La Spagna pittoresca: banditi e viaggiatori

Abstract

La Spagna pittoresca: banditi e viaggiatori

This work studies the employ of the picturesque as aesthetic category by famous travellers who went to Spain between 1830 and 1860. The picturesque style, placing itself within the main romantic stream, became a fashion, a regard’s convention which re-created the landcapes after the manner of Salvator Rosa’s paintings. Andalucía was the travellers’ most loved land, because it was considered as an exotic reservation (Gipsies, bandits, bulls, adventurous posadas). Filtering through the picturesque the traveller-writers (between them R. Ford, T. Gautier, W. Irving, de Custine, P. Mérimée) operated a transformation of the real banditry into a fictitious make-believe, and offered a narrative perspective bordering into exoticism.