Traveller’s Eye: Hippolyte Taine’s Venetian Episode in Voyage en Italie

The article discusses the impact of place on the traveller’s eye. The author uses Hippolyte Taine’s Venetian episode in Voyage en Italie [Journey to Italy] to illustrate how Venice’s landscape transforms and rejuvenates Taine’s eye, modeling his emotions. It turns out that the traveller sees affectively. This way of seeing is no different from the aesthetic eye which, according to Taine’s theory, “uncovers” what is “conspicuous”. The Italian sketches demonstrate as a result that his “philosophy of art” is permeated by geopoetic thinking about the place agency