The seminar will follow the development of the domain of investigation called “iconology,” and which consists, in a first glance, simply, on the affinity between word and pictures. The history of this domain begins in the 16th century, with the treatise Iconologia, written by the humanist Cesare Ripa (1593). The opening part of the seminar will examine this work. At a second glance one realizes that iconology regards questions of morals and definitions of characters, a tradition of “types” and the making of an inventory of significations and narratives, that I will suggest calling “plastic genres,” that has been returning in the visual arts. We will ask ourselves, how come this treatise has reached serving as a foundation for the formation of a general method in the humanities.

We will thereafter proceed to get to know the wide-ranging and influential work of the art historian Aby Warburg (1866-1929), who contributed more than any other historian to the establishment of iconology as a domain in the humanities. We will learn about the establishment of the cultural-science library  (Kulturwissenschaftliche Bibliothek Warburg) in Hamburg, the “Mnemosyne” project and the “Pathos formula,” and will present the bonding between iconology to anthropology, cultural history and social psychology of the turn-of-the-century in the works of Warburg. We will ask ourselves, what is the basis of the relation between humanist renaissance iconology and iconology as a domain of knowledge of the 20th century.

We will proceed to discuss the iconologist followers of Warburg: Erwin Panofsky, Fritz Saxl and Edgar Wind, and we will also examine the “Warburg institute” in its later version in London, in the manner by which this school was presented in the works of Ernst Gombrich, Frances Yates and Raymond Klibansky. Finally, we will turn to discuss the later chapter of iconology at the end of the 20th century, and we will contemplate over the contemporary importance of Warburg and iconology in cultural and visual studies ,in history, philosophy and art (as in the works of W.J. T Mitchell, Giorgio Agamben, Didi-Huberman, and Bredekamp). We will also check whether alternative routes are still available for the continuation and the deepening of the iconological tradition.