A copyist is a person who makes duplications of the same thing. The modern use of the term is mainly confined to music copyists, who are employed by the music industry to produce neat copies from a composer or arranger's manuscript. However, the term is sometimes used for artists who make copies of other artists' paintings.
Until the 1990s, most copyists worked by hand to write out scores and individual instrumental parts neatly, using a calligraphy pen, staff paper, and often a ruler. Producing parts for an entire orchestra from a full score was a huge task. In the 1990s, copyists began using scorewriters – computer programs which are the music notation equivalent of a word processor. (Such programs include Sibelius, Finale, MuseScore, LilyPond, and many others). Scorewriters allow the composer or songwriter to enter the melodies, rhythms and lyrics to their compositions into the computer using a computer mouse or keyboard or by playing the notes on a MIDI-equipped instrument. Once a composition is fully entered into a scorewriting program, the computer can be instructed to print out the parts for all of the different instruments.
Both handwritten and computer-based copying require significant understanding of musical notation, music theory, the musical styles and conventions of different styles of music (e.g., regarding appropriate ornamentation, harmony rules pertaining to accidentals, etc.), and strong attention to detail and past conventions. Johann Sebastian Bach's second wife, Anna Magdalena, regularly copied compositions by her husband and sometimes by other composers, e.g. "Bist du bei mir" in the Notebook for Anna Magdalena Bach . [2] Ludwig van Beethoven had a contentious relationship with his copyists, who often made mistakes that remained uncorrected until the advent of Urtext editions; some musicologists have devoted a lot of effort to identifying Beethoven's copyists. [3]
Copyist programmes are run by a number of museums that offer permits to members of the public. [4] These permits grant artists access to museums, enabling them to produce their own copies of artworks. [4] Copyists copy to enhance their skills or to financially benefit by selling their work. [5]
The Louvre in Paris was one of the first museums to enable artists to copy art in 1793. [6] Other major museums soon followed such as the Metropolitan Museum of Art (MET) in New York City in 1872. [6] To become a copyist in 1880 at the Louvre, a simple request at the office of the secretary was sufficient. [6] After gaining permission to use the museum, a complementary easel was provided to the artist for a year. [6] This is a tradition that still occurs in many copyist programmes today, but the availability of permits is more limited in the 21st century.
Permits are renewable, artists often complete more than one session. [6] Copyists are still required to follow certain traditions such as being required to cover the floor with a drop cloth to prevent damage to the gallery floors at the MET. [7]
Notable artists such as Picasso began practising their art as copyists in museums. [8] The utility of this programme has frequently been emphasised, for instance artists such as Paul Cézanne and Cennino Cennini. [9] Ingres and Delacroix highly emphasised the value of learning from other painters by going to the Louvre and discovering their artistic personalities. [10] The benefits of copying were addressed in a study by Okada and Ishibashi (2004). It was found that copying caused the participants to assess and compare their own artistic style with others, which led to more creative pieces, in comparison to the control group. [11]
At some centres the availability of permits has been drastically reduced over time due to the popularity of the programme. [8] There are now selection processes involving the submission of a portfolio, along with a list of potential pieces the artist would like to copy. Upon a successful application, artists are normally able to copy their first or second choice. [12] The permits tend to be given to locals, [12] since the artists will be required to spend a lot of time in the gallery.
