The true work of art is but a shadow of the divine perfection.

The saying expresses a distinctly Renaissance-Christian (and partly Neoplatonic) hierarchy in which God’s perfection is the ultimate reality and human making can only approximate it. Read this way, “true” art is not self-sufficient or autonomous; it is valuable insofar as it reflects—like a shadow or image—an ideal beauty that originates beyond the artist. The phrasing also implies humility about artistic achievement: even the greatest masterwork remains an imperfect trace of a higher, divine standard. In a Michelangelesque frame, this aligns with the idea that the artist “discovers” form already latent in matter and that beauty points upward toward spiritual truth rather than ending in itself.