Last Day of Carravaggio @ National Gallery / Copyright and the Re-monopolization of artworks

Today is the last day of National Gallery of Canada's (NGC) extraordinary summer exhibition “Carravaggio and his Followers in Rome” – so take your last chance to see it!

I would love to include a picture of a Caravaggio painting here (e.g. Saint Francis in Ecstasy, c. 1594-1595) and one by his follower Simon Vouet (The Fortune-Teller, c. 1620) that I adore. But I am not sure if I am allowed because of copyright restrictions by the NGC. Of course, this blog has no commercial approach, but publish pictures online has its pitfalls. The NCG policies is unclear in that point, stating “The Materials on this Site are provided for browsing, viewing, downloading, listening where such activities are limited to, non-commercial, educational and personal use only. By downloading, printing or otherwise using text, images, files from NGC web sites, users agree that they will limit their use of such files to fair dealing, and will not violate NGC's or any other party's proprietary rights.” (http://www.gallery.ca/en/terms-of-use.php)

The Canadian Copyright Act states in §29: “Fair dealing for the purpose of research or private study does not infringe copyright.” But does private study also include blogs? I don't think so, and there are huge discussions out there (e.g. see: http://blog.tech-and-law.com/2009/07/copyright-in-photo-of-painting-national.html).

Further, the Saint Francis in Ecstasy (c. 1594-1595) belongs to the Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art; and the amazing Martyrdom of Saint Matthew (c.1620) that the NCG uses in his exhibition pamphlet, belongs to Contarelli Chapel in Rome, but the photo credits in both cases belong to Art Resource that sits in New York. As far as I know, the international copyright law states that works of art comes into the public domain 70 years after the artist's death. But the question remains, if photographic reproductions of the artworks are also public domain. The National Portrait Gallery (UK) states that the digital reproductions of their paintings are recent works, and due to the amount of work that needed to be done to create them, qualify as copyrighted works. That means by using just reproduction techniques without creating an artistic original, they made a a new copyright, which – in my opinion – is a improper re-monopolization of artworks.

Nevertheless, the Caravaggio exhibit is a unique treasure chest of Caravaggio's master works – nevertheless that the NGC only owns paintings AFTER Caravaggio and not by himself (http://www.gallery.ca/en/see/collections/artist.php?iartistid=7957). But thanks to this exhibition, organized by the NGC and the Kimbell Art Museum, Fort Worth, we can see some of his masterpieces for the first time here in Canada.

http://www.gallery.ca/en/see/exhibitions/current/details/caravaggio-and-his-followers-in-rome-64