I love how the art snob is like “who cares, we already knew that, it makes no difference” and then points to an article from 8 years ago that makes a guess on the 500-year-old mystery.

In fact, I was told by art teachers that the landscape was imaginary and this was an important novelty in portraiture at the time and meant to add mystery and allure to its subject, an idea that receives plenty of attention in Sassoon’s own book on the subject.