Leonardo Da Vinci Quotes
"Leonardo da Vinci had the good luck to be born out of wedlock. Otherwise, he would have been expected to become a notary, like the firstborn legitimate sons in his family stretching back at least five generations."
Because Michele was a notary, he was entitled to the honorific "Ser" and thus became known as Ser Michele da Vinci.
"The next in line, Antonio, was an anomaly. He used the honorific Ser and married the daughter of a notary, but he seems to have lacked the da Vinci ambition."
"On one of his visits back to Vinci, Piero had a relationship with an unmarried local peasant girl, and in the spring of 1452 they had a son."
"Leonardo’s mother was not considered worth mentioning in Antonio’s birth notation nor in any other birth or baptism record."
"In fact, she was an orphaned and impoverished sixteen-year-old from the Vinci area named Caterina Lippi."
"As Leonardo’s well-attended baptism attests, being born out of wedlock was not a cause for public shame."
"These strictures had an upside. Illegitimacy freed some imaginative and free-spirited young men to be creative at a time when creativity was increasingly rewarded."
"Because Florence’s guild of notaries barred those who were non legittimo, Leonardo was able to benefit from the note-taking instincts that were ingrained in his family heritage while being free to pursue his own creative passions."
"His lack of reverence for authority and his willingness to challenge received wisdom would lead him to craft an empirical approach for understanding nature that foreshadowed the scientific method developed more than a century later by Bacon and Galileo."
"The most vivid memory Leonardo had of his infancy was one he recorded fifty years later, when he was studying the flight of birds."
"This ability to convey the subtleties of motion in a piece of still art was among Verrocchio’s underappreciated talents, one that Leonardo would adopt and then far surpass in his paintings."
"The Annunciation shows Leonardo, still in his early twenties, experimenting with light, perspective, and narratives involving human reactions."
"The Munich Madonna of the Carnation, the focus of the picture is the reaction of the newborn Jesus to the flower."
"The Madonna and Child with Flowers in Russia’s Hermitage Museum also shows the lively emotions and reactions that Leonardo had learned to capture in a scene, thus turning a moment into a narrative."
"The good painter has to paint two principal things, man and the intention of his mind."
"Movements of the soul are made known by movements of the body."
"As you go about town, constantly observe, note, and consider the circumstances and behavior of men as they talk and quarrel, or laugh, or come to blows."
"Tell me if anything was ever done... Tell me... Tell me."
"The power of the pictures comes from the premonition that both mother and child seem to have of the crucifixion."
"The penis sometimes displays an intellect of its own."
"The most arresting features of the portrait are Ginevra’s eyes."
"The motions of the mind are made known by movements of the body."
"We do not lack devices for measuring these miserable days of ours."
"There is no perfect gift without great suffering."
"Sitting on feather-pillows, lying reclined beneath the blanket is no way to fame."
"If any of the above-mentioned things seem impossible or impracticable to anyone, I am most readily disposed to demonstrate them."
"Fame, without which man’s life wastes out of mind, leaving on earth no more memorial than foam in water or smoke upon the wind."
"The movement is more praiseworthy than anything else."
"He who has access to the fountain does not go to the water-jar."
"If a man is placed flat on his back, with his hands and feet extended, and a compass centered at his navel, his fingers and toes will touch the circumference of a circle thereby described."
"In narrative paintings you should closely intermingle direct opposites, because they offer a great contrast to each other, especially when they are adjacent."
"Though I have no power to quote from authors as they have, I shall rely on a far more worthy thing—on experience."
"If you open your legs enough that your head is lowered by one-fourteenth of your height and raise your hands enough that your extended fingers touch the line of the top of your head, know that the center of the extended limbs will be the navel."
"Nature has given sensibility to pain to living organisms that have the power of movement, in order to preserve those parts which might be destroyed by movement."
"In the human body, the central point is the navel."
"From above the chest to the top of the head is one-sixth of the height of a man."
"The soul seems to reside in the judgment, and the judgment would seem to be seated in that part where all the senses meet; and this is called the senso comune."
"There is no certainty in sciences where mathematics cannot be applied."
"The space between the mouth and the base of the nose is one-seventh of the face."
"A man with wings large enough and duly attached might learn to overcome the resistance of the air and raise himself upon it."
"The greatest force a man can apply will be when he sets his feet on one end of the balance and then leans his shoulders against some stable support."
"Every part will be drawn, using all means of demonstrations, from three different points of view."
"This work should begin with the conception of man, and describe the nature of the womb and how the fetus lives in it."
"The action of a pole drawn through still water resembles that of running water against a stationary pole."
"Proportion is not only to be found in number and measure, but also in sounds, weights, times and places and every force that exists."
"The frog dies instantly when its spinal cord is perforated."
"In painting, the actions of the figures are, in all cases, expressive of the purpose of their minds."
