STUDY BY WATTEAU

From an original drawing in the collection of Charles Ricketts and
Charles Shannon.]

All through the work of the men who used this light and shade (or
chiaroscuro, as it was called) the outline basis remained. Leonardo,
Raphael, Michael Angelo, Titian, and the Venetians were all faithful to
it as the means of holding their pictures together; although the
Venetians, by fusing the edges of their outline masses, got very near
the visual method to be introduced later by Velazquez.

In this way, little by little, starting from a basis of simple outline
forms, art grew up, each new detail of visual appearance discovered
adding, as it were, another instrument to the orchestra at the disposal
of the artist, enabling him to add to the somewhat crude directness and
simplicity of the early work the graces and refinements of the more
complex work, making the problem of composition more difficult but
increasing the range of its expression.

But these additions to the visual formula used by artists was not all
gain; the simplicity of the means at the disposal of a Botticelli gives
an innocence and imaginative appeal to his work that it is difficult to
think of preserving with the more complete visual realisation of later
schools. When the realisation of actual appearance is most complete, the
mind is liable to be led away by side issues connected with the things
represented, instead of seeing the emotional intentions of the artist
expressed through them. The mind is apt to leave the picture and
looking, as it were, not at it but through it, to pursue a train of
thought associated with the objects represented as real objects, but