Claudia Wedepohl

Bio

Claudia Wedepohl is the Archivist of the Warburg Institute. She has studied Art History and Italian Literature in Göttingen and Hamburg, and joined the staff of the Warburg Institute in 2000. Since 2006 she is responsible for the Archive. She held fellowships at the Center for Literary and Cultural Research in Berlin and at the Center for Advanced Studies, Morphomata, at the University of Cologne (2010-11). Her academic work focusses on Fifteenth-century Italian art/ architecture and art historiography around 1900. She has published widely on the genesis of Aby Warburg’s ideas and key terms, with a special interest in his concept of myth and mythology.

Magistra Artium, Universität Hamburg
Dr. phil., Universität Hamburg

Research interests

Aby Warburg and his circle

A number of studies grew out of Claudia’s familiarity with the Institute’s Archive collection, in particular Aby Warburg’s working papers, correspondence, book and photo collection. She has been exploring the origin and genesis of Warburg’s ideas, concepts and key terms, and the collaboration between Warburg and members of his closer and wider circle as well as the afterlife of his ideas. Claudia is currently preparing a book that will take Warburg’s iconic Atlas as the starting point for a comprehensive consideration of his contribution to scholarship. She has edited several of Warburg’s unpublished writings, and she is co-editor of the series of his collected works and co-editor of the volume of Lectures and Essays.

History of the Kulturwissenschaftliche Bibliothek Warburg / Warburg Institute

In connection with her research on Warburg’s highly original scholarship Claudia has developed a particular interest in the history of the institution he founded, the place of the KBW in the 1920s and the Institute’s development after the arrival in Britain in 1933.

Italian Renaissance Art and Architecture

Trained in European art history and Italian language and culture Claudia’s postgraduate studies were mainly devoted to Fifteenth century Italian art and architecture, focussing on iconography, patronage and context. She has conducted extensive research on two patrons, Sigismondo Malatesta and Federico da Montefeltro, specifically Federico’s Palazzo Ducale at Urbino. The result was a monograph, based on her doctoral dissertation on the concept of the adjacent chapel and so-called temple at Urbino.

Semantics of multi-coloured stones

A particular aspect of Claudia’s research is the semantics (and allegorical reading) of multi-coloured stones such as the meaning of the representation of porphyry from Antiquity to the Sixteenth century.

Franciscan Iconography

Claudia has also researched and published on the narrative element in Italian mural and panel painting, specifically on the representation of the typical Franciscan devotion of the Holy Cross.

Teaching

As part of the MA in Art History, Curatorship and Renaissance Culture Claudia teaches the Term 1 core component on Archival and Curatorial Research (together with Alan Crookham of the National Gallery). The component is designed to serve as introduction to the use of archival resources.

In term 3, Claudia supervises MA dissertations appropriate to her expertise.

Claudia offers a course in German Palaeography in the annual London International Palaeography Summer School at the School of Advanced Study (together with Dorothea McEwan).

Publications

Books and edited volumes:

Warburg, Cassirer und Einstein im Gespräch. Kepler als Schlüssel der Moderne, Berlin: Wagenbach 2015 (co-author Horst Bredekamp).

The Muses and Their Afterlife in Post-Classical Europe, ed. by Kathleen W. Christian, Clare E.L. Guest and Claudia Wedepohl (Warburg Institute Colloquia Series, 26), London: The Warburg Institute and Turin: Nino Aragno Editore 2014. (In this volume: Mnemosyne, Apollo and the Muses. Mythology as Epistemology in Aby Warburg’s Bilderatlas, pp. 211-270).

In den glänzenden Reichen des ewigen Himmels. Cappella del Perdono und Tempietto delle Muse im Herzogspalast von Urbino, München: Scaneg 2009.

Text editions:

Aby Warburg, Manet and Italian Antiquity. Translated by Henriette

Frankfort. Introduced, edited and annotated by Claudia Wedepohl, in: Bruniana & Campanelliana 20/2 (2014), pp. 455-476.

Aby Warburg, From the Arsenal to the Laboratory, translated by Christopher D. Johnson, annotated by Claudia Wedepohl, West 86th. A Journal of Decorative Arts, Design, History and Material Culture, vol. 19/1 (2012), pp. 106-124.

Aby M. Warburg, Per Monstra ad Sphaeram. Sternglaube und Bilddeutung. Vortrag in Gedenken an Franz Boll und andere Schriften 1923 bis 1925, hrsg. von Davide Stimilli unter Mitarbeit von Claudia Wedepohl, München – Hamburg: Dölling und Galitz 2008.

