The pathosformeln of laughter and European engraving at the beginning of modernity

For Aby Warburg, a Pathosformel is a set of representative and meaningful forms, historically determined at the moment of their first synthesis, which reinforces the understanding of the meaning of what is represented by mobilizing the affective field available to a culture to accomplish the fundamental experiences of social life. Each Pathosformel is passed down through the generations that build the same horizon of civilization, and undergoes periods of latency, recuperation, appropriation and metamorphosis. The aim of this conference is to explore the Pathosformeln on which early European modernity based its representations of laughter and comedy. Late Renaissance painting will be explored, but the privileged field of study will be devoted to the production of funny and satirical engravings that were widely circulated in Italy and France in the ^sixteenth and ^seventeenth centuries.