Architects From Italy

"Impetus is a power of the mover applied in a movable thing which causes the movable thing to move after it is separated from its mover."

"Whenever you make a figure of a man or of some graceful animal remember to avoid making it seem wooden; that is it should move with counterpoise and balance in such a way as not to seem a block of wood."

"Take a piece of glass of the size of a half sheet of royal folio paper, and fix it... between your eye and the object you wish to portray. Then move it away until your eye is two-thirds of a braccio away from the piece of glass, and fasten your head by means of an instrument in such a way as to prevent any movement of it whatsoever. Then close or cover up one eye, and with a brush or a piece of red chalk finely ground mark out on the glass what is visible beyond it; afterwards, copy it by tracing on paper from the glass, then prick it out upon paper of a better quality and paint it if you so desire, paying special attention to the aerial perspective."

"If you wish to thoroughly accustom yourself to correct and good positions for your fingers, fasten a frame or a loom divided into squares by threads between your eye and the nude figure which you are representing, and then make the same squares upon the paper where you wish to draw the said nude but very faintly. You should then put a pellet of wax on a part of the network to serve as a mark which as you look at your model should always cover the pit of the throat, or if he should have turned his back make it cover one of the vertebrae of the neck. ...The squares you draw may be as much smaller than those of the network in proportion as you wish your figure to be less than life size..."

"You know that in an atmosphere of uniform density the most distant things seen through it, such as the mountains, in consequence of the great quantity of atmosphere which is between your eye and them, will appear blue. Therfore you should make the building... wall which is more distant less defined and bluer. ...five times as far away make five times as blue."

"Painting embraces and contains within itself all the things which nature produces or which results from the fortuitous actions of men... he is but a poor master who makes only a single figure well."

"Feathers shall raise men towards the heaven even as they do the birds:—That is by the letters written by their quills."

"Things severed shall be united and shall acquire of themselves such virtue that they shall restore to men their lost memory:—That is the papyrus sheets, which are formed out of several strips and preserve the memory of the thoughts and deeds of men."

"The wind which passes through the skins of animals will make men leap up:—That is the bagpipes, which cause men to dance."

"Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication."

"The properties of the air are such that it may become condensed or rarefied."

"Studying Leonardo... will not only allow us to recognize his science as a solid body of knowledge. It will also show why it cannot be understood without his art, nor his art without the science."

"Leonardo is the hamlet of art history whom each of us must recreate for ourselves."

"The genius of Leonardo as a painter came through unfolding the mystery of life..."Look at the grace and sweetness of men and women in the street," he wrote. The most ordinary functions of life and nature amazed him most. He observed of the eye how in it form and colour, and the entire universe it reflected, were reduced to a single point. "Wonderful law of nature, which forced all effects to participate with their cause in the mind of man. These are the true miracles!" Elsewhere he wrote again: "Nature is full of infinite reasons which have not yet passed into experience.""

"His art took, thus, its guidance in realism, its purpose in spirituality. The search for truth and the desire for beauty were the twin ideals he strove to attain. The keenness of this pursuit saved him from the blemish of egoism which aloofness from his surroundings would otherwise have forced upon him. For his character presented the anomaly, peculiar to the Renaissance, of a lofty idealism coupled in action with irresponsibility of duty. He stood on a higher plane, his attitude toward life recognizing no claims on the part of his fellowmen. In his desire to surpass himself, fostered by this isolation of spirit and spurred on by the eager wish to attain universal knowledge, he has been compared to Faust; but the likeness is only half correct. He was not blind to the limitations which encompassed him, his very genius making him realize their bounds. Of the ancients he said that in attempting to define the nature of the soul, they sought the impossible. He wrote elsewhere, "It is the infinite alone that cannot be attained, for if it could it would become finite.""

"He was like a man who awoke too early in the darkness, while the others were all still asleep."

"Incredibly endowed both physically and mentally, he achieved greatness as a linguist, botanist, zoologist, anatomist, geologist, musician, sculptor, painter, architect, inventor, and engineer. Leonardo made quite a point of distrusting the knowledge that scholars professed so dogmatically. These men of book learning he described as strutting about puffed up and pompous, adorned not by their own labors but by the labors of others whose work they merely repeated... they did not deal with the real world."

