Enfilade

From ArtHist.net:

Visualizing Antiquity: On the Episteme of Early Modern Drawings and Prints V:

The Copy of the Copy … of the Copy: Techniques of Pictorial Reception of

Antiquity in the Early Modern Period

Online and in-person, Berlin-Brandenburgische Akademie der Wissenschaften, 3 July 2026

Organized by Elisabeth Décultot, Arnold Nesselrath, Cristina Ruggero, and Timo Strauch

Various early modern depictions of Harpocrates (the Greek form of the Egyptian child-god Horus).

In virtually all areas of human creativity, the outcomes—whether intentional or not—are subject to the principle of repetition. Likewise, in the history of acquisition of knowledge about antiquity, what has once been recorded in writing or in images regularly becomes the starting point for reproduction. The information gathered at the beginning of the line of transmission is henceforth copied and disseminated for as long as there is a need for it, with the copies themselves often becoming multipliers through replication. In this context, copies by no means function merely as duplicates in a subordinate hierarchical relationship to the ‘original’. In chains of transmission that are usually preserved only in fragments, and often in the absence of the lost ‘original’, copies are rather a standard of transmission and thus offer crucial insights into historical processes, illustrate methodological strategies and promote epistemic understanding by making visible the continuous engagement with ancient models. The fifth colloquium in the series, Visualizing Antiquity: On the Episteme of Early Modern Drawings and Prints focuses on diverse processes of copying in the graphic arts and examines the role of copies as powerful resources of knowledge in the context of the preservation, transmission and creative transformation of concepts of antiquity.

Admission is free, with the required registration available here. Online access will be available here.

p r o g r a m m e

12.30  Welcome and Introduction — Elisabeth Décultot (Martin-Luther-Universität Halle-Wittenberg) and Cristina Ruggero (BBAW)

12.45  On the Theories of Copies
Chair: Elisabeth Décultot (Martin-Luther-Universität Halle-Wittenberg)
• Arianna Farina (Università degli Studi Suor Orsola Benincasa, Naples), Reproducing Art: the Copy as an Epistemic Device

1.15  Antiquities in Academic Contexts
Chair: Tommaso Gristina (Sapienza Università di Roma, Rome)
• Lorenzo Giammattei (Sapienza Università di Roma, Rome), Learning Antiquity through Copies: Vincenzo Camuccini and the Transmission of Classical Models in Private Roman Academies
• Susanne Müller-Bechtel (Munich/Würzburg), Das akademische Aktstudium – ein wichtiger Multiplikator der bildlichen Antikenrezeption

Coffee Break

2.45  (Mis-)Interpretations of Antiquity
Chair: Timo Strauch (BBAW)
• Anna Carrarini (Zentralinstitut für Kunstgeschichte, Munich), Copy or Creature? Die druckgraphische Verfremdung der Kapitolinischen Wölfin
• Ana Sofia Pinto (Marta Rocha Moreira / CENP, FAUP, Porto), Around the ‘tripode’: The Roman Meal, Revisited
• Norbert Franken (Berlin), Fallstudien: Stiche und Zeichnungen verschollener Altertümer im kritischen Vergleich

Coffee Break

4.45  Antique Architecture in Copy Chains in Drawing and Print
Chair: Arnold Nesselrath (Rome)
• Elena Efimova (Lomonossow University, Moscow), Les copies des dessins de la Renaissance par les maîtres du cercle de Cassiano dal Pozzo dans un album du XVIIe siècle à Saint-Pétersbourg
• Ruggero De Blasi (Università degli Studi di Genova, Genoa), Representing Obelisks in Sixteenth- and Seventeenth-Century Roman Prints: Practices of Copying and Reconfiguration
• Ana Šverko (Cvito Fisković Centre and University, Split), The Copy of a Transformed Original. The Temple of Jupiter in Split and a Case of Graphic Transmission

6.15  Closing Discussion