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It's a stunningly beautiful work, but it also reminds me about the fragility of works. The original is badly damaged. Thankfully, we have this copy, and now th
by dwheeler 6y ago
It's a stunningly beautiful work, but it also reminds me about the fragility of works.
The original is badly damaged. Thankfully, we have this copy, and now that it's been recorded electronically in theory we will at least have this version forever. But in practice, I fear that a lot of data will disappear. Modern hard drives and ssds have a frighteningly short lifetime. There are some organizations that are trying to record some of this, such as the internet archive, but it is not clear to me that they are going to last in the long term.
I would like to be more confident that much of the works of the present and past (like this) will survive into the future.
- tutfbhuf 6y agoI think it will as long as people can download it, have their own copy, re-upload and share it peer-to-peer. I think the single most important thing is to make sure to have many copies around the world and not just to rely on one or a few (even if they are well protected and properly conserved).
- whywhywhywhy 6y agoThings like this seriously need a download link, otherwise it might be archived but really it's just a copy in Google's servers.
- rladd 6y agoThe original is badly damaged, and then damaged more by over-cleaning, one of the misplaced enthusiasms of our age. By stripping away everything but the original paint (of which often not much is left), irreplaceable information is lost, because the retouchers had often seen the original or more of it, and restored detail that had been damaged. What remains after these extreme cleanings is too often little more than the underpainting and initial sketch. It's a great loss and a great pity.