The origin of Fabrizio Salani's "AG" monagram

[eggyk]

For it to be pre-renoir, he would have had to have chosen to directly copy and use all of the aspects of that older design in various other monograms, yet never simply copy the design in full. It feels unlikely to me, but not impossible, I guess. He had no problem directly copying and using other seals (such as those from monarchs).

It also assumes that nobody decided to print/publish that design anywhere for over 100 years, then it happened to be found and copied later, which I don't really buy.