Leonardo DaVinci

The tears come from the heart and not from the brain.

declaimers of the works of others, must be regarded and not otherwise esteemed than as the object in front of a mirror, when compared with its image seen in the mirror. For the first is something in itself, and the other nothingness – folks little indebted to Nature, since it is only by chance that they wear the human form and without it I might class them with the herds of beasts.

The sorest misfortune is when your views are in advance of your work

‘I will go my own way and withdraw apart, the better to study the forms of natural objects,’ I tell you, you will not be able to help often listening to their chatter. And so, since one cannot serve two masters, you will badly fill the part of a companion, and carry out your studies of art even worse. And if you say: ‘I will withdraw so far that their words cannot reach me and they cannot disturb me,’ I can tell you that you will be thought mad. But, you see, you will at any rate be alone. And if you must have companionship find it in your studio. This may assist you to have the advantages which arise from various speculations. All other company may be highly mischievous.

And if you call painting dumb poetry, the painter may call poetry blind painting. Now which is the worse defect? To be blind or dumb?

men who desire nothing but material riches and are absolutely devoid of that of wisdom, which is the food and the only true riches of the mind.

3 branches of Perspective, which are: the diminution in the distinctness of the forms of the objects; the diminution in their magnitude; and the diminution in their colour.

Painting is concerned with all the 10 attributes of sight, which are: Darkness, Light, Solidity and Colour, Form and Position, Distance and Propinquity, Motion and Rest.

Darkness, Light, Solidity and Colour, Form and Position, Distance and Propinquity, Motion and Rest

general rule, Nature teaches us that an object can never be seen perfectly unless the space between it and the eye is equal, at least, to the length of the face