Quotes & Sayings About Painting By Leonardo Da Vinci

Music may be called the sister of painting, for she is dependent upon hearing, the sense which comes second and her harmony is composed of the union of proportional parts sounded simultaneously, rising and falling in one or more harmonic rhythms. — Leonardo Da Vinci

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. — Leonardo Da Vinci

After painting comes Sculpture, a very noble art, but one that does not in the execution require the same supreme ingenuity as the art of painting, since in two most important and difficult particulars, in foreshortening and in light and shade, for which the painter has to invent a process, sculpture is helped by nature. Moreover, Sculpture does not imitate color which the painter takes pains to attune so that the shadows accompany the lights. — Leonardo Da Vinci

Painting is poetry which is seen and not heard, and poetry is a painting which is heard but not seen. — Leonardo Da Vinci

Painting is concerned with the ten things you can see: these are darkness and brightness, substance and color, form and place, remoteness and nearness, movement and rest. — Leonardo Da Vinci

When you're a kid and someone's an artist, you think of Leonardo da Vinci. You don't think that's a job; you just think of a man with a beard painting the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel. — Noel Fielding

Surely when a man is painting a picture he ought not refuse to hear any man's opinion ... Since men are able to form a true judgement as to the works of nature, how much more does it behoove us to admit that they are able to judge our faults. — Leonardo Da Vinci

If you call painting dumb poetry, the painter may call poetry blind painting. — Leonardo Da Vinci

Painting embraces and contains within itself all the things which nature produces or which results from the fortuitous actions of men ... he is but a poor master who makes only a single figure well. — Leonardo Da Vinci

He who despises painting has no love for the philosophy in nature. — Leonardo Da Vinci

Let the painter composing narrative pictures take pleasure in wealth and variety, and avoid repeating any part that occurs in it, so that the uniqueness and abundance attract people to it and delight the eye of the observer. I say that a narrative painting requires (depending on the scene), wherever the eye falls, a mixture of men of diverse appearances, of diverse ages and dress, combined together with women, children, dogs, horses, buildings, fields, and hills. — Leonardo Da Vinci

While working on The Last Supper, Leonardo da Vinci regularly took off from painting for several hours at a time and seemed to be daydreaming aimlessly. Urged by his patron, the prior of Santa Maria delle Grazie, to work more continuously, da Vinci is reported to have replied, immodestly but accurately, 'The greatest geniuses accomplish more when they work less. — Tony Schwartz

The merit of painting lies in the exactness of reproduction. Painting is a science and all sciences are based on mathematics. No human inquiry can be a science unless it pursues its path through mathematical exposition and demonstration. — Leonardo Da Vinci

When Leonardo da Vinci wanted to create a whole new style of painting, one that was more lifelike and emotional, he engaged in an obsessive study of details. He spent endless hours experimenting with forms of light hitting various geometrical solids, to test how light could alter the appearance of objects. He devoted hundreds of pages in his notebooks to exploring the various gradations of shadows in every possible combination. He gave this same attention to the folds of a gown, the patterns in hair, the various minute changes in the expression of a human face. When we look at his work we are not consciously aware of these efforts on his part, but we feel how much more alive and realistic his paintings are, as if he had captured reality. — Robert Greene

Perspective is to painting what the bridle is to the horse, the rudder to a ship. — Leonardo Da Vinci

We may call painting the grandchild of nature. — Leonardo Da Vinci

You don't leave the film alone. You have a new audience, and you have a new medium. Why would you leave it alone? Film is not an antique. It's not a relic. It's not a Leonardo da Vinci. I don't want someone painting over a da Vinci or Rembrandt. But these movies aren't that. — William Friedkin

Perspective is the rein and rudder of painting. — Leonardo Da Vinci

When you are painting you should take a flat mirror and often look at your work within it, and it will then be seen in reverse, and will appear to be by the hand of some other master, and you will be better able to judge of its faults than in any other way. — Leonardo Da Vinci

Painting is poetry that is seen rather than felt, and poetry is painting that is felt rather than seen. — Leonardo Da Vinci

I think its pretty clear that film is the pre-eminent art form of our age. If Michaelangelo or Leonardo Da Vinci were alive today they'd be making Avatar, not painting a chapel. Film is incredibly democratic and accessible, it's probably the best option if you actually want to change the world, not just re-decorate it. — Banksy

Leonardo da Vinci, one of the greatest creative thinkers of all time, strongly recommended the habit of meditation in the dark. He wrote: "For I have found in my own experience that it is of no small benefit, when you lie in bed in the dark, to recall in imagination, one after another, the outlines of the form you have been studying." He often awoke to find his problems solved. Da Vinci would often stand silent and motionless before a painting for hours, without using his brush, as though waiting for spiritual guidance. — Wilferd Peterson

Painting is mute poetry, and poetry is blind painting — Leonardo Da Vinci

One day a man came to watch him work on a painting he was doing of Jesus and his disciples. The man sat there all day, and Leonardo only made one stroke the whole time. 'You stood there all day and only made one stroke,' the man said. Leonardo just looked at him. 'Yeah, but it was the right stroke,' he said." Dan sat quietly for a second. I was not sure if he was angry or if he didn't see the relevance of the analogy. Then, all of a sudden, he burst out laughing. "That's pretty good, Nerburn," he said. He reached over and pushed me playfully. "What was that guy's name?" "Leonardo da Vinci." "I've got to remember that. Leonardo Duvishhi. You sure he wasn't an Indian?" "Might have been Wapashaw's long-lost uncle," I said. Dan laughed heartily. "This is a good day, Nerburn. I'm glad you came to visit me." The hawk cut great arcs against the towering sky. The eastern horizon was filling with pinks and lavenders. "So am I, Dan," I said. "It's been too long. — Kent Nerburn

How painting surpasses all human works by reason of the subtle possibilities which it contains. — Leonardo Da Vinci

The painter will produce pictures of little merit if he takes the works of others as his standard. — Leonardo Da Vinci

Now do you not see that the eye embraces the beauty of the whole world? It counsels and corrects all the arts of mankind ... it is the prince of mathematics, and the sciences founded on it are absolutely certain. It has measured the distances and sizes of the stars it has discovered the elements and their location ... it has given birth to architecture and to perspective and to the divine art of painting. — Leonardo Da Vinci

Poetry is superior to painting in the presentation of words, and painting is superior to poetry in the presentation of facts. For this reason I judge painting to be superior to poetry. — Leonardo Da Vinci

If Michaelangelo or Leonardo Da Vinci were alive today they'd be making Avatar, not painting a chapel. — Banksy

Thirst will parch your tongue and your body will waste through lack of sleep ere you can describe in words that which painting instantly sets before the eye. — Leonardo Da Vinci

The vivacity and brightness of colors in a landscape will never bear any comparison with a landscape in nature when it is illumined by the sun, unless the painting is placed in such a position that it will receive the same light from the sun as does the landscape. — Leonardo Da Vinci