That sculpture is more admirable than painting for the reason that it contains relief and painting does not is completely false. ... Rather, how much more admirable the painting must be considered, if having no relief at all, it appears to have as much as sculpture!
Interpretation
Galileo argues that painting is more admirable than sculpture because it creates the illusion of depth despite lacking physical relief.
In this quote, Galileo expresses his belief that painting, although it does not have the tangible depth of sculpture, can evoke a sense of three-dimensionality that is equally impressive. He challenges the notion that relief, which is a characteristic of sculpture, defines its superiority, suggesting that the skill involved in creating that illusion in painting should be celebrated even more.
In practice
In a discussion on the merits of different art forms, this quote can illuminate the hidden complexities of painting.
It has always seemed to me extreme presumptuousness on the part of those who want to make human ability the measure of what nature can and knows how to do, since, when one comes down to it, there is not one effect in nature, no matter how small, that even the most speculative minds can fully understand.
We must say that there are as many squares as there are numbers.
Science proceeds more by what it has learned to ignore than what it takes into account.
The sun, with all those planets revolving around it and dependent on it, can still ripen a bunch of grapes as if it had nothing else in the universe to do.
Philosophy is written in this grand book, the universe, which stands continually open to our gaze. But the book cannot be understood unless one first learns to comprehend the language and read the letters in which it is composed.
To command their professors of astronomy to refute their own observations is to command them not to see what they do see and not to understand what they do understand.
An actor is a sculptor who carves in snow.
Drawing is not only a way to come up with pictures: drawing is a way to educate your eye to understand visual information, organizing it into a more hierarchical way, a more economical way. When you see something, if you draw often and frequently, you examine a room very differently.
As far as I was concerned, it was the absence of women in the poetic tradition which allowed women in the poems to be simplified. The voice of a woman poet would, I was sure, have precluded such distortion. It did not exist.
Every play is rhythmic control. If you want an audience to go on a journey, it's rhythmic control. You're crafting when they lean in, when they push back, when they breathe, when they surrender.
My writing is inspired by where I come from, where I am today, and where I hope to go some day.
You know, it shouldn't just be about women as heroic figures overcoming things, it just needs to be about women in general getting the opportunity to play a multitude of roles, telling a multitude of stories - just to express human experience from a woman's perspective. I hope, someday, we can get to that point. I'm all about representation.
Subscribe for the occasional hand-picked quote. No noise.