The present volume brings together the papers presented at the one-day Symposium "The Landscape of Aesthetics" (Il Paesaggio dell'Estetica), as well as few other essays. The Symposium was organized in Palermo by the International Study Center on Aesthetics on January 30, 1995, to commemorate the first anniversary of Rosario Assunto's death (1915-1994).
The first part of this volume addresses the most fundamental reasons why Assunto's work has played such an important role in the development of research in aesthetics during the second half of the 20th century. These essays highlight Assunto's revolutionary methodology in studying the history of aesthetics (cfr. Luigi Russo's, "Assunto e il paesaggio dell'estetica") and his re-evaluation of the visual dimension (cfr. Franco Fanizza's, "Assunto e la cultura dell'occhio"). The scholars included in the second part of this volume focus, instead, on Assunto's crucial contributions to various fields of research, such as Medieval aesthetics (cfr. Maria Bettetini's, "Assunto e l'antico"), Neoclassicism and Romantic (cfr. Michele Cometa's, "Assunto e l'età di Goethe"), the garden (cfr. Massimo Ferrante's, "Paradise Lost: la 'filosofia del giardino' di Assunto"), and the landscape (cfr. Paolo D'Angelo's, "Natura e storia nel paesaggio di Assunto").
This volume contains also a closing Appendix that comprises a "Bibliography" of Assunto's works, as well as the text of an enlightening "Conversazione" in which Assunto participated a few months before his death.