WILHELM STEINFIELD (1816-1854)
Mont Aiguille (2, 087m -9,209ft)
France ( Dauphiné)
In Gebirgslandschaft - Gebirgslandschaft im französischen Dauphiné. Im Zentrum der Mont Aiguille, 1839, Oil on panel, 52 x 41cm,
The mountain
Mount Aiguille (2, 087m -9,209ft) , located in the town of Chichilianne, is an advanced tooth of the eastern cliff of the Vercors massif, on the edge of Trièves, south of the department of Isere (France). It is one of the seven wonders of Dauphiné area.
From a geomorphological point of view, it is a structure left by the erosion around it, of the plateau of which it was originally part. Mount Aiguille owes its particular shape to this: a block of cliffs and a summit meadow, similar to the pastures of the entire Vercors plateau.
Mount Aiguille is a limestone scale previously attached to the rest of the Vercors massif. The base consists of a set of soft limestone and marl surmounted by a wall itself composed of a thick series of limestone more rigid. Its morphology results from the difference in the behavior of the layers in the face of erosion.
During the formation of the Alps, the layers of limestone, then lining the bottom of the Tethys, were raised, folded and fractured. The latter favored runoff, which caused significant erosion of the base of the needle (where the layers are softer), while whole sections of the wall collapsed as a result of the undermining of the base. base and by karstification of limestone layers. The countless active faults between Mount Aiguille and the Vercors Massif followed by the planing of the eastern flank of the Vercors massif by glaciers during the different glaciations of the Quaternary era have allowed its current isolation.
The painter
Wilhelm Steinfeld was an Austrian 19th century painter most known during his life for his landscape and mountains paintings. Strangely enough no informations are available about him except he was the son of Franz Steinfeld (1787-1868), very famous himself for his historical paintings.
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2019 - Wandering Vertexes...
by Francis Rousseau