Line of Beauty
Line of Beauty
Title given by Wm. Hogarth to an undulating line supposedly containing the essence of the graphically beautiful, and so regarded as both the cause and the criterion of beauty; particular lines and paintings become beautiful as and because they exhibit this line. According to Hogarth, such lines must express “symmetry, variety, uniformity, simplicity, intricacy, and quantity”. (Analysis of Beauty, London, 1753, p. 47.) — I.J.