List of Leon Battista Alberti Quotes

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.

Painting Is Possessed Of Divine Power, For Not Only Does It Make The Absent Present, But Also Makes The Dead Almost Alive.

What Is Painting But The Act Of Embracing, By Means Of Art, The Surface Of The Pool?

The Picture Will Have Charm When Each Color Is Very Unlike The One Next To It.

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.

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.

Buildings Have Been Made Because Of Man.

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.

The Greatest Work Of An Artist Is The History Of A Painting.

It Was Never Shameful To Learn From Any Teacher Things That Are Useful To Know.