The landscape picture presents a somewhat different problem. It cannot be described as either 'active' or 'passive,' inasmuch as it does not express either an attitude or an event. There is no definite idea to be set forth, no point of concentration, as with the altarpieces and the portraits, for instance; and yet a unity is demanded. An examination of the proportions of the types shows at once the characteristic type.

P.D.P.Dg.V.Sq.Or.
Landscapes,130335360508

It is now necessary to ask what must be the interpretation of the use of these types of composition. Must we consider the pyramid the expression of passivity, the diagonal or V, of activity? But the greatly predominating use of the second for landscapes would remain unexplained, for at least nothing can be more reposeful than the latter. It may aid the solution of the problem to remember that the composition taken as a whole has to meet the demand for unity, at the same time that it allows free play to the natural expression of the subject. The altarpiece has to bring about a concentration of attention to express or induce a feeling of reverence. This is evidently brought about by the suggestion of the converging lines to the fixation of the high point in the picture—the small area occupied by the Madonna and Child—and by the subordination of the free play of other elements. The contrast between the broad base and the apex gives a feeling of solidity, of repose; and it seems not unreasonable to suppose that the tendency to rest the eyes above the center of the picture directly induces the associated mood of reverence or worship. Thus the pyramidal form serves two ends; primarily that of giving unity; and secondarily, by the peculiarity of its mass, that of inducing the feeling-tone appropriate to the subject of the picture.

Applying this principle to the so-called 'active' pictures, we see that the natural movement of attention between the different 'actors' in the picture must be allowed for, while yet unity is secured. And it is clear that the diagonal type is just fitted for this. The attention sweeps down from the high side to the low, from which it returns through some backward suggestion of lines or interest in the objects of the high side. Action and reaction—movement and return of attention—is inevitable under the conditions of this type; and this it is which allows the free play—which, indeed, constitutes and expresses the activity belonging to the subject, just as the fixation of the pyramid constitutes the quietude of the religious picture. Thus it is that the diagonal composition is particularly suited to portray scenes of grandeur, and to induce a feeling of awe in the spectator, because only here can the eye rove in one large sweep from side to side of the picture, recalled by the mass and interest of the side from which it moves. The swing of the pendulum is here widest, so to speak, and all the feeling-tones which belong to wide, free movement are called into play. If, at the same time, the element of the deep vista is introduced, we have the extreme of concentration combined with the extreme of movement; and the result is a picture in the 'grand style'—comparable to high tragedy—in which all the feeling-tones which wait on motor impulses are, as it were, while yet in the same reciprocal relation, tuned to the highest pitch. Such a picture is the Finding of the Ring, Paris Bordone (1048), in the Venice Academy. All the mass and the interest and the suggestion of attention is toward the right—the sweep of the downward lines and of the magnificent perspective toward the left—and the effect of the whole space-composition is of superb largeness of life and feeling. With it may be compared Titian's Presentation of the Virgin (107), also in the Academy, Venice. The composition, from the figure moving upward to one high on the right, to the downward lines, waiting groups and deep vista on the left, is almost identical with that of the Bordone. Neither is pure diagonal—that is, it saves itself at last by an upward movement. Compare also the two great compositions by Veronese, Martyrdom of St. Mark, etc. (1091), in the Doge's Palace, Venice, and Esther before Ahasuerus (566), in the Uffizi, Florence. In both, the mass, direction of interest, movement and attention are toward the left, while all the lines tend diagonally to the right, where a vista is also suggested—the diagonal making a V just at the end. Here, too, the effect is of magnificence and vigor.

If, then, the pyramid belongs to contemplation, the diagonal to action, what can be said of the type of landscape? It is without action, it is true, and yet does not express that positive quality, that will not to act, of the rapt contemplation. The landscape uncomposed is negative; and it demands unity. Its type of composition, then, must give it something positive besides unity. It lacks both concentration and action; but it can gain them both from a space composition which shall combine unity with a tendency to movement. And this is given by the diagonal and V-shaped type. This type merely allows free play to the natural tendency of the 'active' picture; but it constrains the neutral, inanimate landscape. The shape itself imparts motion to the picture: the sweep of line, the concentration of the vista, the unifying power of the inverted triangle between two masses, act, as it were, externally to the suggestion of the object itself. There is always enough quiet in a landscape—the overwhelming suggestion of the horizontal suffices for that; it is movement that is needed for richness of effect; and, as I have shown, no type imparts the feeling of movement so strongly as the diagonal and V-shaped type of composition. It is worth remarking that the perfect V, which is of course more regular, concentrated, quiet, than the diagonal, is more frequent than the diagonal among the 'Miscellaneous Religious' pictures (that is, it is more needed), since after all, as has been said, the final aim of all space composition is just the attainment of repose. But the landscapes need energy, not repression; and so the diagonal type is proportionately more numerous.

