Covet an Italian masterpiece, but shy of the millions? How about a digital copy at supercar prices

Participating museums sign a certificate of authenticity, and in return receive 50% of the profits.

“We don't want to sell a piece of technology. We want to sell a piece of artwork,'' said John Blem, the Italian-born Danish entrepreneur who founded the initiative and who serves as chairman of Cinello and vice president of the nonprofit.

Revenue sharing is key

The revenue sharing is integral to the project, which aims to help cash-strapped museums access new income streams, and a key part of the sales pitch, Blem said. Over the last two years, Save the Artistic Heritage has contributed 300,000 euros ($347,000) to its Italian museum partners, with prices of the digital masterpieces ranging from 30,000 euros to 300,000 euros.

Contributing to the value, each is sold in a limited series of nine, representing the conventional number of statues that can be cast from a single mold and still be considered original.

The catalog of some 250 Italian artworks comes from about 10 Italian museums and foundations, including the Pinacoteca Ambrosiana in Milan, the Capodimonte in Naples and the Pilotta in Parma, which owns Leonardo's unfinished painting on wood of a woman with windblown hair, which sold for 250,000 euros (nearly $290,000).

Blem and a partner are in the process of setting up a similar nonprofit in the United States that is expected to launch next year.

The Digital Experience

The digital artworks appear backlit on screens sized to match their originals, the luminescent effect bordering on Technicolor for such brightly colored masterpieces as Raffaelo's “The Marriage of the Virgin,'' which hangs in Milan's Brera Art Gallery.

Others on display in the non-profit's Milan offices, like Leonardo's wind-swept portrait and Andrea Mantegna's “Lamentation over a Dead Christ,” are more subdued. On close inspection, details are visible down to the brush stroke, but without any texture that may belong to the original.

“I must say that the digital copy of ‘The Marriage of the Virgin' has aroused in me and all those who have seen it a great deal of interest,'' said Angelo Crespi, the Brera Art Gallery's director. “The perfection, the luminosity, the visibility of the painting is amazing. But at the same time it doesn't deceive. … When they get close, people can see that it's a digital copy on a screen.”

Digital technology has been gaining ground in the art space, including digital canvases and even TV sets that display rotating artworks and photographs.

The Van Gogh museum in Amsterdam has experimented on two limited-time projects: textured, multidimensional scans of selected masterpieces in its Relievo partnership with Fujifilm and the “Meet Vincent Van Gogh” interactive experience seen by more than 1 million people globally.

Luke Gartlan, the head of the University of St. Andrews art history department, said Save the Artistic Heritage's project falls in a long tradition of Italian institutions using copies of artwork to help support their activities and preserve their collections.

“Italian museums, bodies, have been at the forefront of these technologies,'' he said, citing the Alinari Archive in Florence, a collection of over 5 million photographic materials dating from the mid-1800s, and the Vatican Museums, which collaborated on ultra-high-resolution digital photography to create a detailed record of the Sistine Chapel.

A revenue source

The Brera museum last week launched another phase with Save the Artistic Heritage, with a second series of nine artworks that can be used to woo donors and for promotional purposes, reinforcing the fundraising mission. Roman numerals distinguish them from the commercial series.

The Brera gets 30% of its roughly 14 million euro budget from donations, sponsors and other projects, and just 10% from the state. The rest comes from tickets. Any new revenue source is precious.

“Save the Heritage is not just making a sale,'' Brera director Crespi said. “They are creating a system that allows anyone who buys an artwork to contribute to the museum.''

How it works and what's next

The digital copies are projected onto screens sized to scale with original artworks in replica frames. The patented technology comprises a box that contains the digital copy that unlocks when in communication with Cinello’s mainframe. Computer code makes each digital copy unique.

The technology is patented in Europe, the United States and China, places where Blem is looking to expand.

In a next phase, Blem hopes to be able to support so-called digital exhibitions of masterpieces that are only rarely if ever put on loan, bringing them to far-flung and remote places where access to museum quality exhibitions are rare. He calls them “Impossible Exhibitions."