This work investigates the role of nature in the aesthetic thought of Luigi Pareyson. His aesthetic theory, based on a philosophy of existentialist, personalistic and ontological features, embodies in one activity – formativity – the common element which grants an artistic character to every human act and which, when specified, installs art in its autonomy and independence, thus granting a maximum reach to aesthetic experience. The problem of nature arises since nature – being not a human product – presents itself under two forms: as the extreme limit of aesthetic fruition, in natural beauty, and as a model whose operation human formativity imitates, in artistic production. Based on the description and analysis of the parallels between art and nature in the theory – in the pareysonian description of the work of art and of its production in organicistic terms, in his theory of interpretation as applied to nature, and in his re-elaboration of Kant s and Goethe s ideas – this work intends to understand how the natural sphere can be affirmed as autonomous and formative, according to a philosophy of the person in their relation with being. And, also, to understand how the naturalistic and personalistic aspects of formativity can be reconciled into a coherent view of the aesthetic character shared by nature and art. This investigation concludes that personal formativity is the paradigm in analogy and in contrast to which nature s formative power can be conceived and understood, with a consequent reduction and subordination of naturalistic and metaphysical elements to the personal-existential horizon of Pareyson s thought.