The (high) mountains are an environment that can quickly become hostile to human presence: it's not possible to live in a world of rock and ice. Physical confrontation with the mountains also involves physical effort and fatigue, which can prove disabling, especially at altitude. These facts and figures ... Read more

Angelo Mosso (1846-1910) was an Italian physician, physiologist and mountaineer. He was interested in the Alps and their impact, not physical but physiological, on the human body. The Alps were seen as the ideal place to answer some of the burning questions about the human body at the end of the century, including how the body reacts to ... Read more

Gabriel Loppé (1825-1913) was a French painter, photographer and mountaineer. Although he is little known to the general public today, he enjoyed considerable success during his lifetime. However, there are few studies of his work. Loppé was a painter-mountaineer, that is, a painter and mountaineer who put art above all else: his paintings ... Read more

Joseph Mallord William Turner (1775-1851) is without doubt the best-known English painter of the 18th century. Many exhibitions are still devoted to him today. He is known as one of the leading painters of the aesthetic of the sublime and for his great talent, particularly in watercolor. Although his strokes are forced, he is often ... Read more

Caspar Wolf (1735-1783) was one of the first artists to explore and paint the Alps, between 1774 and 1779. Although he painted other subjects, it was precisely as a painter of the Alps that he passed into posterity. Even his contemporaries emphasized Wolf's innovative side, as Karl Gottlob Küttner did in August 1778: ... Read more

The 18th century saw a real craze for the Alps, with a huge influx of travellers. There were a number of reasons for this, which we'll develop below, but it was the result of a slow evolution. Dragons in the Alps The early 18th century was still marked by the ... Read more