Many will be busied in taking away from a thing, which will grow in proportion as it is diminished.
To me it seems that those sciences are vain and full of error which are not born of experience, mother of all certainty, first-hand experience which in its origins, or means, or end has passed through one of the five senses.
A life well used procures a happy death.
I say that the power of vision extends through the visual rays to the surface of non-transparent bodies, while the power possessed by these bodies extends to the power of vision.
He who draws... ought to take his position so that the eye of the figure he is drawing is on a level with his own... because, generally, figures or people whom you meet in the streets all have their eyes at the same level as yours, and if you make them higher or lower you will find that your portrait will not resemble them.
A wave is never found alone, but is mingled with as many other waves as there are uneven places in the object where the said wave is produced.
Just as courage is the danger of life, so is fear its safeguard.
... we might say that the earth has a spirit of growth; that its flesh is the soil, its bones the arrangement and connection of the rocks of which the mountains are composed, its cartilage the tufa, and its blood the springs of water.
It reflects no great honor on a painter to be able to execute only one thing well -- such as a head, an academy figure, or draperies, animals, landscapes, or the like -- in other words, confining himself to some particular object of study. This is so because there is scarcely a person so devoid of genius as to fail of success if he applies himself earnestly to one branch of study and practices it continually.
The Medici made me and the Medici destroyed me.
The body of the earth is of the nature of a fish... because it draws water as its breath instead of air.
He who loves practice without theory is like the sailor who boards ship without a rudder and compass and never knows where he may cast.
O painter, take care lest the greed for gain prove a stronger incentive than renown in art, for to gain this renown is a far greater thing than is the renown of riches.
Ogni nostra cognitione prīcipia da sentimēti. All our knowledge has its origin in our preceptions.
Surely when a man is painting a picture he ought not refuse to hear any man's opinion... Since men are able to form a true judgement as to the works of nature, how much more does it behoove us to admit that they are able to judge our faults.
Truth at last cannot be hidden. Dissimulation is of no avail. Dissimulation is to no purpose before so great a judge. Falsehood puts on a mask. Nothing is hidden under the sun.
If you throw a stone in a pond... the waves which strike against the shores are thrown back towards the spot where the stone struck; and on meeting other waves they never intercept each other's course... In a small pond one and the same stroke gives birth to many motions of advance and recoil.
The poet ranks far below the painter in the representation of visible things, and far below the musician in that of invisible things.
What induces you, oh man, to depart from your home in town, to leave parents and friends, and go to the countryside over mountains and valleys, if it is not for the beauty of the world of nature?
Good culture is born of a good disposition; and since the cause is more to be praised than the effect, I will rather praise a good disposition without culture, than good culture without the disposition.
Make yourself a master of perspective, then acquire perfect knowledge of the proportions of men and other animals.
The painter who draws merely by practice and by eye, without any reason, is like a mirror which copies every thing placed in front of it without being conscious of their existence.
The evil which does me no harm is like the good which in no wise avails me.
A painter was asked why, since he made such beautiful figures, which were but dead things, his children were so ugly; to which the painter replied that he made his pictures by day, and his children by night.
The merit of painting lies in the exactness of reproduction. Painting is a science and all sciences are based on mathematics. No human inquiry can be a science unless it pursues its path through mathematical exposition and demonstration.
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