Guided Pathway

It is generally held that, for Warburg, the Renaissance signified the afterlife of antiquity’s facing down of the threat of the passions via sophrosyne, the guarantor of agency and freedom. Considering Panel 70 in the historical context of inter-war Germany allows us to ask the following question: If the Renaissance was to serve, for Warburg, as a model for how he and his modernity could secure and expand what Warburg famously called the “space of reflection” (Denkraum) – the “moment…before the clash of battle and the movement of action” merely “for its own sake” (Gombrich, 234) – what would the role of the “Baroque” (the apparent subject of panel 70) be in this project?