CREATING NATURE THROUGH SCIENCE AND ART: DISCOVERING THE MOUNTAIN IN THE 18TH CENTURY

Abstract

Nature has been approached in different ways throughout history, and many different sorts of relations have been established with it. Mountain experience gives evidence of this fact as, actually, it was only in the near 18th century that it was truly discovered -or created?- by science and art. This article deals with the representations of the mountain along the 18th century: from the ignorant prejudiced pejorative expressions which located evil in them, to the later depictions triggered by scientific preoccupations, which placed in them first the beautiful and then the sublime.