Once upon a time, there was a famous artist called Francis Bacon. He was born in Dublin, but went to live in London when still a young lad. When he grew up, he painted lots and lots of strong and difficult paintings in which people looked tortured, and the world they were set in looked very weird. Galleries bought them and put them on show. Francis Bacon got nice and rich.

For almost 30 years, he went to work in the same studio in a place called No 7 Reece Mews, South Kensington. Studios are those messy places where artists work. Then Francis Bacon died and his paintings became even more famous and more expensive, because that is what happens.

But now, if you happen to be in Dublin, you can go and visit the studio for yourself at a place called the Hugh Lane Gallery where they hope they will live happily ever after because they get £6 every time a big person buys a ticket to see the Bacon Pig Sty! And if you liked this story, there is another very good one called The Emperor's New Clothes.

This week the Hugh Lane Gallery finally opened the doors on its much-hyped reconstruction of Francis Bacon's studio. Bacon died in 1992, leaving his estate to his long-time companion, John Edwards. In 1998 Edwards donated the structure and contents of the studio to the Hugh Lane.

Some £1.5 million has been spent on the intervening reconstruction project. Ten people catalogued, conserved and moved the studio to Dublin. More figures: the studio contained some 7,000 items, including 570 books and 1,500 photographs. About the only thing that wasn't counted were the particles of dust, although they, too, were logged, bagged and rescattered once the reconstruction was in place.

There is no doubt that the procedure was painstaking, and that the Hugh Lane sees the studio's acquisition as a major coup for the gallery. A large space has been designated permanently for the Bacon Studio, and an accompanying contextual video and display. But what real purpose does this reconstruction serve?

The fact that Bacon was a fine painter is not in question, but his studio itself is not a work of art, and reconstructing it in a special room in a gallery, at vast expense, does not transform it into one.

Much has been made of the fact that Bacon's studio was cluttered and untidy. Two short words that come to mind fairly sharpish are "so" and "what". Artists' studios, by their nature as creative workspaces, are usually cluttered and untidy, as anyone who has ever been in one will know.

Besides, untidiness is subjective: it all depends on what one considers ordered. A place may look a mess to an outsider, but to the person who works in it, everything has its precise place.

The reconstructed studio raises several questions. Was it worth it? Who benefits? Is it, indeed, the important contribution to Irish cultural life which Sile de Valera is on record as saying it is? And where does one draw the line on any future acquisitions? What makes the dust and mess of one artist's studio more interesting that anyone else's?

The Hugh Lane gives prominent credit to John Edwards, who generously donated the studio and its contents. Generous the donation may have been, but the gift has not been passed on to the visitor. It costs a whacking £6 for an adult punter to view it.

This money will not be going back to the various State bodies which funded the reconstruction. The director of the gallery, Barbara Dawson, confirmed this week to The Irish Times that the entrance fees will go towards funding some splendid international exhibition every two years or so. Therefore, the Hugh Lane gets any future glory and the public foots the bill for it, by paying to see something which the gallery got as a gift.

In February a Bacon painting sold for over £3 million at auction. The fact that his studio is now installed in a municipal art gallery can only raise his profile, and his prices, still further.

Putting a £6 admission fee on the Bacon Studio in a city where we are immensely fortunate in having free admission to galleries and museums is a bold and risky move. It seems unlikely there will be many repeat visits by locals. It couldn't be in stronger contrast with another donation made in the last decade to the Irish art world.

When the Jesuits in Leeson Street discovered, to their amazement, that they had been hosting a Caravaggio for decades that had been given to them as a gift, they responded by donating it to the National Gallery of Ireland.

It was both a true and a truly admirable gesture of philanthropy, since The Taking of Christ would have fetched millions at auction. They explained their action by saying simply that the painting had come as a gift to them and what was freely received should be freely given.

Philanthropy and entrance fees aside, the bigger issue by far is the questionable merit of the reconstruction itself, even if it had free admission. Although it has a strong and well-respected collection, the Hugh Lane is a physically small gallery. Giving over a large chunk of its space permanently to the Bacon Studio gives the exhibit a weight and significance that seem to be totally out of proportion with what's on show.

Bacon never intended his studio to go on view, which immediately introduces an element of voyeurism to the project.

There is, of course, the argument that the public is served by an insight into the process of artistic creation. But what purpose does the reconstruction serve which has not already been addressed by Perry Ogden's meticulous and excellent photographs of the interior before it was dismantled in London, and which are also on view at the Hugh Lane?

At the very least, the Bacon Studio raises serious questions about what constitutes art. Hype alone will not create something out of nothing, as the emperor in the fairy tale discovered when he was caught in the buff.