请聪明的人来看看这一句话,如何理解

ivy3997

It has recently been discovered that many attributions of paintings to the seventeenth-century Dutch artist Rembrandt may be false. The contested paintings are not minor works, whose removal from the Rembrandt corpus would leave it relatively unaffected: they are at its very center. In her recent book, Svetlana Alpers uses these cases of disputed attribution as a point of departure for her provocative discussion of the radical distinctiveness of Rembrandt's approach to paintings.

很难明白这段话的意思,为什么前面说not minor后面又是unaffected呢?

这难道不是矛盾的吗?希望聪明的人指点我一下,谢谢

puffca

The contested paintings are NOT minor works.

Minor works' removal ---> relatively unaffected.

The contested paitings "are at its very center", and the removal of them does affect.

ivy3997

ogod~ thank u so much, it's ur first answer

quite appreciated for ur clear thoughts~

i c

templar

请问，"are at its very center" 是什么意思？

dphxmg

to be at its very centre: to be of vital importance