Page:Pictorial beauty on the screen.djvu/183

 *ings, and that the background is all the region which lies beyond the ruined tower. This picture has many distances, and yet they fuse together into a single composition. Equilibrium is maintained by the fact that the scattering figures near the fountain weigh against the marching soldiers to the left in the foreground, while the two sides find a center of balance in the quiet horseman and the three persons to whom he is talking. In the middle ground the same care has been shown, for the soldiers first swing to their left, past the tower, and then execute a balancing movement to their right. In the background there is a balance between those forces which are executing a "column right" and those which are proceeding down into the village street. And if we take the background of the picture as against the foreground, we shall find a balancing point in the narrowest part of the street. No undue attention is attracted to either side of this point, but the whole sweep of interest from front to back, or from back to front, is continuous and even. There is plenty of military movement here amid evidences of terrific bombardment, and yet, because of the artistic composition of the picture, we get from it all a momentary sense of repose, as though war itself were at rest.

Several details in this "still" are worth noting. For example, the comparatively few figures in the right side of the foreground are given additional weight by the whiteness of costume, as against the gray of the soldiers. Another interesting thing is the balance between the line described by the leading company of soldiers and the line of tree tops on the wooded hill, which begins near the upper right hand corner and