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Jan Bialostocki Erwin Panofsky 1892 1968 Thinker Historian Human Being Simiolus Netherlands Quarterly For The History of Art Vol 4 No 2 PDF
Jan Bialostocki Erwin Panofsky 1892 1968 Thinker Historian Human Being Simiolus Netherlands Quarterly For The History of Art Vol 4 No 2 PDF
Jan Bialostocki Erwin Panofsky 1892 1968 Thinker Historian Human Being Simiolus Netherlands Quarterly For The History of Art Vol 4 No 2 PDF
Jan Bia#ostocki
Simiolus: Netherlands Quarterly for the History of Art, Vol. 4, No. 2. (1970), pp. 68-89.
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Fri Mar 21 13:41:02 2008
ERWIN PANOFSKY ( 1892-1968):
JAN BIAEOSTOCKI
comparable erudition and his admirable talent for logical, although sometimes intricate
thinking, his inborn wit and incredible feeling for languages, soon allowed him to
create an individual writing style in an English marked by AngloSaxon clarity of ex-
pression. His highly specialized academic knowledge could now be fruitfully used in
works written for the general educated public. The American custom of organizing lee
tures later to be published gave Panofsky's activity a convenient framework, facilitating
the publication of the books which brought him fame and glory in the English-
speaking world. Studies in Zconology (1939), The Life and Art of Albrecht Diirer
(1943), Early Netherlandish Painting (1953), Tomb Sculpture (1964): all these books
show a happy mixture of German precision and thoroughness with the simplicity and
wit of the English essay style.
Slowly Panofsky's fame began to reach beyond the narrow circle of art historians,
and also beyond the Enghsh-speaking world, until it even penetrated his land of origin,
which had expelled him after his dismissal from the university in 1933. His books
began to be translated, even in Germany and France, which for a long time had not
been very interested in what was going on in the field of the humanities outside her
own borders. Panofsky was famous: he received memberships in learned societies and
academies, and honorary degrees from several universities. The first of these, which was
granted to him at the nadir of his fortunes, in 1935, was the honorary doctorate from
Utrecht University.
It was only one year before l s death that Panofsky decided to end an absence of
33 years and visit the country which was once his own, whch had expelled h m and
w l c h was as if forgotten. He came for a short stay, and even though he accepted the
high national order of West Germany, Pour le merite, he delivered h s lecture in
English. In these ways he stressed his being a foreigner, he maintained distance and
mistrust. Although he admitted with pride to belonging to the great tradition of Ger-
man scholarship, he stressed his claim to being 'free from what may be suspected as
retroactive German patriotism'.3
Panofsky was not only the creator of a system and a method (in spite of the fact that
he denied it, with his acquired Anglo-Saxon dislike for systems), he was also the nucleus
of an international group of scholars, of somethmg hke a 'clan' of art hstorians bound up
with him either by the direct h k s of the teacher-pupil relation or by a - perhaps still
more valuable - Wahlvenuandschaft, brought into being by the animating contact with
Panofsky's thought-provoking and dluminating ideas. A stay at the Institute for Advanced
Study in Princeton, where Panofsky from 1935 on represented art history in the School
of Historical Studies, sharing the membership of the Institute with scholars like Einstein,
Oppenheimer and Maritain, was a dream of art hstorians, not only because it gave them
the opportunity for quiet work in that wonderful place Princeton was and still is, but also
because of close contact with Panofsky's mind and intelligence. Everybody who has
learned the completeness of the Princeton libraries, the charm of its University, its
avenues and gardens, understands why Panofsky has called his compulsory emigration
from Germany and his settling down in Princeton 'an expulsion into Paradise'.
To many people - even to many art lstorians - Panofsky is known first of all, or
exclusively, as a deviser of a method called iconology. Although he probably did not
dislike being thought of in that way, late in h s life he used to quote a statement by an
Arab statesman, who said that 'discussion of methods spoils application.'4 He also
avoided the term 'iconology', taking care not to use it in his late studies. Its too great
popularity and a too great crowd of imitators, with whom he often disagreed, provoked
l s skepticism. In this there was quite a lot of his acquired English understatement. since
Panofsky was, it seems, one of the most systematically minded of art historians, gifted
3. Erwin Panofsky, Meaning in the Visual Arts, Garden City, N.Y. 1955, 323.
4. William S.Heckscher, 'The Genesis of Iconology', in: Stil und Liberlieferung in der Kunst des
Abendlandes. Akten des XXI. Internationalen Kongresses fur Kunstgeschichte, Bonn 1964, Berlin
1967, 111, 239-262, quot. 262.
with a powerful talent for precise thinking. His scholarly activity in the historical study of
art and of the literature of art was accompanied - especially in the first half of his
creative life - by constant reflection on theory. In this way he built up a conceptual and
methodological framework that sustained and justified his practical work. Hence the
importance of the system of art analysis devised by Panofsky, a system which is no less
significant an achievement than the results of h s historical research and interpretation.