The museums allow artists to pick from a variety of different pieces in their collection. Their selection is subject to certain conditions, such as safety concerns and whether the piece is in the permanent collection. [12] In 1880, only two copyists were allowed at paint the Mona Lisa in the Louvre at one time, due to its popularity. [6] The Prado forbids the copying of certain works, such as Las Meninas , because they attract crowds. [13] Some copyists used to be able to make a living from selling their copies made in the Prado, however copyists find it much harder to do this in the 21st century. [14]
Artists frequently only paint a selected area of the work, due to time constraints or individualistic stylistic decisions. [6] However, to discourage and prevent the sale of exact forgeries, the copy must be different in size or scale. At the MET, the copyist's work must be different in its dimensions by 10% in comparison to the original work. [7] Upon completion, a copyist's work produced in the Louvre is subject to an examination to check for any forgeries. One such violation would be if the work was less than one-fifth bigger or smaller than the original. After inspection, the copy is then stamped and signed by a member of the Louvre's copy staff. [8]
The difference between a forgery and a copy involves the intention behind the act; a copy is based upon honesty and does not try to replace the original. [15] In the late 19th century, the number of copies which were sold under false pretences were high due to the absence of any considerable legislative deterrence. [15] The treatment of forgeries of art were not as severe as other types of forgery such as that of legal documents, whereby the punishment was death (until 1832). [16] The reasoning behind the lack of judicial constraints was due to the insignificant economic impact. Another reason why the number of forgeries was high is because it was harder to identify a copy due to shortcomings in technology. [17]
Copying in the 19th century was not constrained by gender, in terms of accessibility. However, gender stereotyping was prevalent regardless: female copyists frequently had their work denounced as lacking creativity. Male copyists were viewed as using the experience as a way to enhance their artistic abilities. [15] These perspectives mirrored contemporary misconceptions around women lacking intelligence and so inferior to their male counterparts. [15] These attitudes meant that women were rarely accused of being a fraud, because this would have implied the possession of mental skill (deceit). [18] Initially only men were professional copyists, with women adopting a lower rank such as amateur.
Being a female copyist in the 19th century regularly had negative implications upon a woman's reputation due to the high risk of slander and damnation. [19] The nature of their work meant that it was relatively easy for men to engage with them, for example by escorting them to the gallery. [19] As a result, rumours would frequently be spread and often result in the ruining of a woman's standing in society. [19]
Bartolomé Esteban Murillo was a Spanish Baroque painter. Although he is best known for his religious works, Murillo also produced a considerable number of paintings of contemporary women and children. These lively realistic portraits of flower girls, street urchins, and beggars constitute an extensive and appealing record of the everyday life of his times. He also painted two self-portraits, one in the Frick Collection portraying him in his 30s, and one in London's National Gallery portraying him about 20 years later. In 2017–18, the two museums held an exhibition of them.
Vermilion is a color family and pigment most often used between antiquity and the 19th century from the powdered mineral cinnabar. It is synonymous with red orange, which often takes a modern form, but is 11% brighter.
The Lady of Elche is a limestone bust that was discovered in 1897, at La Alcudia, an archaeological site on a private estate two kilometers south of Elche, Spain. It is now exhibited in the National Archaeological Museum of Spain in Madrid.
Guido Reni was an Italian painter of the Baroque period, although his works showed a classical manner, similar to Simon Vouet, Nicolas Poussin, and Philippe de Champaigne. He painted primarily religious works, but also mythological and allegorical subjects. Active in Rome, Naples, and his native Bologna, he became the dominant figure in the Bolognese School that emerged under the influence of the Carracci.
Art forgery is the creation and sale of works of art which are falsely credited to other, usually more famous artists. Art forgery can be extremely lucrative, but modern dating and analysis techniques have made the identification of forged artwork much simpler.
Music engraving is the art of drawing music notation at high quality for the purpose of mechanical reproduction. The term music copying is almost equivalent—though music engraving implies a higher degree of skill and quality, usually for publication. The name of the process originates in plate engraving, a widely used technique dating from the late sixteenth century. The term engraving is now used to refer to any high-quality method of drawing music notation, particularly on a computer or by hand.
Silverpoint is a traditional drawing technique and tool first used by medieval scribes on manuscripts.
Josephus Maria Van der Veken was a Belgian art restorer, copyist, and art forger who mastered the art of reproducing the works of early Netherlandish painters.
Cennino d'Andrea Cennini was an Italian painter influenced by Giotto. He was a student of Agnolo Gaddi in Florence. Gaddi trained under his father, called Taddeo Gaddi, who trained with Giotto.
Working in layers is a system for creating artistic paintings that involve the use of more than one layer of paint.
The 16th-century portrait Mona Lisa, or La Gioconda, painted in oil on a poplar panel by Leonardo da Vinci, has been the subject of a considerable deal of speculation.
Johannes Sixtus Gerhardus (Jan) Verkade, afterwards Willibrord Verkade O.S.B., was a Dutch Post-Impressionist and Christian Symbolist painter. A disciple of Paul Gauguin and friend of Paul Sérusier, he belonged to the circle of artists known as 'Les Nabis.' Of a Dutch anabaptist background, his artistic and spiritual journey led him to convert to Roman Catholicism, and to take Holy Orders as a Benedictine monk, taking the religious name Willibrord. He entered the Archabbey of Beuron and continued his work in a religious context, working closely with Desiderius Lenz, leader of the Beuron Art School. He worked throughout Europe and had an important influence on the continuing development of the new Benedictine Art.
