Leon Battista Alberti
Leon Battista Alberti
Leon Battista Albertiwas an Italian humanist author, artist, architect, poet, priest, linguist, philosopher and cryptographer; he epitomised the Renaissance Man. Although he is often characterized as an "architect" exclusively, as James Beck has observed, "to single out one of Leon Battista's 'fields' over others as somehow functionally independent and self-sufficient is of no help at all to any effort to characterize Alberti's extensive explorations in the fine arts." Alberti's life was described in Giorgio Vasari's Lives of the Most Excellent...
NationalityItalian
ProfessionArchitect
Date of Birth14 February 1404
CountryItaly
Errors accumulate in the sketch and compound in the model.
As ability goes, so goes our fortune.
It was never shameful to learn from any teacher things that are useful to know.
A person can do anything if they only will it strongly enough.
Painting contains a divine force which... makes the dead seem almost alive.
Philosophers say that nothing can be seen that is neither illuminated nor colored.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Painting is possessed of divine power, for not only does it make the absent present, but also makes the dead almost alive.
Nothing overshadows truth so much as authority.
The picture will have charm when each color is very unlike the one next to it.
The greatest work of an artist is the history of a painting.