Anyone seeking, at the beginning of the twentieth century, to get a clear view of the
fundamental problems of art study had to consider, and to form his own attitude to-
wards, such concepts as 'style', 'forms of beholding', 'artistic volition', 'symbol' and
'symbolic form', concepts which had been formulated and discussed by the generation of
predecessors and teachers of Panofsky. The young scholar dealt with them in a masterly
way. With an admirable striving for system and with a certain stubbornness he returned
over a long period of h s life to those problems, in order to make his concepts more
perfect and to eliminate ambiguity. And he always looked on the questions from the
most general point of view. He succeeded in creating a system whch is perhaps the most
coherent art-hstorical method put together in our times. Problems of style, artistic
volition and general concepts of art history were analyzed in a Kantian spirit; the problem
of the relation of art and ideas in a neo-Kantian, Cassirerian spirit; and the method of art
study, which was later to be celebrated as 'iconology', was conceived in a Warburgian
spirit.
He was well aware of his own position and of his importance, and if he complained it was
only when he felt that his efficiency in work was declining in his old age. Aware of the
role he played in the art history of our time, he nonetheless wanted to be linked with
older tradition. Indeed, if any art historian in our century has profited from the tradition
of scholarship, it was Panofsky. A tireless reader who united contemplation with activity,
he never worked in a state of immobile concentration, but in an incessant confrontation
with books, dictionaries, articles and photographs, constantly verifying his immense
erudition in order to purge it of error and doubt.
With a youthful enthusiasm, at the age of twenty three he began a polemic with the
most prominent leader of his discipline - Heinrich Wolfflin. In 1912 Wolfflin delivered a
lecture before the Prussian Academy of Sciences in Berlin, presenting the ideas of his
book Kunstgeschichtliche Grundbegriffe (Principles of Art History), which appeared only
7. Heinrich Wolfflin, 'Das Problem des Stils in der bildenden Kunst', Sitzungsberichte des
koniglichen Preussischen Akademie der Wissenschaften, XXXI, 19 12, 572ff.
8. Erwin Panofsky, 'Das Problem des Stils in der bildenden Kunst', Zeitschrift fiir Aesthetik und
allg. Kunstwissenschaft, X , 1915,460467.
9. Heinrich Wolfflin, Kunstgeschichtliche Grundbegriffe. Das Problem der Stilentwicklung in der
neueren Kunst, Munich !915.
10. Hans Sedlmayr, Die Quintessenz der Leh_ren Riegls', in: Alois Riegl, Gesammette Aufsatze,
Augsburg-Vienna 1929, xii-xxxiv; Otto Pacht, Art Historians and Art Critics-VI: Alois Riegl',
Burlington Magazine 1963, 188-193; Ksawery Piwocki, Pierwsza noweczesna teoria sztuki, Pogludy
Aloisa Riegla, Warszawa 1970.
'
used by Panofsky - from p ant.' What is that Sinn, the essential or intrinsic meaning of
artistic phenomena? It is the tendency one finds expressed in the choice and in the
shaping of formal and figurative elements, and which can be discerned in the uniform
attitude towards the basic artistic problems. And what are artistic problems?
Starting with hls criticism of Riegl and Wolfflin, Panofsky undertook to build up a
system of 'aprioristic concepts of the study of art', as Kant did for philosophy. In his
article of 1920 on the interpretation of 'artistic volition', he merely sketched the pro-
blem, announcing that a history of art aiming at a study of meaning has to proceed from
previously defined concepts applicable to 'any possible artistic problem'. Thls is the
background of the 1924 article by Panofsky (in which he took advantage of studies by
the Hamburg art historian-philosopher Edgar Wind) concerning the relation of art history
to art theory, an article which could be entitled 'Prolegomena to any future art history
which could claim to be a science'.12
The five pairs of concepts devised by Wolfflin are, according to Panofsky, no more
than elaborations of incidental empirical concepts, fit perhaps to describe the individual
differences between Renaissance and Baroque, but not deriving from a transcendental
analysis of the very possibilities of art. In other words, they are merely aposterioristic
interpretations of historical material, and not Grundbegriffe at all. A transcendental
analysis of the possibilities of art was still lacking, and Panofsky now attempted to fill
this lack, in the first of hls tabular systems of concepts, apparently following a Kantian
model.
