"What induces you, oh man, to depart from your home in town, to leave parents and friends, and go to the country-side over mountains and valleys, if it is not the beauty of the world of nature which, on considering, you can only enjoy through the sense of sight; and as the poet in this also wants to compete with the painter, why do you not take the poet's descriptions of such landscapes and stay at home without exposing yourself to the excessive heat of the sun?  Would that not be more expedient and less fatiguing, since you could stay in a cool place without moving about and exposing yourself to illness?  But your soul could not enjoy the pleasures that come to it through the eyes, the windows of its habitation, it could not receive the reflections of bright places, it could not see the many flowers which with their various colours compose harmonies for the eye, nor all the other things which may present themselves to the eye."   Leonardo da Vinci, The 'Paragone