Guided Pathway

The tension that animates the visual economy of this arrangement is then further heightened by the third claim on the viewer’s attention made by the cluster of four images originating in the bottom left of the panel, but reaching into its center (#6, #7, #8, and #9); each of these images examines representations of the goddess “Fortuna” and the need to lay hold of the fleeting moment in productive ways.
Interestingly, two of the four images in this bundle focus on laying hold of a moment of peace in the midst of or after brutal (civil) wars. Does this third visual claim, that signifies the productivity of “seizing” “opportunity” (Occasio) “by the Forelock,” function merely as an emblematic gloss on the “reasoned” achievement of the serenity of reflection indicated by both the diagonal and the vertical sequences? Or is it an allusion to the specific historical moment of intra-European conflict during which Warburg was designing the Atlas? Regardless of how we answer these questions, the rhythms and internal animation of Panel 70 produced by the balanced tension across these several lines of sight arguably resemble the complex dynamics that are often associated with Baroque style (see Christiansen, 9, 19), allowing us to read the panel itself as an exercise in Baroque visual organization.