Guided Pathway

This sequence stages an unrestrained outburst of pathos – the polar opposite of the rather sober images discussed in the last sequence. Hence, thematically they are unambiguously related to the Massacre of the Innocents, the panel’s paradigm for such pathetic violence. The image by Matteo di Giovanni (#13) even represents the same iconographic subject; other examples, such as the etching after Leonardo’s Battle of Anghiari (#18), show similarly tumultuous scenes of battle and uproar.

Above all, Bertoldo di Giovannis bronze relief (#7.1-2) represents, in Warburg’s view, the incarnation of an “antique pathos formula”: the scene “shows how the artist, adopting and exaggerating [!] the motifs of a sarcophagus, understands and emphasizes the warrior-pathos of the Roman battle” [[Die Szene] zeigt, wie [der Kuenstler], die Motive eines Sarkophags aufnehmend und uebertreibend, auch das Kaempferpathos der roemischen Schlacht leidenschaftlich nachempfindet (Werke, 303ff)].

Yet tellingly, Warburg erroneously pieces the two parts of the relief together, confusing the right and the left part of the bronze plaque. Instead of having the scene framed by women at the respective margins of the relief, he amasses a group of three figures in the middle. The calm and centered, empty spaces prevalent in the images of the previous sequence are thus inverted and negated. Formally, this somewhat intrusive emphasis on the middle seems to prefigure the emergence of the ‘heroic singular figure,’ which I see as the central theme in the following sequence.

The remaining images heighten the impression that the previous sequence has been inverted, while at the same time they foreshadow the emergence of the “singular hero.” Specifically, the iconographic subject of the Reconciliation of the Sabines and Romans (#8), attributed to Bartolomeo di Giovanni by Bernard Berenson, whom Warburg followed in this respect, can be read as almost typologically related to the Massacre of the innocents, which features so prominently in the first sequence. Instead of depicting mothers safeguarding their children from murderous soldiers, here they are shown holding their babies up and presenting them to the approaching soldiers. Stylistically, however, it is an image in the same vein as the Massacre and the other battle scenes, which feature a mass of people in the foreground. A compositional bridge to the bronze relief by di Giovanni is established through the architectural setting with three iconic Roman buildings (the Pyramid of Cestius, the Coliseum, and the Constantine Arch), which occupy the center background and thus become the secret heroes of the scene.