The aesthetic view of the landscape in the Late Middle Ages

Abstract

Despite the increasing focus on landscape over the last few decades, either as a pictorial genre or from a purely abstract and aesthetic perspective, many scholars have set the beginning of landscape in the Renaissance. Research on landscape has comparatively been neglected, as it is not yet considered an autonomous genre.

Medieval attitude towards nature was completely different to our current concept and landscape (lejos, as it was then called, played another role within its cultural framework. Never can this whatsoever be considered as a lack of interest in landscape. In this paper the conceptual discovery of landscape in the late Middle Ages is aimed to be proved from textual sources, landscape theory and artistic heritage.