Guided by the romantic compass of Turner, Byron, and Ruskin, Victorian travellers to the Dolomites sketched in the mountainous backdrop of Venice a cultural ‘Petit Tour’ of global significance. As they zigzagged across a debatable land between Italy and Austria, Victorians discovered a unique geography characterized by untrodden peaks and unfrequented valleys. The discovery of this landscape blended aesthetic, scientific, and cultural values utterly different from those engendered by the bombastic conquests of the Western Alps achieved during the ‘Golden Age of Mountaineering’. Filtered through memories of the Venetian Grand Tour, the Victorian encounter with the Dolomites is revealed through a series of distinct cultural practices that paradigmatically define a ‘Silver Age of Mountaineering’. This book shows how these practices are more ethnographic than imperialistic, more feminine than masculine, more artistic than sportive — rather than racing to summits, the Silver Age is about rambling, rather than conquering peaks, it is about sketching them in an intimate interaction with the Dolomite landscape.
- Cover
- Table of Contents
- Introduction: Tools for Unravelling Heritage
- Part One: Matrices of Topographic Memory
- 1. The Alps and the Grand Tour
- The End of the Grand Tour
- Hannibal’s Passage
- Romantic Rocks
- 2. The Laboratory of the Picturesque
- Travelling into Substance
- Geological Riddles
- Picturesque Exploitation
- 3. The Golden Age of Mountaineering
- Alpine Sensationalism
- Portable Mountains
- The Playground of Europe
- The Alpine Club Orthodoxy
- Part Two: The Invention of the Dolomites
- 4. The Silver Age of Mountaineering
- The Vogue of Italy
- The Alpine Tour
- Gothic Mountains
- Edwards’s Sentimental Voyage
- 5. Titian Country
- The Scotland of Italy
- The Cult of Titian
- The Dolomite Petit Tour
- 6. Picturesque Mountains
- Revelling the Scenery
- Picturing the Picturesque
- Picturing the Dolomites
- 7. Dolomite Close-Ups
- Prominent Strongholds
- Haptic Mountains
- Dolomite Guides
- 8. King Laurin’s Garden
- Debatable Peaks
- The Jewel of Austria’s Crown
- Magic Mountains
- Reginald Farrer’s Rock Garden
- Epilogue: Messner Country
- Bibliography
- Index
- List of Figures
- Figure 1 Francesco Guardi, Venice: the Fondamenta Nuove with the Lagoon and the Island of San Michele (1758), oil on canvas, The Ashmolean Museum, Oxford.
- Figure 1.1 J.M.W. Turner, The Snow Storm: Hannibal and his Army Crossing the Alps (1812), oil on canvas, Tate Britain, London.
- Figure 1.2 Philip James de Loutherbourg, set model for The Wonders of Derbyshire; or, Harlequin in the Peak (ca. 1778), pen, gouache, oil, and card, Victoria & Albert Museum, London.
- Figure 1.3 Philip James de Loutherbourg, An Avalanche in the Alps (1803), oil on canvas, Tate Britain, London.
- Figure 2.1 Heinrich Müller, Erste Tafel, worauf das hohe Kaltgebirge, aus Schichten bestehend, mit der Gallmeygrube von Auronzo im Cadorinischen von der Südseite vorgestellt ist (Hacquet, 1785, I, Plate 1).
- Figure 2.2 Leopold von Buch, Esquisse d’une carte géologique de la partie orientale du Trentino (1822), Trento, Biblioteca Comunale.
- Figure 2.3 Wilhelm Fuchs, coloured plates from Die Venetianer Alpen (1844).
- Figure 2.4 Left: Lang Kofel: A Dolomite Mountain in the Grödner-thal (in Murray 1837, p. 248); right: Franz Xaver Schweighofer, Langkofel: Montagne de Dolomie (in Buch, 1823b, Plate 2).
- Figure 2.5 Jean-François Albanis Beaumont, Mountain near Belluno (1792, p. 26).
