Guided Pathway
Panel 47
Nymph as guardian angel and as headhunter. Fetching of the head. ‘Homecoming from the temple’ as protecting the child in foreign places (Tobias images as votive images).
Here Warburg, juxtaposing images from Giotto and Donatello to Botticelli and Ghirlandaio, further widens and complicates the role of the nymph as symbol. A bearer of pathos formulas or “dynamograms,” she oscillates between creation and destruction in the form now as a guardian angel, now as a head-huntress (Judith). A third pathos formula is also ascribed to her: as Tobias, protector of children.