Visual culture in the Piedmont landscapes. Travelers and painters of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries

The vision is not only physiological, but knowledge-based: the filter of "visual culture" - defined by specific statutes - is a way of understanding the complexity of the cultural landscape, the processes that have generated and transformed it, the lost or recognized meaning. Piedmont landscapes – made of mountains, rivers, plains, fortified - are characterized by strong features, to be investigated to understand the current reality of the scenery, seen (with the Europe Council) as "perceived territory". Between the eighteenth and nineteenth century in the literature, from Neoclassical to Romanticism, is remarkable the Goethe’ example with the "tactile vision", the nature observation, history and theories of color. The reports of travelers show the perception of coeval landscape: as an example, the De La Lande guide Voyage d'Italie en françois, (...). With the same approaches, a more direct representation of the landscape is given in the art views, such as those of Bagetti, Migliara, Brass, Fontanesi.