Why does this notion persist? Water Pater wrote a famous essay on the painting in 1869. My impression is that it made a pretty big splash in the English-speakin

Why does this notion persist? Water Pater wrote a famous essay on the painting in 1869. My impression is that it made a pretty big splash in the English-speaking world, at least: much later, W.B. Yeats used a sentence from the essay in his Oxford Book of Modern Verse.