Abstract

LANDSCAPES 2021, VOL. 22, NO. 2, 191–196 BOOK REVIEWS Rediscovering Lost Landscapes: Topographical Art in North-West Italy, 1800- 1920, by Pietro Piana, Charles Watkins and Ross Balzaretti, Woodbridge: The Boydell Press, 2021, 324 pp., 26 colour illustrations, 91 b/w., £70 (hbk), ISBN: 9781783276318 Previous articles by the authors of ‘Rediscovering’ in Landscapes (issues 19:1 and 19:2) - and in other journals such as Rural History and Landscape History - were valuable pointers to a wider project (Leverhulme Trust-funded) run over five years, which brought together paintings/ watercolours and sketchbooks, early photographs, travel books and guides, and locals and foreigners in Italy’s north-western territories (spanning the Val d’Aosta to the Ligurian Riviera and the plains of Pisa). Now the project team offer a book-length treatment, using a combined art historical, geographical, historical and archaeological approach to ‘analyse draw- ings and paintings by nineteenth- and early twentieth-century topographical artists to provide insights into the way Italian landscapes were appreciated and understood by visitors, tourists and residents’ (p.2). Many of these works are largely unknown outside of local collections, although some well- known examples exist in larger regional galleries such as in Turin and Genoa or in inter- national settings (notably in