Geographical Painting at the 16th Century and its relation with a new Landscape definition

Abstract

Landscape as a concept was coined during the 16th century in either Germanic or Latin languages. In Castilian, this concept was also shaped along those years but the term used was pintura (painting). Later on, the Castilian tongue turned to use it, as all the other modern languages to denote such territorial reality. It was then a very rich and clear concept but sciences took away from it, its integral character in the call for specialization. Therefore its natural and cultural components were separated. In this work we analyze two paintings from the turn of the 16th century; one preformed in Western Europe and the other in New Spain (Mexico). This exercise aims to recognize the historical definition of “landscape” in order to enunciate the lost elements of this concept and the decrease of its methodological possibilities. We also propose to enrich today’s definition to study historical geography issues.