o one,
and in some respects well governed as a single composition. Conceive,
however, this subject bereft of the darkened corners, and the gradations
which create a focus. The figures would lie upon the canvas somewhat in
the shape of a letter Z, devoid of essential coherence, with the details
in the foreground hopelessly exposed as padding.

Another resort in order to secure a vortex, or a centre bounded by a
circle, is to surround the head or figure with flying drapery, branch
forms, a halo or any linear item which may serve both to cut out and to
hem in. It accomplishes something of what the hand does when held as a
tunnel before the eye. Such a device offers ready aid to the decorator
whose figures must often receive a close encasement, fitted as they are
into limited spaces, when many an ungracious line in the subject is made
to disappear through the accommodation of pliant drapery or of varied tree
forms.

In this class of compositions especially must the background be made the
_complement_ of the subject. What the subject fails to contain may there
be supplied, a sort of auxiliary opportunity.

The subject, or most interesting part, should lie either _within_ the
circuit or be the most important item _of_ the circle. It should never be
_outside_ the circle. If it appears there, the eye is thrown off of the
elliptical track. If the reader will compare the _"__Lake at Ville
d'Avray__"_ by Corot with his "Orpheus and Eurydice," the charm in the
former may reveal itself more completely through the jar to which the
latter subjects us. The figures of the divine lyrist and his bride
escaping out of one corner of the canvas do not enter at all into the
linear scheme and in their anxiety to flee Hades they are about to leave
art and the spectator. The picture is a strange counterpart of the Apollo
and Daphne of Giorgione at Venice, and since it is known of Corot that he
cared infinitely more for nature than art, it is fair to suppose that he
had never seen this picture either in the original or reproduction. Had
he been governed by the feeling for unity which his works usually display
this pitfall in the borders of plagiarism would not have snared him.

[Orpheus and Eurydice--Corot (Figures outside the natural line of the
picture's composition); The Holy Family--Andrea del Sarto (The circle
overbalanced)]

The "Holy Family," by Andrea del Sarto, is a composition in which the