Landscape with Buildings (recto); Studies for a Flagellation (verso) 1500 - 1600

This is an anonymous etching of a landscape with buildings, dating from around 1500 to 1550. It's fair to say that the cultural and institutional roles of landscape imagery changed significantly during the Renaissance in Europe. The development of linear perspective offered new ways to construct idealized views of nature, often imbued with allegorical or symbolic meaning. You can see that thinking in the way the artist has rendered the buildings in the background. They serve to give the image an idealized or Utopian quality. By looking at comparable images from the time, we can begin to understand the codes and conventions that artists employed. We might then ask how those conventions were supported by institutions like the church or the state. The historian's task is to unpack the complex conditions that give rise to artistic expression.