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We will try in this article to show how art enables us to make the distinction between intimacy and the intimate. Art represents jouissance and offers insights about the division between our intimate and our intimacy. In fact, the structure of intimacy emerged with the subject of the perspective, Alberti’s Renaissance subject. The intimate, on the other hand, is associated more with the Baroque period and is seen for example in the painting of Vermeer. Intimacy is comparable to a specular and phantastic mask that conceals the intimate and takes the form of the human figure, structurally defined by clear boundaries; whereas in the intimate place of the radical incognito of the subject, there is a trace of infinity. Thus the painter may reveal the unimaginable intimate, which the subject seeks to defend itself from by inventing intimacy.