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Pattern is as important in visual art as it is in music or dance. A song is a pattern of notes; a dance is a pattern of movements; and a painting is a pattern of colors, lines, shapes, lights, and shadows. Patterns give consistency and unity to works of art. Mixing a pretty floral pattern with a checkerboard design would be as inconsistent as pasting two types of wallpaper together. The key to pattern is consistency. That said, an artist may choose to intermingle several patterns to create contrast (see “Looking for contrast,” later in this chapter).

Sometimes patterns in art are as easy to recognize as the designs in wallpaper, but more often the patterns are complex, like musical motifs in a Beethoven symphony or the intricate designs in a Persian carpet or a rose window (see Chapter 10). Patterns may also be subtle, like the distribution of colors in Jacopo Pontormo’s Descent from the Cross (see Chapter 13).