A Renaissance Mystery Solved

In 2006, a young London curator visited the University of Texas’ art gallery to study its Genoese and Baroque paintings. That’s when Xavier Salomon first saw an unidentified portrait catalogued as Head of an Angel. “I thought it was a fragment of something larger, but I did not know what,” Salomon recalls. “What struck me at the time was its quality.”

The small image made a big impression. Last year, while researching Paolo Veronese’s Petrobelli Altarpiece for an exhibition at the Dulwich Picture Gallery, Salomon had an “aha” moment worthy of Scotland Yard. In a flashback to Austin, he connected the angel he’d seen two years earlier with Veronese’s monumental altarpiece. The angel, as it turns out, is actually Saint Michael, the missing figure in the 16th century masterpiece.

Salomon’s stunning discovery solved a mystery that had baffled generations of historians. Saint Michael had vanished without a trace in the late 18th century after a Venetian art dealer carved up Veronese’s 16-foot-tall altarpiece and shipped it piecemeal to the highest bidders.

Though fragmentation was commonplace at the time, this particular crime sent shock waves through the art market. “…it will be sold just like meat in a butcher’s shop, poor Paolo, poor painting,” lamented one Scottish buyer. Eventually, three dismembered pieces found homes at the Dulwich, National Gallery of Scotland, Edinburgh and National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa.

Now, thanks to ace detective work, high tech art forensics and conservation, and serendipity, Veronese’s ill-treated masterpiece has been lovingly restored and reassembled. There’s a rare chance to see the reunited work in “Paolo Veronese: The Petrobelli Altarpiece, Reconstructing a Renaissance Masterpiece” at the Blanton Museum of Art at the University of Texas at Austin, the show’s only U.S. venue.

Acting on Xavier Salomon’s hunch, Jonathan Bober, Blanton’s curator of prints, drawings and European paintings took the 16-inch by 12.5-inch portrait to Ottawa last spring where National Gallery of Canada’s chief conservator Stephen Gritt fired up the X-ray machine. “When we unwrapped the painting and put it close to ours, we could see it had the same DNA,” says Gritt. “Within an hour, we had proof in spades.”

An infrared image of Blanton’s fragment showed Veronese’s initial drawings, done in a charcoal-rich material over pale, chalk-based priming. On the left side, a drawing and painting of the edge of a column appeared. On the far right more evidence emerged—the plumb line for the painting’s vertical center and an adjacent vertical line through Saint Michael’s face dropped down from Christ’s reference lines.

Gritt’s team restored Saint Michael, removing old varnish and paint from a previous restoration and retouching his head, vibrant orange tunic and copper green sash. “It was in the best condition of all the fragments and one of the most beautiful bits of the painting,” says Gritt. “It’s not a workshop painting — we know it’s all Paolo.”

Ottawa already had extensive experience with the altarpiece. For decades, the top water damaged pieta, The Dead Christ Supported by Angels, lived in storage, buried in dirt, varnish and over paint. It took conservators nearly two years to clean the fragment, restore the arch, add a lining, and repair missing paint. Additions were purposefully executed to be clearly distinguishable from Veronese’s original paint.

The painstaking restoration offered an opportunity to clear up misconceptions about the fragment’s authorship. A technical study of the under drawing and analysis of paint samples supported the conclusion that the fragment was the work of Veronese, not his assistants. “It was in really bad shape but with all of this, as we’re cleaning, there was a great deal of beauty,” says Gritt. We’re seeing it’s Paolo Veronese.”

Veronese became part of an artistic triumvirate in Venice that included Titian and Tintoretto. Unlike his rivals, Veronese’s corpus includes splendid frescoes at villas like Palladio-designed Villa Barbaro. According to Gritt, historians misjudged Veronese, interpreting his balanced compositions and courtly style as decorative. “We don’t have much information on Veronese’s personality and he didn’t try to stab anyone like Tintoretto,” says Gritt. “Historians gave Veronese the bronze medal on the podium of painting. “Titian is gold, but Veronese is definitely silver.”

Earlier scholarship connected Ottawa’s Pieta and the two large Edinburgh and Dulwich donor portraits as part of a grand Veronese altarpiece. Further research identified the finely-dressed donors as Girolamo and Antonio Petrobelli, wealthy landowners from northeast Italy who commissioned the altarpiece for their family burial chapel. In the complex, highly symbolic work, Veronese depicts his supplicant clients, their patron saints, and Christ with a supporting cast of angels and putti. But both the identity and whereabouts of the missing central figure remained a mystery.

Then in 1949, curators found a smoking gun—hidden beneath layers of paint. While restoring the Dulwich fragment, a museum conservator got more than he bargained for.

The cleaning exposed a lion on the bottom right, bright green drapery at the left edge, and a floating dismembered hand holding a scale with a tiny human figure. “The lion identified the figure as Saint Jerome and the hand and scale suggested the missing figure might be Saint Michael weighing human souls,” says Salomon, Dulwich’s chief curator.

A decade later, the Saint Michael theory was confirmed when Edinburgh’s cleaned fragment, Antonio Petrobelli and Saint Anthony Abbot, suddenly sprouted the archangel’s wing, plus his arm and a spear. To make the donor fragments look like separate paintings, dealers had painted Saint Michael out.

With the four fragments reassembled in the Blanton Museum’s tall octagonal gallery, the Petrobelli Altarpiece is striking for its sheer scale and beauty. Over five centuries ago in a mon­astery church, set in a limestone frame above an altar, its impact on parishioners must have been profound. Even with a void for the archangel’s body, believed to have been either damaged or sacrificed when the altarpiece was cut, serene Saint Michael steals the show, holding the balance of good and evil.

