Note 3 — LETTER LXIX.

Thirdly. They belong to schools which, orderly and obedient themselves, understood the law of order in all things. Which is the chief distinction between Art and Rudeness. And the first aim of every great painter, is to express clearly his obedience to the law of Kosmos, Order, or Symmetry.3 The only perfect work of the four I have given, the Titian, binds itself by this symmetry most severely. Absolutely straight lines of screen behind the Madonna’s head,—a dark head on one side, a dark head on the other; a child on one side, a child on the other; a veil falling one way on one side, a scroll curling the other way on the other; a group of leaves in the child’s right hand balanced by another in the Madonna’s left; two opposed sprays of leaves on the table, and the whole clasped by a single cherry. In the Lippi, the symmetry is lateral; the Madonna fronting the group of the child central, with supporting angel on each side. In the Leucothea, the diminishing magnitudes of the attendant goddesses on the right are answered by the diminishing magnitudes from the seated goddess and the child, to the smallest figure at her knee, which clasps both the sides of the chain.