Il mercante e la mela
“The merchant and the apple” work of art aims to reflect about the question of the artwork’s reproducibility and about the importance of constantly reactivating the memory of whom is represented.
We are witnessing a curious paradox: you can create endless copies of a work, but each one of them acquires its own authenticity, it becomes a brand new artwork.
And so here it is, the story of the merchant Pietro Mellini that, in 1474, is represented by Benedict Majano on a marble bust, sculpting his memory forever: from a 15th century marble, through a 19th century chalk , up to a plaster copy replicated in several specimens in 2012 and then voluntarily broken and restored as an exercise study. Two of these copies shall accompany an apple in a photograph reproduced four times at once.
The artwork, that has already been reproduced several times, is copied again introducing a new medium: photography.
We are witnessing a curious paradox: you can create endless copies of a work, but each one of them acquires its own authenticity, it becomes a brand new artwork.
And so here it is, the story of the merchant Pietro Mellini that, in 1474, is represented by Benedict Majano on a marble bust, sculpting his memory forever: from a 15th century marble, through a 19th century chalk , up to a plaster copy replicated in several specimens in 2012 and then voluntarily broken and restored as an exercise study. Two of these copies shall accompany an apple in a photograph reproduced four times at once.
The artwork, that has already been reproduced several times, is copied again introducing a new medium: photography.
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