In Flanders, they paint only to deceive the external eye, things that gladden you cheer you and of which you cannot speak ill. Their painting is of stuffs, bricks and mortar, the grass of the fields, the shadows of trees, and bridges and rivers, which they call landscapes, and little figures here and there. And all this, though it may appear good to some eyes, is in truth done without reason, without symmetry or proportion, without care in rejecting or selecting.
Michelangelo Buonarroti, Letter to Francesco da Hollanda (c. 1540)
landscape theory 