Drawing from Experience: Fra Angelico to Leonardo

By the end of the twentieth Century the access Andre Malraux anticipated his "Museum Without Walls" , (the world beyond museums that the mass distribution of reproductions of artefacts offered) , was firmly in place. What he failed to take into account of however, were two factors that John Ruskin had written passionately about during the previous century , first that reproductions may be good for jogging the memory but t no substitute for the real thing and second that access alone doesn’t necessarily lead to understanding.