Albrecht Dürer quotes

Albrecht Dürer was a German Renaissance artist, mathematician, and theorist, renowned for his paintings, prints, and engravings. His innovative techniques and detailed works greatly influenced the development of European art. He is celebrated for masterpieces like "Melencolia I" and "Self-Portrait," and for shaping the course of Western art history. Here are 21 of his quotes:

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.

Albrecht Dürer

The new art must be based upon science - in particular, upon mathematics, as the most exact, logical, and graphically constructive of the sciences.

Albrecht Dürer

If a man devotes himself to art, much evil is avoided that happens otherwise if one is idle.

Albrecht Dürer

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.

Albrecht Dürer

There is no man on earth who can give a final judgment on what the most beautiful shape may be. Only God knows.

Albrecht Dürer

I hold that the perfection of form and beauty is contained in the sum of all men.

Albrecht Dürer

Sane judgment abhors nothing so much as a picture perpetrated with no technical knowledge, although with plenty of care and diligence.

Albrecht Dürer

span id=But_I_shall>But I shall 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.

Albrecht Dürer

Art is embedded in nature and they who can extract it, have it.

Albrecht Dürer

Love and delight are better teachers than compulsion.

Albrecht Dürer

Why has God given me such magnificent talent? It is a curse as well as a great blessing.

Albrecht Dürer

What beauty is, I know not, though it adheres to many things.

Albrecht Dürer

Help us to recognize your voice, help us not to be allured by the madness of the world, so that we may never fall away from you, O Lord Jesus Christ.

Albrecht Dürer

Whoever ... proves his point and demonstrates the prime truth geometrically should be believed by all the world, for there we are captured.

Albrecht Dürer

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.

Albrecht Dürer

Geometry is the foundation of all painting.

Albrecht Dürer

Some think that they know everybody, but they really don't know themselves.

Albrecht Dürer

Sight is the noblest sense of man.

Albrecht Dürer