DOLOMITES-UNESCO: INSPIRING ARTISTS SINCE THE RENAISSANCE
TRENTO - Before becoming an open air laboratory for earth scientists and a challenge for the most accomplished alpinists, the Dolomites provided inspiration for artists as far back as the Italian Renaissance, say landscape experts. In the exhibition 'Dolomiti', currently open in the Centre for Contemporary Art in Cavalese, a reproduction of Leonardo da Vinci's Monna Lisa is hung next to a photograph of the Catinaccio peaks to highlight the almost incredible similarity between the Dolomite mountains and Leonardo's background.
''In the Fassa Valley the Dolomites rise straight up in the sky, with blinding white walls thousands of feet high. The pointed mountains stand side by side in great number but without touching. Their forms brings to mind the mountain landscape Leonardo da Vinci painted in the background of his portrait of the Monna Lisa'', wrote German naturalist and explorer Alexander von Humboldt in his 1845 book, 'Kosmos'. While there is no real proof that Leonardo visited the Dolomites, Titian Vecellio, more or less a contemporary, was born in Pieve di Cadore in the heart of the Dolomites. At the time neither artists nor their patrons considered landscapes suitable subjects but merely to be used for backgrounds. In Titian's The Presentation Of The Virgin At The Temple, now at the Academy in Venice, the bluish mountains in the distance recall the vertical forms particular to the Dolomites.
Only later, during the sixteenth century, did the mountains themselves become a popular subject for drawing and painting although at the end of the fifteenth century Albrecht Dürer made several prints of the Alpine panoramas he admired on his trip from Nuremburg to Venice by way of the Brenner Pass and the Isarco and Adige valleys. The first painters to choose the Dolomites as their subjects, seeing them as the manifestation of the Romantic picturesque and sublime aesthetic, were the English travellers drawn to the Dolomites in the nineteenth century. The first was Josiah Gilbert, who wrote the popular book 'The Dolomite Mountains' with the geologist George Churchill. Between 1861 and 1863 Gilbert produced what became a famous series of drawings and watercolours of Dolomite landscape. Gilbert also dedicated a book to Titian's birthplace, a kind of guide to areas with connections to the great Renaissance master. Other painters who took the Dolomites as their subject include Thomas Ender (1793-1875), an Austrian artist who produced a series of watercolours for Archduke John of Austria; Johanna Isser Grossrubatscher (1802-1880), an artist from the Südtirol, many of whose 400 Romantic landscapes painted before 1850 were of the Dolomites; the German water colourist Emil Kirchner (1813-1885); the English painter Edward Theodor Compton (1849-1921) whose work illustrated important books on mountaineering; Compton's son Harrison (1881-1961); the Venetian Guglielmo Ciardi (1842-1917); the Cortina artist Luigi De Zanna (1858-1918); the Austrian Gustav Jahn (1879-1919), an Art Nouveau painter; Camillo Rasmo from the Trentino area (1876-1965); and Francesco Vitalini (1865-1905) from the Marche region who died on Mount Popera.
Less traditional use of the mountains is found in works by Italian Futurist Fortunato Depero and contemporary works by Riccardo Schweizer. Living artists painting the Dolomites today include Markus Vallazza from Alto Adige and Paolo Vallorz from the Trentino region. Author and journalist Dino Buzzati from Belluno is also a painter and imbues his work with the same magical atmosphere found in his books. During the First World War artists were sent to the Dolomite frontlines by both sides, enrolled in the armed forces to portray battle scenes, heroic events, and military life. Many of these works are important not just as records of war but are valued for preserving images of the Dolomites from the beginning of the twentieth century.
The Dolomites were a popular subject for advertising posters commissioned from famous artists in the 1930s and 1940s. The graphic artist Franz Lenhart designed posters and travel brochures for clients in Bolzano and Cortina d'Ampezzo. From about 1930 to 1955 he designed nearly one hundred posters of mountain themes; his skiers in action are particularly prized today. Finally, Aurelio Galleppini who drew the famous Tex Willer comic strip set in the American West and whose ravines and peaks were inspired by Dolomite landscapes. Galleppini was in the habit of going into the Trentino mountains to sketch the peaks, mountains, valleys and alpine lodges that invariably wound up in his popular comics. Italy's stunning Dolomite mountains have been declared a United Nations World Heritage Site. The nine Dolomite mountain groups in the serial site, spanning 142,000 hectares and given 85 hectares of border areas for a total of 231,000 hectares, are spread over five provinces: Trento, Bolzano, Belluno, Pordenone and Udine. The Dolomites have joined the world's other cultural and natural wonders on the World Heritage List. The United Nations Educational Scientific and Cultural Organisation's World Heritage Committee unanimously approved Italy's bid at its meeting on June 26, 2009 in Seville, Spain.
