Thanks to technological progress, the reproduction of a painting in its original dimensions can now be accomplished by computer, unlike the reproduction of a more three-dimensional artifact. It is generally thought that those who reproduce paintings have it easy because they work in air-conditioned comfort-no fiery kilns or toxic pottery glazes for these lucky chosen ones! With mere clicks of a computer mouse, colors are adjusted and the command is sent for an oversized printing machine to output a 150 x 230 centimeter reproduction virtually identical to the original painting.

But is it really as simple as that?

This reproduction of Piebald from "The Ten Steeds," by the Qing court painter Giuseppe Castiglione, sells for NT$40,000 at least.

Fidelity is beauty

Steven Chen, chief engineer at Jetprint Image Service Company, sums up in a few brief words what the goal is for anyone involved in reproduction of paintings: "We don't seek beauty. We seek fidelity." But fidelity, it turns out, is generally more difficult to achieve than beauty.

In the history of the NPM, Nigensha of Japan is probably the only firm that has ever been authorized to photograph paintings at close range in the museum's photography room, back when reproduction was still in its infancy at the NPM. Since that time, the most the NPM has done is to provide developed photographic slides, or perhaps supply digital images scanned from slides.

A subsidiary of Epson Taiwan, Jetprint has been licensed by the NPM to reproduce over 100 works of calligraphy and painting since 2000, including a Tang-Dynasty facsimile of Clearing after Snowfall by the Jin-Dynasty calligrapher Wang Xizhi; Autobiography by the Tang-Dynasty calligrapher Huai Su; One Hundred Horses by Qing court painter Giuseppe Castiglione; and Red Cliff by the Jin-Dynasty painter Wu Yuanzhi (currently on public display at the NPM). A reproduction of Hermit Anglers on a Mountain Stream by the Ming-Dynasty painter Tang Yin hanging on the wall in the office of NPM director Chou Kung-shin was made by Jetprint.

In the reproduction of a classic artwork, the most important factor determining the fidelity of the reproduction is the quality of the photographic slides of the original work. A lot of details must be gotten just right, such as the angle of the shot and the lighting. A little puff of wind at just the wrong time can upset the apple cart. But those who do reproductions are not allowed to take their own photographs at the NPM. Too many variables are beyond their control, which is why Steven Chen admits that "100% fidelity in a reproduction is impossible."

A craftsman who manages to obtain an original 8x10 or 10x5 slide still has to scan it in order to create a digital image that can be manipulated on a computer screen. Predictably, each step in the process causes the reproduction to stray a little bit farther from the original work.

Ultra-modern inkjet printers (right) turn out images that communicate the thoughts and feelings of artists from a long-gone era. In some cases, that may be a gasp of delight at the beauty of flowers, birds, or a pristine landscape. In others, it is a cry of rage or grief at some great calamity that has befallen the nation or one's family.

Along the River

The version of Along the River during the Ching-ming Festival that was painted during the reign of the Qianlong emperor of the Qing Dynasty by court painters Chen Mei, Sun Hu, Jin Kun, Dai Hong, and Cheng Zhidao, is the best known painting in the NPM collection. This 12-meter scroll is fully twice as long as the earliest known version, which was executed during the Northern Song Dynasty by Zhang Zeduan and is part of the collection of the Palace Museum in Beijing. While re-creating the scenery of Bianjing depicted in the Zhang version, the Qing court painters' version adds depictions of a lot of popular activities, including stage theater, performing monkeys, and martial arts bouts on a raised platform.

To reproduce the Qing court painters' version of Along the River, the NPM had 24 photographs taken of it, but as Steven Chen notes, after the images were input into a computer and stitched together, the eaves of buildings didn't quite match up along the stitched borders because they ended up at different heights at the edges of the photos, perhaps due to the angle from which the photos were shot. And there were also inconsistencies in color tones and hues.

"All we could do was edit the images one tiny bit at a time," says Chen. When he saw a streak or smudge that seemed unnatural, he had to contact NPM experts to find out whether the suspicious element was actually present in the original painting, and if not he then Photoshopped it out of the image.

Editing a photo is hard on the eyes and mentally stressful, and there is no way to speed up the process. "Classical Chinese paintings have a yellowish hue, and after you've been staring at the computer screen for five or six hours you can no longer tell whether the yellow you're looking at is more greenish than orange, or vice versa," says Chen.

"Moreover, a computer monitor throws off its own light, whereas paper merely reflects light coming from another source. What the viewer perceives is different, so after a photo is edited it has to be printed out and compared against the original slide provided by the NPM."

From start to finish, it took about two months to make a reproduction of Along the River. Chen says that there are big technical challenges involved in the reproduction of a traditional Chinese inkwash because the lines in an inkwash tend to be rather jagged. Gradations in color saturation are infinitesimal, moreover, and gray tones are especially difficult to handle. Make the slightest error in the application of black and white, and you can get the feel of the work entirely wrong. In contrast, it is not nearly so difficult to reproduce Piebald and other works by Qing court painter Giuseppe Castiglione, who hailed from Italy and whose work was heavily influenced by Western technique. He employed the concept of composition, while his works feature very clearcut lines and contain less fuzzy or ambiguous spaces, which greatly simplifies the task of editing the digital image.

Seven colors do the trick

After a digital image has been edited, it is time to print it out using an inkjet printer. Jetprint employs a seven-color printing process to produce all the colors of traditional Chinese painting. In addition to the CMYK color model (cyan, magenta, yellow, and key), the process also makes use of light magenta, light cyan, and light key.

To achieve truly solid colors, the firm uses very-high-definition printers that produce images with a resolution of 1,440 x 2,880 dots per square inch. For paper, Jetprint ordinarily uses relatively thin Gampi paper for a scroll and thicker art paper for the border. Chen notes that both types of paper are imported and have an archival rating of 75 years.

Recently, a calligraphy expert from mainland China who was visiting the Grand Hotel in Taipei saw hanging on a bathroom wall a reproduction of a calligraphic work originally done by Wang Chong, and mistook it for the original. After that incident, many began to wonder whether reproductions these days are not perhaps undistinguishable from the originals.

But Chen doesn't think so: "No reproduction is ever going to be comparable to the original. Anyone at all can take an inexpensive 25-power magnifying glass to a reproduction and they'll clearly see the printer spots."

Yet this fact does not detract from the value of a high-quality reproduction. Says Jetprint president Carol Chou: "The reproductions enable people to own the beauty of priceless national treasures for a very affordable price." In this age of mechanical reproductions, a knock-off may not have the special cachet that comes with the authenticity of the original, but the ersatz is not for that reason any less beautiful in its own right.