Sir Peter Paul Rubens was a Flemish artist and diplomat. He is considered the most influential artist of the Flemish Baroque tradition. Rubens's highly charged compositions reference erudite aspects of classical and Christian history. His unique and immensely popular Baroque style emphasised movement, colour, and sensuality, which followed the immediate, dramatic artistic style promoted in the Counter-Reformation. Rubens was a painter producing altarpieces, portraits, landscapes, and history paintings of mythological and allegorical subjects. He was also a prolific designer of cartoons for the Flemish tapestry workshops and of frontispieces for the publishers in Antwerp.
Christiana Jane Herringham, Lady Herringham was a British artist, copyist, and art patron. She is noted for her part in establishing the National Art Collections Fund in 1903 to help preserve Britain's artistic heritage. In 1910 Walter Sickert wrote of her as "the most useful and authoritative critic living".
De pictura is a treatise or commentarii written by the Italian humanist and artist Leon Battista Alberti. The first version, composed in Latin in 1435, was not published until 1450. It is one of his three treatises on art; the other two are De statua and De re aedificatoria, that would form the Renaissance concept for the fine arts: painting, sculpture, and architecture.
Authenticity in art is manifest in the different ways that a work of art, or an artistic performance, can be considered authentic. The initial distinction is between nominal authenticity and expressive authenticity. In the first sense, nominal authenticity is the correct identification of the author of a work of art; of how closely an actor or an actress interprets a role in a stageplay as written by the playwright; of how well a musician's performance of an artistic composition corresponds to the composer's intention; and how closely an objet d’art conforms to the artistic traditions of its genre. In the second sense, expressive authenticity is how much the work of art possesses inherent authority of and about its subject, and how much of the artist's intent is in the work of art.
Imitation is the doctrine of artistic creativity according to which the creative process should be based on the close imitation of the masterpieces of the preceding authors. This concept was first formulated by Dionysius of Halicarnassus in the first century BCE as imitatio, and has since dominated for almost two thousand years the Western history of the arts and classicism. Plato has regarded imitation as a general principle of art, as he viewed art itself as an imitation of life. This theory was popular and well accepted during the classical period. During the Renaissance period, imitation was seen as a means of obtaining one's personal style; this was alluded to by the artists of that era like Cennino Cennini, Petrarch and Pier Paolo Vergerio. In the 18th century, Romanticism reversed it with the creation of the institution of romantic originality. In the 20th century, the modernist and postmodern movements in turn discarded the romantic idea of creativity, and heightened the practice of imitation, copying, plagiarism, rewriting, appropriation and so on as the central artistic device.
The Prado Mona Lisa is a painting by the workshop of Leonardo da Vinci and depicts the same subject and composition as Leonardo's better known Mona Lisa at the Louvre, Paris. The Prado Mona Lisa has been in the collection of the Museo del Prado in Madrid, Spain since 1819, but was considered for decades a relatively unimportant copy. Following its restoration in 2012, however, the Prado's Mona Lisa has come to be understood as the earliest known studio copy of Leonardo's masterpiece.
Katherine Elizabeth Wallis (1861–1957) was a Canadian sculptor, a watercolor painter and poet. She traveled all over the world, observing art, studying sculpture and advancing her artistic career. Wallis is best known for bronze sculptures of animals and infants.
After is an art convention used in the titles and inscriptions of artworks to credit the original artist in the title of the copy. Often the title of the original work is retained, for example an interpretation by Rembrandt of da Vinci's The Last Supper becomes The Last Supper, after Leonardo da Vinci. The addendum, sometimes termed an attribution qualifier, may be used by the artist making the copy or a later curator or academic and features in the linked records that make up the Cultural Objects Name Authority. The term may be used regardless of how similar the two works appear. Curators have sometimes referred to the resulting imitation works as "after-[original artist's name]s", with works inspired by Albrecht Dürer being after-Dürers. In some instances, artists have signed works made after the manner of their own indicating their approval of the copy.
Sources
Media related to Copyists at Wikimedia Commons| National | |
|---|---|
| Other | |
