Thread by @CultureExploreX

"Beauty perishes in life, but is immortal in art."
- Leonardo da Vinci

Be captivated by 24 breathtaking sculptures that redefine the meaning of beauty. 🧵

1. Pietà by Michelangelo (1499) St. Peter's Basilica, Vatican City.

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

2. The Winged Victory of Samothrace (190 BC), Louvre Museum, Paris, France.

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

3. The Veiled Christ by Giuseppe Sanmartino (1753) Cappella Sansevero, Naples, Italy.

“The most beautiful thing we can experience is the mysterious.”
– Albert Einstein

4. The Abduction of Proserpina by Gian Lorenzo Bernini (1622) Galleria Borghese, Rome, Italy.

“The curve is more powerful than the sword.”
– Mae West

5. Apollo and Daphne by Gian Lorenzo Bernini (1625) Galleria Borghese, Rome, Italy.

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

6. Modesty (La Pudicizia) by Antonio Corradini (1752), Cappella Sansevero, Naples, Italy.

"True beauty lies in modesty."
- Anonymous

7. Ecstasy of Saint Teresa by Gian Lorenzo Bernini (1652), Santa Maria della Vittoria, Rome, Italy.

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

8. The Veiled Virgin by Giovanni Strazza (1850s), Presentation Convent, St. John’s, Newfoundland, Canada.

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

9. David by Michelangelo (1504), Galleria dell'Accademia, Florence, Italy.

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

10. Saint Bartholomew Flayed by Marco d'Agrate (1562), Milan Cathedral (Duomo di Milano), Milan, Italy.

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

11. Cupid and Psyche by Antonio Canova (1793), Louvre Museum, Paris, France.

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

12. Moses by Michelangelo (1513), San Pietro in Vincoli, Rome, Italy.

“Power (like beauty) resides where men believe it resides.”
– George R.R. Martin

13. Perseus with the Head of Medusa by Benvenuto Cellini (1554), Loggia dei Lanzi, Florence, Italy

“Beauty will save the world.”
- Fyodor Dostoevsky

14. The Kiss by Auguste Rodin (1882), Musée Rodin, Paris, France.

“Love is composed of a single soul inhabiting two bodies.”
– Aristotle

15. Discobolus (Discus Thrower) by Myron (460–450 BC), National Roman Museum (Palazzo Massimo alle Terme), Rome, Italy (best-preserved Roman copy)

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

16. Bathsheba by Victor Benjamin (2021), Currently located in private collection.

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

17. Penitent Magdalene by Antonio Canova (1796), Museo di Arte Antica, Genoa, Italy.

“The eyes are the window to the soul.”
– Traditional Proverb

18. The Pietà by Ippolito Scalza (1570-1579), Orvieto Cathedral (Duomo di Orvieto), Orvieto, Italy.

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

19. Undine Rising from the Waters by Chauncey Bradley (1880), Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington, D.C., USA.

“Beauty is a light in the heart.” – Kahlil Gibran

20. “Beata Ludovica Albertoni” by Bernini (1671-1674), San Francesco a Ripa, Rome, Italy.

“There is no saint without a past, no sinner without a future.”
– Augustine of Hippo

21. Pieta by Jacopo Cardillo (2020), currently located in private or contemporary exhibitions.

“Pain and beauty, our constant companions.”
– John Mark Gree

22. The Release from Deception by Francesco Queirolo (1754), Cappella Sansevero, Naples, Italy.

“The truth will set you free, but first it will make you miserable.”
– James A. Garfield

What is your favorite definition of beauty?

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

Image: The West Wind by Thomas Ridgeway Gould (1870)

24. Nefertiti Bust (1345 B.C.), Neues Museum, Berlin, Germany.

“'Beauty is truth, truth beauty' – that is all / Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know”
- John Keats' poem, Ode on a Grecian Urn