Leonardo Da Vinci on Art Including Painting and Sculpture

Leonardo Da Vinci: The Difference Between Painting and Sculpture

" I do not find any other difference between painting and sculpture than the sculptor's work entails greater physical effort and the painter's greater mental effort. "

Leonardo Da Vinci: Painting and Poetry

" 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: The painter has the universe in his mind and hands

" If the painter wishes to see enchanting beauties, he has the power to produce them. If he wishes to see monstrosities, whether terrifying, or ludicrous and laughable, or pitiful, he has the power and the authority to create them. If he wishes to produce towns or deserts, if in the cold season warm places, he can make them. If he wants valleys, if from high mountaintops he wants to survey vast stretches of country, if beyond he wants to see the horizon on the sea, he has the power to create all this; and likewise, if from deep valleys he wants to see high mountains of from high mountains deep valleys ..."

Leonardo Da Vinci: How To Study

" The painter who draws by practise and judgement of the eye without the use of reason is like the mirror that reproduces within itself all the objects which are set opposite to it without knowledge of the same."

" The youth first ought to learn perspective, then the proportions of everything, then he should learn from the hand of a good master in order to accustom himself to good limbs; then from nature in order to confirm for himself the reasons for what he has learned; then for a time he should study the works of different masters; then make it a habit to practise and work at his art."

Leonardo Da Vinci: A good painter is to paint man and his mind

" A good painter is to paint two main things, namely, man and the working of man's mind. The first is easy, the second difficult, for it is to be represented through gestures and movements of the limbs."

Leonardo Da Vinci: The painter should be desirous of hearing every man's opinion

" Surely when a man is painting a picture he ought not to refuse to hear any man's opinion, for we know very well that though a man may not be a painter he may have a true conception of the form of another man, and can judge aright whether he is humpbacked or has one shoulder high or low, or whether he has a large mouth or nose or other defects."

Leonardo Da Vinci: The mirror is the master of painters

" When you wish to see whether the general effect of your picture corresponds with that of the object presented by nature, take a mirror and set it so that it reflects the actual thing, and then compare the reflection with your picture and consider carefully whether the subject of the two images is in conformity with both, studying especially the mirror."

Leonardo Da Vinci: On the life of the painter in his studio

" The painter of draftsman ought to be solitary, in order that the well-being of the body may not sap the vigor of the mind."

Leonardo Da Vinci: Advice to the painter

" O painter, take care lest the greed for grain prove stronger incentive than renown in art, for to gain this renown is a far greater thing than is the renown of riches."

Source
Goldwater, R & Treves, M. 1976. Artists on Art, From the 14th to the 20th Century . John Murray.

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