ABSTRACT
This chapter explores how Latin literary encounters with mountains and the subsequent discovery of their aesthetic qualities in the Early Modern period were intertwined with-and influenced by-contemporary practices of describing the mountain landscape in pictures and in written chorographical accounts. The discussion draws on material from the areas of geography and landscape art. Accordingly, the fertile area of overlap between these disciplines is the focus of much of the chapter’s argument. The key term in the texts throughout this chapter is prospectus, ‘a sight’ or ‘view’. It is around this visual and specifically scenic term that notions of landscape art and geography come together in the texts and where aesthetic attitudes towards the mountain begin to change.