The square and oval types, as is seen from the table, are far less often used. The oval, most infrequent of all, appears only among the 'active' pictures, with the exception of landscape. It usually serves to unite a group of people among whom there is no one especially striking—or the object of whose attention is in the center of the picture, as in the case of the Descent from the Cross. It imparts a certain amount of movement, but an equable and regular one, as the eye returns in an even sweep from one side to the other.

The square type, although only three per cent. of the whole number of pictures, suggests a point of view which has already been touched on in the section on Primitive Art. The examples fall into two classes: in the first, the straight lines across the picture are unrelieved by the suggestion of any other type; in the second, the pyramid or V is suggested in the background with more or less clearness by means of architecture or landscape. In the first class are found, almost exclusively, early examples of Italian, Dutch and German art; in the second, pictures of a later period. The rigid square, in short, is found only at an early stage in the development of composition. Moreover, all the examples are 'story' pictures, for the most part scenes from the lives of the saints, etc. Many of them are double-center—square, that is, with a slight break in the middle, the grouping purely logical, to bring out the relations of the characters. Thus, in the Dream of Saint Martin, Simone Martini (325), a fresco at Assisi, the saint lies straight across the picture with his head in one corner. Behind him on one side, stand the Christ and angels, grouped closely together, their heads on the same level. Compare also the Finding of the Cross, Piero della Francesca (1088), a serial picture in two parts, with their respective backgrounds all on the same level; and most of the frescoes by Giotto at Assisi—in particular St. Francis before the Sultan (1057), in which the actors are divided into parties, so to speak.

These are all, of course, in one sense symmetrical—in the weight of interest, at least—but they are completely amorphous from an æsthetic point of view. The forms, that is, do not count at all—only the meanings. The story is told by a clear separation of the parts, and as, in most stories, there are two principal actors, it merely happens that they fall into the two sides of the picture. Interesting in connection with this is the observation that, although the more anecdotal the picture the more likely it is to be 'double-centered,' the later the picture the less likely it is to be double-centered. Thus the square and the double-center composition seem often to be found in the same picture and to be, both, characteristic of early composition. On the other hand, a rigid geometrical symmetry is also characteristic, and these two facts seem to contradict each other. But it is to be noted, first, that the rigid geometrical symmetry belongs only to the Madonna Enthroned, and general Adoration pieces; and secondly, that this very rigidity of symmetry in details can coexist with variations which destroy balance. Thus, in the Madonna Enthroned, Giotto (715), where absolute symmetry in detail is kept, the Child sits far out on the right knee of the Madonna. Compare also Madonna, Vitale di Bologna (157), in which the C. is almost falling off M.'s arms to the right, her head is bent to the right, and a monk is kneeling at the right lower corner; also Madonna, Ottaviano Nelli (175)—all very early pictures. Hence, it would seem that the symmetry of these early pictures was not dictated by a conscious demand for symmetrical arrangement, or rather for real balance, else such failures would hardly occur. The presence of geometrical symmetry is more easily explained as the product, in large part, of technical conditions: of the fact that these pictures were painted as altarpieces to fill a space definitely symmetrical in character—often, indeed, with architectural elements intruding into it. We may even venture to connect the Madonna pictures with the temple images of the classic period, to explain why it was natural to paint the object of worship seated exactly facing the worshipper. Thus we may separate the two classes of pictures, the one giving an object of worship, and thus taking naturally, as has been said, the pyramidal, symmetrical shape, and being moulded to symmetry by all other suggestions o technique; the other aiming at nothing except logical clearness. This antithesis of the symbol and the story has a most interesting parallel in the two great classes of primitive art—the one symbolic, merely suggestive, shaped by the space it had to fill, and so degenerating into the slavishly symmetrical, the other descriptive, 'story-telling' and without a trace of space composition. On neither side is there evidence of direct æsthetic feeling. Only in the course of artistic development do we find the rigid, yet often unbalanced, symmetry relaxing into a free substitutional symmetry, and the formless narrative crystallizing into a really unified and balanced space form. The two antitheses approach each other in the 'balance' of the masterpieces of civilized art—in which, for the first time, a real feeling for space composition makes itself felt.

FOOTNOTES.

[1] SOURCES OF ILLUSTRATIONS.