Collected Item: “The Afterlife of Alchemy in the Warburg Institute Library’s Collection”
Contributing Organisation
Contribution Title
The Afterlife of Alchemy in the Warburg Institute Library’s Collection
Description (This can only be plain text, i.e. no links or bullet points.)
It will take more than a few visits for new readers at the Warburg Institute Library to get to grips with the library’s unique classification system. Spread across 4 floors, the library collection of over 360,000 volumes, is organised thematically, with each book shelved under one of four broad categories: ‘Image’ (history of art), ‘Word’ (language, literature and the transmission of texts), ‘Orientation’ (religion, magic and science) and ‘Action’ (cultural and political history). These four themes are the product of close collaboration between the library’s founder Aby Warburg and his colleague Gertrud Bing (who became director of the Institute in 1955). This thematic classification system is based on Warburg’s own art historical thinking, which displaced the traditional art historical studies of aesthetic judgement by putting greater value on the iconographical aspects of artwork.
Warburg and Bing’s classification system, which was heavily influenced by their research on the legacy of antiquity in medieval and early modern culture, placed artworks and iconography into the ‘cultural milieu from which they sprang.’ Warburg’s line of thinking has inspired art historical methodology ever since, and is indeed what inspires this blog, as we trace the iconography of the ‘hermaphrodite’ from its origin in classical myth, to the alchemical works of medieval and early modern Europe.
Warburg and Bing’s classification system, which was heavily influenced by their research on the legacy of antiquity in medieval and early modern culture, placed artworks and iconography into the ‘cultural milieu from which they sprang.’ Warburg’s line of thinking has inspired art historical methodology ever since, and is indeed what inspires this blog, as we trace the iconography of the ‘hermaphrodite’ from its origin in classical myth, to the alchemical works of medieval and early modern Europe.
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Hermaphrodite. Lux Lucens in tenebris. 1584. Warburg Institue.
Content Type
Blog
Subject (1)
Art and Architectural History
Subject (2)
History of Gender, Sex and Sexualities
Time Period
Ancient
Time Period (2)
Medieval
Contribution URL
https://historycollections.blogs.sas.ac.uk/2025/10/22/warburg-afterlife-of-alchemy/