Gezicht op een bergketen in de Dolomieten, Italië before 1878

Eugène Goblet d'Alviella captured this view of a mountain range in the Dolomites, Italy, using photography. The stark, towering peaks evoke a sense of sublime awe, a motif deeply rooted in Romanticism. Consider how the mountains themselves act as symbols, their formidable presence echoing ancient notions of the divine and the untamed forces of nature. This imagery hearkens back to the visual language of the Gothic, where landscapes mirrored the emotional states of the soul. Mountains appear across cultures, from the sacred Mount Meru in Buddhist cosmology to the Greek Mount Olympus, home of the gods. The shared human experience of confronting nature's grandeur taps into a collective memory, a sense of the eternal and the transcendent. This photograph reminds us that our engagement with such landscapes is never simply a matter of observation, but a profound, psychologically charged encounter that resonates across generations.