Under the Volcano. Warburg’s Legacy. Editorial of Engramma no. 211

Under the Volcano. Warburg’s Legacy, explores the enduring influence of Aby Warburg’s ideas, likening his intellectual legacy to volcanic activity – continually shaping the landscape of cultural history. If Warburg “was a volcano”, this issue is structured around the metaphorical fissures and lava flows, and is divided into four sections: Unpublished, Rediscovery, Readings, Presentations. In the section Unpublished, Davide Stimilli presents the first English edition of the lecture given by Max Adolph Warburg on the occasion of the centenary of his father’s birth in 1966. “Aby Warburg was a volcano”. Max Adolph Warburg, for the Centenary of Aby Warburg’s Birth (1966). This text, written and never spoken, paints a portrait of Aby Warburg’s explosive intellect and influence, which Max Adolph poetically associates with disruptive volcanic activity. The text has so far only appeared in Stimilli’s Italian translation in 2004 but is still unpublished in the original language, this issue of Engramma includes both the original English and an updated Italian translation. In Towards an edition of the Atlas. Gertrud Bing’s Unpublished Notes on Mnemosyne Panels Giulia Zanon presents a first edition of Gertrud Bing’s unpublished notes on the Bilderatlas, both in the original German, with an English and an Italian translation. The notes, which were written in two notebooks that are preserved in the Warburg Institute Archive, provide a synopsis of each panel of the Mnemosyne Atlas. They include indications for the completion, editing, and publication of the Atlas as part of the larger project of an edition of Warburg’s corpus. The section includes two unpublished letters: In Classical Tradition as a Method and a Way of Approach. Note on a Letter from Gertrud Bing to Raymond Klibansky, Martin Treml presents a letter sent from Bing to Raymond Klibansky that shed light on lesser-known aspects of Raymond Klibansky’s involvement with the Warburg Institute; in “One talked all European languages”. Note on a Letter from Gertrud Bing to Luigi Meneghello (1957), Chiara Velicogna publishes a letter from Gertrud Bing to Luigi Meneghello dated January 1957 (a few months after Bing’s lecture on the Warburg Institute at the Humanist Studies Conference in La Mendola). The section Rediscovered presents two important researches on two forgotten intellectuals that had been close to Warburg: Monica Centanni and Giacomo Calandra di Roccolino present A forgotten essay by Fritz Rougemont on Warburg and “bibliophily” as a scientific tool (1930), an important contribution of his published in 1930. The essay, hitherto neglected in the vast literature of Warburgian studies, is presented in a new edition of the original 1930 German, in the first English translation and in the first Italian translation. Rougemont’s essay is a primary testimony to the specificity of Warburg’s “bibliophilia” in a scientific sense. In A Fictional Letter, a Florentine Friendship. On André Jolles and Aby Warburg, Wannes Wets examines the relationship between Dutch art historian and linguist André Jolles and Aby Warburg. The lens through which the analysis is conducted is a fictional biography of Warburg by André Jolles, which has been rediscovered and translated into English for the first time. The section Readings delves into the matter of Warburgian thought. Dorothee Gelhard’s article Max Adolph Warburg’s Doctoral Thesis and the Warburg Circle offers a comprehensive reconstruction of Max Adolph Warburg’s dissertation, Zwei Fragen zum Kratylos (Two Questions on Cratylus), and his time as a student in Heidelberg, which reveals the methodology of the Warburg circle, the influence of Boll and the importance of Ernst Cassirer. In Giocare con il Bilderatlas. Due casi e una questione teorica. Tavole 56 e 53, Careri raises some of these questions with regard to Panels 56 and 53 of the Menemosyne Bilderatlas – in which Michelangelo becomes a guiding element for reading the heuristic operation of the montage – but also raises a more general methodological question about the use to which the Panels lend themselves. The section Presentations welcomes the most important publications in the field of Warburgian studies for the year 2024. Ianick Takaes presents an important book on one of Warburg’s most important heirs, Edgar Wind. Edgar Wind. Art and Embodiment, Peter Lang, London 2024, edited by Jaynie Anderson, Bernardino Branca and Fabio Tononi. The volume brings together a collection of studies on the pioneering art historian and philosopher Edgar Wind. The volume Gertrud Bing im Warburg-Cassirer-Kreis, Wallstein, Göttingen 2024, edited by Dorothee Gelhard and Thomas Roide, recalls Bing’s importance in the Warburg-Cassirer circle (and publishes for the first time the doctoral thesis written by Gertrud Bing. The significance of the friendship between Aby Warburg and the German philologist Franz Boll (to whose death Warburg dedicated the seminal lecture Per monstra ad sphaeram in 1925) is explored in the volume Sternenfreundschaft. Die Korrespondenz Aby Warburg und Franz Boll, Wallstein, Göttingen 2024, a crucial edition of the correspondence between the two scholars.