Pareidolic Landscape

Pareidolia is the tendency to interpret a vague stimulus as something known to the observer, such as seeing shapes in clouds or seeing faces in inanimate objects or abstract patterns. The word derives from the Greek words para (παρά, "beside, alongside, instead [of]") and the noun eidōlon (εἴδωλον "image, form, shape")  Pareidolia can cause people to interpret random images, or patterns of light and shadow, as faces.

In his notebooks, Leonardo da Vinci wrote of pareidolia as a device for painters, writing:

If you look at any walls spotted with various stains or with a mixture of different kinds of stones, if you are about to invent some scene you will be able to see in it a resemblance to various different landscapes adorned with mountains, rivers, rocks, trees, plains, wide valleys, and various groups of hills. You will also be able to see divers combats and figures in quick movement, and strange expressions of faces, and outlandish costumes, and an infinite number of things which you can then reduce into separate and well conceived forms.

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