The thought that a painting is valuable in and of itself is strange to me. I see its purpose in the images and associations that it calls up and the richer and wider their scope, the more the painting is needed. And the mighty community and continuity of humanity also plays a part in this; it finds expression at the very least in the fact that we, people of the second half of the twentieth century, who fly in enormous airliners, who penetrate the cosmos and have set foot on the moon, and an artist separated from us by three centuries, who wore a powdered wig and silken breeches, who believed in God and revered a king, take the exact same joy from such simple and wonderful sights as a simple dish filled with peaches with their velvety, soft skin saturated with light blue and pink colors, or a white pitcher with dark blue designs and the little bouquet sticking out of it.