Rudolf Steiner: "The painting of landscape has come into prominence only since the last three to five centuries. Earlier than that you will find that landscape takes second place; it is the human world that is brought to the forefront because the consciousness still survived that in regard to objective processes of Earth existence the human world is much more important than the landscape — which is but the effect of the human world. In the very birth of preference for landscape there lies, in the sphere of art, the parallel phenomenon of the birth of the materialistic trend of mind — consisting in the belief that landscape and what it represents has an existence of its own, entirely apart from humanity. But the truth is quite the reverse."
Source: https://martyrion.blogspot.com/2018/01/the-influences-of-lucifer-and-ahriman_22.html