The most general, inclusive antithesis in art is, according to Panofsky, that between
'fullness' and 'form'. This line of thinlung leads Panofsky to formulate the system of
three layers of opposed values present in every work of visual art:
1. elementary values (optical-tactile, i.e. space as opposed to bodies)
2. figurative values (depth-surface)
3. compositional values (internal links-external links, i.e. internal organical unity as
opposed to external juxtaposition).
In order for a work of art to be created, a balance must be struck within each of these
scales of value. The absolute poles, the limiting values themselves, are outside of art:
purely optical values characterize only amorphous luminous phenomena. Purely tactile
values characterize only pure geometrical shapes deprived of any sensual fullness. A
solution which determines the position of the work of art at some point on any given
scale at the same time determines its position on the other scales. To decide for surface
(as opposed to depth) means t o decide for rest (as opposed to movement), for isolation
(as opposed to connection) and for tactile values (as opposed to optical ones): a typical
example confirming the analysis quoted above may be the Egyptian relief.
The individual work of art is not, as claimed by Wolfflin, defined by one antithetical
category or the other, but is situated at some point on the scale between the limiting
values. For instance the scale 'optical-tactile' takes actual form in such categories as
11. Kirchner's Worterbuch der philosophischen Grundbegn'ffe, 6th ed., ed. Carl Michaelis, Leipzig
1911,910.
12. 'Uber das Verhdtnis der Kunstgeschichte zur Kunsttheori;', Zeitschrift fir Aesrhetik und allg.
Kunstwissenschaft, XVIII, 1925, 120-16 1 ; cf. Edgar Wind, Zur Systematik der kiinstlerischen
Probleme', ibidem 438-486.
'painterly' (near the 'optical' pole), through 'sculptural' (in the middle of the scale) to
'stereometric-crystalline' (closest to the ideal, untrodden pole of the absolute 'tactile'
quality). The borderlines and the values attainable on the scale are conditioned by histori-
cal tendencies: the quahties considered as most painterly on the Renaissance scale moved
closer to the tactile pole in the Baroque, because the whole scale had shifted towards the
optical pole.
The manner in which elements are composed in a work of art reveals a specific creative
principle, i.e. a specific principle of solving problems. In a given work the set of principles
used for solving artistic problems constitutes a unity. And this unity is for Panofsky the
essential meaning of a work or of an artistic period. It corresponds for him to what he
understands by 'artistic volition'.
Theoretical, interpretative study of art reveals that in case A artistic problem X has
been solved; in case B artistic problem Y has been solved; moreover we observe that in
both cases they have been solved in a similar way, which means that A:X=B:Y. The
constant attitude of the artist or of the hstorical period towards fundamental artistic
problems can be established in t h s way, and eventually the meaning, the artistic volition
of the work, the artist or the period. Seen in this light, artistic volition loses all traces of a
voluntaristic or psychological character and becomes 'the essence of style' or 'style in an
intrinsic sense'.
Moreover, since 'artistic volition' is nothng but 'the intrinsic meaning' of artistic
phenomena, or the 'unity of the principles of solving artistic problems', it is quite a useful
concept from the methodological point of view, allowing one to join two methodological
positions usually opposed in the study of art. I mean the method w h c h stresses the
autonomy of artistic phenomena and the method whch stresses their links with the other
elements of the historical process. What is more, t h s joining can now be done not as a
Taine or a Semper did it, i.e. by considering the artistic phenomena as influenced by
technical, economical, geographical and other factors, nor in the manner of Dvoiik's
'expressionistic' relation between art and religion or philosophy, of whch the work of art
is to be considered a function, but in a new way: by defining the common factor in the
intrinsic meanings found in the various fields of culture.
