This article compares the landscape works of the contemporary Italian artist Enzo Fiore with the shanshui painting of the Ming painter Lan Ying (1585–1664). Although separated by centuries and technique, both artists are said to present nature as a continuous cycle without beginning or end, in which matter, life and death are bound by a fatal attraction. Fiore’s textural landscapes, built from roots, branches, moss, earth and insects set in epoxy resin, draw the viewer’s gaze across the surface towards a thinning horizon, much as Lan Ying’s Whirling Snow on the River Bank (1639) leads the eye through riverbanks, villages and mountains towards a sense of infinity. Reading Fiore’s series inspired by Leonardo da Vinci through the pair of Eros and Thanatos, the author identifies a tension between genesis and annihilation that finds an equivalent in the dense, charged colour of Lan Ying’s mountains. The difference lies in two experiences of time: Fiore’s vanitas is consumed and points to transience, whereas the journey through the Chinese scroll is cyclical and never ends. For both artists, materiality invites a tactile perception that goes beyond visual pleasure in search of the essence of nature.