 That part of the theory which concerns the typical stratification of the background is completely original. In response to the second question above, the answer is that different aesthetic objects display different articulations of the background stratum. In the case of literary works, for example, Hartmann distinguishes at least six different levels for more sophisticated genres like epic narratives or novels, while other genres have fewer levels. This applies to lyrical poems, for example, whose expressiveness is articulated into fewer levels because of the constraints imposed on the admissible expressive forms. Hartmann cites the portrait as an example of a visual aesthetic object. He distinguishes the following levels in its background stratum: the three-dimensional space in which the subject of the portrait and some elements of the setting appear; the movement of the subject’s apparent corporeality; the subject’s character; their individual idea, or the idea that the person portrayed has of themselves; the symbolic, or the universal content manifested by the portrait. His discriminating and extensive analyses of works by Beethoven, Shakespeare, Ibsen, and Rembrandt, among many others, are worthy of close consideration by theorists, as is the entire theory.