Arte y ciencia en la pintura de paisaje Alexander von Humboldt

Resumen

During the Enlightenment, new discoveries created a new way of looking at Nature. The modern conception of the world had replaced the vision of a harmonious cosmos with a new sense of order based on the scientific method. On the one hand, naturalist iconography reached a level of detail never seen before, being expressed in botanical and zoological drawings; on the other, it was a significant moment for the History of Art, when aesthetic categories like the picturesque and the sublime were being discussed. Art and Science were categories strongly interrelated. Alexander von Humboldt was one of the first foreigners to visit the Spanish colonies, with the French botanist Aimé Bonpland. This study is focused on his most illustrated work: "Atlas Pittoresque, Vues des Cordillères et monuments des peuples indigènes de l’Amérique" (1810). This publication, containing sixty-nine plates of vistas, changed the way of seeing the Americas, going beyond botanical research to consider Nature, history and American culture. Humboldt was the first to publish a picturesque atlas of America and presented an image which had been never seen before, shaping the landscape of the New Continent to be presented to Europe. Beyond the known studies of Humboldt’s influences onto the Tropical landscape painting, this thesis is focused on the previous, analyzing the Atlas Pittoresque as a vehicle for the interpretation of the American landscape and exploring the role of art and the artists in the early formation of Humboldt’s aesthetic view. The dissertation begins with a theoretical and methodological section. Thereafter the argument is developed in three parts: the first is dedicated to the links between art and science in Humboldt’s landscape theories, considering the legacy of a picturesque travel in Netherlands, England and France with Georg Forster (1754-1794) during his youth, his contacts with the art of the Spanish scientific expeditions during the American journey, and his considerations about pre-Columbian art; the second explores the images of the Atlas Pittoresque as a practice of collecting, on the idea of fragments which were designated to make a whole view of the American landscape; and the last one analyses Humboldt frustrated intents to travel in Egypt, India and the Himalayas, his connection with two Orientalist landscape painters: William Hodges (1744-1797) and Thomas Daniell (1749-1840), to conclude with the Humboldt’s visions of the Oriental otherness and its projection onto the Tropical landscape.