Melencolia I

THE HISTORIANS whose writings were examined in the previous chapters—Riegl and Wölfflin—were explicitly concerned with the construction of critical systems. This chapter is about two historians who were not. Anton Springer and Aby Warburg represent a continuation of the tradition of Rumohr, both in their concern with philological detail and their integration of the study of art within the complexities of social life. …

Renaissance artists sometimes produced works intended primarily to serve as demonstration pieces. They may have wished to display both their skills in technique and craftsmanship, and their intellectual concerns and abilities. A noteworthy example of this type of work, from the very end of our period, is Parmigianino’s Self-portrait in a Convex Mirror (fig. 112). Vasari writes that Parmigianino took this panel, and others, with him to Rome, where Pope Clement VII and his court were …