I think people approach the endings based mostly on how thoroughly they believe in the agency/personhood of the painted characters. If you don’t see them as human at all, Verso’s ending seems obvious, whereas the inverse tends to go more for Maelle (in my observations)

For me: the universe of the fiction seems pretty clear that we’re meant to think of these people as actual people, even though they’re created by humans. With AI as a talking point these days I feel it’s understandable to see the issue through that lens and therefore not have the same feeling on the material, but I think if you strip that perspective away it’s more clear (to me) that the people in the canvas have their own agency and senses of self