Date: 1637

"Their [philosopher's] sole reason for positing such images was that they saw how easily a picture can stimulate our mind to conceive the objects depicted in it, and so it seemed to them that, in the same way, the mind must be stimulated, by little pictures formed in our head, to conceive the obj...

— Descartes, René (1596-1650)

Date: 1637

"Now a painter cannot represent all the different sides of a solid body equally well on his flat canvas, and so he chooses one of the principal ones, sets it facing the light, and shades the others so as to make them stand out only when viewed from the perspective of the chosen side. In just the ...

— Descartes, René (1596-1650)

Date: 1667

"From Sons has made you Lords of th' Earth, / And on yours stampt the Portrait of His minde."

— Woodford, Samuel (1636-1700)

Date: 1669

"Eloquence is a painting of thought; and thus those who, after having painted it, add something more, make a picture instead of a portrait."

— Pascal, Blaise (1623-1662)

Date: 1671

"Fancy rough-draws, but judgement smooths and finishes."

— Shadwell, Thomas (1642-1692)

Date: 1681

"That, for all furniture, you'l find / Only your Picture in my Mind."

— Marvell, Andrew (1621-1678)

Date: 1681

"For thou alone to people me, / Art grown a num'rous Colony; / And a Collection choicer far / Then or White-hall's, or Mantua's were."

— Marvell, Andrew (1621-1678)

Date: 1684

"For certainly there must be some change in our mind when we have some thoughts and then others, and, in fact, ideas of things we are not actually thinking about are in our minds as the shape of Hercules is in rough marble."

— Leibniz, Gottfried Wilhelm (1646-1716)

Date: 1687

"Yet sure we think 'em sensless stories, / The pageantry of some distempered Head, / Which fancies Pencil did delineate, / The broken visions of the living when they dream'd 'oth' dead."

— Rawlet, John (bap. 1642, d. 1686)

Date: 1690, 1694, 1695, 1700, 1706

"Whence comes that vast store, which the busy and boundless Fancy of Man has painted on it, with and almost endless variety?"

— Locke, John (1632-1704)