Michelangelo
Michelangelo
Michelangelo di Lodovico Buonarroti Simoniwas an Italian sculptor, painter, architect, poet, and engineer of the High Renaissance who exerted an unparalleled influence on the development of Western art. Considered to be the greatest living artist during his lifetime, he has since also been described as one of the greatest artists of all time. Despite making few forays beyond the arts, his versatility in the disciplines he took up was of such a high order that he is often considered a...
NationalityItalian
ProfessionPainter
Date of Birth6 March 1475
CityCaprese, Italy
CountryItaly
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.
I sometimes set myself thinking and imagining that I find amongst men but one single art or science, and that is drawing or painting, all others being members proceeding therefrom.
Perchance that I might learn what pity is, That I might laugh at erring men no more.
Art is a jealous thing; it requires the whole and entire man.
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.
The greatest risk to man is not that he aims to high and misses, but that he aims to low and hits.
Heaven-born, the soul a heavenward course must hold; beyond the world she soars; the wise man, I affirm, can find no rest in that which perishes, nor will he lend his heart to ought that doth time depend
You must know that I am, of all men who were ever born, the most inclined to love persons. Whenever I behold someone who possesses any talent or displays any dexterity of mind, who can do or say something more appropriately than the rest of the world, I am compelled to fall in love with him; and then I give myself up to him so entirely that I am no longer my own property, but wholly his.
Death and love are the two wings that bear the good man to heaven.
It is therefore indisputable that the limbs of architecture are derived from the limbs of man.
However rich I may have been, I have always lived like a poor man.
After four tortured years, more than 400 over life-sized figures, I felt as old and as weary as Jeremiah. I was only 37, yet friends did not recognize the old man I had become.
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.
I don't want what I am saying to sound like a prophecy or anything like an analysis of modern society... these are only feelings I have, and I am the least speculative man on earth.