a perception which we have at present lost so utterly as hardly to be able even to conceive it. And let it not be said, as it was of the late discoveries of subtle curvature in the Parthenon,45 that what is not to be demonstrated without laborious measurement, cannot have influence on the beauty of the design. The eye is continually influenced by what it cannot detect; nay, it is not going too far to say, that it is most influenced by what it detects least. Let the painter define, if he can, the variations of lines on which depend the changes of expression in the human countenance. The greater he is, the more he will feel their subtlety, and the intense difficulty of perceiving all their relations, or answering for the consequences of a variation of a hair’s breadth in a single curve.
The Stones of Venice, Volume II (of 3)
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John Ruskin
