Just a heads up, I’ll be posting many nude male sculptures over the next week for my Art class. If you’d rather skip that then please come back in a week or two. We are studying Ancient Greek art and are moving into sculpture. No way around it, the ancient Greeks were enthralled with the beauty of the male body.
Having said that, I thought I would share some more quotes from Michaelangelo. He was a flawed, complex, gifted, man who has left us a legacy of faith and beauty. Having seen some of his works in person I am awe. These quotes give me much to contemplate.
Carving is easy, you just go down to the skin and stop.
Every beauty which is seen here by persons of perception resembles more than anything else that celestial source from which we all are come.
I am still learning.
I live and love in God’s peculiar light.
I live in sin, to kill myself I live; no longer my life my own, but sin’s; my good is given to me by heaven, my evil by myself, by my free will, of which I am deprived.
I saw the angel in the marble and carved until I set him free.
If people knew how hard I worked to get my mastery, it wouldn’t seem so wonderful at all.
If we have been pleased with life, we should not be displeased with death, since it comes from the hand of the same master.
Pieta
Lord, grant that I may always desire more than I can accomplish.
Many believe – and I believe – that I have been designated for this work by God. In spite of my old age, I do not want to give it up; I work out of love for God and I put all my hope in Him.
My soul can find no staircase to Heaven unless it be through Earth’s loveliness.
The true work of art is but a shadow of the divine perfection.
What do you despise? By this you are truly known.
