Leon Battista Alberti Quotes

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

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

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

A man can do all things if he will.

The city is like a great house, and the house in its turn a small city.

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

A common error of ignorance is to maintain that what one does not know does not exist.

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

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.

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.

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.

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

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

A person can do anything if they only will it strongly enough.

Errors accumulate in the sketch and compound in the model.

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.

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

Nothing overshadows truth so much as authority.

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.

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

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

As ability goes, so goes our fortune.

It was never shameful to learn from any teacher things that are useful to know.

Philosophers say that nothing can be seen that is neither illuminated nor colored.

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