In 1945 the Swedish Institute of Classical Studies in Rome acquired a set of 166 watercolours and approximately 400 full-scale tracings of the paintings from the Etruscan tombs of Tarquinia, Veii, Chiusi and Orvieto. The watercolour sketches and tracings, executed in situ between 1897 and 1910 by the painter Alessandro Morani (1859-1941) and his collaborators, were used to create the copies held in the Ny Carlsberg Glyptotek in Copenhagen, commissioned by Carl Jacobsen (1842-1914) and Wolfgang Helbig (1839-1915) (facsimiles on canvas and small watercolour fair copies).
The copies were made in accordance with the state of the Etruscan paintings in the late 19th century, when many of the tombs were already in a poor state of preservation, and reproduce the actual condition of the paintings with details such as patches of cement, plant roots etc. The copies are still of great importance because several original paintings are now faded or completely destroyed.