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Prospect Perspective and the Evolution o the Landscape Idea

Denis Cosgrove

Transactions

of

he Institute ofBritish Geographers New Series, VoL 10, No. 1 (1985),

45-62.

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45

Prospect perspectíve and the evolutíon of

the

landscape

idea

DENIS COSGROVE

Senior

Lecturer

m Geography Loughborough University Lo.ughborough Leic. LEI 1 3TU

Revised MS receiued 4

May

1984

ABSTRACT

The landscape concept m geography has recently been adopted by humanislic writers because of ts hdistic and sub¡ec

llve tmpl cahons. BL ü the history of the landscape idea suggesls lhat ils origins lie m the renatssance humanists' search for

certainly rather than a vehtcle of indJviduiil sub¡echvity. Landscape was a 'way of seeing'

HcaJ

was bourgems. mdtvtdual

tst and related to the exercise of power

over

space.

The

basic theory and technique of the landscape w;¡y

of

seemg was

linear

perspective.

as

importan

for tfce

history of

tke

graphic

1mage

as printing

was for

that of

the

wrllten word. Alberti's

perspecttve

was

lke foundation of realism in art untü

the mneleentl:¡_

century, and

is

dosely related

by h1m

lo sonal

class

and spallal hterarchy.

t

employs the

same

geometry

as

merchant trading

and

accmmling, navigalion, land survey,

map-

ping and arhllery. Perspechve ts

f:trst

applied

in the

cily and lhen lo acounlry subjugated lo urban control and viewed

as

landscape

The evolutton of landscape palnting parallels that of geometry ¡ust

as

does the changing

soctal

relaltons on

the land in

Tudor, Stuart

and

Georgian

England. The v1sual

power

g1ven

by lhe landscape

way

of seeing complemenls

the real

power humans exert o

ver

landas properly. Landscape

as

a geographical concepl cannot

be

free

of lhe ideologtcal

ovedays of 1ts h1slory as a visual concept

unless

il subJeds landscape lo historical inlerrogation Only asan unexamined

concept m a geography whtch neglects ils own vtsual foundalions can

landscape be

appropriated for

an

antiscienlific

humamstic geography

KEY

WORDS:

Landscape, Geometry, Perspective, Prosped, Humanism, ldeology, Graphic image, Cartography,

Pamtmg, Seemg, Chorograpky, Morphology,

Survey, Space.

Geographical interest in the landscape concept has

seen a reviva in recent years. In large measure this is

a consequence of the humanist renaissance in

geography. Having enjoyed a degree

of

prominence

in the interwar years, Jandscape fell from favour in

the 1950s and 1960s. Its reference te the visible

forms of a delimited area to be subfected to mor

phological study (a usage still curren in the German

'landscape indrcators' schooi)

1

appeared subjedive

and too imprecise for Anglo-Saxon geographers

developing a spatial science. The static, descriptive

morphology of landscape ill-suited their

cal

for

dynamic fundional regions to be defined and

inveshgated by geographers contributing to econ

omic and social planning.

1

Recently, and primarily in North America,

geographers have

sought

to reformulate landscape

as a concept whose subjective and artistic

resonances are to be active] y embraced. They allow

for the incorporation of indiVidual, tmaginative and

creative human experience into studies

of

the

Tran<.

IHs/_

Br. C.agr. N.S. 10.45---62 (1985)

IS.SN

00lü l750

geographical environment, aspeds which

geographical

sc1ence

is daimed to have devalued at

best and at worst, ignored. Marwyn Samuels, for

example,

3

refers to landscapes as 'authored',

Courtice Rose thinking along similar lines would

analyse landscapes as texts,

4

and Edward Relph

regards landscape as 'anything I see and sense when

1 am out of

doors landscape

ts the necessary con

text and background both oF my daily affairs and

of

the more exotic circumstances of

my

life'

5

American

humanist geographers have adopted landscape for

the very reasons that their predecessors refected

it.

It

appears to point towards the experiential, creahve

and human aspects

of our

environmental relations,

rather than te the objedified, manipulated and

mechanical aspects of those relations_ It is the latter

against which humanism is a protest, which Relph

traces te the seventeenth century scientific revol

ution and its Cartesian division

of

subject and

objed.

Landscape seems te embody the holtsm which

modern humanists prodaim.

Printed in

Great

Britam



46

DENI5 COSGROVE

In

Britain a reviva[

of

landscape

is

also apparent.

Here the humanist critique

in

geography has been

less vocal. Recent landscape study has remained

doser to popular usage

of

the word

as

an arhstic or

literary response to the visible scene.

6

Among

British geographers ínterest

in

landscape was

stimulated partly by perception studies, particularly

the short-lived excitement over landscape evalu

ation for planning purposes which surrcunded the

1973

reform of

local government.

7

This led to

various mechanishc theories of landscape aesthetics

which, like Jay Appleton's ethclogically-founded

and influential 'habitat theory' of landscape,

8

had

little in common with the humanism prodaimed

in

North American studies

Epistemological divergence notw1thstanding,

landscape

is

again a focus

of

geographical interest.

With that interest has come a refreshing wlllingness

by geographers to employ landscape representatíons

i n

painting, imagmative literature and garden

design as sources for answering geographical

questions.

9

The purpose of this paper

is

to support

and promote that initiative while simultaneously

entering certain caveats about adopting the land"

scape idea without sub1ecting

it

to critica historical

examination

as

a term which embod1es certain

assumptions about relations between humans and

their environment,

or

more spedfically, society and

space. These caveats go beyond landscape as such

and touch upon aspects of the whole humanist

endeavour within geography.

Landscape first emerged

as

a term an idea, or

better stilL a

way of seéng

1

the externa world,

in

the fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries.

lt

was,

and it remains, a visual term, one that arase initially

out of renaissance humanism and its particular con

cepts and constructs of space. Equally, landscape

was, over much of its history, dosel y bound up with

the practica appropriation of space. As we shall see,

its connections were with the survey and mapping

of

newly-acquired, consolidated and "improved'

commercial estates

in

the hands of an urban

bourgeoisie; with the calculation

of

distance and

trajedory for cannon fire and of defensive fortifica

tions against the new weaponry; and with the

projection

of

the globe and its regions onto map

graticules by cosmographers and chorographers,

those essential set designers for Europe's entry

centre-stage of the world's theatre.

In

painting and

garden design landscape achieved visually and

ideologically what survey, map making and ord

nance chartlng achieved practically: the control and

domination over space

as

an absolute, objedive

entity, its transformation into the property of

individual or state. And landscape achieved these

ends by use

of

the same techniques as the practica[

sciences, principally by applying Eudidian geometry

as the guarantor of certainty in spatial conception,

organization and representahon.

In

the case

of

land

scape the technique was optical. linear perspeclive

but the principies to be learned were tdentical

to those of architedure, survey, map-making and

artillery science. The same handbooks taught the

praditioners

al of

these arts.

11

Landscape, like the practica[ sciences of the tallan

Renaissance, was founded upon scientific theory and

knowledge. lts subsequent history can best be

understood

in

conjunction with the history of sc1"

ence. Yet

in

its contemporary humanist guise within

geography, landscape

is

deployed within a radically

anti-scientific programme. Significantly that pro

gramme

is

equally non-visual. Recent programmatic

statements of geographical humanism (and critiques

of it) in the pages of these

Transactions

are notable

for their concentration on verbal, literary and linguis

tic

modes of communication and for their

alm"ost

complete neglect

of

the visual and its place

in

geography.

11

The attack on science is characteristic

of much contemporary humanist writing. But the

apparent lack of interest

in

the graphic image

is

more

surprismg. Consider the traditions of our discipline,

its alignment with cartography and the long-held

belief that the results of geographical scholarship are

best embodied in the map. Consider too the human

ists' prodaimed interest

in

images of

place and land

scape, and yet their remarkable neglect of the

v i s ~ l Indeed the dearest statement of the

centrality of sight in geography that 1 know

is

found

in

William Bunge's Theoret1ca/ Geography a

manifesto for spatial science: 'geography

is

the ene

predictive science whose inner logic

is

literally

visible'.

14

Bunge's book may be doser

in sp1rit

to

the original humanist authors of the landscape idea

than his contemporary humanist critics. The book

after al

is

a celebration of the certainty of geometry

as the constructional principie of space.

In fact,

the humanist attack on science and its

neglect of the visual image

in

geography are not

unconnected.

They

both result m sorne measure

from the lack of critica reflcction

on

the European

humanist tradition, from the conf abon of the spatial

theme

in

geography with a positivist epistemology,

and from a mystification of art and literature. All

three of these aspects will be illustrated

in

a brief



Euolution

of the

l n d s c p ~ i d ~ 47

e:xplorahon of the landscape idea as a way of seeing

in the European visual tradition, emphasizing that

tradition's most enduring convention of space rep

resentation, linear perspedive. In this exploratíon 1

shall justífy and elaborate the daim that the land

scape idea

is

a visual ideology; an ideology

all

too

easdy adopted unknowíngly ínto geography when

the landscape idea is transferred as an une:xamined

concept ínto

our discipline.

