At the end of the XVIIIᵉ century, new ways of looking at the landscape were being invented.
With Horace-Bénédict de Saussure and Marc-Théodore Bourrit, the summits became privileged observation points: it was no longer just a question of representing a site, but of embracing the totality of the visible.
A few years later, the British artist Robert Barker formalised this ambition by inventing the "panorama", a continuous image designed to envelop the eye. In the XIXᵉ century, figures such as Franz Schrader extended this approach by developing precise, legible circular views, heralding the educational and tourist devices that would become the orientation tables of the Touring Club de France.
This development marks a shift: from the landscape, a sensitive and cultural construction of the gaze, to the panorama, a device designed to organise, deploy and control the visible space.
This lecture will trace this transformation, examine the aesthetic, scientific and cultural issues involved, and provide a better understanding of what distinguishes (and links) landscape and panorama.
Concluding with a contemporary opening: images in which the horizon, folded in on itself, transforms the panorama into a circular landscape (a mini-planet).