Considering the proceedings of a painter’s work I have, a desire has possessed me to imitate him. He maketh choice of the most convenient place and middle of every wall there to place a picture, labored with all his skill and sufficiency; and all void places about it he filleth up with antique boscage or grotesque works, which are fantastic pictures, having no grace but in the variety and strangeness of them. And what are these my compositions, in truth, other than antique works and monstrous bodies, patched and huddled up together of diverse members, without any certain or well ordered figure, having neither order, dependency, nor proportion, but casual and framed by chance?

From Montaigne’s Essays, translated by J. Florio, Amherst, New York: Prometheus Books, 2005, p. 91.