GEOMETRY PERSPECTIVE ND

RENAISSANCE HUMANISM

Traditionally the seven liberal arts of medieval

scholarship were grouped into two sets. The trivium

was composed of grammar, rhetoric and logic: the

quadrivJUm of arithmetic, geometry, astronomy and

music. While in its narrowest definition humanism

referred to studies

in

the trivium (the recovery,

secure dating and translation of te:xts), many early

renaissance humanists were equally fasdnated by the

material of the quadrivium, seeking a unity of know

ledge across all the arts.

5

The fifteenth century saw

revolutionary advances in both sets of studies,

advances which altered their organization, social sig

nificance and role in the production and commumca

tion of human knowledge of the world and our place

within it. In the arena of words, language and writ

ten expression the most striking advance was the

MedLHt r ~ y ~

Exrrjn5jc ~ y s

únu jc r ~ y

Gutenberg invention of movable type in the

1440s

6

In the quadrivium, always more theoretical,

the critica advance carne from the re-evaluatíon

of Euclid and the elevation of geometry t the

keystone of human knowledge, specifically its

appli<:ation to three-dimensional space represen

tation through single-point perspedive theory and

technique. Perspedive, the medieval study of

optics, was one of the mathemattcal arts, studied

since the twelfth-century reviva of leaming,

as

evidenced for e:xample

in

Roger Bacon's work.

Painters like Cimabue and Giotto had constructed

their pidures

in

new ways

t

achieve a greater

realism

i/ vera

than thetr predecessors.

17

But the

theoretical and practica development of a coherent

linear perspedive awaited the fifteenth-century

Tuscan Renaissance. That movement, despíte its

emphasis on dassical

te:xts,

grammar and rhetonc,

revolutionized spatial apprehensions

in the

west.

For the plastic and visual arts: paintíng, sculpture

and architedure, and for geography and cosmology,

al concemed with space and spatial relations,

it was from the quadrivium, from geometry and

number theory, that foun and

strudure

were

determined-even if their content was provided by

the trivium.

In 1435 the Florentine humanist and architect

Leon Battista Alberti published

his Del/a

Ptttura

On

FIGURE

l

The viwal t r i ~ n g l e as desc:ribed by Albert• (fwm

S<rrnuel Y

Edgertort k

n. - ,....i«ana

r O i s r o ~ e r y

of lmear pmpedme.

Harper and Row. London. 1975. reproduced with

permission)



48

DENJS OSGRO

VE

painfing ,

18

a work whose authority in artistic the"

ory endured beyond the eighteenth century when

Sir Joshua Reynolds, first president

of

the Royal

Academy, used it

as

the foundation for his lectures

en

pidorial composition, beauty and the hierarchy

of

genres.

In

Delia Hltura

Alberti demonstrates a

technique which he had worked out expenmentally

for constructing a visual triangle which allowed the

pamter to determine the shape and measurement of a

gridded square placed on the ground when v1ewed

along the horizontal axis, and to reproduce in pic

torial fonn its appearance to the eye. The con-

struzione leggitíma

gave the realist illusion

of

three-dimensional space on a two-dimensional sur

face.

This construdion, the foundation of linear p r ~

spedive, depended upon concepts

of

the vanishing

point, distance point and interseding plane. Alberti

describes it as a triangle

of

rays extending outwards

from the eye and striki.ng the

objed

of vision. There

are three

ki.nds of

ray

(Fig 1).

The

extrinsic

rays,

thus

circlmg the

plane--one

touch

mg the

other, endose

all the plane like the willow

wands of a basket

cage. and

make . the

visual

pyram1d.

It

Js hme forme to describe what the pyramid

is and how

rt

s constructeQ by these rays The

pyramid

is

a

figure

of a body from

wkose base

mes

are

drawn

upward, terrmnating at a

single

pmnt.

The

base

of

the

pyramid

is the plane which

s

seen. The

sides of

the pyramid are the rays which have

called

extrinsic.

The cuspid.

that

is the

point of

the pyramid, is

located

w1thin

the

eye

where the angle of the

quantity J.S.

19

The visual pyramid here described

is

familiar to

every geographer who reads Area although its

geographical significance may not always be fully

appreciated

(Fig

2). e need not concem ourselves

here with the details and accuracy of Alberti' s con

struction (except perhaps to note the defi.nition

of

pyramid, lifted diredly from

Euclid).

But we should

observe certain consequences that flow from

it.

First,

fonn and position

m

space are shown to be relative

rather than absolute. The forms of what we see, of

objeds

in space and of geometrical figures them

selves, vary wtth the angle and distance of vistan.

They are produced by the sovereign eye, a single

eye, for this

is

not a theory of binocular visJOn.

Secondly, Albert regards the rays of vis ionas hav

ing origin

in

fh

eye

ilself thus confirming its

sovereignty at the centre

of

the visual world.

Thirdly, he creates a technique which became

fundamental to

the

realist representation

of

space

and

the

externa world. The artist, through perspec

tive, establishes the arrangement

or

composition,

and thus the specific time, of the events described,

determines in both

senses the

"point of view' to

be taken by the observer, and controls through fram

ing the scope of reality revealed. Perspedive tech

nique was so effedive that the realist conventions

which

it

underlay were not fundamentally chal

lenged until the nineteenth century.

20

Realist representation of three-dimensional space

on a two-dimensional surface through linear per

spedive

direds

the externa wodd towards the

individuallocated outside that space.

It

gives the eye

absolute mastery over space. The centdc ray moves

in a direct line from the

eye

to the vanishing point,

to the depth of the recessional plane. Space ts

measured and calculated fwm this line and the rest

of what

is

seen constructed around the vanishing

point and within the frame fixed by externa rays.

Observation

FIGURE 2 A

seventeenth-century ·way

of seeing· (familiar to

readers

of Area



Evolutilm tJf tlu / m d s c a p ~

idl tl

49

FIGURE

J

Ambrogoa L:.renzetto Gaad

Gavemment

m the

C.ty'

detoul fwm

Palazw

Pubblico,

Soena

(d1tta O Boflml

V¡sually space is rendered the property of the

individual detached observer, from whose divine

location

it

¡s a dependent, appropriated object. A

simple movement of the head, closing the eyes or

turning away and the composition and spatial form

of objeds are altered or even negated. Develop

ments from the fifteenth century may have altered

the assumed position of

the

observer, or used per

spechve analybcally rather than synthetically as

Alberb and his contemporaries intended,

2

' but

th¡s

v1sual

appropriation of space endured unaltered.

Significantly, the adoption of mear perspective as

the guarantor of pidona realism was contemporary

with those other realist techniques of pamhng: mls,

framing and produdion for a market of mobile, small

canvases. In this resped perspedive may

be

regarded as one of a number of techniques which

allowed for the visual representation of a bourgeois,

rahonahst conception of the world.

The term bourgeois is appropriate, for mear per

spechve was an urban invention, employed initially

to represent the spaces of the city.

t

was hrst

demonstrated pradically by Alberti's clase associate.

Filippo Brunelleschi,

in a

famous experiment of 1425

when he succeeded in throwmg an tmage of the Bap-

tistery at Florence onto a can vas set up

m

the great

portal of the cathedral.

22

f

we

compare Ambrogio

Lorenzetti's well-known frescoes in the Palazzo Pub

blico at Siena

(Fig

3) which represent

good

govern

ment in the city, painted

in

the 1340s, wtth

Pe1tro

Perugino's representation of

Chnst

win

f St

Peter

the

Keys

f

the

Kingdom of

Heauen

(Fig

4)

painted on the wall of the Sistine Chape

in

1481, the

significance of perspective is clear. Lorenzetti shows

us

the c¡ty as an acbve bustling world of human

life

wherem people and their environment interad

across

a

space where unity derives from the acbon

on

1ts

surface.

These pre-perspecttve

urban landscapes show

not

so

much what the towns

looked

like as wh.at ¡t felt ltke

to

be m them. We get an tmpression of tfle towns not as

they mtght ha

ve looked

toa detached observer

from

a

fixed

vantage

pomt bu as

lhey mtght

have

impressed a

pedeslrian walkmg

up the

streets and

seemg

the bu,ld-

mgs from many d1fferent

sldes.

23

By contrast, in Perugmo's tdeal c1ty a formaL

monumental order is organized through preCise

geometry, construded by the eye around the axis

which leads across the chequerboard piazza to the

circular temple at its centre. The

p1azza,

geometrical

centre of this city, becomes in

th¡s

genre symbolic of

the whole city.

24

The hills and trees beyond rel:led

the same regimented arder as the urban architecture.

The people of the city, or rather withm 1t, for they

reveal no particular attachment to it, group them

selves in dtgni&ed and theatncal poses.

In

the 'ideal

townscapes' of the late fifteenth-century Umbrian

school of Piero della Francesca humans scarcely

appear. They have no need to for the 'measure of

man', so neatly captured in Leonardo da Vmci's an

in

a

C1rcle anda SqWJ.re ts written mto the measured



50

DEN S COSGRO VE

FIGURE _ Pietw Perugino' 'Chrlst giving to St Peter the Keys to the Kingdom of Heaven· Vatican City, Sistine Chapel (ditta O Bilhm

architectural fa¡;ades and propcrticned spaces of the

city an intellectual measure rather than sensuous

human

life.

