First Response - "Ways of Seeing", "Woman in Bed" & "On Caravaggio's The Calling of St. Matthew"

This was kind of a boring essay to me. What I got from the essay, the just of what he was saying is that a reproduction of a painting just doesn't mean the same. You won't get the same "in awe", speechless feeling unless you go to the museum that the original painting is held in and you study the painting. Only then, will you be able to get the feeling the painter is trying to portray. I did have a question about this though. In "Ways of Seeing", it says that, "The National Gallery sells more reproductions of Leonardo's cartoon of The Virgin and Child with St. Anne and St. John the Baptist [below] than any other picture in their collection. A few years ago it was known only to scholars. It became famous because an American wanted to buy it for two and half million pounds." My question is, why did the American put up so much money? If it wasn't famous to begin with, why in the world would he pay two and a half million pounds for a simple reproduction? Was it because of the artist? I don't know. Doesn't it make you think?