124 LANDSCAPE DESIGN 



actually be also inclosing and enframing, foreground or background, 

 objects, but if they do nothing but concentrate the attention upon the 

 main object or composition of objects, still the whole composition re- 

 mains in effect typically of the first or second kind, as the case may be. 

 In the third case, the hollow object looked into may, in its turn, 

 surround a single object or a composition of objects ; but if these objects 

 merely diversify the open space without attracting any particular con- 

 sideration to themselves, the composition remains typically of the 

 third kind. 



In actual practice it is seldom that a given view is a pure example 

 of any one of these types, indeed a view may impress the observer 

 as one or another according as his attention happens to fall. 



The pictorial landscape compositions which we have been discuss- 

 ing are often very definite and very powerful in their esthetic effect, 

 but, as we have seen, the effect of the same scene may be greatly dif- 

 ferent upon different observers, and essentially the same compositional 

 effect may be produced by very different scenes. It comes about from 

 this that we have practically no specific names denoting arrangements 

 of objects by their compositional effect,* indeed in all the literature of 

 landscape design we have really only one word of this kind, namely, 

 the word vista. It is not surprising that the vista should be thus dif- 

 ferentiated, for it is perhaps of all landscape compositions the most 

 unified. For this reason we may discuss it here as a typical example 

 of a pictorial composition. 



The Vista as a The unity of the vista consists in the dominance of the focal point, 

 Typical and this point is made important in almost every possible way. It is 



im ^ 6 enframed pictorially by the balanced subordinate masses which inclose 



the vista, and these masses screen all other objects out from the com- 

 position. The bounding lines of these enframing masses converge upon 

 the focal point, and a sequence of attention follows their vanishing 

 straight lines or their masses diminishing in perspective toward the 

 focal point. In association, the open space of the vista allows or 

 at least suggests that the spectator go toward the focal point as an 



* Cf. Hirschfeld's remarks on the difficulty of finding names for different parts 

 of the landscape, in his Theorie de f Art des Jardins, 1779, v. I, p. 215-216. (See 

 REFERENCES.) 