2 5

This alerts us to the fact that perspec

tive and its geometry hada greater significance than

mere y its employment as a painting technique_

The mathematics and geometry assodated with

perspective were directly relevant to the economic

life of the tallan merchant cities of the Renaissance,

to trading and capitalist finance, to agriculture and

the land market, to navigation and warfare. Michael

Baxandall

6

has shown that merchants attending the

abbaca

or commernal school in their youth under

took a currículum which prov1ded the key skills of

mathematics for application

in

commerce: account

ing, book-keeping, cakulation of interest and rates

of return, determining proportions

in

joint risk ven

tures. One of the most commonly used tests sum

marizing the various merchant skills was Fra Luca

Padoli's

Summa di Arilhmelica

Geomelria Propor-

lione

l ProporfionaMti

(1494).

27

Hs

author, close

friend of Leonardo, acknowledges Albert[ as well as

Ptolemy and Vitruvius, and of course Euclid among

his

sources. While Fiero delta Francesca had himself

written an earlier text, De

Abbaco

Pacioli's was the

first complete manual of practica[ mathematics to

appear in printed book form, following only two

years after the first printed geometry and setting the

model for a collection

of

later texts. Pactoli devotes

the second book of the volume to geometry and the

measurement of d1stance, surface and volume. He

points out the value of such skills for land survey

and map making,.for warfare and navigation. From a

text like this Italian merchants learned to calculare

visually or 'gauge'

by

eye and using 1t the volume of

a barrel, a churn, a haystack or other regular shape, a

valuable

sk.ill

in

an age befare standard sizes and

volumes became the norm. This visual gauging was

regarded as a wonderful skill. In the words of Silvio

Belli wríting of visual survey

in

1573: 'certainly

it is

a wondrous thing to measure with the eye, because

to everyone who does not know íts rationale

it

appears completely impossible.'

28

lt has been

argued that the search for accurate visual techniques

of land survey held back Italian innovabons

in

instrumentation for many decades,

9

but the signifi

cance accorded to it indicates the importance

attached to the power of vision linked to intelled

through geometry, and how

the principies which

underlay perspective theory were the everyday

skills of the urban merchant



Evolulim1

of

lhe lam/scape idea

51

Not

al land survey was by eye. The astrolabe,

quadrant and plane table were in use and discussed

in the texts cited. For map makers and navigators

these were crucial instruments.

But

they required

geometrical calculation to make their results

meaningful. The ltalian renaissance was a carto

graphk

as

muchas an artistic event. Ptolemy whose

Almagest had always ranked

as

a key geometrical

source became known too for his Cosmografia

brought as a Greek text to Florence at the beginning

of

the hfteenth century. Alberti produced an accu

rately surveyed map of Rome, Leonardo one of

Pavia. These were regarded

as

revelatíons of the

rabona arder of created space produced by the

application

of

geometry. Perhaps more

dosely

related lo landscape painting was the pianta prospet-

twa the bird' s eye view of dties which became so

popular at the

tum

of

the sixteenth century. Among

the best known of these is Jacopo de 'Barbari's 1500

map of Venice, like so many of its type as much an

ideological expresswn of urban dominion as an

accurate rendering of the urban scene

3

The view

point for these maps

is,

significantly, high above the

city, distan , commanding, uninvolved. Jt

is

the same

perspedive that we find in Bruegel' s or Titian' s land

scapes, panoramas over great sweeps of earth space,

seas, mountains and promontorles.

Linear perspedive organizes and controls spatial

coordinates, and because it was founded in

geometry

it

was regarded as the discovery

of

inherent properties

of

space itself.

31

In this, perspec

tive hada deeper cultural significance, as Pollaiuolo's

bas-relief of Prospeftiva

as

a nubile goddess, sculp

ted on the tomb of Sixtus

IV

in 1493 might suggest.

One of the earhest and most widely influenhal of the

Ren.aissance thinkers, the Paduan humaníst Nicholas

of Cusa, theologian, cosmographer and mathema

tician, challenged the Aristotelian scholastic world

view in his De 0Gda [grnJrantia of 1440 by appeal

lo the Eudidean geometry.

32

Rejeding the idea that

there could be no empírica knowledge of the

spiritual sphere by men confined to the temporal,

and thus no

dired

knowledge of God, Cusanus pro

claimed the significance of indired evidence

in

a

neoplatonic sense He pointed out that in the

infinitely large cirde the circumference and tangent

comcide in a straight line while the infinítely small

circle was a point. This is the foundation of a con

tinuous geometry relating

al

Eudid's separate prop

ositions and giving forros a qualitative

as

well

as

quantitative charader.

33

Equally,

it

gave support to

Cusanus' argument for a

pattem

running through aiJ

creation in which

God

was to be found at the centre

and circumference

of

the cosmos. A regular

geometry proceeding from the perfedion

of

the

cirde underlay the strudure of

both

spiritual and

temporal worlds. Geometry and proportion took on

therefore

a

metaphysical significance, ene that was

given even greater weight with the translating and

misdating

of

the CGrpus

Hermeticum

by Marsilio

Ficino in 1464 and the introduchon of cabalist num

ber theory by Pico della Mirandola in 1486.

34

The

cirde, the golden sedion, the rule

of

threes, al

of

them part and paree of the intelledual and practica

baggage of the Renaissance merchant, sailor,

surveyor and chartmaker, could be related to the

most erudite metaphysical speculabon. Above all

it

was the human intellect, human reason, that could

apprehend this significance and seek the certaíntíes

of geometry.

And

the human body, created

in

the

image and likeness of God. replicated

in

microcosm

the divine proportions, as Leonardo's human figure

endosed in divine geometry makes clear. At the

centre of Renaissance space, the space reproduced

by perspective, was the human individual, the

measure

of his

world and its temporal creator and

controller. Like God, the microcosm, man, also

appears at the drcumference

of

Renaissance space,

high above the globe, seeing ít spread befare the

sphere of his eye in perspective on the map, the

piant.a

prospeftiva

or

the panoramic landscape.

The

authonty

attributed to man

35

was exercised

in a hierarchy that was at once spatial and sociaL a

hierarchy

in

which the landscape idea played a signi

ficant, if subordin.ate role. Referring to architedure,

the 'queen of the arts', Albert[ discusses the decor

aban

suitable lo different buildings:

Borh pamtings and poelry vary m kind. The type that

porlrays the deeds of great men. worthy of memory.

differs

from lhar whtch describes the habils

of

prívate

citizens

and again

from

that

depictmg

the

life of

the

peasants.

The

ilrst.

which is

majestic in character, shGu d

be

used

for

public buildmgs and the dwe lings of the

greal. while the last mentioned would be suilable for

gardens,

for

tlts the mosl pleasing

of all.

Our

mmds

are

cheered beyond

measure

by

he

sight

of

painttngs,

depicting he delighlful counfryside, harbours, físhing,

hunhng, swimming.

he

games of shepherds-flowers

and verdure.

36

The reference is to the genres of painting which

replicate those of poetry: from the most elevated,

stGria (epic or historie events), to portraiture

and domesfic scenes, and finally the least serious,



52

DENIS COSGROVE

landscapes and rural scenes_ Geographically, the

centre of the city, where public buildings and

monuments adorn the main piazza,

is

the setting for

great men and should record their epic deeds. In the

urban palaces and prívate houses of the patriciate

appear portraits and family groups while

in

the

countryside, far away from and subordinate to the

power at the heart

of

the

city

the peasants- beasts

cf the villa'

-disport

themselves in thetr rude

manner, while gentlemen relax, follow apprcpriate

leisurely pursuits and enjoy the beauty of nature .

:l

[n the theatre, whose auditorium design, spatial

arrangements and stage sets were exercises

in

applied geometry and perspedive construdion

even cosmological theory

38

this hierarchy was

carefully articulated for the three forms

of drama.

T ragedy was played against seHings of the ideal city

and

1ts

monumental architedure. romance

in

the

palace interior or closed garden, and comedy or farce

in the sylvan setting of a rural landscape. Control

and

pcwer

radiate

down

a socio-spatial h1erarchy

alcng the crthogonal lines reaching cut frcm the

piazza of an ideal

c1ty

to transed recognizably

dtstind landscape types.

LANDSCAPE PERSPECTIVE NO

RE LIST

SPACE

lt

is known that the first artist references te spedfíc

paintings as 'landscape' (pacsaggio) come frcm early

sixteenth-century taly One of the most often

quoted

is

that from 1521 referring to Giorgione's

Tempi Sfa

39

Both Kenneth Clark and

J

B. Jackscn, in

discussicns

cf

landscape in this period, sense a rela

tionship between the new genre and ncticns of

authority and controL Noting the appearance cf

"reahst' landscape in upper taly and Flanders, the

second mercantil-e core of early modern Europe.

Clark daims that

it

refieded 'sorne change

in

the

adicn of the human mind which demanded a new

nexus

of

unity, enclosed space.' and suggests that

this was conditioned by a new, scientífic way of

thinkmg abcut the world and an 'increased control

of nature by man'

40

Jackscn refers to a widespread

belief that the relationship between a social group

and its landscape could be

se

expertly ccntrolled as

to make appropriate a comparison between

envircnmental bonds and family bcnds,

41

thereby

allcwing landscape to become a means cf moral

ccmmentary. Perspedive was the central technique

which allowed this control to be achieved in the new

paíntíngs

of

landscape. In Lecnardo's writings the

importance of perspedive is in no doubt: 'for

Leonardo, as for Albertí, painbng is a science

because cf its foundation on mathematical perspec

tive and

on

the study

of

nafure .

