Nature and the European Spirit. The Aesthetics of Autonomous Natural Landscape in Painting

Abstract

The present article analyzes the spring, development and consecration as an autonomous painting genre of natural landscape in European painting, bringing examples from the works of the most representative masters of landscape. The seeds of the appearance of natural landscape are identified in the religious, philosophical and aesthetic thinking of the Early Middle Ages. Up to the moment of amalgamation with the humanist current, Christian symbolism included various directions of capitalization of the natural world through artistic language, thus generating conceptual and representational models in the field of visual arts. Starting with the Renaissance period, once painting techniques and representation methods started to develop, being oriented towards naturalism, the philosophy of nature generated in the European space pays its tribute to the general orientation - towards the knowledge and mastering of nature having as immediate usage the realization of progress. In this respect, nature has started to be regarded, in time, as a distinct reality, distant from the civilized world, thus the acute feelings of alienation and nostalgia towards the world of nature appear. The aim of this article is to underline these trends and the way they are reflected in the natural landscape up to the appearance of Impressionism.

Keywords

• landscape painting
• nature
• natural elements
• symbolism
• medieval
• renaissance
• history
• expressiveness