True Art Is Made Noble

In My Opinion Painting Should Be Considered Excellent In Proportion As It Approaches The Effect Of Relief, While Relief Should Be Considered Bad In Proportion As It Approaches The Effect Of Painting.

Led By Long Years To My Last Hours, Too Late, O World, I Know Your Joys For What They Are. You Promise A Peace Which Is Not Yours To Give And The Repose That Dies Before It Is Born. The Years Of Fear And Shame To Which Heaven Now Set A Term, Renew Nothing In Me But The Old Sweet Error In Which, Living Overlong A Man Kills His Soul With No Gain To His Body. I Say And I Know Having Put It To The Proof, That He Has The Better Part In Heaven Whose Death Falls Nearest His Birth.

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.

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.

The Science Of Design, Or Of Line-drawing, If You Like To Use This Term, Is The Source And Very Essence Of Painting, Sculpture, Architecture... Sometimes... It Seems To Me That... All The Works Of The Human Brain And Hand Are Either Design Itself Or A Branch Of That Art.