All Quotes by Albrecht Durer
“What beauty is, I know not, though it adheres to many things.”
“I hold that the perfection of form and beauty is contained in the sum of all men.”
“Since geometry is the right foundation of all painting, I have decided to teach its rudiments and principles to all youngsters eager for art.”
“Sane judgment abhors nothing so much as a picture perpetrated with no technical knowledge, although with plenty of care and diligence. Now the sole reason why painters of this sort are not aware of their own error is that they have not learnt Geometry, without which no one can either be or become an absolute artist; but the blame for this should be laid upon their masters, who are themselves ignorant of this art.”
“Whoever … proves his point and demonstrates the prime truth geometrically should be believed by all the world, for there we are captured.”
“let the little I have learnt go forth into the day in order that someone better than I may guess the truth, and in his work may prove and rebuke my error. At this I shall rejoice that I was yet a means whereby this truth has come to light.”
“The new art must be based upon science — in particular, upon mathematics, as the most exact, logical, and graphically constructive of the sciences.”
“There is no man on earth who can give a final judgment on what the most beautiful shape may be. Only God knows.”
“As I grew older, I realized that it was much better to insist on the genuine forms of nature, for simplicity is the greatest adornment of art.”
“No single man can be taken as a model for a perfect figure, for no man lives on earth who is endowed with the whole of beauty.”
“Sane judgment abhors nothing so much as a picture perpetrated with no technical knowledge, although with plenty of care and diligence.”