Ah, I have completely misunderstood you! Thanks for suspecting that we were talking past one another, because it made me reread your comment.
I thought that you were taking as factual certain theories that the Mona Lisa in the Louvre is a copy (not descendant) of a painting that has since been lost. Rather than directly engage that claim (which I think is pretty thoroughly disbelieved), I just responded to the idea that the true original would be less valuable, which I find even weirder. But you were not talking about that at all.
My only defence is that “the original would be” doesn’t really make sense either; perhaps you should write “the original was”?
Heh. I wasn’t even aware of any such theories existing.
You don’t really need defense here, my point was decidedly obscure, as I realized when I tried to answer your question. I got about two paragraphs into a response before I foundered in the inferential gulf.
I suspect that any way of talking about “the original” as distinct from its “descendent” is going to lose comprehensibility as it runs into the human predisposition to treat identity as preserved over time.
Surely the original, if discovered to be still extant after all (and proved to really be the original), would be even more highly valued if we had it?
Can you expand a little on how you imagine this happening? I suspect we may be talking past one another.
Ah, I have completely misunderstood you! Thanks for suspecting that we were talking past one another, because it made me reread your comment.
I thought that you were taking as factual certain theories that the Mona Lisa in the Louvre is a copy (not descendant) of a painting that has since been lost. Rather than directly engage that claim (which I think is pretty thoroughly disbelieved), I just responded to the idea that the true original would be less valuable, which I find even weirder. But you were not talking about that at all.
My only defence is that “the original would be” doesn’t really make sense either; perhaps you should write “the original was”?
Heh. I wasn’t even aware of any such theories existing.
You don’t really need defense here, my point was decidedly obscure, as I realized when I tried to answer your question. I got about two paragraphs into a response before I foundered in the inferential gulf.
I suspect that any way of talking about “the original” as distinct from its “descendent” is going to lose comprehensibility as it runs into the human predisposition to treat identity as preserved over time.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Speculation\_about\_Mona\_Lisa#Other\_versions (which is more than just speculation about the original)