“Fabritius is thirty-two, and I was the same age when I first wrote about his self-portrait. He and I remain the same age whenever we meet. He is dead, I am still alive, so the existential maths [sic] is now absurd. But a person in a portrait does not age, even if the painting does. The picture removes the person from time's harm and fixes them in the moment; and so it does for me. I never go to a gallery and think that these people are dead and gone, no matter how long ago they were depicted. The painting fuses the person in the moment and that moment somehow includes me, and you, and everyone to come. Here he is now, Carel Fabritius, and so he will remain; the artist appearing in and as his own painting.”