| Abstrakt: |
The essay provides the first results of a study that investigates the course through which the relationship between the Umbrian landscape and artists developed in time. The Umbrian landscape luck is a really vast topic, but it's not enough to illustrate the morphologic and environmental peculiarities of the region to understand the motives behind secular predilection for this territory. Various literary testimonies from Byron to Carducci, even before the artistic ones, describe Umbria as a "pleasant area". Umbria has effectively been for centuries an isolated territory, mainly woodland, protected by natural barriers, yet equipped of all the comforts, embellished by defined portions of anthropized spaces since ancient times. What are the real "proportions" if they can be defined as such, between reality and perception that the artist establishes? How did they come in succession in History? What can we do today to fully appreciate the landscape? These are just a few of the questions that move the study forward and to which the essay tries to offer starting points of reflection and answers. The first examples of Umbrian landscapes are undoubtedly found in Giotto's frescos, a model which inspired Benozzo Gozzoli byhalf of the XV century. The landscape then became a fundamental component in the paintings of the Great Umbrian artists of the Renaissance. Later Raffaello also seized this privileged relationship with the idyllic Umbrian scenarios. Hereafter we can state that painters who dedicated themselves to the landscape genre, drew from the landscape repertoire in a subjective manner, always balancing ideal and real. In this muted scenario, one of the most interpreted landscapes, natural in appearance but anthropic in substance, was the waterfall created by the Velino River near Terni, the so called Marmore Falls, chosen countless times during the modern age to be represented in drawing, incision, fresco and on canvas, until becoming an authentic iconographic cliché. Thanks to the affirmation of the Grand Tour in the 18th century and to the inclusion of Terni in the itinerary to reach Rome, the Marmore Falls would then quickly become one of the favoured subjects of landscape paintings done by artists who could boast an international market (e.g. Jan Frans Van Bloemen, Jacob More, Philipp Hackert, Louis Ducros, Camille Corot and much more). The commercial triumphs show how the Falls became a panoramic icon of relevance not only Umbrian or Italian, but worldwide. It's thus necessary that the study of its fortunate and literary iconography matures keeping in mind the importance and the universal value of the site even through a comparative eye with Lazio (in particular the Falls of Aniene River in Tivoli) and Abruzzo (the Fucino Lake before the modern draining), on the panoramic impact produced by the great works of hydraulic engineering. With the final purpose of nominating the individuated asset to the UNESCO list of World Heritage Sites. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR] |
