Abstract

OLIVARES SANDOVAL, Omar. The Volcanoes of Alexander von Humboldt and Johann Moritz Rugendas. The Humboldtian Landscape Complex. Invest. Geog [online]. 2023, n.110, e60692.  Epub June 26, 2023. ISSN 2448-7279.  https://doi.org/10.14350/rig.60692.

Landscape history and theory have included thoughts on their parallel development as analytical concepts and as a visual and pictorial genre. In this context, the work of the polymath Alexander von Humboldt is a reference since he considered that landscape aesthetics and epistemology were central elements of his notion of "physiognomy". Through the cases of Humboldt and the Bavarian painter Johann Moritz Rugendas, including the drawings of the latter for Christian Sartorius's book, this article analyzed the development of landscape aesthetics as part of the interdisciplinary framework of Geography and Geology, and their networks of agents, which were interested in the interdependence of scientific knowledge and industrial development. The selected approach explores the visual construction of landscape and the scientific and social trajectories involved in its production. The case of the Jorullo volcano illustrates how landscape aesthetics was used to generalize the geological knowledge, along with a geographic approach for the colonization of Mexico. Likewise, the case of the Colima volcano serves to analyze the simultaneous production of landscape, geological, geographic, and cartographic observations, as well as viewpoints on industrial modernization. This constellation is named the “Humboldtian landscape complex”.

Keywords : Landscape; Alexander von Humboldt; Johann Moritz Rugendas; physiognomy.

        · abstract in Spanish     · text in English | Spanish     · English ( pdf ) | Spanish ( pdf )