L’invention de la nature

The Renaissance marks the irruption of a new way of seeing the world and it is nowhere more remarkable than in painting. Hieratic compositions, built according to intellectual canons, are replaced by works nourished by the observation of Nature. This is the passage Nadeije Laneyrie-Dagen documents in her book. Starting with traditional elements – air, fire, water, earth – she shows for each one of them how Giotto or Roger van der Weyden influenced the representation of the world. One therefore gets attached to very simple things which, in the end, are very important: sprays of water and splashes, the light of candles, the texture of grass or of moss, the shape of the clouds. It is by being so closely interested in the shape of things that artists may have been the first to realize how fragile Nature is. Were Bosch and Mantegna environmentalists before their time?

• L’invention de la nature par Nadeije Laneyrie-Dagen, Flammarion, 2008, 258 p., 75 €, ISBN : 978-2-0801-1605-5