Aby Warburg

Introduction

Aby Warburg, born 1866 in Hamburg was a German art historian and cultural theorist. Warburg established iconology as an independent discipline within art history.

Contribution to Digital Humanities

Iconology is a model for interpret the general meaning of a piece of art, in a historical and cultural context. After Warburgs studies of art history, archaeology and history of religion in Bonn 1886, Warburg moved to Florence to study at the Kunsthistorisches Institut in Florence. There he got interested in applying the methods of natural science to the human science which led to the new method, iconology. Warburg created a metaphoric encyclopedia, Mnemosyne Atlas [1]. Although Warburg never finished the Mnemosyne Atlas, it is now digitalized and read all over the world [2].