(Figure 12.2). This landscape is ‘pastoral’,
composed of meadow grass and herbage beneath
a tree, stretching beyond the foreground figure
into a blue distance, with sheep and shepherd,
and framed by blue mountain forms, visible
against an evening sky. It draws upon a set of
topographic associations traceable to ancient
Greek and Roman poetry (Cafritz et al., 1988;
Cosgrove, 1993: 222–251; Jenkins, 1998). The
image has been copied and parodied by artists
since its original painting. Giorgione is often
regarded as a pioneer of the genre of secular
landscape in western art. Beyond the obvious
point that not all cultures would make the imme-
diate connection between a surface pattern of
variously pigmented oils on a canvas (or, in this
reproduction, of ink dots on white paper) and a
human female lying in an evening glade, my
reproduction of Giorgione’s image registers and
activates whole sets of cultural responses in you,
the viewer/reader. If my text made no reference to
the image, if it were replaced by a colour
photographic snapshot of an actual such scene, if
the young woman were known to you, if the
image was used to illustrate an erotic or sacred
narrative, if you are a devout Muslim woman, or a
13-year-old American schoolboy – in every case
the meaning of the image would be transformed
according to altered conventions of seeing.
The Giorgione painting alerts us to the power-
ful connections between seeing and space. To
make sense of the painting we must accept cer-
tain conventions for representing the external
world on a flat surface. Among these are the
three-dimensional depth of the space represented
within the frame and its lateral extension beyond
the frame, the perspective rules whereby smaller
elements are assumed to be more distant, and
aerial perspective conventions whereby more
indistinct and blue-toned elements are assumed
to be further away. I shall consider these repre-
sentational conventions in more detail later.
Beyond them we may consider the subject matter
of this image. The presence of a nude human
figure in an open field of grass upsets conven-
tional connections between seeing and space.
Powerful cultural norms confine human naked-
ness almost exclusively to private space, and
define such privacy as removal from sight. What
may be seen, by whom, and where, are among
the most fundamental and contested cultural con-
siderations in shaping social space. Geographies
of what may be seen are generally more highly
regulated that those of what may be heard,
smelled, felt or tasted. The power that conven-
tions of visibility exercise over location in the
case of nudity is illustrated by how most of us
might feel holding a business conversation overthe telephone while naked. Barriers to vision
and, conversely, vision’s ‘penetration’ of space
are significant determinants of material land-
scape. Such cultural conventions, activated by
this image, have been subject to critical exami-
nation in recent cultural geography.
Language captures something of the rich cul-
tural complexity of seeing. A glance is different
from a stare, a sight is different from a vision.
In considering the active use of the sense of
sight most languages make a fundamental dis-
tinction between seeing and looking (in French
voir/regarder, in Italian videre/guardare). The
former suggests the passive and physical act of
registering the external world by eye; the latter
implies an intentional directing of the eyes
towards an object of interest. In English, viewing
implies a more sustained and disinterested use of
the sense of sight; while witnessing suggests that
the experience of seeing is being recorded
with the intention of its verification or subsequent
communication. Gazing entails a sustained act of
seeing in which emotion is stirred in some way,
while staring holds a similar meaning but con-
veys a sense of query or judgement on the part of
the starer. Such complexity in the ordinary
language of seeing suggests something of its cul-
tural significance in our relations with the exter-
nal world, both with physical objects and with
other people. As the dual meaning of ‘I see’ indi-
cates, connections between seeing and cognition
are similarly complex. ‘Insight’ captures the
human capacity to ‘see’ more than is immedi-
ately visible to the eye, the idea that humans may
be capable of penetrating beyond physically
registered surface to invisible meaning. ‘Vision’
is at once the physiological function and an
imaginative capacity in which non-material pheno-
menaare somehow witnessed.
Vision’s connections with imagination sug-
gest further cultural complexities to the sense of
sight and acts of seeing. Imagination is the capa-
city to fashion images that have not previously
existed in the material world of their maker.
Imagination works with the raw materials of
experience (it has none other available) to create
and fashion new phenomena. Imagination is thus
closely linked to human art and it finds expres-
sion in the realm of each of the senses: in heard
music, tasted cuisine, bodily movements,
smelled perfumes and graphic representations
which appeal to the eye. The unique emotional
power of visual images has always generated
anxiety, prompting social control of their pro-
duction and effects, from Plato’s censure of
painted images to religious iconoclasm, to secu-
lar concerns about pornography and violence on
film. Social regulation points to a powerfulLANDSCAPE AND THE EUROPEAN SENSE OF SIGHT 2533029-ch12.qxd 03-10-02 5:49 PM Page 253