The "Original" Fake

The images that populate our memory, even those that belong to the personal sphere, have been filtered and manipulated by the process of reproduction. They are copies, in some cases copies of copies. Our collective imagination is based on the vision of fakes: multimedia, three-dimensional, virtual repro-ductions, augmented reality.The course of the research, initially, envis-ages the description of a theoretical refer-ence framework that includes the declina-tions of the notion of copy and the related fruition rituals. In the second part the re-search exemplifies the theoretical frame-work, through one emblematic and iconic case study: Las Majas al Balcón. The case shares the notion of copying, in fact it has entered the collective imagination thanks to its reproductions and/or falsifications. It is now virtually invisible, because it belongs to a private collection, and it is one of Goya’s best known paintings.