y praising, and were
the very embodiments of cheerful innocence.

It is worth while to look at this picture for a moment, without
thinking of its meaning, and indeed without paying much attention to
the beauty of the figures, just to see how this great painter has
managed the lines and masses of the work. In art, lines and masses
and color are not unlike what words and sentences and what we call
style are in literature. Even if a writer has good and beautiful
ideas, much of the pleasure we might derive is lost when the words are
ill chosen, the sentences are bungling, perhaps even ungrammatical,
and the whole expression is commonplace or confusing.

We cannot get any notion of Raphael's color from our little print, but
it is not difficult to trace the lines and to see something of the
effect of the masses, and of light and shade. The shape of the whole
is a combination of pyramids. When you see the great base of a pyramid
and observe how the sides taper upward, you are aware that nothing
could stand more securely and at the same time suggest lightness, by
the rising and receding of the sides.

Now here you see that lines drawn from the shoulders of the two
attendant figures would meet at the Virgin's head, as at the apex of a
pyramid. The curtains even help this effect, by being drawn aside in
such a way as to make these lines more evident.

In the lower half of the picture the lines in the draperies of the
kneeling saints taper to an imaginary point between the heads of the
cherubs, forming a second inverted pyramid or triangle. Thus the
composition is inclosed in a harmonious figure whose outlines suggest
what we call a diamond.

[Illustration: SISTINE MADONNA
_Dresden Gallery_]

Perhaps one reason why a triangular arrangement satisfies the eye,
lies in the simple fact that the most important and yet familiar
object in nature is thus arranged. Thus in this picture, the three
principal persons form the upper triangle, and the body of each person
repeats the figure,--that is, the head rises from the shoulders in
such a way that the lines inclosing them produce a triangle. Further,
in each face, the line formed by the eyes is connected by two
imaginary lines meeting at the mouth.

In the picture the central figure illustrates this very noticeably.
The arm of the Virgin forms by its position, along with the body of
the child, a base, from which two other lines rise, tapering to the
top of the head; the child's h