This electronic thesis or dissertation has been downloaded from the King’s Research Portal at https://kclpure.kcl.ac.uk/portal/ The Aesthetics of the Mountain Latin as a Progressive Force in the Late-Renaissance and Early Modern Period Barton, William Michael Awarding institution: King's College London The copyright of this thesis rests with the author and no quotation from it or information derived from it may be published without proper acknowledgement. END USER LICENCE AGREEMENT Unless another licence is stated on the immediately following page this work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International licence. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/ You are free to copy, distribute and transmit the work Under the following conditions: Attribution: You must attribute the work in the manner specified by the author (but not in any way that suggests that they endorse you or your use of the work). 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Oct. 2021 1 KING'S COLLEGE, LONDON The Aesthetics of the Mountain: Latin as a Progressive Force in the Late- Renaissance and Early Modern Period William Michael Barton Student Number: 0603568 A THESIS SUBMITTED FOR THE DEGREE OF: PhD Classics FIELD OF STUDY: Neo-Latin School of Arts and Humanities, Department of Classics Course Code/ Name: RDPL3ARCLA/Classics Research September 8th 2014 Word Count: 95,829 2 Abstract Neo-Latin was a progressive force in Renaissance and Early Modern Europe. As such, its literature played a significant role in shaping the ideas of the modern world. This study will attempt to corroborate these assertions by taking the example of the aesthetic attitude change towards the mountain that took place in the Renaissance and Early Modern Period. This attitude shift saw the mountain change from a fearful, ugly or simply aesthetically uninteresting place, to one of beauty and splendor over the course of around 300 years. Previous studies have argued that this change took place in the vernacular literature of the early and mid 18th century. This thesis will contend that it took place earlier and in Latin. The aesthetic attitude shift towards the mountain can be shown to have had its catalysts in two broad spheres: firstly the development of an idea of 'landscape', and secondly in its increasing scientific and theological investigation. These two broad spheres can then be divided into a further two topics each: the 'landscape idea' emerged on the one hand from growing geographical—particularly chorographical—interest in Germanic countries at the beginning of the 16th century, and on the other hand out of the growing trend for specialisation and secularisation in art theory during the same period. The scientific interest in the mountain was driven by the numerous debates that sprang out of attempts to explain natural phenomena with reference to scripture. The effect of the changes in both scientific and theological thought on the aesthetic perception of the mountain reached its peak in the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries. The new Latin evidence for the change in aesthetic attitude towards the mountain unearthed in the course of this study brings new material to the current debate on the aesthetics of nature. This study's concluding chapter shows that looking more closely into the processes that produced the Late Renaissance and Early Modern shift in aesthetic attitude towards the mountain can reveal important information for modern positions on the aesthetic appreciation of nature. 3 Table of Contents Title Page 1 Abstract 2 Table of Contents 3 List of Illustrations 7 List of Abbreviations 8 Note on Neo-Latin Texts 10 1. Introduction 11 i) Prelude: Two Mountain Views 1537 and 1802 11 ii) Latin Literature Overlooked 13 iii) Latin as a Progressive Force in the Renaissance and Early Modern Period—The Case of Mountain Aesthetics 15 iv) Sketch of the Study's Contentions 19 v) Time Frame and Overview of the Mountain Mentality Change 20 vi) L'histoire des Mentalités 23 vii) A Final Consideration: Petrarch, Fam. IV.1 23 2. The Mountain in Latin: Literary Heritage 27 i) The Mountains in the Classical Tradition: Introduction 27 ii) Josias Simler's De Alpibus Commentarius (1574) 32 iii) The Mountain and the Gods 34 iv) The Wild Mountain Outside 43 v) The Mountain as a Barrier 47 4 vi) Distinctive Mountain People 50 vii) The Horror of the Mountain 55 viii) The Mountain as a Viewpoint 62 ix) The Mountain: Exploration, Discovery and Assets 66 x) The Mountain in the Classical Tradition: Concluding