Zevengebergte bij Bonn, gezien vanaf de Rijn 1767

Hendrik de Leth created this print of the Siebengebirge near Bonn sometime in the first half of the 18th century. The image is suffused with the aesthetic of the picturesque – the mountains, the river, the trees, and the buildings all arranged to please the eye. The picturesque was a cultural phenomenon that became a fully fledged aesthetic movement in the 18th century, influencing painting, garden design, and even architecture. The picturesque aesthetic grew in part from the writings of people like Joseph Addison, the co-founder of the magazine The Spectator, which sought to make serious philosophical ideas accessible to a wider public. The picturesque can be seen as part of the democratization of culture in Europe. To get a better understanding of the picturesque, you might look at the kind of texts that were circulating at the time or at the institutional history of artistic movements. Thinking about art in the context of its time helps us to better understand its meaning.