A painting is not made to be sniffed.

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Source, in full

Statement that a painting should be contemplated at a distance, rather than examined closely; attributed to Rembrandt in early biographies, as quoted in The Rise of the Cult of Rembrandt : Reinventing an Old Master in Nineteenth-Century France (2003), by Alison MacQueen. p. 287

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Attribution

Quote text and notes from Wikiquote: Rembrandt (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0. Source quality and labels are our own summary of what Wikiquote records.