There's an interesting small exhibit in the Frick Fine Arts Building at the University of Pittsburgh. In it, there are several copies of Italian masterpieces. T

There's an interesting small exhibit in the Frick Fine Arts Building at the University of Pittsburgh. In it, there are several copies of Italian masterpieces. The artist, Nicholas Lochoff, was commissioned by the Russian government in 1911, to go to Italy and produce near perfect replicas of the art to be sent back to Russia for display and viewing. According to the histories, he worked so meticulously that only a handful of the copies were sent back by the time of the Russian Revolution in 1917. He was then unable to return to his home country and cut off from financial support, he started to sell off these paintings, almost the entire collection of which is now in that building. In the same area, there are two completely original statues made in the style of 14th century Italian marbles. They aren't copies at all, but were made in the early 20th century by Alceo Dossena. Dossena sold his works through an art dealer who unscrupulously sold them off as original 14th century works, some of which ended up in museums. When Dossena found out about this, and discovered the vast sums they were sold for (compared to what he earned) he publicly revealed the situation and sued his dealer. Here's a picture of some of the area in the building including the statues https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/c/c7/Frick_Fine_Arts_Building_-_Pitt_- https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/c/c7/Frick_Fi... _IMG_0767.jpg What I found really fascinating is how this one exhibit really challenged ideas of authenticity in art, what was a legitimate copy, what was illegitimate, what was passed off as original and so on.