Influence of Painted Reproductions on the formation of European Sovereign or Princely Collections of Painting from the 17th Century onward

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The Uffizi Gallery and the Palatine Gallery at the Pitti Palace possess numerous copies and replicas of old masters both in their display rooms and storage areas. In collaboration with Japanese and Italian scholars I have conducted our three-year-term survey about 230 paintings which are deemed as painted reproductions or originals by old masters for later copies. At the same time, we tried to find the related historical documents in the National Archive of Florence and the museums' reference rooms, and succeeded in transcribing the documents related to 35 works. A detailed survey report was published in March 2014.As is often the case with other sovereign or princely collections, such copies were accumulated partly on purpose and partly by chance by the Tuscan grand dukes and their families in the course of collecting the works of old masters for the purpose of establishing ambitious and unique collections or universal museums in the sense of the Enlightenment.