Line in art is a mark that has length and direction. It can trace the edge of a body, build a shadow out of hatching, or simply lead the eye across a surface, and it is one of the basic elements of art, the one every shape in a drawing starts from. The drawing where it is easiest to see is Ingres’s portrait of the violinist Niccolò Paganini, made in 1819, in which a few contours carry a whole man.
A line has no area. Once it closes on itself it becomes a shape, and once it is laid down in layers it becomes tone, which is why artists treat it as the most economical tool they own.
A pencil or a pen is enough to say where an arm ends or which way a figure turns. What changes from one artist to the next is the character of the stroke, firm, nervous, swarming or very fine, and that character works like handwriting.
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The oldest famous story about a line comes from the Roman writer Pliny the Elder, and it concerns a panel that held nothing else. The Greek painter Apelles sailed to Rhodes to meet a rival named Protogenes and went straight to his studio.
Protogenes was out. Apelles found a large panel waiting to be painted on, drew one very thin colored line across it, and left. Protogenes came home, saw the line, and knew at once who had been there.
He answered by drawing a thinner line, in another color, over the first. Apelles came back, saw the reply, and cut through both with a line in a third color, so fine that, in Pliny’s words, it left no room for any greater subtlety.
Pliny says he saw the panel himself, and he says what Protogenes did when he understood what had been done to his line. But the whole story turns on one word, finer. Hold on to it. By the time Ingres and Delacroix appear, nobody agrees that a finer line is a better one.
What did Protogenes do when he saw the third line?
He conceded. Protogenes admitted he was beaten and decided the panel should stay exactly as it was…
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