ONEWHEN the painter Ingres was about sixty-five years old and at the height of his powers—although he was to paint nobly for twenty more years—he received in his studio in Paris a young woman called one of the most beautiful of her times. She reminded him, he said, of the subject of his famous portrait, Mlle Rivière, and he would like to paint her in a similarly ornamental setting.
“I don’t think such a background would do for me,” she replied, thinking of the rich velvets and embroideries of his masterpiece.
“Why not?” the master asked.
“I feel too close to the earth.”
He appeared startled. “Then the earth must be very beautiful in your sight,” he suggested.
“How did you know?”
“One with such visual beauty as you have can’t fail to visualize beauty all about you. Each of us is a mir
