Nymphs

In 1900, art historians André Jolles and Aby Warburg constructed an experimental dialogue in which Jolles supposed he had fallen in love with the figure of a young woman in a painting: 'A fantastic figure - shall I call her a servant girl, or rather a classical nymph? What is the meaning of it all? Who is the nymph? Where does she come from?' Warburg's response: 'In essence she is an elemental spirit, a pagan goddess in exile,' serves as the touchstone for this wide-ranging and theoretical exploration of female representation in iconography. In Nymphs, the newest translation of Italian…