Leon Battista Alberti famous quotes

04-21-2025

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

#Appreciation #Perfect #Mind
We must always take from nature what we paint and always choose the most beautiful things.
-- Leon Battista Alberti

#Beautiful #Paint #Beautiful Things
No art, however minor, demands less than total dedication if you want to excel in it.
-- Leon Battista Alberti

#Inspirational #Art #Dedication
Errors accumulate in the sketch and compound in the model.
-- Leon Battista Alberti

#Errors #Compounds #Models
It was never shameful to learn from any teacher things that are useful to know.
-- Leon Battista Alberti

#Teacher #Shameful
I prefer you to take as your model a mediocre sculpture rather than an excellent painting, for from painted objects we train our hand only to make a likeness, whereas from sculptures we learn to represent both likeness and correct incidence of light.
-- Leon Battista Alberti

#Light #Hands #Sculpture
Perhaps the artist who seeks dignity above all in his 'historia', ought to represent very few figures; for as paucity of words imparts majesty to a prince, provided histhoughts and orders are understood, so the presence of only the strictly necessary numbers of bodies confers dignity on a picture.
-- Leon Battista Alberti

#Artist #Order #Numbers
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 is light and shade that make objects appear in relief.
-- Leon Battista Alberti

#Art #Black And White #Light
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 which I see no art but that of outline.
-- Leon Battista Alberti

#Art #Portraiture #Faces
Philosophers say that nothing can be seen that is neither illuminated nor colored.
-- Leon Battista Alberti

#Philosophy #Philosopher
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.
-- Leon Battista Alberti

#Art #Errors #Perfect
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 smallest weakness is easily seen.
-- Leon Battista Alberti

#Reality #Practice #Drawing
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 same color which is located in light. Shade makes color dark, whereas light makes color bright where it strikes.
-- Leon Battista Alberti

#Dark #Light #Color
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 or any other material. These... enable us to examine... the work as a whole... and, before continuing any further, to estimate the likely trouble and expense.
-- Leon Battista Alberti

#Drawing #Woods #Trouble
Beauty is 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

#Beauty #Add #Harmony
A man can do all things if he will.
-- Leon Battista Alberti

#Attitude #Men
Nothing overshadows truth so much as authority.
-- Leon Battista Alberti

#Truth #Authority
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

#Doe #Alive #Painting
The picture will have charm when each color is very unlike the one next to it.
-- Leon Battista Alberti

#Color #Next #Charm
... the movements of the body reveal the movements of the soul.
-- Leon Battista Alberti

#Soul #Movement #Body
Painting contains a divine force which... makes the dead seem almost alive.
-- Leon Battista Alberti

#Alive #Painting #Divine
The city is like a great house, and the house in its turn a small city.
-- Leon Battista Alberti

#Cities #House #Turns
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 living among the gods.
-- Leon Battista Alberti

#Life #God #Science

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