The first book devoted to the history and theory of landscape drawing in early modern Europe, this study traces the practice of drawing from nature across three centuries, exploring how artists experienced, interpreted and transformed the landscape – and arguing for these works as independent achievements rather than mere preparatory studies.
 
Bringing together art history, theory and material culture, this richly illustrated volume explores artists’ engagement with the landscape and the fascinating creative process of producing views, offering new perspectives on how landscape forms and meanings were understood through drawing. Its contributors – scholars and drawing specialists from universities, museums, and private collections – examine diverse geographical and cultural contexts through original case studies of artistic practice.
 
The essays range widely, from Italian to Northern European art, from close material study to historiographic narratives. They include analyses of large panoramas by Pozzoserrato and of small sketchbooks by Tuscan artists in the 16th and 17th centuries; studies of the techniques used by Rembrandt to depict wetlands and of his landscape practice across different media; and explorations of the exchange between Jean-Honoré Fragonard and Hubert Robert in their rendering of organic textures and temporal effects. Further chapters consider the practices of Federico Zuccari, Federico Barocci and Nicolas-Didier Boguet, as well as artificial landscapes devised for 17th-century court performances for Christine of Bourbon-France and the watercolours by British artists for early 19th-century design firms.
 
This volume seeks to foreground the autonomy of landscape drawing and to challenge the traditional assumption that early modern drawings of nature were conceived primarily in relation to painting. It will offer new tools to study the materiality of works on paper as it relates to drawing practices, helping readers reflect on the early modern experience and perception of landscape, and on the way it has shaped the artistic canon of pictorial genres and the representation of nature.