Since the intrinsic meaning of phenomena in the visual arts is nothing else than the
underlying similarity in the means of solving the basic artistic problems, we are able to
compare it with the intrinsic meaning of phenomena not only in the other arts, e.g. music
and literature, but also in the other fields of human culture. Scientific, legal and linguistic
systems are based - as far as they are systems - on some specific principles of solving
problems peculiar to those fields. A generalizing humanistic study is able, then, to
compare the intrinsic meanings of various fields of human activity in any culture limited
in time, space, ideas or social character. Now we understand how it happened that
Panofsky, twenty-four years later, presented an admirable comparative account of the
parallel structure in Gothc architecture and Scholastic thinking.'
In this way the once dynamic concept of Kunshvollen was transformed in the hands of
the ingenious humanist from a tool Riegl could use to describe the artistic features of
different periods, places and individuals, into one enabling Panofsky to compare the
13. Gothic Architecture and Scholasticism [lecture 1948 1, Latrobe, Pa., 195 1 .
similarities of ideological and artistic attitudes manifest in the various aspects of one and
the same culture. From here it was only one step to the concept of 'symbolical form' and
to use it in the methodology of art history. Panofsky's next step was precisely that.
3. Symbolic Forms
Una veritas in variis signis varie resplendet
Nicolas Cusanus
Panofsky was born in Hanover. He went to high school in Berlin, where he was educated
in the famous Joachimsthalsches Gymnasium, which gave him an excellent formation
both in the classics and in mathematics. He began his university studies in the Law
Department of the University of Freiburg im Breisgau, owing his conversion to art history
to h s friend Kurt Badt, who took him t o hear Wilhelm Voge's lecture on Diirer's Feast of
the Rose Garlands. 'Et ceciderunt de oculis eius tamquam squamae', he wrote later.14 He
studied art history with the most prominent mediaevalists of his time. First with Voge at
Freiburg, where he completed his doctorate in 1914 with a prize thesis on Diirer's art
theory; then, feeling the need to develop his erudition and method even further, he
studied for several terms with Adolf Goldschmidt in ~erlin.' Thanks to an otherwise
innocuous fall from a horse at the beginning of his military service, he avoided the hell of
the First World War. His abilities were so highly valued that in 1920 the new Hamburg
University, just being organized, invited him to pass his Habilitation and to become the
head of the art-historical seminar. From 1921 on Panofsky was Dozent and from 1926 on
the full professor of the history of art in Hamburg (Ordinarius), a position he kept until
the spring of 1933, when he was dismissed - after the proclamation of the Nuremberg
Law - and left Germany.
The Hamburg years were a period of intense scholarly as well as pedagogical and
literary activity for Panofsky. At the age of thirty, hls talent at its peak, he found himself
living in one of the most interesting centers of pre-war German scholarship, in the sphere
of influence of two powerful minds, men one generation older than he was - Ernst
Cassirer and Aby Warburg. That he underwent their influence was to be expected; what is
interesting is that he knew how to make use of that influence in an independent way. He
was able to learn from them what he needed, without surrendering to the spell of their
strong personalities. From the beginning he stood on equal footing with them, as it were.
Cassirer and he understood each other at once thanks to their shared Kantian training.
He must have been fascinated by the depth and scope of that thmker's philosophical and
humanistic interests. The concept of symbol at the center of Cassirer's phlosophy, a con-
cept of great concern to every art historian, and Cassirer's special concentration in the
field of Renaissance neo-Platonism and its consequences must also have contributed to
the formation of a strong link between the phlosopher and the art hstorian. Their direct,
close collaboration was realized precisely in the field of neo-Platonic studies. Two lectures
in the Warburg Library in Hamburg were devoted to Plato's aesthetic ideas. Cassirer spoke
about the idea of beauty in Plato's dialogues, Panofsky about the development of the
14. Erwin Panofsky, 'Wilhelm Voge' in: Bildhauer des Mittelalters. Gesammelte Studien von
Wilhelm Voge, Berlin 1958, ix-xxxi, quot. xxiv.
15. Hans Kauffmann, obituary, O.C.261.
Platonic concept of idea from antiquity until Bellori. In the preface to his book Idea (the
development of that lecture), dated March 1924, Panofsky expressed his thanks to
Cassirer for his help and encouragement.
Soon the mind of the art historian felt the influence of Cassirer's fundamental theory,
w h c h was at that time being developed in his magnum opus, the three volumes of The
Philosophy of Symbolic Forms. Perhaps the first echo of that theory in the history of art
was the descriptive title Panofsky gave to his famous study of perspective, presented as a
lecture in winter 1924125 and published in 1927. As we all know, that study was called
'Perspektive als "symbolische Form" '.
