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
I sometimes set myself thinking and imagining that I find amongst men but one single art or science, and that is drawing or painting, all others being members proceeding therefrom.
True art is made noble and religious by the mind producing it.
What one has most to work and struggle for in painting is to do the work with a great amount of labour and sweat in such a way that it may afterward appear, however much it was laboured upon, to have been done almost quickly and almost without any labour, and very easily, although it was not.
My beard towards heaven, I feel my nape support / The back of my head, I grow the breast of a harpy / And my brush as it drips continually / Upon my face, makes it a gorgeous floor.
Perchance that I might learn what pity is, That I might laugh at erring men no more.
No great work of art is ever finished.
Let it be enough for you to have bread and live virtuously and poorly like Christ, as I do here. I live meanly and don't bother about life or honor ... and I live with the greatest toil and a thousand worries. It is now about 15 years since I had a happy hour.
The best of artists hath no thought to show which the rough stone in its superfluous shell doth not include; to break the marble spell is all the hand that serves the brain can do.
The great tragedy of life is not that people set their sights too high and fail to achieve their goals but that they set their sights too low and do.
A good sculpture can be rolled downhill without breaking.
It is not sufficient merely to be a great master in painting and very wise, but I think that it is necessary for the painter to be very moral in his mode of life, or even, if such were possible, a saint, so that the Holy Spirit may inspire his intellect.
I cannot live under pressures from patrons, let alone paint.
If the wine is not good, then throw it out!
From such a gentle thing, from such a fountain of all delight, my every pain is born.