ABSTRACT
It is doubtless an excellent thing to study the old masters in order to learn how to paint; but it can be no more than a waste of labour if someone's aim is to understand the special nature of present-day beauty. The draperies of Rubens or Veronese will in no way teach he/she how to depict moire antique, satin a la reine or any other fabric of modern manufacture, which we see supported and hung over crinoline or starched muslin petticoat. For any 'modernity' to be worthy of one day taking its place as 'antiquity', it is necessary for the mysterious beauty. By 'modernity' the author mean the ephemeral, the fugitive, the contingent, the half of art whose other half is the eternal and the immutable. Every old master has had his own modernity; the great majority of fine portraits that have come down to us from former generations are clothed in the costume of their own period.