The concept of symbolic form introduced at that time by Cassirer is now well at home
in the modern philosophcal vocabulary; it has already passed into the history of philoso-
phy. It had great importance for the study of culture. One can say that if Cassirer's ideas
on language - like those of Carnap - heralded and paved the way for the later approach
of the semiologistsl - Cassirer's theory of culture as a symbolic creation of man paved
the way, as it were, for the method of interpreting the phenomena of civilization used by
the recent school of structural research in cultural anthropology.
How can we know the essence of the human world, Cassirer asks, if neither psychologi-
cal introspection, biological observation and experiment nor historical research gives us a
satisfactory answer to the question 'What is man? ' I have endeavoured to discover such
an alternative approach in my Philosophy of Symbolic Forms. The method of this work is
by no means a radical innovation. It is not designed to abrogate but to complement
former views. The philosophy of symbolic forms starts from the presupposition that, if
there is any definition of the nature or 'essence' of man, this definition can only be
understood as a functional one, not a substantial one. [ . . . ] Man's outstanding charac-
teristic, his distinguishng mark, is not h s metaphysical or physical nature but his work.
-
It is this work, it is the system of human activities which defines and determines the circle
of 'humanity'. Language, myth, religion, art, science, history are the constituents, the
various sectors of t h s circle. A 'philosophy of man' would therefore be a philosophy,
which would give us insight into the fundamental structure of each of these human
activities, and w h c h at the same time would enable us to understand them as an organic
whole. Language, art, myth, religion are no isolated, random creations. They are held
together by a common bond. But this bond is not a vinculum substantiale as it was
conceived and described in scholastic thought; it is rather a vinculum functionale. It is the
basic function of speech, of myth, of art, of religion that we must seek far behnd their
innumerable shapes and utterances, and that in the last analysis we must attempt to trace
back to a common origin'.'
Was this not the very phdosophy Panofsky needed in order to develop a concept of the
intrinsic meaning of a work of art, a period, or a field of culture? The philosophy of
symbolic forms, which conceived the link between various fields of human endeavor in a
functional or structural way, appeared to be similar to the system of concepts developed
by Panofsky. This may be due to Panofsky's and Cassirer's common Kantian background.
'All human works arise under particular hstorical and sociological conditions. But we
4. Iconoiogy
In his obituary of Warburg, written after the latter's death in 1929, Panofsky quoted the
well-known aphorism of Leonardo da Vinci: 'He who is futed to a star does not change
his mind'.' Warburg was doubtless a man of inspiration and genius theia rnarzia. One -
could continue and guess with which celestial body Warburg was linked: Saturn, beyond
any doubt! All the features of the Saturnian psyche, from genius to madness, from
creative intellectual work to the abyss of the most profound melancholy were The
comparison with Nietzsche only one generation older
- is so compelling that one
-
wonders why it was not developed further after Sax1 mentioned it briefly in one of his
early articles." The same incessant tension between rational thought and the energy of
the subconscious, the irrational life of the psyche: the same loss of mental balance cursed
those discoverers of Dionysiac follies and of powerful instincts behlnd the dynamism of
forms. The same union of life and thought for which one pays with madness.
The fact that Panofsky met both Cassirer and Warburg in Hamburg was partly acciden-
tal. Cassirer studied in Marburg, and before coming to Hamburg lived in Berlin. Warburg
22. Fritz Sasl, 'Rinascimento dell'Antichiti. Studien zu den Arbeiten A.Warburgs', Repertorium fur
Kunstwissenschaft, XLII!, 1922, 221-272.
23. Aby Warburg, Flandrische Kunst und florentinische Friihrenaissance', Jahrbuch der
preussischetz Kutzstsarnrnlungen, XXIII, 1902, 247-266.
24. Aby Warburg, 'Italienische Kunst und internationale Astrologic im Palazzo Schifanoja' [lecture
19121, in: Atri del X Congresso Internaziorlale di Storia dell'Arte it1 Roma, L 'Italia e ljlrte Straniera,
Roma 1922, 179-193, reprinted in Gcsarnrnelte Sclrrifien, Leipzig-Bcrlin 1932, 11, 4 5 9 4 8 1 .
