Pathosformel do luto: apropriação cristã das imagens pagãs de lamentação fúnebre

Abstract

The article aims to answer the call of the dossier The Classic and its Appropriations in the Christian Tradition through the notion of pathosformel of mourning, derived from the thought of Aby Warburg. In philological logic, the literary and visual sources of the pathosformel of mourning are articulated in Renaissance works reproduced in the Atlas Mnemosyne. The theatre of mourning appears here in a funerary urn and an ancient sarcophagus, which together with The Bacchae of Euripides, provide the link of the ancient with the themes of mourning under the cross, the deposition and burial of Christ in the Renaissance works of Donatello, Bertoldo di Giovanni and Giorgio Vasari, added to the bourgeois funeral lamentation in a relief of Andrea del Verrochio. As a conclusion, we see the spectrum of the expression of funeral lamentation in the art of the Renaissance, also noting the process of energetic inversion in which the maenads in orgiastic abandonment in pagan tragedy become Christian dolents. The study of the images reveals, finally, the power of the expressive formula to manifest the experiences of human commotion.

Keywords

• Aby Warburg
• Pathosformeln of mourning
• Atlas Mnemosyne
• Mourning in art