ABSTRACT
The gestures we make when holding pictures we admire (not only masterpieces) are those befitting precious objects; but also, let us not forget, objects claiming veneration. … the art museum is by way of becoming a sort of shrine, the only one of the modern age; the man who looks at an Annunciation in the National Gallery of Washington is moved by it no less profoundly than the man who sees it in an Italian church. True, a Braque still-life is not a sacred object; nevertheless, … it, too, belongs to another world and it is hallowed by its association with a vague deity known as Art …. In this context the religious vocabulary may jar on us; but unhappily we have no other.