25. Heckscher, o.c. passim.
Middle Ages and modern times as interconnected epochs and analyze the works of the
'finest' and the most 'applied' arts as equally valid documents of expression. When the
light of such a method is beamed on one dark spot, it can enlighten great general develop-
ments in their interconnection. I care less to present a smooth solution than to discover a
new problem . . .'26
This new branch of scholarshp a synthesis of the knowledge of culture, implicating
-
in its investigations myth, idea, word and image - was to be realized by means of the
library built up by Warburg, first as his private library, then transformed into an institute,
cared for and organized by Warburg's collaborator, pupil and prophet of his ideas, Fritz
~ a x l . ' That
~ great promotor of Warburg's ideas popularized and brought together the
ingenious flashes of his master's thought. He published summaries of Warburg's ideas.
Warburg himself, affected by mental illness, did not round off h s theories. Saxl carried
Warburg's work on after the latter's death in 1929. In 1933 he saved the library from the
Nazi deluge, transferred it to Great Britain and succeeded in incorporating it into the
academic life of the adopted country. He was its head until his death in 1948. Saxl was
the closest collaborator of Panofsky in his Hamburg years.28
What Warburg and his library meant for the whole world of humanistic scholarshp and
philosophy in Hamburg, we learn from Cassirer in the fine dedication to Warburg of one
of h s now classic works, The Individual and the Cosmos in Renaissance Philosophy. 'My
dear and esteemed friend,' Cassirer wrote on June 13, 1 9 2 6 ~- ~'The work I am pre-
senting to you on your sixtieth birthday was to have been a purely personal expression of
my deep friendship and devotion. But I could not have completed the work, had I not
been able to enjoy the constant stimulation and encouragement of that group of scholars
whose intellectual centre is your library. Therefore, I am speaking today not in my name
alone, but in the name of t h s group of scholars, and in the name of all those who have
long honoured you as a leader in the field of intellectual history. For the past three
decades, the Warburg Library has quietly and consistently endeavoured to gather mate-
rials for research in intellectual and cultural hstory. And it has done much more besides.
With a forcefulness that is rare, it has held up before us the principles which must govern
such research. In its organization and in its intellectual structure, the Library embodies
the idea of the methodological unity of all fields and all currents of intellectual history.
Today, the Library is entering a new phase in its development. With the construction of a
new building, it will broaden its field of activity. On thls occasion, we members want to
express publicly how much the Library means to us and how much we owe to it. We
hope, and we are sure, that above and beyond the new tasks which the Library must
fulfil, the old tradition of our common, friendly collaboration will not be forgotten, and
that the intellectual and personal bond that has hitherto held us together will become
ever stronger. May the organon of intellectual-historical studies which you have created
with your Library continue to ask us questions for a long time. And may you continue to
constant confrontations of the sphere of art with that of philosophy and concepts of life.
In the introduction Panofsky first formulated his ideas on the study of content,
conceiving it as an integral and important element of the procedure of the art historian.
We have already seen that the final formulation of these ideas was expressed in the
form of statements in which Panofsky convincingly connected the system of fundamental
concepts of art hlstory, built up in the early stage of his development, with his new task
of the interpretation of content. The program came to fruition in the articles collected in
Studies in Iconologv and in several later papers, written in America.
Panofsky's interests spread out from already existing nuclei. His studies on Diirer's art
history led to several papers on Diirer's art, culminating in the monumental monograph
on the artist published in 1943. Panofsky's interest in Jan van Eyck did not die after he
Panofsky's desire to link ideas and forms, art and humanistic thought was expressed in
the masterly parallel of Gothic Architecture and Scholasticism (1948), which could be
described as an exercise in structural analysis; in his study on Galileo and his scientific
views in their relation to art (1954 and 1955); and in h s last article on Erasmus of
Rotterdam and the visual arts (1969). Titian studies, beautifully inaugurated by an article
in Studies in Iconology, became the subject of Panofsky's last book.37
He once wrote that the world of the art historian is composed of many islands. These
islands grow up and multiply, sometimes they connect to form extensive areas, recognized
and subjugated.38 The world of art on whch he ruled extended from antiquity to the
eighteenth century, although he undertook sporadic excursions also into the last two
centuries.39 Although he did not have a negative attitude towards contemporary art, the
movies seemed to h m the most important of the various artistic expressions of our
century. He thought of film as an extremely 'iconographic' art, the heir of the tradition
of symbolism and of the old meanings connected with images. It was not by accident that
he devoted to the movies a study highly appreciated even by specialists.
He was troubled by areas which could not be subjugated by logical, ordering thought.
