Michelangelo Quotes About Painting

Quotes about: Painting

• A man paints with his brains and not with his hands.

  Michelangelo

  Art, Pain, Inspiration

  Michelangelo Buonarroti (1913). “Michelangelo: A Record of His Life as Told in His Own Letters and Papers”

• For those who feel it, nothing makes the soul so religious and pure as the endeavor to create something perfect; for God is perfection, and whoever strives after it, is striving after something divine. True painting is only the image of the perfection of God, a shadow of the pencil with which he paints, a melody, a striving after harmony.

  Michelangelo

  Religious, Perfect, Soul

• Painters are not in any way unsociable through pride, but either because they find few pursuits equal to painting, or in order not to corrupt themselves with the useless conversation of idle people, and debase the intellect from the lofty imaginations in which they are always absorbed.

  Michelangelo

  Pride, Order, People

• Good painting is nothing else but a copy of the perfections of God and a reminder of His painting. Finally, good painting is a music and a melody which intellect only can appreciate, and with great difficulty.

  Michelangelo

  Appreciation, Appreciate, Perfection

• The science of design, or of line-drawing, if you like to use this term, is the source and very essence of painting, sculpture, architecture... Sometimes... it seems to me that... all the works of the human brain and hand are either design itself or a branch of that art.

  Michelangelo

  Art, Drawing, Hands

• Good painting is the kind that looks like sculpture.

  Michelangelo

  Art, Looks, Sculpture

• Sculpture is made by taking away, while painting is made by adding.

  Michelangelo

  Sculpture, Painting, Made

  Georgia Illetschko, Michelangelo Buonarroti (2004). “I, Michelangelo”, Prestel Pub

• It is not sufficient merely to be a great master in painting and very wise, but I think that it is necessary for the painter to be very moral in his mode of life, or even, if such were possible, a saint, so that the Holy Spirit may inspire his intellect.

  Michelangelo

  Wise, Thinking, Inspire

• I sometimes set myself thinking and imagining that I find amongst men but one single art or science, and that is drawing or painting, all others being members proceeding therefrom.

  Michelangelo

  Art, Men, Thinking

• What one has most to work and struggle for in painting is to do the work with a great amount of labour and sweat in such a way that it may afterward appear, however much it was laboured upon, to have been done almost quickly and almost without any labour, and very easily, although it was not.

  Michelangelo

  Struggle, Sweat, Deception

• It is better decoration when, in painting, some monstrosity is introduced for variety and a relaxation of the senses and to attract the attention of mortal eyes, which at times desire to see that which they have never seen.

  Michelangelo

  Eye, Relaxation, Desire

• In my opinion painting should be considered excellent in proportion as it approaches the effect of relief, while relief should be considered bad in proportion as it approaches the effect of painting.

  Michelangelo

  Relief, Opinion, Painting

  Quoted in Robert J Clements (ed) Michelangelo: A Self-Portrait (1968).

• Painting and sculpture, labour and good faith, have been my ruin and I continually go from bad to worse. Better it would have been for me if I had set myself to making matches in my youth. I should not be in such distress of mind.

  Michelangelo

  Stress, Mind, Sculpture

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