Art Is A Shadow Of Divine Perfection.

My Beard Towards Heaven, I Feel My Nape Support / The Back Of My Head, I Grow The Breast Of A Harpy / And My Brush As It Drips Continually / Upon My Face, Makes It A Gorgeous Floor.

After Four Tortured Years, More Than 400 Over Life-sized Figures, I Felt As Old And As Weary As Jeremiah. I Was Only 37, Yet Friends Did Not Recognize The Old Man I Had Become.

Let Whoever May Have Attained To So Much As To Have The Power Of Drawing Know That He Holds A Great Treasure.

Painting And Sculpture, Labour And Good Faith, Have Been My Ruin And I Continually Go From Bad To Worse. Better It Would Have Been For Me If I Had Set Myself To Making Matches In My Youth. I Should Not Be In Such Distress Of Mind.

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.