Guided Pathway

Rembrandt’s famous painting (#11) offers a clear alternative to Moeyaert’s. His version is deliberately multi-directional, with the partially horizontal, partially downward thrusting movement to the right of Pluto’s chariot countered by the upward sweep of Proserpina body and arm as she struggles to wrest herself free. The result, also with its more naturalistic feel and embedding of the action deep in the landscape, is a more animated and more dramatic “northern Baroque,” a “truer” Dutch art than the one represented by Moeyaert. For all its dramatic tension, Rembrandt’s painting nevertheless also seems to stop the action of the story in its tracks, pausing just before the chariot will plunge beneath the earth. The effect is the creation of something like the possibility of a “space for reflection” in the split second in which we as viewers also pull up short, challenged by the sight of Proserpina’s determined and deliberate attitude of resistance to Pluto’s passions, which differs so dramatically from the gestures of Moeyaert’s nymph to consider the choice we must make between these two versions of the scene. The juxtaposition of the two images thus represents both a moral and a stylistic fork in the northern Baroque road. Warburg’s own preference is clear; the route through the panel that he maps out ends with the de Passe engraving of the serene basket-carrying woman, suggesting that the correct path is the one that ends in the vision of a female figure – and thus of a humanity – in control. The promise of Rembrandt’s version of the tale is fulfilled; by default the version of the northern Baroque represented by Moeyaert et al is not endorsed.