Bilderatlas Mnemosyne | Final version
Final version | October 1929
Warburg tried to establish a final or last version of the Bilderatlas after his return, in mid-July 1929, from a nine-months long sojourn in Italy, followed by a stay at a health spa. Whilst in Rome he had been working on two series of panels for central chapters of the Bilderaltas. The first of these two additional series was developed in connection with his lecture at the Biblitoteca Hertiziana, held in late January 1929, and the second, much shorter series, was drafted in early May 1929. After Warburg had returned to Hamburg, he worked ceaselessly to include the findings of his Italian journey in the Bilderatlas-in-progress. The last written record of an order of panels and arrangement of images, established by himself, dates from 19 October 1929. Warburg passed away seven days later, on 26 October 1929. Sometime after this date 63 numbered – since the calligraphy of the numbers varies and differs from the existing series, possibly including minor posthumous changes – and an unknown number of unnumbered panels were photographed of an Atlas clearly incomplete. The most striking proof of the status of ‘work-in-progress’ is the gap between panels 8 and 20, a lacuna of 11 numbers. Perhaps Warburg was still trying to finalize the so-called development of Perseus; a short series of unnumbered panels addressing this theme is extant, too. As a fighter against monsters, Perseus was for Warburg a mythical incarnation of the human soul in its struggle against evil. Warburg neither managed to include the impact of the thought of Giordano Bruno, the early modern philosopher for whom myths were an allegory of cognition; he had discovered Bruno’s crucial role in the development of abstract thinking during his trip to Italy. [C.W.]
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Panel A
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Panel B
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Panel C
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Panel 1
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Panel 2
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Panel 3
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Panel 4
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Panel 5
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Panel 6
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Panel 7
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Panel 8
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Panel 20
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Panel 21
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Panel 22
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Panel 23
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Panel 23a
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Panel 24
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Panel 25
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Panel 26
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Panel 27
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Panel 28/29
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Panel 30
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Panel 31
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Panel 32
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Panel 33
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Panel 34
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Panel 35
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Panel 36
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Panel 37
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Panel 38
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Panel 39
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Panel 40
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Panel 41
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Panel 41a
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Panel 42
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Panel 43
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Panel 44
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Panel 45
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Panel 46
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Panel 47
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Panel 48
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Panel 49
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Panel 50/51
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Panel 52
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Panel 53
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Panel 54
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Panel 55
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Panel 56
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Panel 57
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Panel 58
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Panel 59
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Panel 60
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Panel 61/62/63/64
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Panel 70
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Panel 71
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Panel 72
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Panel 73
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Panel 74
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Panel 75
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Panel 76
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Panel 77
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Panel 78
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Panel 79