and arrangement. For this is Raphael’s supreme distinction. The Venetians surpassed him in color, the Florentines in drawing, but none to this day have ever equated him in his mastery over the filling of a space, whether it be inside a frame or on the large surface of a wall. Study the Madonna degl Ansidei, and you will admire the tenderness of the Madonna’s face, the rapture of St. John’s, and the noble sweetness of St. Nicholas’s. But the point I wish you to grasp—and it is difficult to put it into words—is that the composition as a whole is mainly responsible for the effect which the picture produces upon your imagination; that it is the actual direction of the lines, the shapes of the full and empty spaces and their relation to one another, which make the chief impression, and that the expression of the faces is only a minor detail, just as you are impressed by the total structure of some great building before you begin to notice the sculptures in its archways or the carved ornaments of the windows.
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“The Madonna of the Rocks.” by Leonardo Da Vinci.
Perhaps you will best understand the meaning and value of perfect composition by contrasting Raphael’s picture with Wohlgemuth’s “Death of the Virgin.” In the latter there is no composition, in the sense in which we are using the word—that is to say, of an arrangement carefully planned. It presents only a crowd of figures more or less naturally grouped. Our attention is not engrossed by the whole, but is scattered over the parts. And you will find, as you continue your studies, that there is even more art in knowing what to leave out than in knowing what to put in; that simplicity of the parts and unily of the whole are the characteristics of the greatest artists.
Among the many interesting contrasts presented by the two pictures, one may be singled out. Wohlgemuth has tried to represent the