Quiet, Reposed
The Fetish of Silence and the Femme Fragile

Flowers of Evil: Paul Gauguin's Decadent Imagination and the Concept and Culture of the Fin-de-Siècle
The presence that rose thus so strangely beside the waters, is expressive of what in the ways of a thousand years men had come to desire. Hers is the head upon which all “the ends of the world are come,” and the eyelids are a little weary. It is a beauty wrought out from within upon the flesh.
– Walter Pater
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There is no more accurate documentation of the manner in which a culture perceives its moral and social mission than in the works of visual art it produces. (Bram Dijkstra, Idols of Perversity)