Page:Landscape Painting by Birge Harrison.djvu/274

LANDSCAPE PAINTING Here the scientific fact has become a visual lie. If an artist should by any chance be using these two forms as units in a decorative frieze wherein it was essential that they should be of the same length, he would unhesitatingly lengthen the central line of No. 2 and shorten that of No. 1, so that visually they would become equal; and in so doing he would be telling the truth in his own way; whereas had he allowed the foot-rule to control him he would have been guilty of an artistic lie.

The Greek architects, observing that the horizontal architrave surmounting the columns on their temples appeared to sag, corrected the fault by giving their architrave a slightly upward arch, thus by means of a curve securing a straight line; or at least a line which was architecturally and visually straight.

Here then clearly lies the division line [214]