33. Panofsky, 'Jan van Eyck's Arnolfini Portrait', Burlington Magazine, LXIV, 1934, 177ff.; The
Friedsam Annunciation and the Problem of the Ghent Altarpiece', Art Bulletin, XVII, 1935, 433ff.;
'Once More the Friedsam Annunciation and the Prpblem of the Ghent Altarpiece', ArtBulletin, XX,
1938, 429ff.; 'Who is Jan van Eyck's Timotheos? , Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes,
- --, 1949.
X11. - - .- , 80ff.
- - - -.
34. Pandora's Box, New York 1956, reed. 1962 and 1965.
35. Erwin Panofsky, 'Et in Arcadia Ego', Philosophy and Histoiy, Essays Presented to Ernst
Cassirer, Oxford 1936, 223-254; idem, A Mythological Painting by Poussin, Stockholm 1960.
36. Idem, Tomb Sculpture, New York 1964.
37. Idem, Problems in Titian, mostly iconographic, New York 1969.
38. Idem, Meaning in the Visual Arts, Garden City, N.Y., 1955,340.
39. 'The 'Tomb in Arcady" at the "Fin-de-Sikcle" ', Wallraf-Richartz Jahrbuch X X X , 1968,
287-304 (with Gerda Soergel-Panofsky,his second wife).
When the material of history did not yield to his expectations of intellectual order he
complained jokingly but also accusingly of 'die verdammten Originale'.40 It was of course
easier to put order into photographs and types. He was also troubled by Spain - which he
never visited, by the way - 'where everything is always possible', where there was no
certain point of reference. His erudition and his - to quote ~ o m b r i c h ~-' 'enjoyment of
the virtuosities of erudition' have led to his being considered a 'bookish' scholar who
worked in his study with books and photographs only. He was accused of a lack of
interest in form, in art itself. Everybody who knew this exceptional man knows how false
such an opinion is, and that this kind of criticism was altogether unjust. But it is certainly
true that his main interest was in meaning, which he saw everywhere and which he knew
how to reveal to others.42 In that he typified the basic interests of contemporary huma-
nistic studies, of which he was in several respects the precursor.
45. First formulated together with Saxl in 'Classical Mythology in Mediaeval Art', Metropolitan
Museum Studies, IV, 1933, 228-280. Developed in Studies in Iconology, New York 1939 and in
Renaissance and Renascences, Uppsala-Stockholm, 1960.
enthusiastically revived by the Renaissance, was ritual in origin and the specific connec-
tion of such longae coronae with funerary rites is attested by as venerable a source as the
Twelve ~ a b l e s . ' ~
A tendency to precision, reflected in his attempts to establish laws, predisposed that
master of philology to a love for the sciences and partisanship in favor of their application
in art history. His close collaboration with the Brussels Laboratoire Central and his
friendslp with its creator, Paul Coremans, were proofs of that attitude. A record of that
aspect of his interests is preserved in Panofsky's obituary of orem mans.^^ Panofsky
stressed the close link between technological and scientific analysis and the humanistic
investigation of a work of art. Experience aided by instruments is blind if not led by the
'aprioristic' humanistic considerations that properly precede it. Panofsky availed himself
eagerly and often of the results of laboratory investigation, using X-rays and technological
analysis not only in his research on Jan van Eyck, but also on Poussin and Titian.
Technology rewarded him for that recognition, confirming one of the beautiful analy-
tical investigations included in his study of Rembrandt's Danae of 1933. Panofsky de-
monstrated the originality of Rernbrandt's iconographic conception against the back-
ground of tradition. He reconstructed Rembrandt's 'ideal' transformation of the usual
type of Danae by the elimination of the golden shower in favor of rays of golden light, by
shifting the position of the old nurse and by modifying the pose and gesture of the
heroine. Technical investigations by Soviet scholars in the Hermitage, recently published
and interpreted by Youri Kousnetsov, have confirmed Panofsky's thesis, revealing un-
expectedly that the process reconstructed by the scholar was not 'ideal' but quite real:
traces of the original, traditional invention have been found in the lower strata of the
picture. They were changed by the master some dozen or more years after the execution
of the original version.48
Looking into the pictorial structure of the work of art, trying to reach its prima idea,
Panofsky was far from restricting himself only to tracing content, meaning and symbo-
lism. Like any inventor of a new method he was and still is looked upon in a one-sided
way. Opposing that current distorted appraisal, Panofsky's elder colleague, Walter Fried-
lander is reported by ~ o m b r i c hto~have
~ said: 'He is not as learned as all that, but he has
a wonderful eye.' Some of Panofsky's analyses of style, form and individual features of
artistic expression are among the best-known in the whole history of art. One such
masterpiece of critical and historical thought, based on an observation of Voge's, is
Panofsky's systematized and precisely formulated definition of the relation of volume
and space in Romanesque and Gothic sculpture, in his study on perspective.50 Another
one is his excellent characterization of Diirer's graphic technique;51 still another the
57. Abbot Suger on the Abbey Church o f St.Denis and Its Art Treasures, Princeton 1946,
Introduction. 1-37.
