For an Iconology of the Emotions: A Warburgian Reading of Poliziano’s <i>Stanze per la giostra</i>

ABSTRACT What is the relationship between image and text? Can we conceive of continuity between a visual image and a mental one? Is there an “opsis,” or a distinct category to frame the visuality within texts as a phenomenon of imagery? Furthermore, what epistemological role might this concept play in the comparative analysis of cultures, especially in the Mediterranean, a region marked by extensive intercultural exchanges and influences? This article proposes to approach these questions by applying Aby Warburg’s semiotic-cognitive theory to a reading of Angelo Poliziano’s poem of 1478. Central to Warburg’s approach is the concept of the pathosformel, the emotional formulas that elicit emotional responses to artworks and evoke and produce cultural memory. Poliziano’s poem lends itself well to a reading through this concept. Its publication opened its engagement with multiple forms of Renaissance visualities, or performances, including jousting festivals, Italian garden design, and Greek-inspired art forms adapted from fifteenth-century Florentine culture, offering a rich site for examining Warburg’s pathosformel in action at the intersections of visual and literary arts.