The nineteenth century saw a revival in the illumination of manuscripts in Europe, involving amateurs as well as professional painters. Today, however, a significant part of the resulting written artefacts are declared to be forgeries without strong evidence, which often hinders further investigation into their context of origin and use. The current study aims to precisely investigate these contexts in Italy. Manuscripts, that contain musical notation as well as illuminations will be focused on as case studies. Overall, this article illustrates the broad 19th-century interest in illuminated manuscripts and discusses contemporary ideas of the terms ‘original’ and ‘copy’ in relation to newly produced written artefacts.