Exceptions to Krautheimer's Theory of Copying

Abstract

As an introduction to this special issue of Visual Resources, this article briefly examines general notions of copying in medieval art and how the theories of Richard Krautheimer and others have been so effective in understanding why copying was done in such a creative and symbolic fashion. After presenting the first three articles in this context, it then explores exceptions to this imaginative copying, discussing examples of imitation that utilized verisimilitude in which the medieval viewer could instantly recognize the visual source of the copy. This article suggests that different kinds of copying were employed based on the function for which particular objects were made, when the objects were made, and why.