Nadeije Laneyrie-Dagen's 'L'Invention de la nature' Examines Landscape in Renaissance Art

Nadeije Laneyrie-Dagen's book 'L'Invention de la nature' (Flammarion) explores the radical transformation in the representation of nature in art from the 14th to the 16th century. Rather than focusing on the human figure, the study examines backgrounds—skies, earth, seas, rivers—and how painters shifted from a medieval symbolic treatment of the four elements to depicting them as concrete realities: water became streams, rain, or waves; air became a meteorological space with clouds; fire turned into flame; earth became rock or mud. The book is divided into five chapters: the first on the creation of the world, the next four on each element, and a final chapter on chaos—storms, tidal waves, apocalypses. Laneyrie-Dagen supports her argument with details from famous works, beautifully reproduced, making the volume one of the year's most visually striking. The book changes how we see Renaissance painting.