eading lines
and forms.

Painting and modelling, again, offer more elaborate treatment and
possibilities, and we know that beautiful works have been done in both
ways; but art of this kind seems more appropriate to lofty vaulted
chambers and churches, such as one sees in the palaces of Italy, at
Genoa and Venice, at Florence and Rome.

I remember a very striking and bold treatment of a flat-beamed ceiling
in the Castle of Nuremberg, where a huge black German eagle was painted
so as to occupy nearly the whole field of the ceiling, but treated in an
extremely flat and heraldic way, the long feathers of the wings
following the lines of the beams and falling parallel upon them and
between them; and upon the black wings and body of the eagle different
shields of arms were displayed in gold and colours, the eagle itself
being painted upon the natural unpainted wood--oak, I think. The work
belonged to the thirteenth or fourteenth century, I believe. It seemed
the very antithesis of Italian finesse and fancy, but the fitness of
such decoration entirely depends upon its relation to its surroundings,
which in this case were perfectly appropriate.

[Co-operative Relation]

That is the great point to bear in mind in all design--the sense of
relation; nothing stands alone in art. Lines and forms must harmonize
with other forms and lines: the elements of any design must meet in
friendly co-operation; it is not a blind struggle for existence, a
fierce competition, or a strife for ascendency between one motive and
another, one form and another, or a war of conflicting efforts. There
may be a struggle _outside_ the design, in the mind of the designer. He
may have tried hard against difficulties to express what he felt, and
have only reached harmony through discord and strife, but the work
itself should be serene; we should feel that, however various its
elements, they are not without their purpose and relation one to
another, that all is ordered and organized in harmonious lines, that
everything has its use and place, that, in short, it illustrates that
excellent motto, whether for art or life: "Each for all, and all for
each."

CHAPTER VI

Of the Fundamental Essentials of Design: Line, Form,
Space--Principles of Structural and Ornamental Line in Organic
Forms--Form and Mass in Foliage--Roofs--The Mediaeval
City--Organic and