Cezanne's objects were more modest than most still-life paraphernalia: thus, according to Fry's formalist reasoning, the forms that they made were all the more directly expres- sive of the artist's interior life, and that made them all the more meaningful. A later art historian argued for the sig- nificance of still life in Cezanne's oeuvre too, but from a contrary point of view: Meyer Schapiro thought the subject matter of the "apples of Cezanne" all important, finding in them "a latent erotic sense, an unconscious symbolizing of a repressed desire," which made them the displaced embodiment of the painter's sexuality, as expressed in the pas- toral poetry of his early letters and his con- tinuing obsession with body-crowded images of bathers, bacchanalia, and "battles of 8 love. " For Schapiro the social art historian with the long view, the iconography of still life—of Cezanne's still lifes in particular— was as important as that of mythological, religious, or history painting; indeed in Cezanne's case the topics of high painting were latent in still life, which was laden with the psychological weight of the humanist Figure 2 narrative. As paradoxical a view as Fry's, Paul Cezanne Schapiro's account of Cezanne's painting also Still Life with Compotier, 1880 accorded high standing to the artist's work Oil on canvas, 46 x 55 cm 1 5 in still life. (i8 /s x 21 /8 in.) Private collection There are ways, then, of giving a splendid thing like the Getty's Still Life with Blue Pot its due, despite or even because of its humble object world, and in this study I mean to do just that. My terms will be a little different from those of either Fry or Schapiro, or per- haps it is better to say that I will combine and alter them. Like Fry, I am interested in the 3 OPENING LINES