PROPORTION IN FINE ART. This has to do with the relative sizes of things represented or embodied in a design; and, in a secondary sense, with the relative importance of certain passages of light and dark, or of color more or less powerful and effective. Thus, the composition (q.v.) may be marred by a disagreeable rela tion between the heights or the bulks of two figures, trees, rocks, buildings in a picture or in reality. or parts of a building. in which ease they are said to 1,, rout of proportion.' So in an ordinary hop se froor, as on the street of a city. the prop, I lion hi tw en the window openings and spates bet \ 'CCU them, and between the window op of coo tier and those of other tiers. and , between the cornice and the wall below and be twtan the stone-faced basement and the brick faced wall between the basement and the cor nice. may all be so judicious that the whole front becomes. by the combination of these different proportions. a remarkable work of art. Certain
architect; of great fame have had no other im portant claim to the consideration of posterity than a mastery of sueh proportions as these.
There is no fixed rule for proportion, nor even any body of rules for the government of those who would produce effective proportions in their design. tt is true, however, that many attempted analyses have been made of fine designs. both in painting and in architecture, with a view of ascertaining the supposed principles which gov ern the designer in making admittedly beautiful eompositions. For proportion in the fine arts, consult: Viollet-le-Due, Dictionnairc de l'Archi feetare, articles "Proportion" and "Symetrie;" Robinson, Principles of Architectural Composi tion (New York:, 1899) ; Dow, Composition (ib., 1900) : Poore, Pictorial Composition and the Critical Judgment of Pictures (ib., 1903) ; Van Pelt, A Discussion of Composition (ib. 1902).