History of the Alps

The (high) mountains are an environment that can quickly become hostile to human presence: it's not possible to live in a world of rock and ice. Moreover, physical confrontation with the mountain involves physical effort and fatigue that can prove disabling, particularly at altitude. These facts have prompted a number of scientists and mountaineers to look into the matter, turning the Alps into a laboratory for experimentation. This non-exhaustive overview is followed by a second chapter focusing more specifically on the figure of Angelo Mosso, a physician, physiologist and ...

Angelo Mosso (1846-1910) was an Italian physician, physiologist and mountaineer. He was interested in the Alps and their impact, not physical but physiological, on the human body. The Alps were seen as the ideal place to answer some of the burning questions about the human body at the end of the century, such as how the nerves react to changes in environment, or how energy is expended and fatigue caused in experiments. So we're a long way from the Alps as playground of Europe, as Leslie Stephen put it. Mosso noted that the effects of fatigue are stronger in the mountains, but last ...

Gabriel Loppé (1825-1913) was a French painter, photographer and mountaineer. Although he is little known to the general public today, he enjoyed considerable success during his lifetime. However, there are few studies of his work. Loppé was a painter-mountaineer, i.e. a painter and mountaineer who put art above all else: mountain outings were subordinated to artistic practice. First steps in painting Loppé's decision to become a landscape painter was prompted by the sight of two painters working from summit on Pic Saint-Loup. This vocation would be facilitated by his stays ...

Joseph Mallord William Turner (1775-1851) is without doubt the best-known English painter of the 18th century. Many exhibitions are still devoted to him today. He is known as one of the leading painters of the aesthetic of the sublime and for his great talent, particularly in watercolor. Although his strokes are forced, he is also considered the precursor of Impressionism, and even of abstract art. Turner's first trip to Switzerland Turner came from a modest background: his father was a barber. He was spotted at an early age: he entered the Royal Academy of Painting at the tender age of 14. ...

Caspar Wolf (1735-1783) was one of the first artists to explore and paint the Alps, between 1774 and 1779. Although he painted other subjects, it was precisely as a painter of the Alps that he passed into posterity. Even his contemporaries insisted on Wolf's innovative side, such as Karl Gottlob Küttner in August 1778: Wolf is the painter of the sublime and terrible nature of the Swiss mountains. He went deep into the icy, snowy regions of the mountains, as no painter had done before him; no danger, no difficulty could prevent him from exploring nature...

The 18th century saw a real craze for the Alps, with a huge influx of travelers. There were a number of reasons for this, which we'll develop below, but it was the result of a slow evolution. Dragons in the Alps The early 18th century was still marked by popular beliefs, which were also reflected in scientific research: many people spoke of monsters and dragons in the mountains. Scheuchzer devotes an entire chapter to his Ouresiphoites Helveticus, sive itinera per Helvetiae alpinas regiones (published in 1723), one of the most important works ...

The 17th century had a more mixed relationship with the mountains than the 16th century, and sometimes a more negative one. This was partly due to the slight cooling of the climate at the time. Glaciers were growing and sometimes sweeping away churches and fields in their path, causing great damage, but also making it more difficult to enjoy the mountains. The mountains were sometimes perceived as divine punishment, as Horace-Bénédict de Saussure testifies: "The little people of our town [Chamonix] and the surrounding area give Mont Blanc and the snow-covered mountains that surround it the name of ...

Although mountains occupy a central place in many civilizations and mythologies - being the refuge of the gods, for example - it's only in recent times that man has taken an interest in them. Petrarch's ascent of Mont Ventoux on April 26, 1335 was one of the very first of its kind. It is often regarded as the first awareness of landscape and mountain perception, even if the claim is somewhat exaggerated. A few months before Columbus discovered America, on June 26, 1492, Antoine de Ville climbed Mount ... on the orders of King Charles VIII of France.

The life of John Ruskin (1819-1900), British writer, poet, art critic and painter, is closely linked to the Alps. A great traveller who visited the continent on numerous occasions, particularly Switzerland and Italy, he first saw the Alps from Schaffhausen, on his first trip to Switzerland in 1833, when he was 14. It was an instant revelation. His love of the mountains would never leave him, and more than anywhere else, it was in the mountains that Ruskin felt truly at home, as he wrote on July 24, 1845...