WIST Quotations

Michelangelo -- (Attributed)

Dave — Sun, 01 Feb 2004 16:00:00 +0000

Trifles make perfection, and perfection is no trifle.

Michelangelo (1475-1564) Italian artist, architect, poet [Michelangelo di Lodovico Buonarroti Simoni]
(Attributed)

The first appearance of this attribution is in C. C. Colton, Lacon: Or, Many Things in Few Words, Vol. 1, § 168 (1820), with no citation as to where he found it (if he did not make it up himself).

Michelangelo -- (Attributed)

Dave — Sun, 01 Feb 2004 16:00:00 +0000

If people knew how hard I work to get my mastery, it wouldn’t seem too wonderful after all.

Michelangelo (1475-1564) Italian artist, architect, poet [Michelangelo di Lodovico Buonarroti Simoni]
(Attributed)

The earliest attributions only go back to the Twentieth Century (e.g., 1929) in non-academic contexts. No original source is known.

A related attribution, regarding the Sistine Chapel -- "If you knew how much work went into it, you would not call it genius." -- only can be found in the Twenty-First century (e.g., August 2001).

Michelangelo -- (Attributed)

Dave — Sun, 01 Feb 2004 16:00:00 +0000

The true work of art is but a shadow of the divine perfection.

Michelangelo (1475-1564) Italian artist, architect, poet [Michelangelo di Lodovico Buonarroti Simoni]
(Attributed)

Michelangelo -- (Attributed)

Dave — Sun, 01 Feb 2004 16:00:00 +0000

The greatest danger for most of us is not that our aim is too high and we miss it, but that it is too low and we reach it.

Michelangelo (1475-1564) Italian artist, architect, poet [Michelangelo di Lodovico Buonarroti Simoni]
(Attributed)

Widely attributed to Michelangelo as of the late Twentieth Century, but without citation.

Michelangelo -- (Attributed)

Dave — Tue, 12 Sep 2023 15:50:53 +0000

I am still learning.

[Ancora imparo.]

Michelangelo (1475-1564) Italian artist, architect, poet [Michelangelo di Lodovico Buonarroti Simoni]
(Attributed)

Also rendered Anchora imparo. This is often described as a daily mantra of Michelangelo's. This association can be traced to Richard Duppa, The Lives and Works of Michael Angelo and Raphael (1806) [tr. Hazlitt]. Duppa misattributed to Michelangelo a drawing by Domenico Giuntalodi, which included the saying. The phrase itself was popular during the 16th Century.

While there's no indication that Michelangelo did not say this, or agree with the sentiment, it does not seem to have been solidly cited to him, or shown to be a personal motto, let alone being original to him.

More discussion: Michelangelo - Wikiquote.

Michelangelo -- (Attributed)

Dave — Wed, 29 Nov 2023 03:53:27 +0000

Beauty is the purgation of superfluities.

Michelangelo (1475-1564) Italian artist, architect, poet [Michelangelo di Lodovico Buonarroti Simoni]
(Attributed)

This phrase is widely attributed to Michelangelo and, often noted as being from a letter to Rene Lui Descartes XIV (1540-03-06). But a search of several books of Michelangelo's letters finds no such letter with parts of that name or with that text.

The letter is almost always noted as being quoted in George Augustus Lofton, Character Sketches (1890). But the reference there merely gives the words of the quote; it says nothing about a letter, let alone a date or to whom it is sent.

The phrase, when rendered into Italian (la bellezza è la purificazione del superfluo or la bellezza è l'eliminazione del superfluo) can be found attributed to Michelangelo, but without citation.

That said, the phrase lines up with many other quotes attributed to Michelangelo, to the effect that statues consist of a figure "trapped" in marble (or whatever the medium), to be revealed by removing just enough stone but no more. E.g.,

Each block of stone has a statue inside it and it is the sculptor's job to discover it.

[Ogni blocco di pietra ha una statua dentro di sé ed è compito dello scultore scoprirla.]

(Source)

Nothing the best of artists can conceive
but lies, potential, in a block of stone,
superfluous matter round it. The hand alone
can free it that has intelligence for guide.

[Non ha l’ottimo artista alcun concetto
ch’un marmo solo in sé non circonscriva
col suo superchio, e solo a quello arriva
la man che ubbidisce all’intelletto.]

(Poem, tr. Nims (1998))