ABSTRACT
In his pioneering series for television, Ways of Seeing, John Berger appears, in one of the programmes, standing before Leonardo da Vinci’s painting The Virgin of the Rocks in the National Gallery in London (Berger 1972). He assures us, the viewers, that we are looking at Leonardo’s famous painting. He then, teasingly, corrects himself. It is he who is looking at the painting by Leonardo; we are looking at a television image. More than that, this ‘reproduced’ image takes its place in the viewer’s living room, perhaps beside other images, photos and so forth, that play a part in the formation of a local habitus. For the National Gallery itself, however, it is important to believe that it owns the original Leonardo, that the painting is ‘authentic’ and not a ‘copy’. Pages of the catalogue are devoted to proving this point, to tracing its unique history, its various ownerships and so forth, to establish its authenticity. The fact is that there is another painting that looks just like this one in the Louvre in Paris. Which is the ‘original’, which is authentic, does it matter?
