We must always take from nature what we paint and always choose the most beautiful things.

Painting is possessed of divine power, for not only does it make the absent present, but also makes the dead almost alive.

The city is like a great house, and the house in its turn a small city.

What is painting but the act of embracing, by means of art, the surface of the pool?

... the movements of the body reveal the movements of the soul.

Beauty is the adjustment of all parts proportionately so that one cannot add or subtract or change without impairing the harmony of the whole.

A common error of ignorance is to maintain that what one does not know does not exist.