large horizon unobstructed by practical little problems of everyday life; but he has a
responsibility 'which devolves upon the tower dweller not in spite but because of the fact
that he dwells in a tower.' The humanist perceives social and political dangers faster than
others. His duty is to spy out calamities and to raise his voice to prevent them. And he
should not remain silent when it is necessary to speak.58
A humanist, in Panofsky's conception, rejects uncontrolled authority, but he respects
tradition, and in interpreting it he discovers lasting values in the human records which he
transmits to posterity. He analyzes signs and structures which emerge from the stream of
time, left behind by men of past times who expressed through them their thoughts. The
humanist is thus, fundamentally, an historian who 'endeavors to transform the chaotic
variety of human records into what may be called a cosmos of culture,' just as a scientist
'endeavors to transform the chaotic variety of natural phenomena into what may be
called a cosmos of nature.' The human world creates history by interfering with time,
opposing conscious records of human existence to its flow. The task of the humanist is to
decode these records, to understand their message and to transmit them further, to
resuscitate that which without the humanist would remain dead, destroyed by time. The
natural sciences, Panofsky wrote, attain a sum of knowledge called by the Latin word
scientia; the humanities attain learning, eruditio. The first is a mental possession, the
second a mental process. 'The ideal aim of science would seem to be something like
mastery, that of the humanities something like wisdom.'59
Within that cosmos of culture built up by the humanist - may I continue Panofsky's
argument - the art historian constructs the world of art. Although the number of ma-
terial objects, its components, remains static or grows slowly, the function, the structure
and the content of that world change, transformed by the mind of the scholar, who
constitutes them according to his own conception of the cosmos of culture, according to
the way in which his intellect and his imagination organize that cosmos.
The mind of the scholar is like a convex mirror which concentrates our sight on
specific objects, qualities, problenis and values. Some scholars present to us a foggy but
beautiful image; the image presented by others is out of focus but touching; still others
present an image of absolute sharpness, where we see each detail, but where the life of art
is extinguished.
Panofsky's mirror showed the cosmos of art in a way similar to that in which one of
the artists closest to him, Jan van Eyck, showed the real world in his pictures. In a
masterly way that painter solved the fundamental problem confronting his generation of
artists: to establish an equilibrium between the analytic and synthetic view, between the
general view of the forest and the individual trees. 'Jan van Eyck's eye operates as a
microscope and as a telescope at the same time.' Panofsky said.60 Likewise, the profound
vision of the great art historian penetrated the meaning and structure of the whole and of
the parts; it revealed great areas of thought and values, projecting a synthetic image of
them based on the most detailed possible analysis of the individual elements. In its
58. 'In Defense of the Ivory Tower', The Centennial Review of Arts and Science, I (N2), 1957,
111-112; 'Three Decades of Art History in the United States: Impressions of a Transplanted
European', [I9531, Meaning in the Visual Arts, 321-346.
5 9. Meaning in the Visual Arts, 25.
60. Early Netherlandish Painting, 18 2 .
panoramic view, composed according to the fundamental problems formulated by 'trans-
cendental analysis', Panofsky's vision took up everything in its ken with a strong feeling
for matter, objects, people and facts.
The cosmos of culture built by humanists changes; it is transformed and becomes
richer with the labors of the re-creating and creating hands of scholars. The art historian
changes that cosmos of art which existed before he came; he does it by discovering a new
beauty, a new function or a new content.
As a mass of material objects, the world of art could remain a mass of lifeless thmgs.
Organized by the thought of humanists into a cosmos, it comes to life and becomes a vital
power. Panofsky was one of the great architects of that cosmos. He has given life to it. He
left it quite different than he found it. In countless places of that immense land hls trace
has been so deeply engraved that facing works of art whose meaning he has revealed, it
would be impossible ever to forget that Erwin Panofsky fuit hic.