Copies and Emulations

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Copying has been one of art's main ways of learning, preserving and spreading images. Xie He's six principles of painting, written in 6th-century China, list the copying of models among the essential skills, and later Chinese painters often made works explicitly 'after' earlier masters. Much of what is known of Greek bronze sculpture, such as the Doryphoros of Polykleitos, survives only in Roman marble versions.

In Europe, prints carried paintings far beyond their walls: Marcantonio Raimondi engraved Raphael's designs, and the Wierix brothers reproduced Albrecht Dürer's engravings with extraordinary precision. Painters trained by copying, and Vincent van Gogh reworked black-and-white prints after Jean-François Millet in his own colours in 1889–90. Copies can outlive their models: Carlo Lasinio's engravings of the frescoes in Pisa's Camposanto record paintings badly damaged by fire in 1944. Contemporary artists such as Vik Muniz and Sherrie Levine make the copy itself the subject.