Slender

About

Slenderness makes a form seem light, elegant or fragile. Etruscan bronze workers made elongated votive figures such as the Ombra della Sera (3rd century BC), now in Volterra, and the column figures on the west portal of Chartres Cathedral rise like part of the architecture. Parmigianino stretched necks and limbs for grace in Madonna with the Long Neck (about 1535–40).

Modern artists found new meanings in thinness. Wilhelm Lehmbruck's elongated figures of the 1910s carry a quiet melancholy, and Alberto Giacometti's post-war figures, reduced to rough, attenuated verticals, suggest isolation and distance. Engineers and architects used slim iron supports to open up interiors: Henri Labrouste's reading room at the Bibliothèque Sainte-Geneviève in Paris, completed in 1850, rests on slender cast-iron columns. Furniture and lighting designers pare legs and stems down as far as materials allow. Look for proportions that stretch well beyond ordinary height-to-width ratios.