Remarks 74 α. i) The Mountains of the Bible: Introduction 77 α. ii) The Mountain Brought Low 78 α. iii) The Mountains and God 80 α. iv) Mountains of Abundance 82 α. v) The Protective Mountain 84 α. vi) The Eternal Mountain 85 α. vii) The Mountain's Positive Associations 87 α. viii) The Mountains of the Bible: Concluding Remarks 88 3. Gaeographia, Prospectus, Pictura 90 i) Introduction and Chapter Layout 90 ii) Prospectus—Gesner Frames the Mountain 91 iii) Gaeographia—The Mountain in Chorography 97 iv) Gaeograhia—Geography into Art: Alberti 99 v) Gaeographia—Geography’s Rebirth in Germania 101 vi) Gaeographia—Aretius: Mountain Enthusiasm and Autopsy 105 vii) Gaeographia et Prospectus—Chorography becomes Art 107 viii) Pictura—Prospectus and the Mountain in Text 111 ix) Pictura—Early Landscape Art and the Mountain 116 x) Pictura—Latin and the Rise of the Landscape Genre 123 xi) Pictura—Pliny and the Category of Landscape 126 xii) Prospectus—Geography and Landscape Art Come Together 131 xiii) Prospectus—Pliny Concludes: A View from Tuscany 138 4. Theologia et Philosophia Naturalis 143 i) Introduction 143 5 ii) Theology and Natural Philosophy—The Disciplines and their Relationship 144 iii) Natural Philosophy, Mountains of the Mind and Aesthetics 148 iv) The Mountains and their Origins—l’état de question 1561 150 v) Biblical Positions—Mountains in Genesis and Berhardus Varenius 164 vi) A Smooth Primaeval Earth—Josephus Blancanus 170 vii) Aesthetics of Nature in Theology: Commentaries on Genesis 176 viii) The 'Burnet Controversy' and Mountain Aesthetics in Natural Philosophy 183 ix) ‘The World Makers’, John Woodward and Dissertationes de Montibus 190 x) Scheuchzer’s Itinera Alpina and the Changed Mountain Aesthetic 194 xi) Scheuchzer’s Natural Philosophy 197 xii) Concluding Remarks 203 5. Aesthetics of Nature: The Case of the Mountain Mentality Change 205 i) Introduction 205 ii) The Appreciation of Nature in Modern Philosophical Aesthetics—An Overview 206 ii. α) Historical Background Historical Background: From Aesthetics of Nature to Aesthetics of Art 206 ii. β) Neglect and Rebirth of Aesthetics of Nature 210 iii) Current Positions in the Aesthetics of Nature 210 iii. α) Cognitive Positions 211 iii. β) Non-cognitive Positions 212 iv) The Natural Environmental Model 213 v) The Case of the Mountain Mentality Change: Further Elements and Ramifications of the Natural Environmental Model 221 vi) Methodological Considerations: Descriptive and Prescriptive Aesthetics 222 6 vi. α) Theism and Positive Aesthetics 223 vii) The Historical Approach: The Role of Natural Science in Aesthetic Appreciation of Nature 226 viii) The Historical Approach: Landscape and the Aesthetic Appreciation of Nature 231 viii. α) Carlson's Anti-formalism and New Formalism 234 ix) Steno and Leonardo: the Tuscan Hills: Nicolaus Stenonis' Prodromus 237 ix. α) Leonardo's View of the Hills of Tuscany 244 x) Conclusions 249 Bibliography 250 7 List of Illustrations Figure 1: Francesco Rosselli, Map of Florence with the Chain (ca. 1485) Uffizi, Florence............................................................110 Figure 2: Wolf Huber, Der Mondsee mit dem Schafberg, (1510) Germanisches Nationalmuseum, Nuremberg.....................118 Figure 3: Jörg Kölderer, View of the Achensee (1504) Nationalbibliothek, Vienna..........................................................119 Figure 4: Albrecht Altdorfer, Sarmingstein an der Donau (1511) Museum of Fine Arts, Budapest...................................................120 Figure 5: Wolf Huber, View of the Danube Valley near Krems (1529) Kupferstichkabinett, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin.........................122 Figure 6: Niklaus Manuel Deutsch, Mountainous Island (1515) Kupferstichkabinett, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin.........................123 Figure 7: A. Carlson and G. Parsons Formal beauty in a mountain range, (2004) from “New Formalism and the Aesthetic Appreciation of Nature” JAAC 62, 4, 363-376....................................................................236 Figure 8: Nicolaus Steno, Schematic representation of the processes that formed the Tuscan Hills (1669) from De solido intra solidum naturaliter contento Dissertationis Prodromus. (Florence)...................................241 Figure 9: Leonardo da Vinci, View of the Hills of Tuscany (1473) Uffizi, Florence...........................................................................246 8 List of Abbreviations AnnAAG Annals of the Association of American Geographers ADB: Allgemeine