OF SYMMETRY, OR THE TYPE OF DIVINE JUSTICE.
Sec. 1. Symmetry, what and how found in organic nature.
Sec. 2. How necessary in art.
We shall not be long detained by the consideration of this, the fourth
constituent of beauty, as its nature is universally felt and understood.
In all perfectly beautiful objects, there is found the opposition of one
part to another and a reciprocal balance obtained; in animals the
balance being commonly between opposite sides, (note the
disagreeableness occasioned by the exception in flat fish, having the
eyes on one side of the head,) but in vegetables the opposition is less
distinct, as in the boughs on opposite sides of trees, and the leaves
and sprays on each side of the boughs, and in dead matter less perfect
still, often amounting only to a certain tendency towards a balance, as
in the opposite sides of valleys and alternate windings of streams. In
things in which perfect symmetry is from their nature impossible or
improper, a balance must be at least in some measure expressed before
they can be beheld with pleasure. Hence the necessity of what artists
require as opposing lines or masses in composition, the propriety of
which, as well as their value, depends chiefly on their inartificial and
natural invention. Absolute equality is not required, still less
absolute similarity. A mass of subdued color may be balanced by a point
of a powerful one, and a long and latent line overpowered by a short and
conspicuous one. The only error against which it is necessary to guard
the reader with respect to symmetry, is the confounding it with
proportion, though it seems strange that the two terms could ever have
been used as synonymous. Symmetry is the _opposition_ of _equal_
quantities to each other. Proportion the _connection_ of _unequal_
quantities with each other. The property of a tree in sending out equal
boughs on opposite sides is symmetrical. Its sending out shorter and
smaller towards the top, proportional. In the human face its balance
of opposite sides is symmetry, its division upwards, proportion.
[Illustration: TOMB OF THE ILARIA DI CARETTO, LUCCA. From a photograph.]
Sec. 3. To what its agreeableness is referable. Various instances.
Sec. 4. Especially in religious art.
Whether the agreeableness of symmetry be in any way referable to its
expression of the Aristotelian [Greek: isotes], that is to say of
abstract justice, I leave the reader to determine; I only assert
respecting it, that it is necessary to the dignity of every form, and
that by the removal of it we shall render the other elements of beauty
comparatively ineffectual: though, on the other hand, it is to be
observed that it is rather a mode of arrangement of qualities than a
quality itself; and hence symmetry has little power over the mind,
unless all the other constituents of beauty be found together with it. A
form may be symmetrical and ugly, as many Elizabethan ornaments, and yet
not so ugly as it had been if unsymmetrical, but bettered always by
increasing degrees of symmetry; as in star figures, wherein there is a
circular symmetry of many like members, whence their frequent use for
the plan and ground of ornamental designs; so also it is observable that
foliage in which the leaves are concentrically grouped, as in the
chestnuts, and many shrubs--rhododendrons for instance--(whence the
perfect beauty of the Alpine rose)--is far nobler in its effect than any
other, so that the sweet chestnut of all trees most fondly and
frequently occurs in the landscape of Tintoret and Titian, beside which
all other landscape grandeur vanishes: and even in the meanest things
the rule holds, as in the kaleidoscope, wherein agreeableness is given
to forms altogether accidental merely by their repetition and reciprocal
opposition; which orderly balance and arrangement are essential to the
perfect operation of the more earnest and solemn qualities of the
beautiful, as being heavenly in their nature, and contrary to the
violence and disorganization of sin, so that the seeking of them and
submission to them is always marked in minds that have been subjected to
high moral discipline, constant in all the great religious painters, to
the degree of being an offence and a scorn to men of less tuned and
tranquil feeling. Equal ranks of saints are placed on each side of the
picture, if there be a kneeling figure on one side, there is a
corresponding one on the other, the attendant angels beneath and above
are arranged in like order. The Raffaelle at Blenheim, the Madonna di
St. Sisto, the St. Cicilia, and all the works of Perugino, Francia, and
John Bellini present some such form, and the balance at least is
preserved even in pictures of action necessitating variety of grouping,
as always by Giotto; and by Ghirlandajo in the introduction of his
chorus-like side figures, and by Tintoret most eminently in his noblest
work, the Crucifixion, where not only the grouping but the arrangement
of light is absolutely symmetrical. Where there is no symmetry, the
effects of passion and violence are increased, and many very sublime
pictures derive their sublimity from the want of it, but they lose
proportionally in the diviner quality of beauty. In landscape the same
sense of symmetry is preserved, as we shall presently see, even to
artificialness, by the greatest men, and it is one of the principal
sources of deficient feeling in the landscapes of the present day, that
the symmetry of nature is sacrificed to irregular picturesqueness. Of
this, however, hereafter.