Leonardo da Vinci was a man of regal spirit and tremendous breadth of mind and his name became so famous that not only was he esteemed during his lifetime, but his reputation endured and became even greater after his death.

In my opinion painters owe to Giotto, the Florentine painter, exactly the same debt they owe to nature, which constantly serves them as a model and whose finest and most beautiful aspects they are always striving to imitate and reproduce.

Paolo Uccello's wife told people that Paolo used to stay up all night in his study trying to work out the vanishing points of his perspective. When she called him to come to bed, he would say Oh what a lovely thing this perspective is!

One of the worst things that can happen to a man is for him to work and study hard in order to benefit others and make his own name and then be prevented by sickness, or perhaps death itself, from finally completing what he has begun

I wish to be of service to the artists of our own day, by showing them how a small beginning leads to the highest elevation, and how from so noble a situation it is possible to fall to utmost ruin, and consequently, how these arts resemble nature as shown in our human bodies.

Art owes its origin to Nature herself... this beautiful creation, the world, supplied the first model, while the original teacher was that divine intelligence which has not only made us superior to the other animals, but like God Himself, if I may venture to say it.

As long as art lives never shall I accept that men are truly dead.

Drawing is the necessary beginning of everything [in Art], and not having it, one has nothing.