The construct: [subject] "approximates" [something] to [something else]

Question

Cambridge provides this example of "approximate" as a verb:

to come near in ​quality, ​amount, ​value, or ​character:

The ​painting only approximated the ​mountain ​landscape.

Similarly, Oxford provides this example:

approximate to something:

His story approximates to the facts that we already know.

My question:

Adding my own subjects (for instance "the artist" and "the author"), can I use "the story" and "the painting" as objects, while keeping the meaning exactly as is in both sentences? Here are the sentences as I want them to sound like:

I.

The ​artist only approximated the painting to the ​mountain ​landscape.

II.

The author manages to approximate his story to the facts we already know.

My suspicion is that I have changed the meaning, but I am not sure. Thank you.

Answer 1

The first issue is to decide whether approximates requires "to", and my best-usage detector suggests that the "to" is not very good.

So a sentence like "The author approximates the story as it is well-known in history books." sounds rather better than "The author approximates [via their writing, etc] to the story as it is well-known in history books."

I suspect "... approximates [object] to [object]" is not a common usage, irrespective of any slight meaning change.