Artist Quotes by Leon Battista Alberti

15 Artist quotes by Leon Battista Alberti

All Artist quotes Leon Battista Alberti’s page

Leon Battista Alberti’s words echo the Renaissance mind that married geometry with imagination. His observations on the artist’s role feel scholarly yet accessible, offering a concise window into the early foundations of visual thinking.

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We must always take from nature what we paint and always choose the most beautiful things.

Leon Battista Alberti

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What is painting but the act of embracing, by means of art, the surface of the pool?

Leon Battista Alberti

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The greatest work of an artist is the history of a painting.

Leon Battista Alberti

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Painting contains a divine force which... makes the dead seem almost alive.

Leon Battista Alberti

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No art, however minor, demands less than total dedication if you want to excel in it.

Leon Battista Alberti

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I certainly consider a great appreciation of painting to be the best indication of a most perfect mind...

Leon Battista Alberti

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There is no art which has not had its beginnings in things full of errors. Nothing is at the same time both…

Leon Battista Alberti

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I would have artists be convinced that the supreme skill and art in painting consists in knowing how to use black and…

Leon Battista Alberti

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Painting is possessed of divine power, for not only does it make the absent present, but also makes the dead almost alive.

Leon Battista Alberti

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Practice by drawing things large, as if equal in representation and reality. In small drawings every large weakness is easily hidden; in…

Leon Battista Alberti

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I shall praise those faces which seem to project out of the picture as though they were sculptured, and I shall censure…

Leon Battista Alberti

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Painting contains a divine force which not only makes absent men present, as friendship is said to do, but moreover makes the…

Leon Battista Alberti

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The function of the painter is to render... the visible surface so that at a certain distance... and position it appears... like…

Leon Battista Alberti

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I prefer you to take as your model a mediocre sculpture rather than an excellent painting, for from painted objects we train…

Leon Battista Alberti

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Perhaps the artist who seeks dignity above all in his 'historia', ought to represent very few figures; for as paucity of words…

Leon Battista Alberti

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More by Leon Battista Alberti

The Arts are learnt by reason and method; they are mastered by practice.

Leon Battista Alberti

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The function of the painter is to render... the visible surface so that at a certain distance... and position it appears... like the body…

Leon Battista Alberti

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When I investigate and when I discover that the forces of the heavens and the planets are within ourselves, then truly I seem to…

Leon Battista Alberti

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The picture will have charm when each color is very unlike the one next to it.

Leon Battista Alberti

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Errors accumulate in the sketch and compound in the model.

Leon Battista Alberti

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It is very rarely granted even to Nature herself to produce anything absolutely perfect in every part.

Leon Battista Alberti

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Painting contains a divine force which... makes the dead seem almost alive.

Leon Battista Alberti

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A man can do all things if he but wills them.

Leon Battista Alberti

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It seems obvious that colors vary according to lights, because when any color is placed in the shade, it appears to be different from…

Leon Battista Alberti

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... the movements of the body reveal the movements of the soul.

Leon Battista Alberti

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Men are themselves the source of their own fortune and misfortune.

Leon Battista Alberti

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There is no art which has not had its beginnings in things full of errors. Nothing is at the same time both new and…

Leon Battista Alberti

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Beauty: the adjustment of all parts proportionately so that one cannot add or subtract or change without impairing the harmony of the whole.

Leon Battista Alberti

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Painting contains a divine force which not only makes absent men present, as friendship is said to do, but moreover makes the dead seem…

Leon Battista Alberti

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I shall praise those faces which seem to project out of the picture as though they were sculptured, and I shall censure those faces…

Leon Battista Alberti

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