Horace-Bénédict de Saussure illustrated his chapter on Mont Blanc in Voyages dans les Alpes (1779) with an illustration of a guide on the ice created by Marc-Théodore Bourrit. Note another guide standing on a ledge on the opposite side of the valley. Saussure strongly identified with the masculinity of the guides and crystal hunters of Chamonix. When illustrations of Saussure's 1787 ascent of Mont Blanc showed him descending on his rear-end while roped from above and below (see Figure 10 in the Summits of Modern Man), Saussure demanded the image be "changed to represent me in a standing glissade on the snow in the attitude of a guide that we see in the vignette in the first volume of Voyages."

Creator

• Saussure, Horace-Bénédict de
• Bourrit, Marc-Théodore

Keyword

• Summits of Modern Man

Year

• 1779

Date created

• 1779

Resource type

• Image

Source

• Beinecke Rare Books and Manuscript Library, Yale University, http://brbl-dl.library.yale.edu/vufind/Record/3587444

Rights statement

• In Copyright

Last modified

• 2020-08-07