Art Quotes

A gray day provides the best light.

The beginnings and ends of shadow lie between the light and darkness and may be infinitely diminished and infinitely increased. Shadow is the means by which bodies display their form. The forms of bodies could not be understood in detail but for shadow.

A good painter has two main objects to paint, man and the intention of his soul. The former is easy, the latter hard as he has to represent it by the attitude and movement of the limbs.

There are three aspects to perspective. The first has to do with how the size of objects seems to diminish according to distance: the second, the manner in which colors change the farther away they are from the eye; the third defines how objects ought to be finished less carefully the farther away they are.

Black is like a broken vessel, which is deprived of the capacity to contain anything.

The painter strives and competes with nature.

Music cannot be called otherwise than the sister of painting, for she is dependent upon hearing, a sense second to sight, and her harmony is composed of the union of its proportional parts sounded simultaneously, rising and falling in one or more harmonic rhythms.

Those who become enamoured of the art, without having previously applied to the diligent study of the scientific part of it, may be compared to mariners who put to the sea in a ship without rudder or compass and therefore cannot be certain of arriving at the wished for port.

To any white body receiving the light from the sun, or the air, the shadows will be of a bluish cast.

Here forms, here colours, here the character of every part of the universe are concentrated to a point; and that point is so marvellous a thing ... Oh! marvellous, O stupendous Necessity - by thy laws thou dost compel every effect to be the direct result of its cause, by the shortest path. These are miracles.

The boundaries of bodies are the least of all things. The proposition is proved to be true, because the boundary of a thing is a surface, which is not part of the body contained within that surface; nor is it part of the air surrounding that body, but is the medium interposted between the air and the body, as is proved in its place.

All bodies together, and each by itself, give off to the surrounding air an infinite number of images which are all-pervading and each complete, each conveying the nature, colour and form of the body which produces it.

Thus it is with a deaf and dumb person who, when he sees two men in conversation - although he is deprived of hearing - can nevertheless understand, from the attitudes and gestures of the speakers, the nature of their discussion.

A picture or representation of human figures, ought to be done in such a way as that the spectator may easily recognise, by means of their attitudes, the purpose in their minds. Thus, if you have to represent a man of noble character in the act of speaking, let his gestures be such as naturally accompany good words; and, in the same way, if you wish to depict a man of a brutal nature, give him fierce movements; as with his arms flung out towards the listener, and his head and breast thrust forward beyond his feet, as if following the speaker's hands.

Many are they who have a taste and love for drawing, but no talent; and this will be discernible in boys who are not diligent and never finish their drawings with shading.

The variety of colour in objects cannot be discerned at a great distance, excepting in those parts which are directly lighted up by the solar rays.

Shadow partakes of the nature of universal matter. All such matters are more powerful in their beginning and grow weaker towards the end, I say at the beginning, whatever their form or condition may be and whether visible or invisible. And it is not from small beginnings that they grow to a great size in time; as it might be a great oak which has a feeble beginning from a small acorn. Yet I may say that the oak is most powerful at its beginning, that is where it springs from the earth, which is where it is largest.

Beauty perishes in life, but is immortal in art.

Painting embraces and contains within itself all the things which nature produces or which results from the fortuitous actions of men... he is but a poor master who makes only a single figure well.

This ramification of the elm has the largest branch in front, and its smallest are the first and the penultimate when the chief branch is straight.