Collateral effects of the “visibile parlare” (Dante, Pg. X, v. 95) : Aby Warburg’s insight about the visual matrix of the Legend of Trajan’s Justice

The paper proposes and argues the hypothesis of a visual matrix for the Legend of Trajan’s Justice, recounted also by Dante in Purgatory, X. In particular, the author focuses on Warburg's insight—borrowed from excerpts of his papers, lectures and, in particular, the notes on Panel 7 and Panel 52 of his Bilderatlas—that the visual matrix of the Legend is a relief from the Arch of Constantine: not the figure of the kneeling Province and the merciful Emperor, but that of the Leader who “overwhelms by riding” his enemy. According to Warburg’s hypothesis, Trajan’s representation was reversed from a figure of violence into a figure of mercy: from the image of the Victor who overwhelms his enemies, into that of the just and merciful Emperor who gives justice to the widow for her murdered son. So, in Mnemosyne Atlas the reinterpretation of Trajan’s relief from the Arch of Constantine is considered as a paradigmatic case of “energetic inversion”.