And yet even as I say this I wonder if it is really what I mean. I think, for example, of the paintings of Paul Cézanne, particularly his still lifes, and the ones of Mont Sainte-Victoire, of which he produced many versions, over and over, as if trying to find in that subject some essence that never fully revealed itself, or that revealed itself always, but in different shades, at different instances, or times of day.