4

Leonardo himself

wrct-e that

Among al the studtes of natural causes and reasons

hght

chiefly

delights the beholder-and among he

great features of mathema ics the certainty of its dem-

ons rations

is

what pre-eminen ly

tends

te elevate he

mmd of the

inves tgator_

Perspec tve must therefore

be

preferred lo

all

the discourses and systems

of

human

leammg.

43

Geometry is the source of the painter's creative

pcwer, perspedive its techmcal express10n. For

Leonardo, perspedive 'transfcrms the mind cf the

painter into the likeness

of

the di vine mind, for with

a free hand he can produce different beings, animals,

plants, fruits, landscapes,

cpen

fields, abysses and

fearful places'.

44

Linear perspedive provides the cer

tainty of our reprodudions cf nature in art and

underlies the power and authority, the divine

creativity

of

the artist.

Leonardo, despite these ccmments and h1s map

ping experiments, is not remembered as a landscape

painter, although

his

geographical contributions

were by no means meagre.

45

Mere interesting from

this point of view is the work of the Venetian

Christcforo Sorte

in

the later Renaissance_ Sorte was

a cartographer and surveyor, employed by the

Venetian republic as one

of

the 'periti' or land

surveyors and valuers cf the Provveditori scpra i

beni inculti, the redamation office which supervised

marshland drainage and dryland irrigaticn in the

second half of the sixteenth century. He was a skilled

cadographer whose maps are regarded as being

among the finest records of the Venetian state at this

time (Fig

5).

46

Sorte was also a landscape painter

who has left usa remarkable treatise on

h1s

art

47

in

the form

of

a reply toa letter from a Veronese noble,

Bartolomeo Vitali, requesting information on how

Sorte had succeeded in reproducing

the true

green

of

tke pastures,

the variety of

the

flowers,

he

range of

green

plants, the density of

the

forests,

the

transparency

of

water

the

distances af

pnspectives

48

The work that Vitali refers to is sadly unknown

But

frcm textual evidence tt is clearly part-map

part-landscape drawing: a chorcgraphy in plan and

perspective of the province of Verona, carefully



54

DENIS COSGRO VE

coloured and consídered a work of art. Sorte, in his

reply, modestly refers to himself

as

mere[

y

a practi

ca[ roan

(un

puro prattico) rather than a philosopher

or an artíst. He is a chorographer But his chorogra

phy

ís securely based

in

science. From Ptolemy's

Cosmograpfua he has leamed how to organize

hts

map according to the four cardinal points, and he has

'located the said chorography with its true relations

and distances on the map'.

49

Once these geometrical

essentials are completed he can díscuss the colouring

of the map. Colours are used partly to avoid too

many words, partly to produce a representation

of

reality. Thus different shades of green a lows us to

recognize fertile and ínfertile lands and forests. The

careful and observant use of colour helps

us

to

'create the image of a landscape {paese on canvas in

gouache and according to perspedive', lndeed the

text ends with a discourse on perspedive,

of

which

Sorte describes two methods, one theoretical

founded in distance and angle measurement and a

second, more pracbcal, for which he employs amir-

ror marked with a graticule. For Sorte perspedive is

'the foundation of painting' without which nothing

can be painted of any value. And this skill of paint

ing is itself fundamental

t

the work of the chorogra

pher: 'niuna potra esser corografo, che non sappia

disegnare o dipingere'.

50

The relationship between perspedive and land

scape could scarcely be more clear than in Sorte" s

text where the practica surveyor and topographer

offers one of the earliest treatises on the art

of

paint

ing landscape. The early twentieth-century art

historian Bernard Berenson agreed with Sorte. 'Space

composition' he wrote, is the 'bone and marrow of

the art of landscape'. Referring to the early Umbrian

landscapists Pietro Perugino and Raphael, Berenson

claimed their triumph ay less in the subtle modelling

of

atmosphere and elaborate study

of

light and

shade such as we find

in

the Venetians than

in

the

technique of space composition. Although Berenson

speaks

of

this ability to compase space

as 'a

structure

of feeling' rather than a specific technique based

on

sophisticated geometrical theory, he

is

well aware of

that sense of power and control over space that the

spedator derives from the perspective organization

of landscape paintlng:

m suck pidures, kow free y one breathes-as i a load

had just been lifted fwm one"s breast. how refreshed,

how noble, how potent

one

feels.

51

No longer is the spedator delighted only by surface

pattem

and the arrangement of forms across two

dimensions, but rather exhilarated by the potency of

extension in depth, a controlled, axial entry into the

pidure plane achieved by linear perspective. This

is the achievement ot a l the great landscapists,

of Bruegel's and Titian's cosmic panoramas,

of

Giovanni Bellini's carefully located figures and

modulated bands of light and shade, of Claude's

stage-like wings, coulisses and recessional planes

along the axis, and of

J

M. W.

Turner himself

Pro

fessor

of

Perspective at the Royal

Academy who

once daimed that 'without the aid of perspedive, al

art totters on its very foundations'.

52

Perspective then ts critica to landscape painting,

and

it

is significant, if beyond the scope of this paper

t explore in detail, how

dose

are the hístorical

parallels between the great advances

in

perspective

geometry and innovations in landscape art. Alberti

wrote

his

treatise at the time

of

Van Eyck and the

earliest [talian landscapists; Pelerin. who refined the

distance point construction in 1505 was the con

temporary of Leonardo and Giorgione; Vignola who

showed in 535 that Pelerin and Alberti's construc

tion produced the same geometrícal results wrote at

the time of Titian's and Bruegel's maturity and was

published in the productive years of Paolo Veronese

and Jacopo Bassano. The great advances of Pascal

and Desargues in the I630s in establishing the con

vergence

of

parallellines and showing their apparent

visual convergence to be a necessary consequence of

point, me and surface definitíons devoid of Eudidian

metrical assumptions, coincide with the Dutch

supremacy in optics and its great school of land

scape. Geometrical continuity and new transform

ational rules between geometrical forros are

propounded in a treatise by Poncelet written at the

same time that Constable and Turner were exploring

light and atmosphere in landscape in ways that

implidtly challenged the dominance

of

linear per

spedive for space composition. Finally

van

Staud in

the 1.840s eliminated metrical ideas from perspective

geometry, revealing the possibility

of

a

non-Eudidian space and n-dimensional conshuc

tions.

His

work was completed by F. Klein in 1875 a

little befare modernists eliminated perspedive from

space composition and at the same time

as

the first

patents were taken out for modern photographic

printing techniques.

53

LANDSCAPE PROSPECT ANO VlSUAL

lDEOLOGY

While it is not suggested that perspedíve stands

alone

as

the basis for realism and landscape painting



Euo/ufion o

h /andscape

idea

55

t he

demand for il vero

in

Renaissance art was a The ltalian word for perspedive

is pro:;pdliua

U

complex social and cultural product

54

it is

argued combines senses which

in

modem English are dis

that the realist illusion of space which was revol- tind: 'perspective' and 'prospecf. Perspedive itself

utionized more by perspedive than any other tech- has a number of meanings

in

English, but as the pro

nique was, through perspective, aligned to the jedion of a spahal image onto aplane it first appears

physical appropriation of space as property, or ter- in

the

later decades of the sixteenth century. This

ritory. Surveyors' charts which located and usage is

found for example

in

John Oee's Preface to

measured individual estates, for example in England the first English translahon of Euclid (1570). Oee, the

after the dissolution of monasteries; cartographers' Elizabethan mathematician, navigational instrument

maps which used the graticule to apportion global maker and magician,

links

this use of perspedive to

space, for example the line defined by Pope painting

in

a classically renaissance way:

Alexander VI dividing the new world between

Portugal and Spain; engineers' plans for fortresses

and cannon trajedories to conquer or defend

national territory, as for example Vauban's French

work or Sorte's for the Venetian defences against

Austria;

al

of these are examples of the application

of geometry

t

the production of real property.

55

They presuppose a different concept of space

ownership than the contingent concept of a feudal

society where land

is

locked into a web of interde

pendent lordships based on

fief

and

fealty_

The new

chorographies which decorated the walls of six

teenth-century council halls and signaría palaces,

56

and the new taste for accurate renderings of the

externa world which gradually moved from back

ground to main subjed matter, were both organized

by perspedive geometry and achieve aesthetically

what maps, surveys and ordnance charts achieve

pradically. landscape

is

thus a way of seeing, a com

position and struduring of the world so that it may

be appropriated by a detached. individual spedator

to whom an illusion of order and control is offered

through the composition of space according to the

certainties of geometry. That illusion very

frequently complemented a very real power and

control over fields and fanns on the part of patrons

and owners of landscape paintings.

