Man looking at the Mona Lisa Yes, but the details are sketchy. I know it was some time after the Pyramid thingy opened. And, like most people who have seen it, what I took away was how small the painting is. I mean, really tiny.

Of course one has no way of knowing how big it ought to be, having seen only reproductions, and never bothering to read the dimensions. But some pictures are just much bigger than you think they’re going to be, and others -- there’s a Picasso of a large woman -- are surprisingly tiny.

Big question: why should seeing the real thing -- badly -- be so important?

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