Guided Pathway

Mise-en-abîmes

The timeless threat of the mob is then made explicit by two late fifteenth-century depictions (#9, 10), the first from Lübeck, the second from Florence, of the destruction of the host by Jews. These images of the “desecration of the host” [Hostienschändung] remind us that violence in relation to symbol practice is never far away. Here Warburg revisits the fears that haunted him and contributed to his mental breakdown in the tumultuous years just after WWI.