Ovid once told that a Cypriot sculptor carved a woman out of ivory with such beauty and delicacy that he named her Galatea. He dressed her, gazed at her, and spoke to her as if she were alive. Moved by such devotion, Aphrodite granted the miracle: the statue ceased to be a mere representation and came to life.

Contained within that story was already one of the great questions of art: what makes a work truly alive? Form and technical perfection are not enough. There is something harder to name, an unrepeatable presence, a particular vibration that Walter Benjamin called aura: that singularity belonging to the original work, to its time, and to its history. For a long time, we believed that reproducing a work meant inevitably losing that aura, and that the replica was a lesser version compared to the untouched prestige of the original. However, the real interest lies in how the aura is capable of transforming and extending itself.

The Hand of God from the apse of Sant Climent de Taüll continues to engage us almost a thousand years later. One does not need to have stood before the fresco to recognize it. Its strength does not depend solely on the original, but on its ability to keep being looked at, to continue generating emotion in other contexts.

The Neoseries allow this presence to find new places in which to manifest, without replacing the experience of the original. As in the myth of Pygmalion, it reactivates that which makes it sensitive.

We present MNAC. A haven for art, the first Neoseries selection from the Museu Nacional d’Art de Catalunya—one of the most prominent institutions in our country and a benchmark for the study and dissemination of Catalan art.

This is a total of 14 works spanning from the 11th century to the early 20th century, bringing into focus the museum’s two strong suits: on the one hand, Medieval art with a spotlight on Romanesque—of which the MNAC proudly holds the largest collection in the world—and on the other, Catalan Modernisme, an internationally recognized movement known for its fusion of applied arts, architecture, and painting. Pieces selected include The Hand of God from the world-famous apse of Sant Climent de Taüll, The Stone in the Lake by Joaquim Mir, the Border Fragment from El Burgal, several anonymous Annunciations and Mourners, Laziness by Ramón Casas, and Marià Fortuny’s Studio in Rome painted by Ricardo de Madrazo.

Thanks to state-of-the-art technologies, these facsimile editions of great masterpieces reproduce the volume, texture, and color of the originals with extraordinary fidelity. To achieve this level of precision, advanced photometric digitization is performed, capturing not only the image but also the physical materiality of the artwork. Each piece is produced on demand and is both certified and numbered.

As a novelty, on this occasion, Romanesque and Gothic altarpieces have been successfully reproduced on authentic wooden panels, respecting the materiality of the original and ensuring an even higher standard of quality.

The selection of works published as Neoseries reinterprets the MNAC collection through a contemporary lens, establishing cross-cutting dialogues between paintings, eras, and languages. In this way, Neoseries connect heritage with current sensibilities, reaffirming its relevance. Furthermore, they represent perhaps the only way to enjoy museum-grade pieces that are entirely off the market. Without requiring an extraordinary budget, they allow us to coexist with certified, high-quality works by great masters.

With the intention of taking art toward industrialization and expanding the emotional reach of these works, Neoseries democratize access to beauty, allowing art to transcend museum walls, integrate into the intimacy of our homes, and accompany us in daily life. New spaces for contemplation are thus created, and art expands its possibilities for dissemination and experience. At the same time, this collaboration with museum institutions involves transferring these high-precision digital archives, which serve as backup copies of the artworks and aid in heritage preservation.