The Star Online:
Not happy about that enigmatic smile in Leonardo Da Vinci’s Mona Lisa? Okay, if you prefer her with a Jennifer Aniston face, we can do that. Big fan of Dan Brown’s The Da Vinci Code? Go on, commission a six-foot (1.8m) long copy of da Vinci’s The Last Supper.
Welcome to art, Hanoi-style. Right in the heart of the Old Quarter, amidst trendy clothes boutiques and handicraft shops and slick pavement cafes, are the art shops where you can buy a copy of almost any painting you choose.
We are not talking posters and prints here. We are talking proper paintings in oils and acrylics, painted by artists who sit there with a postcard of the original, or a picture torn from a book, and then ? copy it. With amazing skill.
The artistic range of these painters, or copyists as I should perhaps call them, is truly impressive. And the results are not half bad. I don’t think a Sotheby’s expert would for a second be fooled but if you want a very passable imitation of a Van Gogh to hang on you wall – well, here’s your opportunity.
As it happened, we didn’t want a passable imitation of a Van Gogh to hang on our wall. We wanted an original work. Armed with a photograph of our daughter’s baby, Lucas, we were about to commission our first painting. Read more.
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