The Simple Economics of Open Source

[Andrew M. Kuchling]

wware at world.std.com (Will Ware) writes:
> very small. Are there other talented artists with distinctive styles
> for whom it wouldn't be very unreasonable for there to be undiscovered
> works appearing?

Probably not.  The Dutch artist Vermeer is sort of the opposite case;
the number of actual Vermeers is slowly being whittled away by
scholarship as paintings are attributed to his students.  I think the
number of original Vermeer paintings is now put at around 30.  A
forger named Han van Meegeren painted several forged Vermeers, some of
which fooled people for many years.  (http://www.mystudios.com/gallery/han/)

This connects to two obsessions of mine.  Robertson Davies's excellent
novel _What's Bred in The Bone_ has a subplot based on van Meegeren.
And Peter Greenaway's film _A Zed and Two Noughts_ features a
character named van Meegeren who's a doctor obsessed with Vermeer, and
lighting design and photography influenced by Vermeer (always lit from
the left, for example.  In the screenplay PG gives a far lower number
of actual Vermeers than any other source: 23.

-- 
A.M. Kuchling			http://starship.python.net/crew/amk/
I sit here for hours. It's like sitting amongst lighthouses, each lighthouse
giving you a bearing on lost spaces of time...
  -- Peter Greenaway, _A Zed and Two Noughts_ (1986)