The unprecedented high-altitude war effort during the First World War presupposes a new relationship with the Alpine landscape. On the one hand, the occupation for military purposes reconfigures the topographical layout with infrastructural works that definitively introduce modernity in the mountains1 Leoni, La guerra verticale., anticipating in some ways the methods of occupation of mass tourism. On the other hand, it modifies the perceptual categories through a recodification of the gaze that sees multiple means of communication and representation of the landscape in action.2Mosse, Le guerre mondiali.
In the heterogeneous iconographic sources that emerged as part of the project, it is worth pointing out a series of panoramic views elaborated by both the Italian and Austrian sides, in which the genre of the Alpine panorama, which had been of crucial importance in the nineteenth century in the fields of science, mountaineering and geology,3De Rossi, La costruzione delle Alpi. is declined in a strategic-military key, drawing on existing representative tools and codes and subtly altering its visual status.
The synthetic effort of appropriation of the landscape that aspires to cover the entire arc of vision, born in the mid-eighteenth century with the first scientific investigations on the Alps and in the nineteenth century adapted to a widespread genre of tourist-informative illustration,4Bordini, Storia del panorama. is charged in these examples with an unprecedented meaning of landscape control. Often executed from life as in a well-established amateur tradition linked to the practice of mountaineering,5Garimoldi, L’immagine contesa. these views are the outcome of a desire to understand and dominate a territory with uncertain references, which from an object of observation, contemplation or sporting-tourist passion is transformed into a contested, divided, occupied, militarized space.
The perspective surveys of the various combat sections prepared by the cartographic section of the Italian Army, rigorously sized and precise in the rendering of the topographic qualities of the landscape,6See for example panoramas deThe cartographic section of the 4th Army of the Italian Army. AUSSME_B1_110D_23A_monografie_1corpod'armata044. are flanked by several quickly executed panoramic sketches that allow for both plan and elevation views, which are annotated with conventional markings for one’s own and the enemy’s positions, the front lines, the connections, etc.
Some panoramas preserved in the War Archives in Vienna have a remarkable graphic quality.7NFA Kt.3321 Art.Kdo.d.21.Geb.Brig. Panorama 3 Please; NFA Kt.3321 Art.Kdo.d.21.Geb.Brig. Panorama of Moritz Steiner Leaf 134. The skyline of the Sesto/Sextner Dolomites, with the Three Peaks group in the centre, emerges against the background of the sky in a markedly horizontal composition, while the topography is rendered in an effective linear stylization. The first layer of the natural landscape is superimposed, with a different code of representation, by the plot of lines, points and toponymic indications of military positions, which well represent the complex infrastructural network that the process of military occupation is superimposing on the topographical data.
Finally, of great interest is the collection of pencil sketches made by the historian of Innsbruck Richard Heuberger,8Discount Richard Heuberger_TLMF_NL_260_6_Skizzen 1915-1916. which, executed from life and accompanied by written comments and captions, are situated in an intermediate territory between documentary intent, military zeal and conscious restitution of the beauty of the landscape.