André Naffis-Sahely

Salvatore Settis

If Venice Dies

Anthony Grafton

Glenn W Most

Collects alphabetically arranged essays on how classical tradition has shaped popular culture, government, mathematics, medicine, and drama.

The Classical Tradition

Futuro del "classico"

The Tempest is Giorgione's most enigmatic painting. It is a depiction of Giorgione's own family, of the "family of man" tale from Boccaccio, or of the myth of Apollo's birth? In this remarkable study, Salvatore Settis uses the mystery of the painting to shed light on the relationship between artist, patron, work, and critic. The result is a brilliant piece of detective work in the history and sociology of culture that stresses the function of Giorgione's art for the emerging, classically educated connoisseur elite of sixteenth-century Venice.

Interpreting the Hidden Subject

Giorgione's Tempest

Anna Anguissola

Davide Gasparotto

"The dual exhibitions...focus on large - and small - scale repetitions of Greek statuary types in ancient Rome and modern Europe. The two exhibitions - which for us mark the start of a dialogue between the new space in Milan designed by Rem Koolhaas and our venue in Venice, in Ca’ Corner della Regina - depitct antiquity as being different from how we customarily think of it: whereby statuary white was color, uniqueness was multiple, and authorship shared."--Page 45.

The Greek Canon and Its Mutations

Serial

Andrea Pinotti

Georges Didi-Huberman

Katia Pizzi

Barbara Baert

Victoria Cirlot

Monica Centanni

Dorothee Gelhard

Clio Nicastro

Michael Diers

Filippo Perfetti

Giulia Zanon

Matilde Sergio

Giacomo Calandra di Roccolino

Ianick Takaes

In this issue of Engramma: Giulia Zanon’s Zooming Mnemosyne deals with the use of details in Warburg’s Bilderatlas, Monica Centanni’s Collateral effects of the “visibile parlare” (Dante, Pg. X, v. 95) reconstructs the hypothesis of a visual model for the legend of Trajan’s Justice, according to Warburg intuition about it; this contribution is connected of the paper by Filippo Perfetti’s Dante, Botticelli, and Trajan. An Open Note where the author investigates how Botticelli could have come to know that the bas-relief of the Arch of Constantine liberatori urbis was related to an episode in Trajan's life”. The focus of this issue is then extended to Warburg's cultural environment. Matilde Sergio’s Aby Warburg, Walter Benjaming, and the Memory of Images investigates the influence of Warburg's essay about Luther, on Benjamin's thought, while Dorothee Gelhard’s Gertrud Bing’s Scientific Beginnings reconstructs the intellectual history of Bing's doctoral thesis and its influences on Warburgian work. The theme of Warburg’s Denkraum is the focal point of Salvatore Settis’ Anselm Kiefer's Logic of Inversion: a fundamental overview of Kiefer's Questi scritti, quando verranno bruciati, daranno finalmente un po’ di luce(Andrea Emo) on display at Sala dello Scrutinio in Palazzo Ducale, Venezia from March to October 2022. The third section of the issue is dedicated to new publications and exhibitions. Echoing Settis’ reflection on Denkraum, we present Clio Nicastro’s La Dialettica del Denkraum in Aby Warburg, published this year for Palermo University Press; an introduction to Cultural Memories: a series published by Peter Lang and edited by Katia Pizzi. Giacomo Calandra di Roccolino with Mary Hertz Warburg: Free and Unconventional reviews the exhibition of the artist Mary Hertz Warburg. The issue closes with the important Choral Reading of Il metodo di Aby Warburg by Kurt W. Forster. L’antico dei gesti. Il futuro della memoria, where Barbara Baert, Victoria Cirlot, Georges Didi-Huberman, Michael Diers, Andrea Pinotti and Ianick Takaes offer us their personal reading of Warburg’s life and thought as they are presented by Forster’s newly translated book, edited by Ronzani editore.

La Rivista di Engramma 191, aprile-maggio 2022

191 | Aby Warburg: His Aims and Methods

Allan Cameron

Every era has invented a different idea of the 'classical' to create its own identity. Thus the 'classical' does not concern only the past: it is also concerned with the present and a vision of the future. In this elegant new book, Salvatore Settis traces the ways in which we have related to our 'classical' past, starting with post-modern American skyscrapers and working his way back through our cultural history to the attitudes of the Greeks and Romans themselves. Settis argues that this obsession with cultural decay, ruins and a 'classical' past is specifically European and the product of a collective cultural trauma following the collapse of the Roman Empire. This situation differed from that of the Aztec and Inca empires whose collapse was more sudden and more complete, and from the Chinese Empire which always enjoyed a high degree of continuity. He demonstrates how the idea of the 'classical' has changed over the centuries through an unrelenting decay of 'classicism' and its equally unrelenting rebirth in an altered form. In the Modern Era this emulation of the 'ancients' by the 'moderns' was accompanied by new trends: the increasing belief that the former had now been surpassed by the latter, and an increasing preference for the Greek over the Roman. These conflicting interpretations were as much about the future as they were about the past. No civilization can invent itself if it does not have other societies in other times and other places to act as benchmarks. Settis argues that we will be better equipped to mould new generations for the future once we understand that the 'classical' is not a dead culture we inherited and for which we can take no credit, but something startling that has to be re-created every day and is a powerful spur to understanding the 'other'.

