In the fourteenth of Reynolds's Discourses, on the subject of Ideal Landscape, he states that:
To manage a subject of this kind [a mythological one], a particular style of art is required; and it can only be done without impropriety, or even without ridicule, when we adapt the character of the landskip, and that too, in all its parts, to the historical or poetical representation. This is a very difficult adventure, and it requires a mind thrown back two thousand years, and as it were naturalized in antiquity, like that of Nicolo Poussin, to atchieve it. ( Reynolds, Discourses, p. 256)