Afterlife of Antiquity: Anton Springer (1825-1891) on the Classical Tradition

This essay deals with the early history of the notion of an ‘afterlife

of antiquity’ as a metaphor for thinking about antiquity’s continued

presence in later periods. Nachleben der Antike is often

associated with Aby Warburg and Renaissance art but was first applied to

the classical tradition of the Middle Ages by the Czech-German historian

Anton Heinrich Springer (1825-1891). His provocative essay on the

subject, first published in 1862, is a very early attempt to emancipate

the classical tradition from strait-laced classicism and to see it as a

historical problem. Springer’s approach anticipated some important later

trends in understanding antiquity’s continued presence and significance.

Afterlife of Antiquity returns something of the original

resonance to Springer’s idea and sheds light on its significance in the

history of scholarship. Recognizing some of the theoretical tensions

inherent in Springer’s discussion, the current work examines how the

notion of an afterlife of antiquity was embedded in the author’s wider

interest in artistic tradition and how he used it as a polemical concept

targeting both anti-classicizing Romanticist and traditional humanist

views of medieval culture. This issue of Studies in Iconology

also includes the first English translation of Springer’s Das

Nachleben der Antike im Mittelalter, a largely forgotten classic of

humanities scholarship, read and admired by Aby Warburg and Erwin

Panofsky.