I guess my reflexive response to a ravishing late Manet still life of flowers on social media is to hype it, and only then to wonder whether Manet really did paint to the edges in a way that cut his brushstrokes in half.
Reader, he did not.
In 2020 wikimedia superuser Sailko uploaded a 12mb photo they took in 2018 of the cropped hot center of Manet’s painting at the Alte Nationalgalerie in Berlin. What you lose in breadth is more than made up for by zooming into the detail of each brushstroke and hint of bare canvas in that vase. What’s most interesting is how Sailko’s crop propagates across the net, and the many wiki-scraping printed object providers out there. It’s enough to warm my facsimile objective heart. [s/o rg_bunny1 and jeanettehayes]