But what difference does it make? It seems to me the cross sectional area in the photo is larger if the wings are more spread out as in the case with dead butte

But what difference does it make? It seems to me the cross sectional area in the photo is larger if the wings are more spread out as in the case with dead butterflies so you end up seeing more of the beautiful wing patterns. What's the point of hiding a portion of that? After all we kill flowers all the time so that our dining tables look slightly more beautiful. There is something morbid about dead butterflies looking better than alive ones, but I don't think you should put all that on "artists" as much as it being a rather unfortunate artifact of the way nature designed it.