Selected Articles and Chapters:

Genesi dello studio di Panofsky e Saxl sulla «Melencolia I» di Dürer nel segno di Aby Warburg e Karl Giehlow, introduction in Erwin Panofsky, Fritz Saxl, La melanconia di Dürer, Rome: Quodlibet, pp. 9-25.

Critical Detachment: Ernst Gombrich as Interpreter of Aby Warburg, in: Uwe Fleckner and Peter Mack (Eds.), The Afterlife of the Kulturwissenschaftliche Bibliothek Warburg. The Emigration and the Early Years of the Warburg Institute in London (Vorträge aus dem Warburg Haus, 12), Berlin: De Gruyter 2015, pp. 131-162.Mnemonics, Mneme and Mnemosyne. Aby Warburg’s Theory of Memory, in: Bruniana & Campanelliana 20/2 (2014), pp. 385-402.

Pathos – Polarität – Distanz – Denkraum: Eine archivarische Spurensuche, in: Martin Treml, Sabine Flach, Pablo Schneider (Hrsg.), Warburgs Denkraum – Formen, Motive, Materialien (Trajekte), Paderborn: Fink 2014, pp. 17-48.

Bernard Berenson and Aby Warburg: Absolute Opposites, in: Joseph Connors, Louis A. Waldman (Eds.), Bernard Berenson. Formation and Heritage (Villa I Tatti Series 31), Cambridge/MA: Harvard University Press 2014, pp 143-171.

Von der Pathosformel zum Gebärdensprachatlas. Dürers Tod des Orpheus und  Warburgs Arbeit an einer ausdruckstheoretisch begründeten Kulturgeschichte, in: Ausst.-Kat. Die Entfesselte Antike. Aby Warburg und die Geburt der Pathosformel, hrsg. von Marcus Andrew Hurttig, in Zusammenarbeit mit Thomas Ketelsen, Köln: Walter König 2012, pp. 33-50.

Von der Erlösungsallegorie zur heiligen Historie: Kreuzdevotion in der franziskanischen Monumentalmalerei des 14. und 15. Jahrhunderts, in: Frank Bezner, Kirsten Mahlke (Hrsg.), Zwischen Wissen und Politik. Archäologie und Genealogie frühneuzeitlicher Vergangenheitskonstruktionen (Akademiekonferenzen 06), Heidelberg: Akademieverlag 2011, pp. 183-254.

Agitationsmittel für die Bearbeitung der Ungelehrten: Warburgs Reformationsstudien zwischen Kriegsbeobachtung, historisch-kritischer Forschung und Verfolgungswahn, in: Gottfried Korff (Hrsg.), Kasten 117. Aby Warburg und der Aberglaube im Ersten Weltkrieg (Untersuchungen des Ludwig-Uhland-Instituts der Universität Tübingen, Bd. 105), Tübingen: Tübinger Vereinigung für Volkskunde 2007, pp. 325-368. Ideengeographie. Ein Versuch zu Aby Warburgs Wanderstraßen der Kultur, in: Helga Mitterbauer, Katharina Scherke (Hrsg.), Entgrenzte Räume. Kulturelle Transfers um 1900 und in der Gegenwart (Studien zur Moderne 22), Wien: Passagen 2005, pp. 227-254.

Reviews:

Höllische Künste. Georges Didi-Huberman psychologisiert Aby Warburg. Book Review: Georges Didi-Huberman, Das Nachleben der Bilder. Kunstgeschichte und Phantomzeit nach Aby Warburg, Berlin: Suhrkamp 2010, in: Zeitschrift für Ideengeschichte V/3 (2011), pp. 121-124.

Heilung durch den Geist. Erstmals dokumentiert: Aby Warburgs Krankengeschichte, Book Review: Ludwig Binswanger, Aby Warburg, La guarigione infinita. Storia clinica di Aby Warburg, a cura di Davide Stimilli, Vicenza: Neri Pozza, 2005, in: Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung Nr. 75 vom 29. März 2006, p. N 3.

Bernd Roeck, Andreas Tönnesmann, Die Nase Italiens. Federico da Montefeltro. Herzog von Urbino, Berlin 2005

Other:

Aby Warburg, in: Oxford Bibliographies in Art History. Ed. Thomas DaCosta Kaufmann. New York: Oxford University Press 2016