Thread by @CultureExploreX

Be captivated by 20 breathtaking sculptures that redefine the meaning of beauty.

Each masterpiece tells a story that will leave you eager to learn the next one. 🧵

1. The Winged Victory of Samothrace (190 BC)

“Beauty is eternity gazing at itself in a mirror.”
- Khalil Gibran

2. Pietà by Michelangelo (1498-1499)

“The true work of art is but a shadow of the divine perfection.”
- Michelangelo

3. Saint Bartholomew Flayed by Marco d’Agrate (1562)

“Beauty is a manifestation of secret natural laws, which otherwise would have been hidden from us forever.”
- Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

4. Ecstasy of Saint Teresa by Gian Lorenzo Bernini (1647-1652)

“There is no exquisite beauty without some strangeness in the proportion.”
- Edgar Allan Poe

5. Perseus with the Head of Medusa by Benvenuto Cellini (1545-1554)

“Beauty will save the world.”
- Fyodor Dostoevsky

6. Aeneas, Anchises, and Ascanius by Gian Lorenzo Bernini (c.1618-19)

“Beauty is truth, truth beauty, - that is all ye know on earth, and all ye need to know.”
- John Keats

7. Psyche Revived by Cupid’s Kiss by Antonio Canova (1787–1793)

“Love of beauty is taste. The creation of beauty is art.”
- Ralph Waldo Emerson

8. Laocoön and His Sons (40-30 BC)

“The pursuit of truth and beauty is a sphere of activity in which we are permitted to remain children all our lives.”
- Albert Einstein

9. The Veiled Christ by Giuseppe Sanmartino (1753)

“The best part of beauty is that which no picture can express.”
- Francis Bacon

10. The West Wind by Thomas Ridgeway Gould (1870)

“Beauty is not in the face; beauty is a light in the heart.”
- Khalil Gibran

11. Pietà by Jago (2021)

“Beauty is the illumination of your soul.”
- John O’Donohue

12. The Abduction of Proserpina by Gian Lorenzo Bernini (1621–1622)

“Every saint has a past, and every sinner has a future.”
- Oscar Wilde

13. The Pietà by Ippolito Scalza (1570-1579)

“Beauty in things exists in the mind which contemplates them.”
- David Hume

14. David by Michelangelo (1501-1504)

“A thing of beauty is a joy forever.”
- John Keats

15. Apollo and Daphne by Gian Lorenzo Bernini (1622-25)

“Beauty is power; a smile is its sword.”
- John Ray

16. Bathsheba by Benjamin Victor

“Beauty is a short-lived tyranny.”
- Socrates

17. Release from Deception by Francesco Queirolo (1752-1759)

“The beauty of a statue is in its form; the beauty of a man is in his thoughts.”
- Anonymous

18. Modesty by Antonio Corradini (1752)

"True beauty lies in modesty."
- Anonymous

19. The Gates of Hell by Auguste Rodin (1880-1917)

“There is a kind of beauty in imperfection.”
- Conrad Hall

20. Moses by Michelangelo (1515)

“Beauty is the promise of happiness.”
- Edmund Burke

What other sculptures challenge, inspire, and leave you questioning everything you thought you knew about the power of form?

Undine Rising from the Waters by Chauncey Bradley (1880)