Landscape Painting Between Art and Science

Claudia Mattos In 1807 the German naturalist Alexander von Humboldt published a small book entitled Ansichten der Natur (Aspects of Nature), which resulted from his more than five-year trip through the American continent. On the contrary to the thirty volumes of his Voyage de Humboldt et Bompland, published between 1805 and 1836 in Paris this small work from 1807 offered the reader what Humboldt understood as the synthesis of his experience, obtained through a collection of “Naturegemälde,” or “Paintings of Nature.” What Humboldt desired to reveal to the reader was a synthetic view (“Totaleindruck”), obtained by a detailed analysis of the multiple local phenomenon (including the human dimension) that composed the physiognomy (“Phisiognomie”) of each specific segments of our planet. For each of the climatic segments that he explored during his trip through the American continent he tried to compose a “painting,” or a “picture” that would have the power to put that segment of nature before the eyes of the reader, as lively as it appeared to him at the time of his voyage. Summarizing this intent, Humboldt wrote in the introduction to the first edition: