Maria ‘Niobe barocca’: deduzione formale e riemersione engrammatica : Appunti di lettura di Mnemosyne Atlas, Tavola 76

Panel 76 is the last montage of the Atlas that presents images of works of art, more or less known: in the following panels, beginning with Plate 77, the focus shifts on the re-emergence of engrams in contemporary documents, and also in advertising. A drawing taken from the statue of a daughter of Niobe – proposed as compositional focus of the montage – lends its Pathosformel to the figure of her mother, be it Niobe or Mirra: from being the child fleeing from divine murderers, she also becomes the model for the prototype of the mother anxious for her children. Plate 76 illustrates how, in the process of deduction from ancient models, the Pathosformeln of flight and panic, the formula is finally used as a model for the Mother par excellence: Mary anxious for Jesus. In fact, in the notes by Warburg and collaborators on Panel 76, we read "Mutter als Niobe": Mary as a reincarnation of Niobe – a ‘baroque Niobe’. For this reason, in Panel 76 we find the archaeological drawing of the Niobid/Niobe, a pagan antecedent and counter-figure of the Virgin.