultural history, and both its historical scope and its activities as a centre for lectures and publications expanded. In 1933 it moved from Germany to London to escape the Nazi regime, and in 1944 it was incorporated in the University of London. It is now a member-Institute of the University’s School of Advanced Study. Its first Director was Fritz Saxl followed by Henri Frankfort, Gertrud Bing, E. H. Gombrich, J. B. Trapp, Nicholas Mann and Charles Hope. The tradition drawn on by the Institute includes the work of such distinguished scholars as Warburg himself, Fritz Saxl, Ernst Cassirer, Raymond Klibansky, P. O. Kristeller, Otto Kurz, Arnaldo Momigliano, E. H. Gombrich, D. P. Walker, Frances A. Yates, Charles B. Schmitt and Michael Baxandall. It has been a tradition of new departures achieved primarily by working across the boundaries of established disciplines. The Institute continues to promote this approach through all its research activities.

The full-time members of the Institute's academic staff are engaged in maintaining and developing its Archive, Library and Photographic Collection, in teaching, in the supervision of research, and in the preparation of material for publication. The Institute's activities also include public lectures, seminars and colloquia, the publication of a Journal (jointly with the Courtauld Institute of Art), of monographs (Studies of the Warburg Institute and Oxford-Warburg Studies), of Warburg Institute Surveys and Texts, Warburg Studies and Texts, Warburg Institute Colloquia and of occasional publications.

Frances A. Yates long-term (up to 3 years) and short-term (2 – 4 months) Research Fellowships, Albin Salton, Brian Hewson Crawford, Grete Sondheimer, Henri Frankfort and Sophia short-term Fellowships are open to competition among those who have completed at least one year's research on their doctoral dissertation by the time they submit their application. The Fellowships are generally intended for scholars in the early stages of their careers.Three-month Mellon Research Fellowships for scholars from Bulgaria, the Czech Republic, Estonia, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Romania and Slovakia are also available. Information on the number and duration of Fellowships to be awarded for any given year is available in early October of the year before the academic year of tenure. The Annual Report of the Institute is obtainable on request.

The Institute, which is a member Institute of the School of Advanced Study, is open to the academic staff and postgraduate students of the University, to teachers and research students from other universities and institutions. Others are admitted at the discretion of the Director. Enquiries may be made to the Secretary and Registrar: Anita.Pollard@sas.ac.uk

The Institute accepts postgraduate students for the MPhil and PhD degrees by dissertation only, and also offers a one-year full-time MA Course in Cultural and Intellectual History, 1300-1650.

The Institute is named after its founder Aby Warburg (1866-1929). Born in Hamburg, Warburg studied the history of art in Bonn, Florence and Strasbourg before graduating with a doctoral thesis on Botticelli's mythologies. Following Jakob Burckhardt, he came increasingly to feel the limitations of a predominantly stylistic approach to the history of art, and sought contact with the emerging Kulturwissenschaft of the anthropologists. The years succeeding his graduation were devoted to research in the archives of Florence, so as to build up a detailed picture of the intellectual and social milieu of Lorenzo de' Medici's circle. From this inquiry, Warburg was led to ask what the Florentines of his chosen period saw in antiquity, and why symbols created in a pagan context reappeared with renewed vitality in fifteenth-century Italy. Thus he conceived the programme of illustrating the processes by which the memory of the past affects a culture. The paradigm he chose was the influence of antiquity on modern European civilization in all its aspects – social, political, religious, scientific, philosophical, literary and artistic – and he ordered his private library in Hamburg accordingly.

After the rise of the Nazi régime, Saxl accepted the invitation of an adhoc committee to transfer the Institute to London where, with the support of Lord Lee of Fareham, Samuel Courtauld and the Warburg family, it was installed in Thames House in 1934, moving to the Imperial Institute Buildings, South Kensington, in 1937. In 1944 the Institute was incorporated in the University of London. In 1994 it became a founder-member of the University's School of Advanced Study.

Saxl was succeeded as Director by Henri Frankfort (1897-1954), whose interest in the links between religion and social organization in the Ancient Near East extended the Institute's range. He was followed in 1955 by Gertrud Bing (1892-1964), whose career at the Institute had begun in 1922. Under her Directorship the Institute moved into its permanent home in a new building on the University site in 1958. From 1959 to 1976 Sir Ernst H. Gombrich O.M. (1909-2001) was Director, from 1976 to 1990, J. B. Trapp, from 1991 to 2001, Nicholas Mann.