These spots of color, if you examine the picture carefully, really play the part of the shadows in the chiaroscuro of old pictures. Chiaroscuro, you remember, is the pattern of light and dark. Here the red box and the blue of the vase and the green and rose, of the camelias, yes, and even the face in the mirror, the marble shelf and fireplace--all represent the dark spots. But not dark in the old way of being shadows. They are dark as compared with the white of the dress, because their colors reflect less light than the white; their values are lower. Thus they serve the purposes of a dark contrast and yet they themselves are very light. This, in a nutshell, is what the new study of values, that was learnt from Velasquez and from Vermeer, and the other Dutchmen, really means. It has enabled the artist to be even more true to life in the representation of objects, and at the same time to make his color-harmonies purer, clearer and more transparent; in one word, luminous; permeated, that is to say, with a suggestion of light, that in nature permeates the atmosphere and brings all objects into an appearance of harmonious unity.