The difference between looking at images in books or in reproduction can mean you miss out on the depth of experience. For example, in Messina's, Cristo benedicente (o Salvator Mundi), you feel the equation of Christ is that Christ died into God's love and is blessing the earth from afar, almost the Heaven on high, the look in his eyes does not suggest he was born with us. The painting is so complex, I found it hard to observe and his hands blessing appear to convey the message, they look like the Christian ideal. This personal idealization of the Lord felt like the figure of man and premise man himself was simply like a mathematical representation that was reflexive of the distance between the stars.