"Men of lofty genius sometimes accomplish the most when they work least, for their minds are occupied with their ideas and the perfection of their conceptions, to which they afterwards give form."
"The eye, which is said to be the window of the soul, is the principal means by which the brain’s sensory receptor may fully and magnificently contemplate the infinite works of nature."
"Take a poet who describes the charms of a woman to her lover, and a painter who represents her, and you will see where nature leads the enamored critic."
"The true outlines of opaque bodies are never seen with sharp precision."
"The line forming the boundary of a surface is of invisible thickness. Therefore, O painter, do not surround your bodies with lines."
"Between light and darkness there is infinite variation, because their quantity is continuous."
"Painting is based on perspective, and perspective is nothing else than a thorough knowledge of the function of the eye."
"A picture of human figures ought to be done in such a way as that the viewer may easily recognize, by means of their attitudes, the intentions of their minds."
"The eye can never arrive at a perfect knowledge of the interval between two objects by means of the linear perspective alone, if not assisted by the perspective of colors."
"It behooves the painter therefore to touch those parts slightly, in an unfinished manner."
"One who was drinking has left his glass in its position and turned his head towards the speaker."
"Another with hands spread open showing the palm, shrugs his shoulders up to his ears and makes a grimace of astonishment."
"He that dippeth his hand with me in the dish shall betray me."
"Objects against a light background look larger than when against a dark background."
"No surface can be seen exactly as it is, because the eye that sees it is not equally remote from all its edges."
"Stand back until your eye is at least twenty times as far off as the greatest height and width of your work."
"Leonardo was skilled at blurring the differences between the sexes."
"The expressions of the other figures are intense, almost exaggerated, as if they are players in a pageant."
"The light in the painting appears to come from the actual window that is high on the left wall of the refectory, blending reality with imagination."
"Leonardo’s study of perspective science had not made him rigid or academic as a painter."
"His strokes were so light and layered that individual brushstrokes are imperceptible."
"Once a patch of plaster had been put on the wall, that area of the painting had to be completed in one day’s session, before it dried."
"Leonardo finished the painting by early 1498, and the duke rewarded him with a bonus of a vineyard near the church."
"His studio was spared, but the French troops destroyed the clay model of his unbuilt horse monument by shooting arrows at it."
"The original intention was to have the wall display only what could be known to be done by Leonardo’s hand."
"On the rare occasions when he recorded a family event in his notebooks, Leonardo sometimes displayed a notarial tic of repeating the date."
"Expenses for Caterina’s death. burial: For 3 pounds of candle wax s. 27."
"Leonardo spent four times as much in 1497 on the silver cloth, velvet trim, and tailoring for a cloak for Salai."
"Leonardo da Vinci, who is making the bronze horse of the Duke Francesco."
"Leonardo’s first stop on his journey back to Florence in early 1500 was the town of Mantua."
"Why is it that I do not describe my method for remaining underwater and how long I can remain there without coming up for air?"
"Leonardo was tailor-made for a Florence that had rebelled against Savonarola’s Bonfire of the Vanities and was again willing to embrace flamboyant, eccentric, and artistic free spirits."
"These might seem like costumes from one of his plays or masquerades, but we know from contemporary accounts that he actually dressed like this when walking about town."
"By then he owned three editions of Aesop’s fables and multiple volumes of bawdy verse."
"He read your letter and said he would do so, but hearing nothing more from him I finally sent one of my men to him to learn what he wished to do."
"Leonardo’s painting arrived at the French court in 1507, and Salai possessed a similar picture when he died."
"The process of production is more in keeping with the commissioning of a superbly made chair from a major designer-craftsman."
"The Salvator Mundi motif had become very popular by the early 1500s, especially among northern European painters."
"Instead of painting the seduction scene, as others had done, he chose to portray the moment of the births."
"Leonardo may have gone to work with Borgia at the behest of Machiavelli and Florence’s leaders as a gesture of goodwill."
"He shall be given free passage and be relieved of all public tax, both for himself and for his party, and shall be welcomed amicably."
"Percussion is less strong the more oblique it is."
"Save me from strife and battle, a most beastly madness."
"Leonardo was handsome, urbane, eloquent and dandyishly well dressed."
"The river that is to be diverted from one course to another must be coaxed and not treated roughly or with violence."
"In all his works Michelangelo was drawn to the nude."
"The painter should aim at universality."
"To bring the said dispute and litigation to an end and see that true justice is done with as little delay as possible; and you will give us very agreeable pleasure by doing so."
"Salai, I want peace, not war. No more wars, I give in."
"Neither the villa additions nor the garden of delights was ever built, which could reinforce the perception that the time Leonardo spent on engineering was to some extent wasted."
"It was a variety of employment which Leonardo enjoyed, but which has left posterity the poorer."
"It is another example of his relentless curiosity that would astonish us if we had not become so used to it."