Aby Warburg’s Pentimento

Abstract

Aby Warburg’s1 first teaching engagement after his return from Kreuzlingen,2 the 1925 seminar on “The Significance of Antiquity for the Stylistic Change in the Italian Art of the Early Renaissance” (“Die Bedeutung der Antike für den stilistischen Wandel in der italienischen Kunst der Frührenaissance”), was also the first occasion on which he could claim the title of professor that he had been granted in absentia by the recently established University of Hamburg.3 The significance of this test can be understood both as a further confirmation of his full recovery4 and as the in-