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.

Lorenzo de’ Medici seeks highly skilled, aesthetically oriented individual to conceive and implement several major public projects. You are a generalist with sound training in structural engineering, synthesis of pigments and Christian iconography. Some climbing involved

How wrong are those simpletons, of whom the world is full, who look more at color than at the figures which show spirit and movement.

I live in sin, to kill myself I live; no longer my life my own, but sin’s; my good is given to me by heaven, my evil by myself, by my free will, of which I am deprived.

And who is so barbarous as not to understand that the foot of a man is nobler than his shoe, and his skin nobler than that of the sheep with which he is clothed.

I feast on wine and bread, and feasts they are.

Faith in oneself is the best and safest course.

The hand that follows intellect can achieve.

I live and love in God’s peculiar light.

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.

True art is made noble and religious by the mind producing it.

However rich I may have been, I have always lived like a poor man.

Trifles make perfection, and perfection is no trifle.

So now, from this mad passion Which made me take art for an idol and a king I have learnt the burden of error that it bore And what misfortune springs from man’s desire… The world’s frivolities have robbed me of the time That I was given for reflecting upon God.

A beautiful thing never gives so much pain as does failing to hear and see it.

I am a poor man and of little worth, who is laboring in that art that God has given me in order to extend my life as long as possible.

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.

My soul can find no staircase to Heaven unless it be through Earth’s loveliness.

If it be true that any beautiful thing raises the pure and just desire of man from earth to God, the eternal fount of all, such I believe my love.

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.

Many believe – and I believe – that I have been designated for this work by God. In spite of my old age, I do not want to give it up; I work out of love for God and I put all my hope in Him.

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.

A good artist ought never to allow impatience to overcome his sense of the main end of art – perfection.

The best of artists has no conception that the marble alone does not contain within itself.

Art is a jealous thing; it requires the whole and entire man.

If I am more alive because love burns and chars me, as a fire, given wood or wind, feels new elation, it’s that he who lays me low is my salvation, and invigorates the more, the more he scars me.

It is necessary to keep one’s compass in one’s eyes and not in the hand, for the hands execute, but the eye judges.

Love is a beautiful image Imagined or seen within the heart, The friend of virtue and gentility.

An artist does his most difficult work when he steps back from the blank canvas and thinks about what he is going to create.

Draw, Antonio; draw, Antonio; draw and don’t waste time.

Do you know that women who are chaste remain much fresher than those who are not?

If you knew how much work went into it, you wouldn’t call it genius.

There is no greater harm than that of time wasted.

If we have been pleased with life, we should not be displeased with death, since it comes from the hand of the same master.

The marble not yet carved can hold the form of every thought the greatest artist has.

Sculpture is made by taking away, while painting is made by adding.

No great work of art is ever finished.

Gazing on beautiful things acts on my soul.

What spirit is so empty and blind, that it cannot recognize the fact that the foot is more noble than the shoe, and skin more beautiful than the garment with which it is clothed?

So take care of your life and take notice and be observant, for the number of widows is always far greater than the number of widowers.

The true work of art is but a shadow of the divine perfection.

The idea is there locked inside. All you have to do is remove the excess stone.

In every block of marble I see a statue as plain as though it stood before me, shaped and perfect in attitude and action. I have only to hew away the rough walls that imprison the lovely apparition to reveal it to the other eyes as mine see it.

Every block of stone has a statue inside it and it is the task of the sculptor to discover it.

Do not fret, for God did not create us to abandon us.

Your gifts lie in the place where your values, passions and strengths meet.

I am still learning.

Genius is eternal patience.

If people knew how hard I worked to get my mastery, it wouldn’t seem so wonderful at all.

To understand each other is the only way to love each other.

The greatest danger for most of us is not that our aim is too high and we miss it, but that it is too low and we reach it.