Читать книгу Art History For Dummies - Jesse Bryant Wilder - Страница 40

Each part of a painting or relief has visual weight. The artist carefully distributes this weight to balance the work of art. Look at the visual weight distribution in Sandro Botticelli’s Primavera (see Chapter 11): The two male figures on opposite ends of the painting balance it like bookends. Venus stands in the center spreading love from left to right — to the trinity of Graces (on the viewer’s left) and to the goddess Flora and the nymph Chloris (on the viewer’s right). If Botticelli had placed Flora, Chloris, and the Graces on the same side of the painting, it would have appeared lopsided. Besides, Botticelli is telling two love stories in the same painting.

Usually, the more symmetrical and balanced a work of art (sometimes to the point of stiffness), the more likely it is that the piece of art depicts something godlike, important, or ideal, as in Leonardo da Vinci’s The Last Supper (see Chapter 11).