Description

This is a collection of postcards with some of the best known and most prestigious paintings exhibited in Italian public museums. The Italian law (articles 107 and 108 of Legislative Decree no. 42 of 2004) establishes restrictions on the reproduction of cultural heritage. According to these rules, anyone who wants to use for commercial purposes images or videos of pictorial, sculptural or architectural works that are classified as ”cultural heritage” by the Italian legal system must request a formal authorization and must pay a financial contribution («canone») to the public body that holds the original specimen of the work of art. This obviously has the side effect of going into conflict with the concept of public domain and restricting the free reproduction of images.
Fortunately, the EU Directive 790/2019 in art. 14 established a principle that applies in all European Union countries (including Italy): «Member States shall provide that, when the term of protection of a work of visual art has expired, any material resulting from an act of reproduction of that work is not subject to copyright or related rights, unless the material resulting from that act of reproduction is original in the sense that it is the author’s own intellectual creation.» The images shown in this book are therefore in the public domain, freely reproducible by anyone without the need for authorization or compensation thanks to the aforementioned art. 14 of the directive.