Michelangelo
Michelangelo
Michelangelo di Lodovico Buonarroti Simoniwas an Italian sculptor, painter, architect, poet, and engineer of the High Renaissance who exerted an unparalleled influence on the development of Western art. Considered to be the greatest living artist during his lifetime, he has since also been described as one of the greatest artists of all time. Despite making few forays beyond the arts, his versatility in the disciplines he took up was of such a high order that he is often considered a...
NationalityItalian
ProfessionPainter
Date of Birth6 March 1475
CityCaprese, Italy
CountryItaly
He who does not master the nude cannot understand the principles of architecture.
The promises of this world are, for the most part, vain phantoms; and to confide in one's self, and become something of worth and value is the best and safest course.
It is necessary to keep one's compass in one's eyes and not in the hand, for the hands execute, but the eye judges.
Many believe - and I believe - that I have been designated for this work by God. In spite of my old age, I do not want to give it up; I work out of love for God and I put all my hope in Him.
In every block of marble I see a statue as plain as though it stood before me, shaped and perfect in attitude and action. I have only to hew away the rough walls that imprison the lovely apparition to reveal it to the other eyes as mine see it.
My soul can find no staircase to Heaven unless it be through Earth's loveliness.
To touch is to give life.
How wrong are those simpletons, of whom the world is full, who look more at... color than at the figures which show spirit and movement.
If you knew how much work went into it, you wouldn't call it genius.
Already at sixteen, my mind was a battlefield: my love of pagan beauty, the male nude, at war with my religious faith. A polarity of themes and forms: one spiritual, the other earthly.
What spirit is so empty and blind, that it cannot recognize the fact that the foot is more noble than the shoe, and skin more beautiful than the garment with which it is clothed?
Love lent me wings; my path was like a stair; A lamp unto my feet, that sun was given; And death was safety and great joy to find; But dying now, I shall not climb to Heaven.
If people knew how hard I worked to get my mastery, it wouldn't seem so wonderful at all.
If we have been pleased with life, we should not be displeased with death, since it comes from the hand of the same master.