Art lives on constraint and dies of freedom.
A great sculpture can roll down a hill without breaking.
I have never felt salvation in nature. I love cities above all.
If in my youth I had realized that the sustaining splendour of beauty of with which I was in love would one day flood back into my heart, there to ignite a flame that would torture me without end, how gladly would I have put out the light in my eyes.
It is well with me only when I have a chisel in my hand.
Draw, Antonio; draw, Antonio; draw and don’t waste time.
The idea is there locked inside. All you have to do is remove the excess stone.
Only God creates. The rest of us just copy.
Good painting is the kind that looks like sculpture.
Why do You Send Fools To judge My Work?
I couldn’t give you something mediocre even if that’s all you asked for.
No great work of art is ever finished.
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.
No thought is born in me that does not bear the image of death.
The best artist has that thought alone Which is contained within the marble shell; The sculptor’s hand can only break the spell To free the figures slumbering in the stone.
I give my soul to God, my body to the earth, and my worldly possessions to my nearest of kin, charging them to remember the sufferings of Jesus Christ.
The art of creation lies in the gift of perceiving the particular and generalizing it, thus creating the particular again. It is therefore a powerful transforming force and a generator of creative solutions in relation to a given problem.
Perfection is no small thing, but it is made up of small things.
It is better decoration when, in painting, some monstrosity is introduced for variety and a relaxation of the senses and to attract the attention of mortal eyes, which at times desire to see that which they have never seen...
The greatest artist has no conception which a single block of white marble does not potentially contain within its mass, but only a hand obedient to the mind can penetrate to this image.