georges didi huberman, confronti... - lensbased.net

Image as Rend 171it will be remembered, two heterogeneous iconographic series—onthe one hand, a physiological tradition pertaining to the theory of thefour humors, in particular the ‘‘Typus Melancholicus,’’ on the otherhand an allegorical tradition of the mechanical arts and the liberalarts, in particular the ‘‘Typus Geometriae’’—heterogeneous series thatare, he says, perfectly synthesized in Dürer’s engraving:Thus Dürer’s engraving represents a fusion of two iconographicformulae hitherto distinct: the ‘‘Melancholici’’ ofpopular Calendars and ‘‘Complexbuchlein,’’ and that of the‘‘Typus Geometriae’’ of philosophical treatises and encyclopedicdecorations. The result was an intellectualization ofmelancholy on the one hand, and a humanization of geometryon the other ...He [Dürer] depicted a Geometry gonemelancholy or, to put it the other way, a Melancholy giftedwith all that is implied in the word geometry—in short, a‘‘Melancholia artificialis’’ or Artist’s Melancholy. 76Starting from this synthetic principle, Panofsky’s analysis unfoldsin impressive and exemplary fashion—exemplary already because itis, to the very end, a true delight for the mind. The synthesis invokedprovides, in effect, a principle of interpretation that, in itself—in otherwords, in its generality—satisfies the mind, without neglecting to explaina great many iconographic details of the engraving. 77 As an interpretation,then, it is strong and persuasive, even incontestable. Itprovides a comforting feeling of closure, of something settled, ofsomething locked up; it impresses upon us the idea of a definitiveadvance in Dürer studies. A model of completeness, then, in whoseschema an iconographic transformation has been deduced, two heterogeneousseries having been the object of a kind of summation whoseresult is right before our eyes in the clarified figure of Melancholy.And the synthetic vision proposed by Panofsky seems all the morepowerful because it effects a veritable oriented synthesis, bringing tolight an extremely rigorous historical determinism: Melancholy andGeometry effectively collaborate in Dürer’s work in defining a newfield that is none other than that of art itself, art as the auto-teleology