Veronese’s staggering technique and vibrant color palette is on glorious display—from Saint Jerome’s crisp crimson and white robes to Girolamo Petrobelli’s salt and pepper beard and the fur lining on his elegant damask coat. Veronese’s unique palette included ultramarine and pale blues, silvery whites, pinks and oranges, lemon yellows, and the greens so admired by the Impressionists. “If you bought your red pigment in Naples it would have been cut several times, but the guys on the island (Venice) had access to the best materials and biggest range,” says Gritt. “It isn’t just that Veronese can handle tints, it’s all about his modeling without shadows.”

How Veronese’s Head of Saint Michael wound up at a small university museum in Austin is almost as incredible as Xavier Salomon’s discovery. In 1994, Robert Manning, a Texan and the son-in-law of noted Austrian art historian William Suida, dropped by the Blanton unannounced. Recently widowed, Manning was looking for a permanent home for his family’s trove of 240 paintings and nearly 400 drawings, including works by Rubens, Poussin, Lorrain, Tiepolo, and three paintings by Veronese.

Where and when Manning’s father-in-law acquired the Head of Saint Michael is unknown, as is its provenance. According to Jonathan Bober, when Suida fled the Nazis in 1939, he hid the portrait with the rest of his collection in either Milan or Venice. In 1998, the Blanton acquired the Veronese fragment along with the entire Suida-Manning collection over giants like the Metropolitan Museum of Art and Sotheby’s.

Also on view with the Petrobelli Altarpiece are four Veronese paintings drawn from the Blanton and the National Gallery of Canada. Though Veronese exercised good quality control over his workshop, the contrast between autograph works and knock offs is dramatic. “Veronese like Tintoretto relied upon his workshop more and more as he received lots of commissions,” says Bober.

In the Repentant Magdalene, likely commissioned for a high wall of a private chapel, Veronese purposefully elongated his subject’s neck and torso to make her proportions appear normal when viewed from below. “In autograph works like the Magdalene, Veronese modified the composition at each stage of the process,” says Gritt who did a technical study of the painting. The subtle colors of the Virgin and archangel Gabriel in a later autograph work, The Annunciation, illustrate Veronese’s shift to a more muted palette.

Before his death at the age of sixty, Veronese painted several very large paintings, including The Marriage at Cana and The Last Supper, which he renamed Feast in the House of Levi after getting into hot water with the Inquisition. But when it comes to altarpieces, Veronese’s earliest and last works, only two are larger than the Petrobelli — Transfiguration in Montagnana and Martyrdom of Saint Giustina in Padua. Veronese took a far more complex metaphysical approach to altarpieces than his Italian contemporaries, combining separate moments in time in completely plausible fashion.

Seeing the Petrobelli Altarpiece may really be a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. When the show closes next February 2010, the individual pieces will be disassembled and returned to their respective museums. “We always knew it was going to be a temporary exhibition for a very limited amount of time,” says art sleuth Xavier Salomon. “It would be impossible logistically to keep four paintings that belong to four different institutions in three different countries and across two continents. Still, it will be very sad to see the pieces go.”

“Paolo Veronese: The Petrobelli Altarpiece, Reconstructing a Renaissance Masterpiece” runs through Feb. 7, 2010 at The Blanton Museum of Art, University of Texas, Austin, 200 East Martin Luther King Boulevard, (512) 471-7324, blantonmuseum.org. Tuesday to Friday 10-5, Saturday 11-5, Sunday 1-5 (open until 9 pm the third Thursday of the month)

If You Go
In addition to world-class music and art, Austin is a great food city. Whole Foods Market was founded here in 1980. Central Market is an epicurean institution. After a stop at the Blanton Museum, here are some memorable places to refuel:

Tex Mex: The Screaming Goat is famous for its crispy “ahogada” flautas drowned in hot sauce and old house ambience (900 W 10th). With its self-serve salsa bar, hand-made corn tortillas and patio dining, Guero’s Taco Bar is a local favorite (1412 South Congress Avenue). El Zunzal cooks up unique dishes like banana-leaf-wrapped tamales and pollo frito en tajadas, fried chicken breast smothered in tangy sauce (642 Calles Street).

Barbecue: For barbeque purists, Iron Works BBQ offers traditional finger-licking ribs (100 Red River). Lambert’s serves up meat with an Austin twist, local brewed beers, and live music in a historic downtown building (401 W. 2nd Street).

Sweets: It’s one of the toughest decisions you’ll have to make—key lime or Toll house pie at Quack’s 43rd Street Bakery. Whatever you do, don’t miss the éclairs (411 E. 43rd). There are five Austin Amy’s Ice Cream locations (including the airport) to try “Hot Apple Stuff,” a holiday tradition featuring Granny Smiths, cinnamon, nutmeg and brown sugar or the Guinness-­flavored ice-cream (1301 S. Congress Avenue, 3500 Guadalupe Street). At Veracruz All Natural’s modest trailer, two sisters whip up delicious milkshakes, smoothies and the best agua de sandia (sweetened watermelon juice) in town (2027 E. Cesar Chavez).

Susan Jaques is a Los Angeles-based travel writer specializing in the arts, cruises, and food and wine. Her articles have run in the Los Angeles Times, Chicago Tribune, Toronto Globe & Mail, Toronto Sun and Christian Science Monitor.