which belong to wide, free movement are called into play.  If, at the same time, the element of the deep vista is introduced, we have the extreme of concentration combined with the extreme of movement; and the result is a picture in the ’grand style’—­comparable to high tragedy—­in which all the feeling-tones which wait on motor impulses are, as it were, while yet in the same reciprocal relation, tuned to the highest pitch.  Such a picture is the Finding of the Ring, Paris Bordone (1048), in the Venice Academy.  All the mass and the interest and the suggestion of attention is toward the right—­the sweep of the downward lines and of the magnificent perspective toward the left—­and the effect of the whole space-composition is of superb largeness of life and feeling.  With it may be compared Titian’s Presentation of the Virgin (107), also in the Academy, Venice.  The composition, from the figure moving upward to one high on the right, to the downward lines, waiting groups and deep vista on the left, is almost identical with that of the Bordone.  Neither is pure diagonal—­that is, it saves itself at last by an upward movement.  Compare also the two great compositions by Veronese, Martyrdom of St. Mark, etc. (1091), in the Doge’s Palace, Venice, and Esther before Ahasuerus (566), in the Uffizi, Florence.  In both, the mass, direction of interest, movement and attention are toward the left, while all the lines tend diagonally to the right, where a vista is also suggested—­the diagonal making a V just at the end.  Here, too, the effect is of magnificence and vigor.

If, then, the pyramid belongs to contemplation, the diagonal to action, what can be said of the type of landscape?  It is without action, it is true, and yet does not express that positive quality, that will not to act, of the rapt contemplation.  The landscape uncomposed is negative; and it demands unity.  Its type of composition, then, must give it something positive besides unity.  It lacks both concentration and action; but it can gain them both from a space composition which shall combine unity with a tendency to movement.  And this is given by the diagonal and V-shaped type.  This type merely allows free play to the natural tendency of the ‘active’ picture; but it constrains the neutral, inanimate landscape.  The shape itself imparts motion to the picture:  the sweep of line, the concentration of the vista, the unifying power of the inverted triangle between two masses, act, as it were, externally to the suggestion of the object itself.  There is always enough quiet in a landscape—­the overwhelming suggestion of the horizontal suffices for that; it is movement that is needed for richness of effect; and, as I have shown, no type imparts the feeling of movement so strongly as the diagonal and V-shaped type of composition.  It is worth remarking that the perfect V, which is of course more regular, concentrated, quiet, than the diagonal, is more frequent than the diagonal among the ‘Miscellaneous Religious’ pictures (that is, it is more needed), since after all, as has been said, the final aim of all space composition is just the attainment of repose.  But the landscapes need energy, not repression; and so the diagonal type is proportionately more numerous.