It is commonplace within some disciplines to suggest that changes of value and meaning are ethically problematic. This is considered to be a particular problem for sacred objects.

By juxtaposing the two paintings, I believe that I have been able to isolate certain aspects of what makes manifest an object’s sacredness to audiences at particular points in time and in specific contexts. Aspects such as religious subject, physical setting such as a church or museum, painted by a master, nostalgia, age, aesthetics and monetary values, all appear to have varying roles in constructing, maintaining or denying an object’s sacredness. However, I still believe that the essential ingredient still resides in the paintings themselves. They appear to have the ability to bridge civilisations and mediate between history and mutable traditions. The paintings condense multiple messages and convey these to the senses in a way that language cannot.^[53] They appear to be vehicles with the capacity to configure spiritual power.^[54] The Last Supper and Buddha Shakyamuni reach out and materialise something greater than the physical materials that went into making them; a resonance that has outlived their makers and their original audiences; and a resonance that has overcome restorations, reproduction and relocation. Today’s commodity-orientated world has enhanced the power of these paintings by exposing them to even greater audiences. Buddha Shakyamuni and the Last Supper rest in our museum-without-walls lexicon categorised and stored as both sacred and valuable.