Serial / portable classic : the Greek canon and its mutations

In no other period of Western art history was the creation of copies from great masterpieces of the past as important as in late Republican Rome and throughout the Imperial Age. Certain Greek and Roman sculptures were established as canonical, their prestige so high and their acquisition so impossible that their reproductions--even on a small, portable scale--became sought-after commodities among the well-read populace of ancient Rome and modern Europe.
The book focuses on classical sculpture and explores the ambivalent relationship between originality and imitation in Roman culture and its insistence on the circulation of multiples as an homage to Greek art. We tend to associate the idea of classical to that of uniqueness, but in no other period of western art history the creation of copies from great masterpieces of the past has been as important as in late Republican Rome and throughout the Imperial age. The exhibition comprises more than 70 artworks and opens with an in-depth analysis of lost originals and their multiple copies.