5

? Landscape dis

tances us from the world

in

crihcal ways, defining a

particular relationship with nature and those who

appear

in

nature, and offers us the illusion of a world

in

which we may partícipate subjectively by enter

mg the pidure frame along the perspectiva axts. But

this is an aesthehc entrance not an active engage

ment with a nature or space that has

its

own life_

lmplicit

in

the landscape idea is a visual ideology

which was extended from painhng

to

our relation

ship with the real world whose 'frame and compass'

Eli:zabethans so admired and which Georgian English

gentlemen would only approach through the langu

age of landscape painting or the optical distortion of

their Claude Glass.

great

sktll

of Geometne, Arithmetik. Perspedive and

Anthropographie

wtth

many

otker particl.(l.ar arts hath

the Zographer

need

of for hi s perfedion. . Tkis

mechanical

Zographer

(commonly called

rhe

Painter) is

marvelous in his skit

and

seemeth to

kave

a dtvine

power_

58

Dee is writing at the opening of a decade which will

see Saxton's county maps published and when a new

'image of the country' was being produced

as

an

aspect of Eli:zabethan patriotism, using maps and

lands-eape representations as instruments of Tudor

power and nationalist ideology.

59

By 1605 we can find reference to perspedive as a

fonn of insight, a point of view, as

in

the phrase 'get

ting something into perspedive', or seeing it in its

/rue

light, its

corred

relationship with other things_

Many

of the early references quoted

in

the Oxford

English Oidionary to support the definition of per

spedive

as

a drawing contríved to represent true

space and distance relations refer to landscape and

garden layout.

6

The visual ideology of perspective

and

of

landscape

as

ways of seeing nature. indeed a

true way of seeing, ts certainly current in the English

Renaissance_ When we tum

to

the word

prospecl

we

find t

used to denote a view outward. a looking for

ward in time as well as space. By the end of the six

teenth century prosped carried the sense of 'an

extensive or commm1dm g sight or view, a view of

the landscape

as

affeded by one's position'.

61

This

neatly reflects a period when command over land

was being established on new commercially-run

estates by T udor endosers and the new landowners

of measured monastic properties. That command

was established with the help of the surveyors'

'malicious craft', the geometry which wrote new

perspectives across reallandscapes.

62

By the mid-seventeenth century 'prospecf had

become a substitute for landscape. The command

that it implied was

as

much social and political

as



56

DENIS

OSGROVE

FIGURE

6. Rousham garden, Oxfordshire.

Th.e Bowlmg

Green: a

Claud1an

landscape by William

Kent

spatial. Commanding views are the theme of

country house painting, poetry and landscaping

throughout the seventeenth and eighteenth cen

turies Fig

6 , anda

number of recent studies ha ve

revealed the degree to which landscape was a

vehide for social and moral debate during this

period

6

The

prospeds

designed for men like the

Duke of Marlborough at Blenheim who had made

their fortunes from war had an appropriately mlli·

tary

charader

in their blocks

of

woodland set against

shaven lawns. This no doubt reinforced the image of

power and authority, at least for those who wielded

tL

The survey skills whKh

calculated

and laid

out

these andscapes produced fortification p ans, ord

nance charts and campaign maps

as we

as serving

the requirements of the parliamentary enclosers. lt is

not surprising that

in

his critique of emparkment and

andscaping Oliver Go dsmith

in The Deserled Vd-

/age

should descnbe the park that has replaced

Sweet Auburn

in

military metaphors: 'its vistas

stnke,

its

palaces surprise'.

In

those great English

andscape parks prosped also signified the future.

Control was

as

much temporal as spatiaL

The1r

clumps of oak and beech would not be seen in full

maturity by those who had them planted, but

security of property ensured for later scions of the

family

tree

the prosped on inheritance of command-

ing a

fine

view.

The

prosped of the

eye

was equa y

commerdal, such woodland in the andscape was an

economic investment. lt represented prospecting m

wood, as those who scoured the landscape m

the

fol-

lowmg century seeking gold would be descnbed.

6

LANDSCAPE ANO THE HUMANIST

TRADITION IN GEOGRAPHY

Landscape comes into English language geography

primarily from the German

landschafl

Much has

been written about the

fad

that

the

German word

means area, w¡thout any particularly aesthetic or

artistic, or

even

visual connotations.

65

My

own

knowledge of German usage is too

meagre to

con

test this claim, but sorne comment is warranted. In

Humbo[dt's

smos,

regarded by many

as

one of

the

two

pilla(S upon which German geography was

erected, a whole

sedion

is devoted to the history of

the ove of landscape and nature

up

to the time of

Goethe

whom

Humboldt greatly revered and who

was a majar visual theorist

6 6

English geographers

could ha ve taken their landscape concept from John

Ruskin and discovered a usage not very different

from Humboldt's.

67

More directly,

Landschaft in

the

work of Hettner and Passarge, the main sources for

English language geographers like Carl Sauer and



Evolulwn of

lhe

lam/scape i d e ~

57

R

E. Oickmson of the landscape concept, was

confined to the study of

visible

forms,

it

was the

eye

whkh

determined their selection and indusion.

Moreover, Lam/5chaft as Sauer' s

das sic ¡ p r -

'Morphology of

Landscape'-makes

dear.

6

was to

be studied by the chorological method and

its

results

transmitted descriptively in prose and above

al

by

the map. Given what we know of the tradttional

links between cartography, chorography and land

scape painting

is

difficult to accept the argument

that

Landsclw.ft

sustained

in

German geography the

entirely neutral sense of area or

region

as its English

and American devotees of the inter-war period

claimed. Certainly there ts a thread of interest in

German geography for

Gesta/lende Geografie

study of aesthetic holism

in

landscape, that runs

from Humboldt through Ewald Banse to Gerhart

Hard.69

Anglo-Saxon geographers introducing landscape

as

an areal concept were not unaware of the prob

lems caused by its common usage as a painters' term.

But in the interests of a scientific geography they

were keen to distance their concept of landscape

from that of painters or literary writers; poets and

novelists. Thus the links between landscape, per

spedive

and the control of space

as property-the

visual ideology common to landscape painting and

cartography-have

gane unrecorded and unex

plored by geographers. This

is

particularly surpris

ing toda y when we are far dearer about the role that

geography has played

in

the evolution of the

bourgeois concept of individual and national

space.

70

Landscape remains part of our unexamined

discourse, to be embraced by humanist geographers

as a concept which appears to fulfil their desire for a

contextua and anti-posítivist geography. Whereas

in the past landscape geographers active y distanced

their concept from that of common usage, today

writers like Samuels, Meinig, Wreford Watson and

Pocock take the opposite position.

71

In both periods

of its popularity

in

geography landscape as an art

istic concept

is

given the role of potential or actual

challenger to geographical science. Marwyn

Mikesell's daim {with its interesting reference to per

spedive} is an ex.ample of this view:

th.e

perspedive of

th.e

geograph.er is not that of the

mdividual observer located

ata

particular pomt on the

grmmd. The geographer's work entails

map

interpret

ation

as well as direCf Ob""ser"vation.-and.he.makes

no

dts

tinction between

foregrmmd and b a c k g r o u n d ~ t h f .

landscape

of th.e

geograph.er

is thus very

different from

th.at

of

the painter. poet

or

novelist. By

means of sam-

pling, survey

or

detailed

inventory,

he achieves the

comprehensive

but

synthetic perspechve

of the hehcop

ter

pilot or balloomst

armed

with maps.

photograph.s

anda

patr of binoculars.

72

The distindion seems spurious,

it is

drawn at the

leve of technique rather than aims and ob)ectlves.

Given what we know of Leonardo's detailed notes

on how light

falls

upon different rack fonnations. or

of Constable's inventaries of

doud

formations and

atmospheric ccnd1tions, of Turner's strappmg hlm

self

toa sh1p's

mast the better to observe the move

ment of the storm, or of

Ruskin"s

instrudions to

painters to rival the geologist botanist and

meteorologist

in

their knowledge of topography,

geology. vegetation and

sk1es,

it

is

likely that had

they had access to the battery

of

techniques with

whKh Mikesell would ann his geographer they

would all have made good use of them. Certainly

Christoforo Sorte would have revelled

in

their use to

improve

his

'chorographic art', and both Bruegel and

Titian produced landscapes that have a perspective

far

above the ground and

are

as comprehensive and

synthetic as Mikesell could wish

for.

Above

all

the

geometry which underlay perspective, the construc

tional principie of landscapes, and which gave

cer-

tainty to their realism, is the same geometry which

determines the graticule of Mikesell's maps and

delimits the boundaries or localf's

the

elements of his

geographicallandscapes.

Beyond the issue of specific techniques

there are

also methodological similarities between landscape

in painting and

in

geography. similarities which have

allowed geographers to adopt unconsciously some

thing of the visual ideology integral to the landscape

idea.

Like

other area concepts

in

geography, regían

or pays

landscape has been closely associated

in

geography with the morphological methodn Mor

phology

is

the study of constituent forms, their

isolation, analysis and recomposition into a syn

thetic whole. When applied to the visible forms of a

delimited area of land this

is

termed

chorology.

7

The

result of a landscape chorology

S

a stabc

pattern or picture whose interna relations and con

stituent forms are understood, but which lacks pro

cess or change. Indeed, one of the criticisms of

chorology

in

the post-war years was preCtsely that

t

failed to explain the processes giving

rise

to the

forms and spatial relations it described.

