Guided Pathway

Again, in his “Rape of Proserpina,” Rembrandt has frozen the action of this abduction, omitting, even postponing the consequences depicted in a more “monumental,” “staged” fashion in Knüpfer. This is another example of a “northern” mediation of a “southern” tradition, with Rembrandt inheriting the goods of the south, but converting them into a form that is both more moving and more deliberate. The German Elsheimer was active primarily in Rome until his early death; he was a friend of Rubens and influential on Pieter Lastmann (1583-1633), Rembrandt’s later teacher, as well as on Rembrandt himself. The Dutch Knüpfer thus returns the Italianate work of the Renaissance German (Elsheimer) to its proper home in the north where the Baroque Rembrandt successfully lays hold of this inheritance. The thematics of this cluster – seizing the opportune moment and enticing Fortune into one’s own sphere – comment on the urgency of reacting to the threat represented by the rest of the images of the panel, calling for a forceful resistance to the passions signified by Pluto’s violence, but warning that the means for controlling this violence must avoid being violent themselves. Warburg’s “Baroque” panel, conceived of between 1924 and 1926, thus offers an appropriate commentary on the challenges that faced Germany at the time.