Advice of an Old Master

Fiorenza, in the age of the Medicis

First, one must have a sense of line—
you will never be an artist if you have no sense of line.
Note there, for instance: that line of yours askew
diminishes the gesture of the Christ Child. What we make—
whether the subject’s classical or divine—
must like bodies heavenly and human be aligned
with the golden mean and Vitruvian proportion.
No, it is not to please the eye—or not merely—
but because the word cosmos means order,
and because we borrow the epithet of God
the Creator in the making of our worlds—
and there are no worlds without lines. Enough today.
Read your Euclid and return to me tomorrow,
when we will do nothing but draw lines.