Provenance covers an object's complete documented history. An artifact may thus have both a provenience and a provenance. The provenance of works of fine art, antiques and antiquities is of great importance, especially to their owner. There are a number of reasons why painting provenance is important, which mostly also apply to other types of fine art. A good provenance increases the value of a painting, and establishing provenance may help confirm the date, artist and, especially for portraits, the subject of a painting. It may confirm whether a painting is genuinely of the period it seems to date from. The
Means to an end something leading into something else, thus it is an end in itself. Means to an end In philosophy, the term "means to an end" refers to any action (the means) carried out for the sole purpose of achieving something else (an end). It can be thought of as a metaphysical distinction as no empirical information differentiates actions that are means to ends from those that are not—that are "ends in themselves". It has been inferred that all actions are means to other ends—this is relevant when considering the meaning of life. Immanuel Kant's theory of morality, the categorical imperative, states