The article is dedicated to the genesis of topographical landscape representation using the example of the Alps in the 15th century. Their jagged and snow-covered rock formations are presented more and more realistically and act as a “branding” of painting and graphics of the early 16th century. The categories of pure topography as an autonomous landscape, whose artistic significance remains to be discussed, as well as artistically developed topographies and further repeated topographies, for which striking case studies are discussed, emerge. A foray takes artists such as Albrecht Dürer from the Western Alps to the southern Eastern Alps and with Albrecht Altdorfer into the mountain ranges of Salzburg and Upper Austria. This results in new insights into the artists who love to travel and their not unknown works.