Montaigne's "Grotesques and Monstrous Bodies"

The opening sentences from Montaigne's essay "On Friendship" strike a chord:

As I was observing the way in which a painter in my employment goes about his work, I felt tempted to imitate him.  He chooses the best spot, in the middle of each wall, as the place for a picture, which he elaborates with all his skill; and the empty space all round he fills with grotesques; which are fantastic paintings with no other charm than their variety and strangeness.  And what are these things of mine, indeed, but grotesques and monstrous bodies, pieced together from sundry limbs, with no definite shape, and with no order, sequence, or proportion except by chance.

--Michel de Montaigne, 

(translated by J.M. Cohen, Penguin Books, 1958)