Now that's street art, Banksy

It is hanging 44 full-size recreations on walls ranging from Hamleys toy shop (a Seurat) to a sex shop in Soho (a Caravaggio) to give Londoners a taste of what it offers.

Diners in Lexington Street may spot Mr And Mrs Andrews by Thomas Gainsborough, while theatregoers can see a Turner at the Palace Theatre in Romilly Street or a Rembrandt at the Queen's in Wardour-Street. Artists from Botticelli to Holbein and Michelangelo are among those to be seen at locations around Soho over the next 12 weeks.

The initiative is named The Grand Tour after the cultural trips to the Continent undertaken from the 17th century by the upper-classes.

Art critic Andrew Graham-Dixon, said the new initiative was a "creative and innovative billboard campaign" to remind people what a great resource the National Gallery was.

"Anything Banksy can do, the National Gallery can do better.

"I suppose these images do invite Banksy-type interventions, but I'm assured that they are apparently graffitiproof."

All have been reproduced using the latest technology from project sponsors. Hewlett-Packard. Each picture is framed and has an information plaque like the ones in the gallery.

Passers-by can call a number for an audio guide to each work.

Charles Saumarez Smith, director of the National Gallery, said: " I think they're surprisingly effective. I saw the Joseph Wright of Derby and it was very unexpected to come down Frith Street and suddenly see a picture hanging on a brick wall, not in an art gallery but framed as if in a gallery.

"It does jolt one and make you look and think - even me. They're sufficiently high quality on a photographic equivalent of canvas and they are framed in such a way that they don't look like posters.

"It's much more like seeing a work of art in the National Gallery than seeing a poster on the Underground."