Celebratory dates, in art history, are usually occasions to re-evaluate an artist¿s work and historiography. At the same time, these celebrations, be they exhibitions, congresses, publications or even commercial exploitation, reflect the social and cultural concerns of the societies that promote them. The 500th anniversary of Raphael¿s death, in 2020, was directly affected by the Covid 19 pandemic. Congresses and exhibitions were postponed and with the extended duration of thispublic health threat, the solution was found in media tools: videos, interactive websites, online exhibitions and publications. °is book and the congress that originated it are part of this context but also represent a reflection on virtual and mediated aesthetic experiences, such as those which marked Raphael¿s festivities. The articles presented in this volume focus on reproductions and the reception of Raphael and his art. The debate around replication touches on several aspects of visual studies. From a manual copy to digital photographic reproductions, these images concern debates about image circulation, aesthetic mediation, museological and curatorial registry, cultural constructions and, very öen, instrumentalization of an original work and its multiple values. The studies included in this volume cover many of these aspects, focusing on the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, before the advent of the digital image. °is period marks the development of the idea of high fidelityin art reproductions as well as the widespread diffusion of popular, cheap images related to art history.

Joseph Imorde studied Art History, Philosophy and Musicology in Bochum, Rome and Berlin.He was editor of the architectural magazine Daidalos. In 1996 he founded the publishing house Edition Imorde. After his PhD on ephemeral architecture in the Roman Baroque he became assistant professor at the Institute of History and Theory of Architecture at the Federal Technical University (ETH) in Zurich. 2001 he joined the research group Kultbild at the University of Muenster. He finished his habilitation Michelangelo Deutsch! at the Technical University Dresden in 2008 and got a full professorship for Art History at the University of Siegen in the same year. From 2009¿2011 he was Alexander-von-Humboldt Fellow at the University of Michigan, 2012 and 2017 Scholar at the Getty Research Institute. In 2021 he was appointed professor for Art History at the kunsthochschule weissensee berlin.