Landscape

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

(Redirected from Landscapes)

This article does not cite any references or sources. (December 2006)
Please help improve this article by adding citations to reliable sources. Unverifiable material may be challenged and removed.

For other uses, see Landscape (disambiguation).

Image:Landscape small.png

Photograph of a landscape

Mount Ecclesiastes landscape, with its 24 human-made structures, ornate rose gardens and luxuriant preserved vegetation.

A landscape comprises the visible features of an area of land, including physical elements such as landforms, living elements of flora and fauna, abstract elements such as lighting and weather conditions, and human elements, for instance human activity or the built environment. Landscape may also signify the objects around one in a structure.

[edit] Etymology

The word landscape comes from the Dutch word lands chap, from land (directly equivalent to the English word land) and the suffix -scrap, corresponding to the English suffix "-ship".

Landscape, first recorded in 1598,it was borrowed as a painters' term from Dutch during the 16th century, when the Dutch artists were on the verge of becoming masters of the landscape genre. The Dutch word lands chap had earlier meant simply 'region, tract of land' but had acquired the artistic sense, which it brought over into English, of 'a picture depicting scenery on land'.