Many will be busied in taking away from a thing, which will grow in proportion as it is diminished.
When you look at a wall spotted with stains...you may discover a resemblance to various landscapes, beautiful with mountains, rivers, rocks, trees. Or again, you may see battles and figures in action, or strange faces and costumes, and an endless variety of objects which you could reduce to complete and well-drawn figures.
Nature varies the seed according to the variety of the things she desires to produce in the world.
A life well used procures a happy death.
To such an extent does nature delight and abound in variety that among her trees there is not one plant to be found which is exactly like another; and not only among the plants, but among the boughs, the leaves and the fruits, you will not find one which is exactly similar to another.
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.
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.
Just as courage is the danger of life, so is fear its safeguard.
The organ of perception acts more readily than judgment.
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.
He who wishes to see how the soul inhabits the body should look to see how that body uses its daily surroundings. If the dwelling is dirty and neglected, the body will be kept by its soul in the same condition, dirty and neglected.
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.
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.
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.
... 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.
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.
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.
The poet ranks far below the painter in the representation of visible things, and far below the musician in that of invisible things.
Given the cause nature produces the effect in the briefest manner that it can employ.
Of the original phenomena, light is the most enthralling.
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.
Make yourself a master of perspective, then acquire perfect knowledge of the proportions of men and other animals.
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?
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.
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