Art never was irreproducible. The world is full of copies – even of great masterpieces. Each sculptural work, for example, exists in various specimens, casts and copies of the author. And then Michelangelo’s David, the most famous of world icons, reproduced an incalculable amount of times. Now for something new happens.
The clone in 9 copies
And it happens in the Uffizi where it was cloned, sorry reproduced in digital version the Tondo Doni, in only 9 copies, therefore for sale in a limited edition to as many collectors. The first was already bought by a Roman man for 240 thousand euros: 70 thousand of which will remain in the Uffizi, while another 70 thousand represent the remuneration of the company that created and patented this sort of Avatar, Cinello based in Padua and Florence. in via Calzaiuoli, and the other 100,000 cover the production costs, from the frame, made by hand, to VAT, explains Luca Renzi of Cinello.
The digital original, which in technical jargon is called Daw, a digital image, as if – holding the electrical connection in the on position – you had at home on the wall the projected image of the masterpiece created by Michelangelo in the early years of 1500 when Agnolo Doni married Maddalena Strozzi. The work knows the world. The twist of the Madonna’s body with that upward movement, so sculptural in its forms, marks the transition point from the purest Renaissance forms to early mannerism. The idea of the company born from the initiative of two partners – Franco Losi and John Blem – to continue in the business, so much so that with Eike Schmidt’s Uffizi they have already signed an agreement to create the Daw not only of Michelangelo’s table but also of other works: the Madonna of the Grand Duke, the Veiled and the Madonna del Cardellino by Raphael, The Birth of Venus, Spring and Calumny by Botticelli, The Annunciation and Baptism of Christ by Leonardo,
Bronzino’s Eleonora da Toledo, Caravaggio’s Bacchus, Rubens’s The Four Philosophers, Tintoretto’s La Leda and the Swan, Titian’s Venus of Urbino, Canaletto’s View of the Doge’s Palace in Venice. And that’s not enough. Luca Renzi further explains: We have made similar agreements with the Pinacoteca di Brera for which we will reproduce the Dead Christ by Mantegna, we are in negotiations for Leonardo’s La Scapigliata at the Pilotta in Parma and with many other museums. Whose directors, with their signature, will sanction the originality of the digital file provided by them to the company, a file that, through a cryptographic system, will be unreproducible. Is this a good idea or a bad idea? We asked two connoisseurs, an art dealer like Fabrizio Moretti and Francesco Bonami, Florentine historian and critic but now more at home abroad than in Italy: this time, for example, we joined him while he was in Moscow.
Better a nice copy …
Fabrizio Moretti basically likes the idea: Better to have a copy, or if you prefer a digital reproduction of a good work, than an original of a bad work says the general secretary of the Florence Biennale of Antiques. Then he stops, thinks about it, goes beyond the joke and argues: I think the operation is not to blame, even if in this business I would think it more correct that a higher figure remain at the Uffizi. Not only that, I would advise Eike Schmidt (who we have tried but with no luck ed) to use what he earns from these operations to make new acquisitions. Given this, Moretti, who is a lover of beauty and also knows how to recognize it, adds: it is clear that it will never be like having the original in front of you, made of the material and colors of the 16th century and by the artist. The works that you mentioned to me and for which the director Schmidt has concluded this agreement, emanate an energy and strength that make one think that they are almost proof of the existence of God, as if those who created them were his messenger. .
Too expensive …
Bonami sees it differently. I am not at all scandalized by the idea that a masterpiece is reproduced. it has always happened and sometimes it is conceptual art operations, I am thinking of the case of Elaine Frances Sturtevant who reproduced a series of works by Andy Warhol and other of his contemporaries. But there it was a very precise conceptual operation. It was a way to challenge the pre-eminence of the male artist in the art of the last century. Here the operation is certainly different. And here the central economic question, at least according to Bonami who adds: Two hundred and forty thousand euros for the digital reproduction of a work of art, even if so famous, seems to me an exaggerated figure. Copies (even if the company is keen that they are not called copies but digital originals ed.) Have always been there. But even if we are facing a Michelangelo, they do not cost more than a few thousand euros. Only when we are faced with conceptual operations such as that of the Sturtevant that I mentioned earlier do we arrive at such high prices. But there we were faced with a thought, a sort of political manifesto, which I do not really repent here. I wonder what the difference is between the reproduction of the Mona Lisa in mugs and T-shirts and this one. And I ask those who designed it if they think we are facing a conceptual and artistic operation or rather a super-luxury merchandising operation for people with limited skills.
May 15, 2021 | 08:39
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