Wikipedia:Featured picture candidates/Reply of the Zaporozhian Cossacks

Reply of the Zaporozhian Cossacks to Sultan Mehmed IV of the Ottoman Empire
Voting period ends on 7 Jan 2013 at 12:50:41 (UTC)
 * Reason:Repin is one of my favourite artists, but we've only recently started getting high-res versions of his most important work. As such, I would love to start to see him being featured.
 * Articles in which this image appears:Reply of the Zaporozhian Cossacks, Ilya Repin, possibly others. Since it's also the lead image for Template:Cossacks - a usage not generally considered to "count" at FP, but one that puts it in dozens of articles - it's hard to spot other stand alone usages.
 * FP category for this image:Featured pictures/Artwork/Paintings
 * Creator:Ilya Repin


 * Support as nominator -- Adam Cuerden (talk) 12:50, 29 December 2012 (UTC)
 * Comment Perhaps one of Repin's most recognizable paintings, but I don't remember that tiny brown border, is it a part of the canvas? If it's a frame, it should be cropped imho. Brandmeistertalk  13:28, 30 December 2012 (UTC)
 * Edge of the painting. Generally speaking, it's better to include a tiny bit of border than crop parts of the artwork out; Reusers can crop, they can't magically restore material, and the borders are almost never completely straight. One could argue that one could crop to minimise the border, but when this is actually done, it usually looks terrible, since you end up with irregular trianglular wedges where the border was very slightly not straight, instead of a what the eye perceives as a consistent border. Also, the history of painting FPCs show that paintings are often rejected for the tiniest crops. Adam Cuerden (talk) 13:44, 30 December 2012 (UTC)
 * By the way, this is why, when doing restorations of artworks, I either leave a border (for reproduction techniques that inherently include blank paper around the image - you never quite get the same look when republishing such images if you don't do that) or, where cropping is appropriate, use restoration techniques to remove the aforementioned wedges caused by cropping to produce a minimal border. But it's generally accepted that while restoration is appropriate for mass-produced artworks (where any imperfections are likely not in all copies) and poorly-conserved images (where it's necessary to make them usable), but not for well-preserved paintings. If FPC thinks it appropriate, I could probably remove the border without loss of artwork, but there would be a small amount of least-significant-information new material. Adam Cuerden (talk) 13:57, 30 December 2012 (UTC)
 * Support anyway. Brandmeistertalk  16:31, 30 December 2012 (UTC)
 * Support - Interesting image, although the bald gentleman's head nearly poked my eye out. — Crisco 1492 (talk) 15:19, 31 December 2012 (UTC)
 * Support We've had other paintings that have been cropped sans border that have been fine but I don't think the border really detracts from the image and it's a high EV good quality image. Cat-five  t  c   00:13, 4 January 2013 (UTC)
 * Support; an interesting and rather eye-catching picture. Would look splendid on the main page.   dci  &#124;  TALK   04:51, 5 January 2013 (UTC)

--Armbrust The Homunculus 12:54, 7 January 2013 (UTC)