It's a mental thing, you wouldn't understand...
"as Leonardo said of painting, cosa mentale..."
~ Marcel Proust, Within a Budding Grove
Leonardo explained in his Treatise on Painting: "If the painter wants to survey vast stretches of the country... he has it first in his mind and then in his hands.''
"Painting is a mental occupation" (pittura è una cosa mentale), wrote da Vinci, and Michelangelo Buonarroti stated equally firmly, "We paint with our brain, not with our hands" (si dipinge col ciervello et non con le mani).
