Leonardo di ser Piero da Vinci Quotes

Perspective is the bridle and rudder of painting.

The painter who draws by practice and judgement of the eye without the use of reason is like a mirror which copies everything placed in front of it without knowledge of the same.

Just as a stone flung into the water becomes the centre and cause of many circles, and as sound diffuses itself in circles in the air; so any object, placed in the luminous atmosphere, diffuses itself in circles, and fills the surrounding air with infinite images of itself.

Do not despise my opinion, when I remind you that it should not be hard for you to stop sometimes and look into the stains of walls, or ashes of a fire, or clouds, or mud or like places, in which, if you consider them well, you may find really marvellous ideas.

The span of a man’s outspread arms is equal to his height.

A good painter has two chief objects to paint, man and the intention of his soul; the former is easy, the latter harder, because he has to represent it by the attitudes and movements of the limbs.

He is a poor disciple who does not excel his master.

The air moves like a river and carries the clouds with it; just as running water carries all the things that float upon it.

If a man have a tent made in linen of which the apertures have all been stopped up, and it be twelve braccia across and twelve in depth, he will be able to throw himself down from any great height without sustaining injury.

Force is the same throughout and the whole is in every part of it. Force is a spiritual power, an invisible energy which is imparted by violence from without to all bodies out of their natural balance.

Painting is poetry which is seen and not heard, and poetry is a painting which is heard but not seen.

Shun those studies in which the work that results dies with the worker.

I do not find any difference between painting and sculpture except that the sculptor pursues his work with greater physical fatigue than the painter and the painter pursues his with greater mental fatigue.

To devise is the work of the master, to execute the act of the servant.