raphael and the idea first

Raphael's Saint George and the Dragon. It's tiny, and the dragon barely matters. What you remember is how calm George is, mid-strike. The stillness tells the story.

Then Christ Falling on the Way to Calvary (I have both replicas in my house). Christ is crushed under the cross, and his eyes are on his mother. That one turn of the head is the whole painting.

AI has more or less solved the hand. It can paint like Raphael, write like anyone, build whatever you describe. What it can't do is decide that the knight should be calm or that Christ should look at his mother. I don't think it ever will. To know which moment matters, you have to have felt something like it. Raphael knew what it was to watch someone you love suffer, and that's why Christ turns his head. A model can give you every version of that painting. It can't want to make one of them.