- Figure 2.6 Hofer’s House, in Bradshaw’s Notes for Travellers in Tyrol and Vorarlberg (1863, p. 28).
- Figure 3.1 Edward Whymper, left: A cannonade on the Matterhorn (1862); right: The Crags of the Matterhorn, During the Storm, Midnight, Aug. 10, 1863 (1893, pp. 126, 175).
- Figure 4.1 Josiah Gilbert, The Sasso di Pelmo, from Monte Zucco (Gilbert & Churchill, 1864, p. 395).
- Figure 4.2 Josiah Gilbert, Monte Civita and Lake and Village of Alleghe (Gilbert & Churchill, 1864, frontispiece).
- Figure 4.3 Amelia B. Edwards, Sasso di Ronch, from Untrodden Peaks (1889, p. 221).
- Figure 4.4 Elizabeth Tuckett, vignettes, from Zigzagging Amongst Dolomites (1871).
- Figure 5.1 William Logsdail, The Dolomites, Seen from Venice (Robertson, 1896, frontispiece).
- Figure 5.2 Joseph Pennell, Fondamente Nuove (Crawford, 1905, II, p. 313).
- Figure 5.3 Josiah Gilbert, The Antelao Seen from Venice, from a Drawing by Mr. Ruskin (1869, p. 22).
- Figure 5.4 Titian, The Aldobrandini Madonna (1532), oil on canvas, National Gallery, London.
- Figure 5.5 Josiah Gilbert, Cloud Effects from the ‘Madonna and St. Catherine’ (1869, Plate 4).
- Figure 5.6 Josiah Gilbert, Dolomite Forms in Titian and others of the Venetian School (1869, Plate 12).
- Figure 5.7 Josiah Gilbert, The Antelao and Marmarolo, from Titian drawings (1869, Plate 19).
- Figure 6.1 Elijah Walton, Monte Civita seen from the Lake of Alleghe (1867), oil on canvas, Birmingham Museums and Galleries.
- Figure 6.2 Elijah Walton, Clouds: Their Forms and Combinations, lithographs (1868a).
- Figure 7.1 Visualization of prominence, by C.M.G. Lee. Vertical arrows show the topographic prominence of three peaks on an island. Dashed lines show the lowest contours, which do not encircle higher peaks. Curved arrows point from a peak to its parent.
- Figure 7.2 Left: The Ice Camino; right: The Chimney-Breast on the Little Zinne (Sanger Davies, 1894, pp. 162, 58).
- Figure 7.3 Left: The “Little Zinne Traverse” (Showing How Not to Use the Rope); right: A “Firma Loca” (Sanger Davies, 1894, pp. 55, 14).
- Figure 7.4 Left: A Camino; right: Luigi Bernard Beginning the Fünffingerspitze (Sanger Davies, 1894, pp. 48, 130).
- Figure 8.1 Grand Hotel Kareersee, photochrome print (1890s), from Photoglob Co., Views of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, The Library of Congress, Washington D.C.
- Figure 8.2 Joseph Madlener, Der Berggeist (1920s), ink, watercolour, and gouache, private collection, sold at Sotheby’s in 2005.
- Figure 8.3 Bruno Goldschmitt, King Laurin and Dietrich’s von Bern Knights (1911), fresco, Park Hotel Laurin, Bolzano/Bozen.
- Figure 8.4 Edward Harrison Compton, From the Hotel at Misurina (Farrer, 1913, p. 32).
- Figure 9.1 Messner branded cosmetics at MMM Juval.
- Figure 9.2 Poster advertising the biographical film Messner by Andreas Nickel (2012).
- Figure 9.3 Visitor book entry, MMM Ripa.
- Figure 9.4 In the Homeland of Titian: Itineraries in the Belluno Area, tourist map (Dolomiti Turismo, Belluno).
- Figure 9.5 Nicolò Miana, Panoramic view of Venice and the Dolomites, in Miana, Bertolo, & Dello Russo, 2015.
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