An Introduction To Landscape, And Its Relation To The Development Of Perspective And Geography: (1400-1900)

The introduction and the first chapter of Denis Cosgrove’s Social Information and Symbolic Landscape1 explore the idea of landscape in the West since the Renaissance, discuss the relationship of the landscape to the invention of perspective in Italy, and describe the evolution of the ideological aspects of the landscape in seventeenth and eighteenth century Europe and early America. Also, in his Introduction, Cosgrove discusses the idea of the landscape as related to the political, social, and cultural changes in Europe during the revolution era between 1400 and 1900. In Europe, these social processes and political changes during this era—based on changes in capitalism, which induced transformations in the agricultural economy, in the utilization of natural resources, and in industrial production and deposits—created a specific ideology and foundation for the evolution and implication of the notion of landscape beyond the idea of land usage and material issues. Thus, the relationship between man and land on one hand, and political shifts to capitalism on the other is indicative of a new perspective towards the idea of landscape(H. C. Darby, 1951).