Leon Battista Alberti Quotes

23 quotes in 267 categories

• When I investigate and when I discover that the forces of the heavens and the planets are within ourselves, then truly I seem to be…
• Beauty is the adjustment of all parts proportionately so that one cannot add or subtract or change without impairing the harmony of the whole.
• I certainly consider a great appreciation of painting to be the best indication of a most perfect mind...
• A man can do all things if he will.
• Nothing overshadows truth so much as authority.
• We must always take from nature what we paint and always choose the most beautiful things.
• Painting is possessed of divine power, for not only does it make the absent present, but also makes the dead almost alive.
• The picture will have charm when each color is very unlike the one next to it.
• ... the movements of the body reveal the movements of the soul.
• Painting contains a divine force which... makes the dead seem almost alive.
• The city is like a great house, and the house in its turn a small city.
• I will never tire of recommending the custom, practiced by the best architects, of preparing not only drawings and sketches, but also models of wood…
• It seems obvious that colors vary according to lights, because when any color is placed in the shade, it appears to be different from the…
• Practice by drawing things large, as if equal in representation and reality. In small drawings every large weakness is easily hidden; in the large, the…
• There is no art which has not had its beginnings in things full of errors. Nothing is at the same time both new and perfect.
• Philosophers say that nothing can be seen that is neither illuminated nor colored.
• I shall praise those faces which seem to project out of the picture as though they were sculptured, and I shall censure those faces in…
• I would have artists be convinced that the supreme skill and art in painting consists in knowing how to use black and white... because it…
• No art, however minor, demands less than total dedication if you want to excel in it.
• Men can do all things if they will.

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