Quote

Beauty is the adjustment of all parts proportionately so that one cannot add or subtract or change without impairing the harmony of the whole.

Leon Battista Alberti

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Leon Battista Alberti
Age: 68 †
Born: 1404
Born: February 18
Died: 1472
Died: April 3
Architect
Architectural Theoretician
Author
Cryptographer
Linguist
Mathematician
Medalist
Music Theorist
Musicologist
Organist
Painter
Genova
Italy
Leon Batista Alberti
L. B. Alberti
Leo Baptista Alberti
Leon Battista degli Alberti
Lepidus
Leo-Battista degli Alberti
Leone Battista Alberti
Design
Beauty
Art
Proportionately
Subtract
Cannot
Adjustment
Change
Add
Without
Harmony
Whole
Parts

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The Arts are learnt by reason and method they are mastered by practice.
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Philosophers say that nothing can be seen that is neither illuminated nor colored.
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Practice by drawing things large, as if equal in representation and reality. In small drawings every large weakness is easily hidden in the large, the smallest weakness is easily seen.
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I certainly consider a great appreciation of painting to be the best indication of a most perfect mind.
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It seems obvious that colors vary according to lights, because when any color is placed in the shade, it appears to be different from the same color which is located in light. Shade makes color dark, whereas light makes color bright where it strikes.
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Painting is possessed of divine power, for not only does it make the absent present, but also makes the dead almost alive.
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As ability goes, so goes our fortune.
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I will never tire of recommending the custom, practiced by the best architects, of preparing not only drawings and sketches, but also models of wood or any other material. These... enable us to examine... the work as a whole... and, before continuing any further, to estimate the likely trouble and expense.
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I prefer you to take as your model a mediocre sculpture rather than an excellent painting, for from painted objects we train our hand only to make a likeness, whereas from sculptures we learn to represent both likeness and correct incidence of light.
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The greatest work of an artist is the history of a painting.
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Buildings have been made because of man.
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It was never shameful to learn from any teacher things that are useful to know.
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No art, however minor, demands less than total dedication if you want to excel in it.
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When I investigate and when I discover that the forces of the heavens and the planets are within ourselves, then truly I seem to be living among the gods.
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The function of the painter is to render... the visible surface so that at a certain distance... and position it appears... like the body itself.
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The picture will have charm when each color is very unlike the one next to it.
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Men are themselves the source of their own fortune and misfortune.
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The city is like a great house, and the house in its turn a small city.
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