Paolo Veronese: The Petrobelli Altarpiece; Reconstructing a Renaissance Masterpiece

This fall the Blanton Museum of Art at The University of Texas at Austin is pleased to present Paolo Veronese: The Petrobelli Altarpiece, on view October 4, 2009 – February 7, 2010. In 2008, the museum announced an important discovery regarding a work in the Blanton’s collection by Venetian master Paolo Veronese (1528 – 1588). Head of an Angel, part of the museum’s Suida-Manning Collection, had recently been identified as a fragment of a long-lost masterpiece by Veronese. The identification was made by Dr. Xavier Salomon, a Veronese expert and curator of the Dulwich Picture Gallery outside London. While conducting research for an upcoming exhibition, Salomon began to suspect that the Blanton painting was in fact the head of Saint Michael, the central figure in the so-called Petrobelli altarpiece, created around 1565, at the height of the artist’s career. Recent X-rays and other tests performed by Stephen Gritt, conservator at the National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa, confirmed this hypothesis. Three other fragments from the altarpiece had been previously identified in the collections of Dulwich, Ottawa, and the National Gallery of Scotland, Edinburgh. These works, along with the Blanton’s newly identified Saint Michael, have recently undergone treatment and will be reunited for the first time in more than two centuries. The reconstructed altarpiece, along with corresponding X-rays, made its debut in Dulwich in February 2009, and will travel to the Blanton in October for the only US presentation.

While the Blanton’s painting had always been recognized as a fragment from a larger work of Veronese’s mature activity, Salomon suspected that it might correspond to the figure of Saint Michael that once stood at the center of the altarpiece. One of three paintings by Veronese at the Blanton, the work was acquired in 1998 as part of the Suida-Manning Collection, which had been one of the finest collections of Old Master paintings and drawings in private hands, including important works by Correggio, Parmigianino, Rubens, Vouet, Lorrain, Ricci and Tiepolo. The acquisition not only transformed the museum’s holdings, it also connected the Blanton with major American and European institutions and their projects. This discovery and the painting’s role in an international exhibition are only the latest examples. Jonathan Bober, the Blanton’s curator of prints, drawings and European paintings states, “We are elated by this discovery and struck by its implications. Thanks to Salomon’s wonderful intuition and diligent investigation, we now understand the specific context, function, and quality of the work. The identification of the visual and iconographic core of a major project by one of the greatest painters of the sixteenth century is no small thing.”

Around 1565 Veronese was commissioned to do the altarpiece by the cousins Antonio and Girolamo Petrobelli for the church of San Francisco at Lendinara, a small town near Padua. The resulting painting depicted each cousin with his patron saint at the sides of the composition, Saint Michael at the center, and the Dead Christ supported by angels above. One of the largest altarpieces in the sixteenth-century Italy, measuring over five meters high, it was cut down and sold in pieces when, following the suppression of the Franciscan Order, the church was closed in 1788. Writing in 1795 about the altarpiece and its dismemberment, the local historian Giovanni Battista Sasso noted that, “It was sold in quarters, as one does with butcher’s meat.” Dulwich acquired its piece in 1811. After passing through various English hands, the pieces at Edinburgh and Ottawa arrived in the early twentieth century. The intervening history of the Blanton’s fragment is unknown before 1938, when William Suida published it.

For the exhibition, the altarpiece will be reconstructed and exhibited alongside X-rays and blown up details of the work. Supplemental exhibitions drawn from the Blanton’s extensive holdings of Italian art will be on view to provide further context. Salomon recently presented his research and this discovery at the National Gallery of Art, London, and in a recent issue of The Burlington Magazine. This important discovery reinforces the treasures within the Suida-Manning collection and provides an excellent opportunity to re-evaluate this important work.

This exhibition is a collaboration between Dulwich Picture Gallery, London, and the National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa, in association with the Blanton Museum of Art, The University of Texas at Austin.

Presentation at the Blanton is funded in part by Cathy and Giorgio Borlenghi and Jessica and Jimmy Younger. Additional support is provided by Alessandra and Kurt Dolnier and Patricia and Dee Osborne. Travel for the exhibition is provided by a grant from the Still Water Foundation and by Continental Airlines.