Beyond those long and crooked noses in Renaissance portraits there often stood a window, and beyond the window, itself somewhere high up in a lofty and thus revealing tower, there were fields and willows and brooks. There were blue hills and black serfs beyond those magnificent noses, and there were bridges, exercising armies—comparatively small iron armies bristling with spears—and also churches with gleaming steeples and small black bells—almost audible, tinkling—in the distance. There was a dash of longing there, as well. True, everything beyond those ugly and powerful noses was perhaps falsely calm and treacherously serene, but the explicit geometry of the noses clearly contradicted this almost childish lie, which accordingly softened the mendacious spectacle. Today, by contrast, there is no background, there is nothing transparent and telling, in the portraits of powerful men and women who still dare to be immobilized and preserved in this or any other fashion. A flat, numb, opaque, and blind somewhere is there at best. Not even a lie, its serenity and ignorant decency notwithstanding, remains behind the shriveled noses. Is it that the panoramic distances have vanished, as this note would secretly suggest and illustrate, or that the noses are nowadays anatomically incapable of contradicting anything, let alone the decorative illusions of peace and divine harmony? Is it that all are punished, or that our sins have been washed away never to enlighten us again? And where are those who could ask relevant questions about the mysterious noses? Where are the connoisseurs of human physiognomy who could testify to the dissolution of the object of their art?