Neptune as a conducting, 'serving God.' Whom I now. 'Virgil'

Meandering between the Southern and Northern Renaissances, Warburg here juxtaposes Italian and Dutch representations of a myth that was crucial to Virgil’s Aeneid, but that also speaks directly to his own attempts to find images where cosmographic-demonic forces are expressed in an artistic style that shows both formal restraint and individual expression. Building on panels 41a and 60, Warburg explores how late Renaissance and Baroque festive art employed a Virgilian Neptune to symbolize both order and violence.

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