Guided Pathway

While in the last sequence, the formation of a ‘heroic center’ was a rather tentative process – more a negation of what came before, than an affirmation – it gains traction in the present sequence. Yet, at first sight, the images shown here seem diametrically opposed to classical-pagan pathos. In two cases, none other than Christ is shown as the central hero who ostensibly overcomes such pathos. Represented here is the inversion from “the vanquished to the victor” [Besiegten zum Sieger], as Warburg describes it in preparation for his Hertziana Lecture of 1929 (GS VII, 385). The clearest articulation of this process is the image of Bellini’s Blood of the Redeemer (#11), where Christ is standing in front of marble reliefs showing bloody antique sacrifices. In Ghirlandaio’s painting of the Resurrection of Christ (#15.1), Christ is shown as the triumphant heroic individual, whilst the barbarous figures of the heathen guardians are cowering. Christianity thus celebrates its triumph over pagan antiquity: the ascending savior literally oversteps the boundaries of an extremely classicized sarcophagus. The figure of the hero becomes a dominating, uncompromisable and inimitable entity: an “Einzel-Heros” – a singular hero, depicted in postures and composition schemes that could be also associated with pagan heroes (#12).

This inversion is, however, an extremely delicate and pathos-filled process, at least as represented by Ghirlandaio’s Petrus Martyr (#9) where the ‘hero’ is at the same time unambiguously a victim. His fleeing fellow believer, again mirroring the other images of this sequence, takes the posture of the flinching guardian in the Resurrection of Christ. As typical for Warburg, these processes are not understood through historical typology. Even though Petrus Martyr is positioned to the left of the aforementioned Christ the Redeemer (thus in terms of a pictorial narrative, after it) no temporal succession is mirrored by this arrangement, for Bellini painted his panel some 25 years earlier than Ghirlandaio’s.

Inherent to all these singular heroes is the experience of physical and emotional suffering. Consequently, even the Christian heroes inherit something of antique pathos along with other characteristics of their heathen predecessors. Exemplary of this is Rodari’s Presentation of Christ in the Temple (#6), where Hercules, depicted in the altar relief on which the infant Jesus is sitting, is shown as a typological “figura Christi.” Note also the similarity of gesture between Christ the Redeemer and the commanding emperor in di Giovanni’s Massacre (#3).