He may, perhaps, draw it better in detail or give more
character to the head, but he cannot capture that felicity of spacing,
that absoluteness of balance, that variety and vivacity combined with
monumental repose. The more his nature and training have made him a
designer the more certainly he feels, before that single medallion of
Poetry, that he is in the presence of the inimitable master of design.
[Illustration: Plate 11.--Raphael. "Poetry."
In the Vatican.]
If the composition of the rectangles is less inevitable it is only
because the variety of ways in which such simple rectangles may be
filled is almost infinite. Composition more masterly than that of the
"Judgment of Solomon" (Pl. 12), for instance, you will find nowhere; so
much is told in a restricted space, yet with no confusion, the space is
so admirably filled and its shape so marked by the very lines that
enrich and relieve it. It is as if the design had determined the space
rather than the space the design. If you had a tracing of the figures in
the midst of an immensity of white paper you could not bound them by any
other line than that of the actual frame. One of the most remarkable
things about it is the way in which the angles, which artists usually
avoid and disguise, are here sharply accented.
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