"Leonardo did believe in the combination of theory and practice."

"That part of the air which is nearest to the wing which presses on it, will have the greatest density."

"No impetus created by any movement whatever can be immediately consumed, but if it finds an object which has a great resistance it consumes itself in a reflex movement."

"I give the degrees of things seen by the eye as the musician does of the sounds heard by the ear."

"The air which is struck with most swiftness by the movable thing is compressed to the greatest degree in itself."

"Swimming upon water teaches men how birds do upon the air."

"The function which the wing performs against the air when the air is motionless is the same as that of the air moved against the wings when these are without motion."

"If you take as your pattern the wings of feathered birds, these are more powerful in structure of bone and sinew because they are penetrable, that is to say the feathers are separated from one another and the air passes through them. But the bat is aided by its membrane, which binds the whole together and is not penetrated by the air."

"Remember that your bird should have no other model than the bat, because its membranes serve as an armour or rather as a means of building together the pieces of its armour, that is the framework of the wings."

"You will perhaps say that the sinews and muscles of a bird are incomparably more powerful than those of a man... But the reply to this is that such great strength gives it a reserve of power beyond what it ordinarily uses..."

"It is always the under side of the branches of any plant that show themselves to the wind which strikes it, and one leans against the other."

"When you have drawn the same thing so many times that it seems that you know it by heart try to do it without the model; but having a tracing made of the model upon a thin piece of smooth glass and lay this upon the drawing you have made without the model. ...where you find that you have erred bear it in mind in order not to make the mistake again. ...if you cannot procure smooth glass to make a tracing... take a piece of very fine parchment well oiled and then dried, and when you have used it for for one drawing you can wipe this out with a sponge and do a second."

"Life is pretty simple: You do some stuff. Most fails. Some works. You do more of what works. If it works big, others quickly copy it. Then you do something else. The trick is the doing something else."

"Nature is full of infinite causes which were never set forth in experience."

"He who does not value life does not deserve it."

"Wine is good, but water is preferable at table."

"Observe the light and consider its beauty. Blink your eye and look at it. That which you see was not there at first, and that which was there is there no more."

"To enjoy—to love a thing for its own sake and for no other reason."

"The water which rises in the mountain is the blood which keeps the mountain in life."

"He who suffers time to slip away and does not grow in virtue the more one thinks about him the sadder one becomes. No man has a capacity for virtue who sacrifices honour for gain. Fortune is powerless to help one who does not exert himself. That man becomes happy who follows Christ. There is no perfect gift without great suffering. Our triumphs and our pomps pass away; gluttony and sloth and enervating luxury have banished every virtue from the world; so that as it were wandering from its course our nature is subdued by habit. Now and henceforth it is meet that you cure yourself of laziness. The Master has said that sitting on down or lying under the quilts will not bring thee to fame. He who without it has frittered life away leaves no more trace of himself upon the earth than smoke does in the air or the foam on the water."

"Intellectual passion drives out sensuality."

"While I thought I have been learning how to live, I have been learning how to die."

"Where there is most power of feeling, there of martyrs is the greatest martyr."

"Every part is disposed to unite with the whole, that it may thereby escape from its own incompleteness."

"Reserve the great matters till the end, and the small matters give at the beginning."

"The mind passes in an instant from east to west; and all the great incorporeal things resemble these very closely in speed."

"Science, knowledge of the things that are possible present and past; prescience, knowledge of the things which may come to pass."

"Since the wings are swifter to press the air than the air is to escape from beneath the wings the air becomes condensed and resists the movement of the wings; and the motive power of these wings by subduing the resistance of the air raises itself in a contrary movement to the movement of the wings."

"Tell me if anything was ever done."

"When I did well, as a boy you used to put me in prison. Now if I do it being grown up, you will do worse to me."

"Do not reveal, if liberty is precious to you; my face is the prison of love."

"May it please our great Author that I may demonstrate the nature of man and his customs, in the way I describe his figure."

"If you meet with any one who is virtuous do not drive him from you; do him honour, so that he may not have to flee from you and be reduced to hiding in hermitages, or caves or other solitary places to escape from your treachery; if there is such an one among you do him honour, for these are our Saints upon earth; these are they who deserve statues from us, and images..."