"When the wine-grower from Belvedere found a very unusual lizard, Leonardo made wings for it out of skin of other lizards and filled these wings with mecury so that they waved and quivered whenever the lizard moved; he likewise made eyes, a beard, and horns for it in the same way, tamed it, put it in a box, and used the lizard to terrify his friends."

- Vasari om Leonardo da Vinci, her sakset fra den engelske oversættelse af Maurice Merleau-Ponty's Cézanne's Doubt