The Future of the Classical

Oliver Taplin

Alessandro Grilli

Roberto Andreotti

Maurizio Harari

Concetta Cataldo

Rocco Davide Vacca

Ludovico Rebaudo

Claudio Franzoni

Mara Sternini

Alessandra Pedersoli

Editoriale, a cura di Monica Centanni e Maurizio Harari. Oliver Taplin, A Clue to the Riddle of the Dareios krater /vaso di Dario?. Concetta Cataldo, Rocco Davide Vacca, Metamorfosi e peregrinazioni di Io. Dalla pittura vascolare alla tragedia, e ritorno. Monica Centanni, Alessandro Grilli, ἅπαξ δρώμενα. Un criterio per la relazione tra testi teatrali e iconografia vascolare (V-IV sec. a.C.). Alessandro Grilli, Dal mito tragico all’immagine su vaso. Nuclei d’azione e dinamiche trasmediali. Ludovico Rebaudo, Il sileno e Dioniso. Un cratere campano con attore comico in costume. Claudio Franzoni, La donna e il cavallo: persistenza di un paragone. Maurizio Harari, Giorgio de Chirico, Le printemps de l’ingénieur. Giuseppe Pucci. Scritti corsari di un archeologo classico. Antologia da “Alias”, supplemento culturale de “il manifesto” 2012-2021), a cura di Roberto Andreotti. Bibliografia di Giuseppe Pucci, a cura di Mara Sternini. Salvatore Settis, ‘Tradizione’, fra memoria e oblio. A dialogo con la Lettura corale di Incursioni. Arte contemporanea e tradizione (“Engramma” n. 180). Regesto degli spettacoli INDA al Teatro greco di Siracusa (1914-2021), aggiornamento a cura di Alessandra Pedersoli.

e183 | Alias. Miti còlti sul (manu)fatto

Lucrezia Not

Ada Naval García

Seminario Mnemosyne,

Luca Mazzoni

Editoriale a cura di Vittoria Magnoler e Lucrezia Not. Ada Naval García, El reliquat de la Ninfa. Aproximación a la Pathosformel Ninfa en la obra de Georges Didi-Huberman. ’Moderna’, ‘Fluida’, ‘Profunda’, ‘Dolorosa’. Une entrevue sur la Ninfa avec Georges Didi-Huberman, a cura di Lucrezia Not. Il passo della Ninfa fiorentina. Lettura interpretativa di Mnemosyne Atlas, Tavola 46, a cura del Seminario Mnemosyne. Filippo Perfetti, Venus Virgo/Venus Magistra. Lettura della figura femminile in trono, negli affreschi di Villa Lemmi, alla luce di Mnemosyne Atlas, Tavola 46. Le storie di Lucrezia Tornabuoni. Presentazione di: Storia di Hester e Vita di Tubia, Edizioni di Storia e Letteratura, Roma 2020, a cura di Luca Mazzoni Victoria Cirlot, Nietzsche, secondo Arianna. Presentazione di: Ariadna abandonada. Nietzsche trabaja en el mito, Alpha Decay, Barcelona 2021. Aby Warburg, Three Lectures on Leonardo. 1899, edited by Bill Sherman, The Warburg Institute, London 2019, reviewed by Salvatore Settis

e182 | Che cosa significa, allora, Ninfa?

In-depth study of the culture, history and art of Ancient Greece with particular emphasis on its influence on today's society.

storia, cultura, arte, società

I Greci

“This powerful book of cultural criticism” by the renowned art historian “shines a harsh light on” a historic city’s destruction in the name of profit (The Washington Post). What is Venice worth? To whom do its irreplaceable treasures belong? This eloquent book by art historian Salvatore Settis urgently poses these questions, igniting a new debate about urban stewardship and cultural patrimony at large. As Venice grows increasingly unaffordable and inhospitable to its own residents, Venetians are abandoning their hometown at an alarming rate. At last count, there was only one local for every 140 visitors. As it capitulates to tourists and those who profit from them, Venice’s transformation into a lifeless shell of itself has become emblematic of the future of historic cities everywhere. In this blend of history and cultural analysis, written with wide-ranging erudition and élan, Settis makes a passionate plea to secure the soul of Venice. “Anyone interested in learning what is really going on in Venice should read this book.” —Donna Leon, author of My Venice and Other Essays and Death at La Fenice

In no other period of Western art history was the creation of copies from great masterpieces of the past as important as in late Republican Rome and throughout the Imperial Age. Certain Greek and Roman sculptures were established as canonical, their prestige so high and their acquisition so impossible that their reproductions--even on a small, portable scale--became sought-after commodities among the well-read populace of ancient Rome and modern Europe. With almost 400 duotone illustrations, a wealth of explanatory and groundbreaking scholarship and beautiful, delicate paper changes, "Serial / Portable Classic" examines this culture of the copy. Published to accompany the Fondazione Prada exhibitions "Serial Classic" in Milan and "Portable Classic" in Venice, whose display has been conceived by OMA/Rem Koolhaas, it is bound to be treasured by the student of art history and casual reader alike.

Multiplying Art in Greece and Rome

Serial / Portable Classic

La lenta muerte de Venecia deja traslucir el futuro de tantas otras ciudades: su valor intrínseco las hace susceptibles de convertirse en un souvenir, aparentemente bello, pero carente de vida. A camino entre la indignación y la propuesta, Si Venecia muere nos obliga a pensar en la ciudad que queremos, en su planificación urbanística, cultural y social. Cuestiona la monocultura del turismo que arrasa con la diversidad, se mofa de la supuesta necesidad de rascacielos y reivindica la riqueza inmaterial que nos pueden brindar las ciudades. Salvatore Settis nos ofrece un análisis lúcido marcado por su condición de historiador y arqueólogo, en el que expone de manera clarividente cómo la pérdida de la parte humana e histórica de las ciudades conlleva irremediablemente la pérdida de nuestra propia identidad.

Si Venecia muere

Salvatore Settis

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