"Disegni di natura urbana"

“Disegni di natura urbana”. L’immagine dei dintorni di Parigi all’inizio del Settecento, by Camilla Pietrabissa

This essay explores the crucial role of drawing practices in constructing a perception of urban nature in eighteenth-century Paris. It argues that the notion of urban nature emerged at the turn of the century with the opening of the city to its countryside and the emergence of suburban areas as a new space for scientific and artistic practice: the Parisian “environs”. Drawing – a medium both accessible and portable – became the underside of all representation of the nature in the city and its surroundings. Looking at drawings of urban nature help reconcile city and nature in early-modern Paris.

The first chapter outlines the history of the idea of urban nature, first through a history of the city limits and then through a history of the term “environs”. The second chapter introduces a social study of the drawings of the environs beginning with the history of print pedagogy. The third chapter maps out the vedute, the use of topographic notations, and the creation of recurrent motifs of rural and picturesque fragments of the landscape. In the appendixes, a catalogue of the collections of drawings examined in the essay serves as a research tool into the underexplored archive that visualized urban nature.