This is not a pipe

Look at the graphic above.

What do you see?

It's the first page of a Google image search using the words magritte pipe.

I was simply looking for a reproduction of Magritte's famous painting, "The Treachery of Images," for a post on territories and maps and their relationship.

But I got sidetracked by the array of images you're looking at.

My question: Which of the reproductions is closest to the real painting?

There's no way of knowing.

Even if one of them is from the website of the painting's owner, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, that image may be further from the original than some of the others.

A photograph taken when the painting was new (1928-1929) would certainly differ from one taken today, what with time's passage and its effects on the oil pigments and canvas.

In this case, it would seem to me that there is no absolute "right" or "correct" or even "best" image: caveat videor.