every so often I’ll get reblogs of the Marbles edit with people commenting about the “original” version of Susanna and the Elders by Artemisia Gentileschi, which apparently shows Susanna in distress, brandishing a knife.
And... that’s not real. At least, not in the way people think it is. The “original” painting isn’t a thing, they did not take an x-ray of the painting and find that beneath. The black and white “x-ray” is, in fact, another painting made by Kathleen Gilje as part of an exhibition where she “restored” old artworks into new reimaginings - often changing only very small things.
Obviously Gilije’s version is a powerful piece, inspired by Gentileschi’s own life, but... not an x-ray, not the original. Sorry.