The

idea of

change, or process, is very difficult to incorporare

into landscape painting, although there are certain

conventions

like

the memento morí or the rumed



58 DENfS COSGROVE

building which occastonally do so.

But

one of the

consistent purposes of landscape painting has been

to presentan image of arder and proportioned con"

trol, to suppress evidence

of

tension and conflict

between social groups and within human relations in

the environment_ This

is

true for the villa landscapes

painted

by

Paolo Veronese in the strife-ridden

Venetian countryside of the later sixteenth century,

t was equally true for the arcadian image of English

landscape parks in the Georgian period of rural con

flid and transfonnation. In this sense the alignment

of geographical landscape with morphology serves

to reproduce a central dimension of the ideology of

the landscape idea as it was developed in the arts.

Despite appearances the situation

is

little different

in much

of

contemporary geographical use

of

land

scape. Too often geographical humanists make the

mistake of assuming that art and within it, landscape.

are to do with the subjective, somehow standing

against science and its prodaimed obJedlve certain

ties.15 The subjedivism of art is a recent and by no

means fully accepted thesis, a produd above all

of

the artísbc self-1mage generated in the Romantic

movement. Originally,

as

we have seen, landscape

was composed and

construded

by techniques which

Were considered to ensure the certainty of reproduc

ing the real world. Equally, again

as

we have seen,

there

is

an inherent conservatism

in

the landscape

idea, in its celebration of property and of an

unchanging status qua,

in

its suppression

of

tension

between groups

Ír

the landscape. When we take

over landscape into geography, and particularly into

public policy we inevitably import in large measure

the realist, visual values with which it has been

loaded: its connections with a way

of

seeing, its dis

tancing of subject and objed and its conservatism

in

presenting an image of natural and social harmony.

John Punter has pinpointed the place

of

these social

and visual values in contemporary discussions of

landscape and the conservaban and planning of

areas defined as having 'landscape value'

76

A vast

field awaits research into contemporary visual and

social values in landscape

77

.

Te

return, however, to the opening point of th s

paper. Humanist geographers have spent a great

deal of time and energy challenging the orthodoxy

of positivism they have opened up a debate on the

language of geography the constraints and

opportunities of language Sorne have even begun to

explore the ideological assumptions inherent

in

our

concepts of space Jtself.

78

All of these are important

maHers.

But

the ideology of vision, the way of see-

ing implicit in much

of

our geography still awa1ts

detailed examination. At the most obvious leve , we

wam students of the pitfalls of accepting the auth

onty

of

numbers,

of

the dangers

of

misused stat

istics, but virtually never those of accepting the

cartographic, sbll less the landscape, image.

Less

obviously, but more significantly for geographical

scholarship. geography and the arts, or geography

as

art,

is

frequently presented

as

a refuge from ten

dentious social and política debates within the disci

pline. and the 'soul' of geography a resort in which

we can express our 'passions'

in

the neutral and

refined area of subjectivity and humane discourse,

expressing ourselves in those reverential tones that

serve purely to sustain mystification. Geography

and the arts are too 1mportant for this. Both bear

diredly upon our world, both can challenge

as

well

as support the ways we strudure, modify and see

that world.

in

Theorefu nl

Geography Bunge carne

doser

than

any other recent geographical wnter te acknowledg

ing the significance

of

the graphic image in geo

graphy. His later, brilliant use of cartography as a

subversive art bears testimony to his insight.

79

Bunge was equally dear that geometry was the

language of space, the guarantor of certainty in

geographical sc1ence, visually and logically. As

shown. the relationship between geometry, optics

and the study of geographic space is very strong in

European intellectual history smce the Renais

sance.80 in Bunge's thesis spatial geometry was

aligned to a powerful claim for geography

as

a

generalizing positivist science, a very different

con

ception of science from that understood by the

founders

of

modem geometry and perspective,

many of whom still recalled the magic of Pythagoras

and regarded metaphysics

as

being

as

mucha branch

of science as empírica study,

81

and for whom the

trivium and quadrivium were equal contributors to

the seven liberal arts.

In

rejecting science loul courl

humanist geographers have severed links with

spatial geometry, concentrated on the material of

the trivium and failed. among other things, to

develop a proper critique

of

landscape.

Such a division was not true of Renaissance

humanist geographers. John Dee was as clase to

Ortelius and Mercator as he was to Sir Philip Sidney,

admired the magician Cornelius Agrippa's work as

much

as

he did that

of

Copemicus. Cusanus' closest

friend, the executor of his w ll. was Piero dal Pozzo

Toscanelli. Toscanelli. from a Florentine merchant

famJly, was a doctor. student of optJCs and the



EMlulwn

of

/he lam/scape

idea

59

foremost geographer of his

day_ As

a member of the

Greek Academy at Florence,

he

studied one of its

greatest intelledua trophies, Ptolemy's Cosmogra-

fia brought from Constantinople

in

the early years of

the fifteenth century. In thís work Ptolemy describes

a projedion for the world map which uses the same

geometrical construction as the Florentine humanists

employed to develop linear perspective.

82

With the

a d of this study T oscanelli produced a map which

he sent with a letter to Christopher Colurobus

encouraging the Genoese navigator's exploration

west on the grounds that the distance from Europe

to China was shorter than was then commonly

believed by cartographers. The geographical conse

quences of this collaboration of art, science and

practica\

skill

need not be spelled out

here_

But

the

example of this geographical colleague of the great

humanists Alberti and Brunelleschi may remind con

temporary humanists in geography to pay equa\

attention to the Albertian revolution as to that of

Gutenberg.

CKNOWLEDGEMENTS

1 would like to thank the following people for their

help in improving upon earlier drafts o this paper:

Stephen Daniels, Cale Harris, Robin Butlin and

T rever ?ringle, and those who contributed at

various seminars. Sorne of the Italian materials were

collected during a period

o

study in tal y funded by

a grant from the British Academy.

NOTES

L

GE PEL,

R_ (1978) 'The landscape indicators school

m

German geography",

in

LEY. O_ and SAMUELS. M

{eds)

Hun-u:u-mt,c gMgraphy. praspecls and prohlems

{london)pp.

155 71

2. See for example the commenfs on landscape in

HARVEY. D. {1969) p l a ~ a l w n m geography

(London)

PP-

114-15

3.

SAMUELS. M (1979) 'The bwgraphy of landscape',

in

MEINIG, D. (ed.) The i n l e r ¡ m t l w ~ af ordinary

landscapes

{Oxford)

PP-

51-88

4.

ROSE.

C (1981) "William Oilthey's philosophy of his

torical understanding· a negleded heritage of con

ternporary kurnanistic geography',

in

STODDARD.

D.

R. {ed.)

Gwgraphy dMiagy

and

soáal

cancem

(Oxford) PP-

99-133

5_

RELPH.

E. {19Sl) Raluma/ la11dscapes and humamshc

gMgraphy (london) p.

22.

This sense of landscape .as

an all

inclusive, quotJdi.an phenomenon owes a great

deal

in

North American geography to the work of

1

B

jackson. Set> for ex.ample the most recent colledion of

]ackson"s landscape essays (1980), 'The

11uessily /Dr

rW/15 and iJ/her /QpÍcs' {Amherst)

6. See he discussion by PUNTER, J V_ (1981)

"Land

scape aesthetics: a synthesis and critique', m COLO,].

and BURGESS, ]. (eds)

Valued enviwnmenfs

(London)

pp. 100-23

7. PENNING-ROWSELL. E. C (1974) 'L.andscape evalu

.at on

for

development plans',].

R Tn Plann Insl., 60

930-4

8. APPLETON. 1 (1975) The erpenence af la11dscape

(London)

9. POCOCK, D. e D.

(ed.)

(1981) Huma111stic geagra

phy a11d lt era/ure: essays

in lhe erperient:e

of place

(London): DANIELS, S.

(198I)

"Landscapmg for .a

m.anuf.acturer. Humpkrey Repton"s commission for

Benjamín Gott at Armley

in 1809-10 .]

h1sl.

GMg

.

7, 379-96; COSGROVE, D.

(ed.)

(1982) 'Geography

.and

tke Humamhes", Laughhorough U111v.

D/ Techn.,

Oa. Pap . No.

5

10. This phrase i s taken from BERGER. ]. (1971)

Ways of

seeing (London), where sorne of the soci.al impli

cations of visual conventicos are challengingly

explored

11. Examples are nurnerous_ One of tke e.arliest

is

FRANCESCO FEUCIANO (1518) Libro

d'arilmelica.

e geometría speculafiva, e

prachmle.

more comrnonly

5 Cala Grimaldelli (Venice). One of the most compre

h.ensive was Cosirno Bartoli

(1564)

Del miJdiJ

d1 mJs

urare

le

J¡s/aP1/Í2. (Vemce)

12. MEINIG, D (1983) 'Geography as Arf

Tral15.

[1151.

Br

Geogr.

NS.

8: 314-28; WREFORD-WATSON, ].

(1983) Tke soul of geogr.apky", Trans. 115/. Br. Geogr_

NS.

8: 385-99;

BILUNGE.

M (1983)

'The

M.and.arin

dialect',

Trans_ [ns/_

Br.

