1£©Line design
Woven out of relationships of shape and outline. Dominant between decline of Roman Empire and Renaissance. May be unrealistic (Book of Hours) or realistic (Flemish Gothic). Legible element distinct from illusionist. Stereotype and non-personal symbols generally employed. Outlines emphasized by color changes. Areas filled by pattern. Popular for narrative, when features irrelevant to storytelling are omitted. Hidden geometry important. Flowing brush strokes only in illuminated MSS (unlike far-eastern art.) Development from late Roman to Byzantine and to Gothic is not based on direct observation. Symbols are distorted for religious effect. Important artists appearing at end of period include:

1£®Jan van Eyck. Painted direct from nature, capturing illusion of space and pattern of light and tone relationships. Worked by
1¡·modeling light and shade in opaque pigment (probably egg-oil emulsion)
2¡·covering with more or less transparent glaze, and
3¡·working over light side of forms and half shadows in thin films of opaque paint.

2£®Holbein. Worked by:
1¡·Interpreting form by contour lines of great simplicity and subtlety. Lines built of short lines infinitely sensitive to change in direction of surface planes.
2¡·Blending flat pattern and realistic rendering of surface quality of clothes and flesh.

2£©Form Design
Involved the third dimension, often running in counterpoint to a line design as well. Both decorative and descriptive. Intricate and subtle patterns built up by interweaving forms in space, speeding up, slowing and stopping the recession as desired. Artist studied nature to elucidate construction of forms in space, and to relate them rhythmically. Construction uses tone or line, the latter indicating axial and sectional lineaments. Perspective helps. Artists think in the round. Significant artists:
1£®Giotto and Cavallini introduced form design. Giotto observed nature closely and used broad form-design to create monumental and moving tableaux-vivants.
2£®Michelangelo. Depicted vigorous, contrasted action in bulging muscles and swinging draperies. Modeling subtle, but main figure often silhouetted in strong tonal contrasts.
3£®Raphael. More successful than Michelangelo in architectonics of groups of figures. Supremely intelligent artist, learning from others.

3£©Tone Design
Aimed at a. creating a satisfying pattern out of degrees of light and shade and b. representing perceptual truth more closely by some pictorial convention that represents the eye''''s varying sharpness of focus. Lasted early 16th to early 19th centuries. Artists were more concerned with tone than color. Where important, as in Venetian painting, color was generally used decoratively. Willingness to sacrifice detail in areas ''''out of focus'''' meant that brushwork could vigorous and free, adding life and sparkle to the painting. Significant artists:
1£®Leonardo blended outlines in his Mona Lisa.
2£®Gentile and Giovani Bellini, using oil on canvas to avoid corrosive effect of sea air, had a good sense of paint quality which led to an appreciation of tonal values.
3£®Giorgione absorbed the poetic mood and love of landscapes of the Bellinis, but composed his paintings as a whole, with only such detail as was needed.

4£©Color Design
Final stage in cycle of pictorial realism. Color had always played an important part in painting but not until nineteenth century were painters prepared to make drastic sacrifices on tone and precise delineation. Harmony was the object ¡ª achieved by some relationship of warm and cold (i.e. red or blue bias) or color saturation (e.g. a brilliant orange, dark brown, warmish gray and flesh pink are all orange either neat, reduced in tonal intensity, desaturated and reduced in intensity and desaturated respectively ¡ª i.e. orange with nothing, black, gray or white added.) Form tended to be lost and dim interiors were banished for bright landscapes. Finest landscape school was the English of first half of nineteenth century ¡ª helped by Rubens'''' experiments, atmospheric renderings of Poussin and Claude, and rustic motifs from Dutch painters. Significant artists:

1£®Pre-Raphaelites. Hectic realism. Sharp, angular drawing with great precision of detail. Painted thin color over wet flake white.
2£®Manet. Adopted Hals'''' approach, developing an audacious pictorial summary in tone and color of what he observed. Loose and racy brushwork to compensate for loss of more traditional techniques.
3£®Impressionists. Ruthlessly eliminated beauties of linear or tonal pattern to accurately interpret the colors of light.
4£®Degas. Mordantly incisive drawing. Influenced by Japanese print and photography.
5£®Van Gogh. Fierce color and agitated brushstrokes to convey his perception of forces of nature.