Aby Warburg and the Journey of Images. “Hispanic-Arabic Practice” in the Mosque-Cathedral of Córdoba (Spain)

Abstract

The interest that Warburg shows in the transmission and translation of knowledge made during the reign of Alfonsus X the Wise (1221-1284), especially evidenced in the panels 21 and 22 of the Atlas Mnemosyne, places Spain in a crucial place on the 'road map' of cultural exchange between East and West. From the analysis of the Mosque-Cathedral of Córdoba, the present paper tries to show that these processes of transmission of themes and contents can also be applied, in a Warburgian clue, to architectural pieces, in which traces of Antiquity, transported by a sort of pathetic inertia in the conception of space, can be found. In this Mosque survive, among others, the iconography of Greek architecture, the condition of the field of Islamic architecture and the character of object of Renaissance architecture in a eurythmic 'mass of snakes in motion'.