Excerpt from the book: «Originals, Replicas, Copies» by Pietro di Loreto, ed., Ugo Bozzi Editore, 2018
The theme is by no means a new one, but a subject which has been analysed over time through a wealth of approaches and angles. For this reason, in order to unify different research strands and offer an expanded path for analysis, it was necessary to devise a project, capable of offering, for the first time, an exhaustive insight into this issue, in its timeframe and its history, and with a focus on its various implications, from the Early Modernity to the beginning of the Contemporary period.
The question of how important artworks were replicated, copied or forged had, of course, been address at those times and, even more, later, but nevertheless the focus of our wide research is precisely on a period in which the reproduction of works of art had gained knowledge of all the nuances – its didactic, imitative, entrepreneurial and economic value – that outline its comprehensive profile. This facetted topic was explored by the researchers involved in this labour- intensive task, who had investigated it with competence and authentic meticulousness in the essays forming this volume. An original interpretation of important artistic facts, systematic archival research, with new documentary discoveries inevitably leading to the validation of previous attributions or to new proposals – which will certainly allow an adequate revision of important masters’ catalogues – resulted in an exhaustive insight into this phenomenon. Consequently, it became unnecessary for the present editor to explore all the stages of this phenomenon, while it emerges how its development was paralleled by the advancement of an idea of art as a fundamental component of man’s nature itself.
This long research, carried out over two years, was desired and coordinated by the present writer, with the assistance of the friend Pierluigi Carofano and the caring participation of the Foundation Via Artis, generous sponsor of the project, which saw the immediate and enthusiastic adhesion of the publisher Ugo Bozzi Editore. It now reaches the final act of its publication and, therefore, its public’s response, a public formed by experts, but also the larger audience formed by the lovers of the fine arts, who will certainly have a chance of reflecting upon, and, legitimately, of judging the numerous novelties here presented, which reshape the profile of single artists, but also illuminate on previously-known facts and circumstances concerning the Old Masters, here reconsidered ‘with different eyes’.
