The landscape, which has nowadays taken on a life and meaning of its own, is, for me, complemented by living creatures, which can also become the dominating element, from which the natural surrounding scenes take place or in which they are summarised. What better way is there to render, for example, the rushing sense of winter wind over a snowy valley than by including a human figure walking against the wind? (…) And the sense of the mountain in autumn, when the high pastures have been abandoned and life has retreated further down, can be rendered and animated better than with landscape alone with a solitary cow lifting its face toward the distances and altitudes of summer, accentuating its longing and remembrance in a long bellow.

Carlo Fornara, from Giovanni Bertacchi’s Come nasce un paesaggio (How a Landscape is Born), in Le vie d’Italia number 12, 1936