Rafael’s Compressed Colors
From the essay
A photo captures one moment, one thin slice of Now. A painted portrait, especially a great one, carries many moments compressed into one face. While contemplating my visit to the Metropolitan to see Rafael’s great exposition, a parallel thought came to me almost naturally: if portrait painting can compress time, perhaps oil painting can compress color. The painting asks us to look not only at the image, but into the image—almost vertically, as if our eyes could travel down through the thin layers of paint where color slowly acquires depth.