GMgr NS. 8: 400-20.

POCOCK, D.

e

D. (1983) 'The paradox of hurnan

istic geography'.

Area,

15· 355-58

13_ As

alw.ays,

there .are exceptions, although to my mind

none have exammed the visual in relation to

geographical study

as

suck POCOCK D.

e

D.

(1981)

'Sight and Knowledge",

Trans. lnst

Br Geagr.

NS. 6: 385--93; TUAN, YI-FU (1979) The eye and the

mind's eye', in MEIN G, The inlerpreta/¡iJn Df ordin

ary landsmpes (NOTE

3)

PP-

89-102

14.

BUNGE.

W. (1966) Thearelical

geography {2nd ed.

Lund),

p. xiv

15. YATES, f_ A. (1964) G,ordanD B r ~ J and fhe

Hermefic Tradifion

(london) pp.

160-1

discusses the

relations of quadriviurn and trivium

in

Renaissance

humanism, .arguing tkat

"tke

two tradihons appeal to

entirely different interests_ The humanist"s bent i.s

in

the dtredion of liter.ature .and htstory: he sets an

imrnense value on rhetoric and good literary style.

The bent of the other tradition is towards phtlosophy,

theology, and also science (.at tke stage of

m.agic)'

This argument depends on a very restrided definition

of

kumanism

(see

her

fn. 3

P

160),

tgnores the visual

arts which combined literary

reference

(ut

pidura

poests) with 'scientific'

sial ,

and fatls to account for

the large number of Renaissance scholars equally at



60

DENIS

OSGROVE

home

in

philosophy and science as they were con

cerned with grammar, rketoric and cla5sical texts, for

exarnple Gumgiorgio Tríssmo and Damele Barbare in

stxteenth-century Venice

16. EISENSTEIN,

E_

L (1979) The priMiing press as an

agml of

chang2

(Cambndge)

17 MARTINES,

l

(1980)

Power and nnagmalwn·

C.ty-5/a/ m Renmssana Ita/y (London)

18

ALBERT . L B {1966) On paintíng (trans. J. _

Spencer. london)

19. Ibtd

pp

47, 4ll

20 Even photograpky was constricted by conventJons of

perspedive realism, landscape pamting kaving far

more mfluence on early

photography

than vice-versa.

See

GALASSL P (1981) Be[Dre

plwlography: pamling

and

liM invenlwn of phMography

(New York)

11 [bid

pp 16-17

22 For a detailed dtscussion of Brunelleschi's experiment

see EDGERTON, S_ J_ Jr (1975) TI Renmssana

r e d 1 s c ~ ¡ ¡ e r y

of

lrnear

puspeclwe

(London)

pp

143-52

23 REES, R.

(1980) 'Historicallinks berween

geography

and

art'. Geogr

Rm. 70:

66

24 This group of paintings, produced before lhe centrally

planned ch,nch became architecturally popular,

indudes Raphael's

Spomlhio and

Carpac:cio's Recep-

lian of the Engl1sh A m b a s > t ~ d o r s

in the St Ursula

cyde.

The sacred significanc:e of the cirde and centre

S an

enormous topic with cross-cultural impltcations.

See TUAN, Yl-FU (1974) Topoplu/.a a sludy af

envJronmental percep Jan ai Jiudes

a ~ d

b e / ~ f s

(London)

25 The

distinction between mind,

or

intellect,

and

sense

was cenlral to much Renaissance thought, and

ts

d s

cussed in Yates, GJordnno Brww {note 15) p. 193.

Geometry

is of course

an

intdlectual activity. Nicolo

Tarlaglia calls

it

'the pure food of infellectuallife' (il

puro

CJbo

della

vita

intellettuale)

Eucl de Magarense,

philosopha (Venezia. 1543) p. F1L in the first trans

lation of Euclid inlo taltan_ Nene the less, one of the

reasons wky humamsts like Alberli accepted the stg

mficance of numbers

and

proporttons was that the

same proportions which pleased lhe intdlect also

seemed lo please

our

eyes

and

ears.

Th1s ts

a corner

slone of Rena1ssance aesthetics

26. BAXANDALL, M. (1972) Painlmg and e x p ~ m n c e

m

fiftm1lh-cenlury

flaly (London)

27. FRA LUCA PAC OLI (1494)

Summa d1

arilhme Jca,

geamelria, proporliane el

p r o p i l r l o ~ a l l i l {Venice)_

See the reference to the significance of this work in

BRAUDEL. f_ (1982) Cwili21ll lln and

capita Jsm,

I5th-181h

Cenlun¡. Vol

lL

The

Wheds af Cammem

{London)

P-

573

28. SILVIO BELLI (1565)

L1hro

del

misurar

con la

~ i s l a

(Venezia) preface, PP- 1-2 ('certamente e cosi

meravighosa

il

misurar

con

la

v1sta.

poi che

ogm

uno.

che

non

sala rag10ne par del tuHo tmpossible')

29. ROSSL F (1877) Gmma e

squadra,

~ v v e r o

sloria

del/'

agmnmsura

ilal llna

dm

ltmp1

ani Lhi al seco/a XV F

(Torino)

JO. SCHULZ, J {1978)

' lampo

de

'Barbari's view of

VenJCe. map making, city views, and moraliud

geography

befare the year 1500',

The Arl Bu/l., LX:

425-74; MAZZL G. (1980) ' la repubblica e uno

strumento per il dominio', in PUPP , L (ed.) Archilel

fura

e

ufopia nei/a

Vemzw

del

cmqueanlll

{Milano)

pp.

59-62.

t has been pointed out tkat, like con

temporary ideal townscapes, lhe Barbari map lacks all

human presence

J L Renaissance writers never tire of emphasizing that

geometry provides c:erlainty. eg. Pacioli,

Summa

d,

a ~ í l h m e t i m (note 27) p. 2r

'e

m

la

sua Metaphysica

aFferma {Euclid) le sclentie mathemahche, essere nel

primo grado de certezza'

32. McLEAN. A (1972)

Humamsm and

fhe

me of smna

m Tudor England (London) PP- I

12

ff For a full di.s

cussion of Cusanus' work

and

tls impad on Renais

sance thought see CASS RER,

E.

{1964)

The

mdwJdual and he

cosmos

m Renaissance philosophy

(New York)

33_ V NS, W. M_ Ir (1946) A r l a ~ d g ~ o m M r y 11 sludy of

space

inluitians {New York) pp. 79-80

34.

There

is no space here lo explore the fascinaling

implicahons of Renaissanc:e magtc tkeories for

at-tltudes lo nature

and

natural beauty. These theories

are of course fully discussed in Yates, Gwrdnno

Bruno.

(note 15)

36.

There

is no escaping the use of 'man' here. We are

deahng

with a speCLftcally 'male' view of the world

36

ALBERT ,

l

8 (1965)

Ten haoks

an archJieclure

(trans. of J. Leoni, 1755; facs_ copy, London) p. 194

37. SARTORL P l (1981) 'Gli

scnttori

Veneti d'agraria

del cinquecento e del primo seicento. T ra reatra e

utop1a' m T agliafen:i,

E_

{e

d.) Venwa

la lerraferma

allrtwersil le ,elazillne

de

rellar1

{Milano) pp

261-310. See particularly the last three 'days' of

GALLO, A (1565)

ú

d1eci giarnale della er agri-

cultura

e

pmcere del/a mi/a (Vinegia)

38. ZORZL l (1977)

[/tea/ro e

la

cJI/a. Sagg1a

su/la scma

J l a l m ~ a (Tormo)_ On the links

between

thealre

and

cosmological theories see YATES,

F.

A (1966)

The ar/

memory {London)

39. GOMBR CH.

E.

(1971) The renaissanc:e theory of art

and

lhe rise of landscape', in Gombrich. E. Norm and

Farm: studies

in lhe arf

af

the

renaissance (London)

09

40. CLARK,

K·_

(1956)

Landscape in/o arl

(Harmond

sworth)

41. Slgnificantly, the tille of the essay

by

]ACKSON, 1

B

{1979) 'Landscape as tkeatre' m

Landscape,

13_

3:

and

repnnted m JACKSON,

The

nece.ssJiy for rums (note

5)

42. BLUNT, A (1962)

A.rtJSIJc

lheory

m flaly 145D-1600

{Oxford) P- 26 ltahcs

added

43 Quoted m Ib1d. p. 50



44. Leonardo was a master

not mere]

y of linear perspec

five but also of that other and disfind form of per

spective. ama/ perspedive, which plays a complemen

tary role

in

creating tke illusion of space tkrough rhe

manipulaban of tone. hght and shade and colour

intemity. While based on optical theory and exper

imenf, aenal perspechve

ís not

geometrically founded_

Leonardo's work with colour and chiaroscuro allowed

him to

convey

the 'mood' of space, and he saw the

superiority of painhng

over

other arts to lie

in

irs

abiltty to employ aerial perspedive

45 ALEXANOER,

O_

'Leonardo da Vincí and fluvial

geomorphology', Am ]. Sd 282· 735-55

46. SCHULZ.

1 1976) New

maps and landscape draw

ings by Ckristoforo Sorte',

MiUedungen der Kum

lh sloríschen nslilules m Flnrmz

XX. 1 MAZZI. G.

(1980). 'La Repubblica e uno strumento per tl dominio'

m PUPPI. L. ed.) Archileltura e U t ~ p a nella Vemna

del m q u e c m l ~ (Milano) PP- 59-62

47_

SORTE,

C.

