Proportion is the size of parts compared with each other and with the whole: a head compared with a body, a window compared with a wall. Scale is size compared with something we know, usually the human body: a statue can be miniature, life-size or monumental. You measured proportions in Proportion: Comparing Sizes.
Key idea
Proportion compares parts; scale compares with a known size. In hierarchical scale, size shows importance: the most important figure is the largest.
Why it works
Before artists used perspective to show distance, size was free to mean something else. Many traditions used it to show rank. Egyptian art shows the pharaoh larger than servants (see The Rules of Egyptian Art), and medieval painters often made holy figures larger than others.
Worked example: Reading the Maestà
In Duccio's Maestà, an altarpiece painted for Siena Cathedral, the Virgin Mary sits on a throne with the Christ Child, and rows of saints and angels stand around her. She is far larger than any of them. Is she closer to us?
- Look at the front row: four saints kneel in front of her throne, so they are nearer to us than she is.
- Yet they are much smaller. Distance cannot explain her size.
- The Virgin is the most important figure, so Duccio painted her the largest: hierarchical scale.
Answer: No: she is larger because she is the most important.
Common mistake
Reading a large figure in older art as closer. In hierarchical scale, size shows importance, not distance. Check for depth clues: if the figures stand side by side with no overlap, no shrinking background and no perspective, the size difference is about rank.
Artists also play with scale for effect. In Hokusai's Great Wave, the near wave looks taller than distant Mount Fuji, and in Fan Kuan's landscape tiny travelers make the mountain feel immense.