(1580) 'Osservaúoni nella pitrura',

reprinted

in

BARROCCHL P_ (ed.) (1960)

Trallali

d'ar/e del c m q u ~ c e n o :

fra mammsmo

e canlronforrno

VoL 1 Ban)

PP-

275-301. This text merits detailed

geographical study. not only as a discussion of land

scape and cartography but equally because Sorte

appears ro antictpate by a century the recognition by

1ohn Ray of the real movement of tke hydrologicalcycle

48. Letter from Yitali to

Sorte,

reprinted m Barrocch1.

Trallafl d'arl (note 47) p. 275

49. SORTE, 'Osservaztoni nella pittura' (note 47) p

282_

'lnoltre ho posta detta Corografi.a con le sue gtuste

misure e distanze in p1anta'

In

other words,

rhe

work

was based on a plamspheric survey. On the relations

between such survey and

perspedive

see Edgerton.

The Renmsstmce

r ~ d i s w u e r y (note 22)

50. SOR

TE.

'Osservazioni nella pittura' (note 47) p.

283

SI. BERENSON. B. (1952) [tal.an pamtm of

lhe

Renms·

sanee'

(London)

p.

12

52.

Quoted

m WILTON,

A. 1980) Turmr and he

sublime

(London) p. 70

53. IV NS,

Arl

and geomelry (note 33) pp.

105-10:

GALASSI. B4ore Photagraphy (note 20)

54. MARTINES,

Pawer and 1maginalwn

(note 17):

BAX

ANDALL.

Painling and experience

(note 26)

55.

A point that kas

not

gone entirely unnoticed

by

hts

toncal geographers. See for example Ian Adams' work

on

the role of land surveyors m eigkleenth-century

Scottish agrarian change. AOAMS. L H (1980) The

agenfs of agradan change', m PARRY, M_

L.

and

SLATER, T. R_

{eds) The making of the Scaflísh

counlryside

(london) pp. 155-75. esp. pp

167-70

56. For example tke great gallery

of

maps painted by

lgnazio Dante in the Yatican (1580-83)

or

the sim lar

commiss¡ons lo Christoforo Sorte to pamt walls m the

Ducal Palace at Venlce (1578 and 1586)

57.

COSGROVE,

O_

(I982) 'Agrarian change, villa build

ing and landscape· the Godi estates

in Vicenz.a

61

1500-1600 , in

Ferro, G. (ed)

Symposwm

tln s l o r ~ -

ca/ changes m spal1al orgamsalwn and ¡/5

e:rpenence

1n

ihe Med lerranean wor/d (Genova) pp. 13.3-56;

DANIELS,

O_ 1

(1982) 'Humphrey Reptan and the

morahty of landscape', m COLO,

J

and BURGESS,].

{eds)

Va/ued mDiranmenls

{no[e

6)

pp 124-44

58.

Quoted

in MclEAN. Humanism and

ihe rise

of

sóence. . (note .32) p. 138. The translatíon of Eud1d

was

by

Billingsley For Dee's imporlance for geogra

phy

and cartography

see

TAYLOR, E C_

R.

(1954)

Tlu maliMmal,cal praclilianers af Tudor and Sluarl

England {l.ondon) pp.

26-48.

For Oee and magic see

YATES, GJroda110 Bruno (nofe 15) pp. 148-50

59.

MORCAN.

V.

1979)

'The cartographic 1mage of the

country

in

early modern England',

Trans_ R H1sf.

Si c

29: 129-54

60. The whole issue of garden design along Circular and

orlhogonal lines is

too

large lo discuss here but

is

obviously very dosel y related to the geome try under

discussJOn,

to

spatíal theory and those of microcosm,

macrocosm and medicinal concepts_

The

first such

g.arden was designed in Padua in the late sixteenth

century by Oamele Barbara. translater of V1truvius

and

commentator

on Euclid.

See 1ACK50N.

J. B.

(1980)

'Nearer

than Eden' and 'Cardens lo Decipher'

in The necessify for ruim (note 5 pp 19 35 and

37-53

61. OXFORO ENGLISH OICTIONARY {OEO). 1talícs

added

62.

THOMPSON.

F M. L {1968)

Chartmd surDeyars.

lhe growth of a

professJan

(london); HARVEY. P

O_

A.

1980) The hislory of lopagraphic maps: symba/s.

picfures and suweys {london)

The

idea that survey

lng was a malic10us and magJCal art was founded in

part on the negative consequences for tradítionalland

nghts

of new concepts of prívate property enshrlned

in the legal document that the surveyor produced, in

part

on

the recognition of connechons between the

g<"ometry of survey fechmques and that of hermetic

magícians. In the book burnings under Edward

VI

b<loks

containing geometrical lígures were parricu

larly at nsk

63. TURNER,

J

{1979) The polilics of landscape. rural

scenery and

stJC ely

in

English pnelry J63D-J690

(Oxford); ADAMS.

J.

{1979)

The

arl 51

and ihe

caunlry

hQuse

A h 5/ory

of

counlry house and garden

view paintíng

in

Brilain 154D-1870 {London):

BARRELL. ]. 1980) The dark síde af

lhe

/andscape·

the rural paar m

Engl1sh

pamtmg 1631-1741 (Cam·

bndge); ROSENTHAL,

M.

(1982)

Bril1sh landscape

pamlmg

{London)

64_

The OEO notes that the verb 'to prospect' emerged

in

the

nmeteenlh cenfury refernng to rhe parhcularly

G .pitalist ad¡vities of speculative gold mining and

playing the stock exchange. lt is mteresting to note

how 'speculahon' has ttself roots m visual

terminology



62

OENIS COSGROVE

65.

MIKESELL,

M. (1968) 'Landscape',

in ntmmlwnal

em:yclopaedia

af

/he sacJal

scienas

(New

York)

577-79 D CK NSON,

R.

E (1939) 'landscape and

Sodety ,

Sm/1_

geagr. Mag_

55.

1-15; HART

SHORNE, R. (1939)

Tlu nalure { geagraphy. A sur-

uey

of mrrenl thaughf in he light a/

he

pasl (lancas

ter, Pa.)

óó. HUM OLDT

A.

VON

{1849-52)

Cnsmns: a

shtch

af a phys,cal de>Lr plwn af

/he Unwerse L<lndon).

VoL

IL

The relahonshtp between the landscape 1dea

and attltudes to nature

in

the nineteenth century

is

of course enonnously cornplex. On

Goethe and

geography see SEAMON, D. (1978) 'Goethe's

approach to the natural world: implicatlons for

environmental rkeory and educaban', in LEY and

SAMUELS. Humanisl1c Geagmphy note I) PP-

238-50

67. COSGROVE,

D.

(1979) '/ohn Ruskin and the

geograph1cal imagination'

Geog. ReD

69· 43-62

68

SAUER,

e

Q_

{1916)

The

morphol ogy of landscape',

reprinted in LE GHLY 1 (ed.) (1963) Land and /ife.

seleclians fram

/he

wrilings

of

Carl

Orlu.Hn

Sauer

(Berkeley and

Los

Angeles)

69

BANSE, E. (1924) Die Seele der Geographie

(Brunswick); HARD, C. {1965) 'Arkadien in Deutch

land',

Die

Erde, 96 3

l 4

70. HARVEY, O (1974) 'What kind of geography for

what

hnd

of publtc policy',

Trans. [ns/. Br.

Geagr.;

HARVEY, D. {1984)

D o

the history and present con

dition of geography: an historical matenalist

manifesto', Pmf.

Geagr.

35: l-10

71. Notes

3

and 12

72. M KESELL 'Landscape' (note 64) p. 578

73.

Explicitly so by SAUER, 'Morphology of Landscape'

(note 67). and equally m physical geography where

landscape m the title suggests a morphological study

of landforms

74.

VAN

PAASEN,

e

(1957) The

classicallradtlían af

geagraphy

(Gronmgen)

75. See for example the diagram which serves as the

foundahon for the discussion of spatial concepts in

SACK

R. D. (1980) Conuplions nf space in sacia/

thnught· a gMgraphica/ perspedwe (Minneapolis) P-

25

76. PUNTER, ]. 'Landscape aesthetics.

{note

6)

77_ Sorne of tke essays in

COLO,

and BURGESS,

Va/ued

enviranmenls

(note 6) begin to broack this fi.eld, as

have papers presented in recent IBG sessions of

'Geography and the Med1a'

78. SACK,

Canceplions

af pau . (note 74)

79. BUNGE. W. (1973)

The geograpky

of kuman

survival'. Ann Ass. Am. G211gr 63: 275-95

80 This is distind from the relations of Greek geometry

whtch apparently were derived from a tactile

muscular apprehension of space, an apprekenston

which was non-visual. VINS, Art and geometry (note

33

81

YATES,

Giardana

Bruno

(note 15) pp. 144-56

82. EDGERTON, The nmssana rediscaver¡¡. (note

2

cosgrove - evolution of landscape idea

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