This historic work by Paolo Veronese, the famous 16th century Venetian Renaissance painter, went on public display on May 29 in Ottawa.
After some 400 years, various pieces of the original work—which had been cut up by an avaricious dealer to be sold piecemeal—are back together. A few sections are still missing but the restoration by Gritt and his assistants of the top part of the altarpiece is nothing less than miraculous.
“It is a landmark event, because while people have known for quite a while that the individual fragments from the various institutions belong together, no one's really seen them together, or no one's thought about them together in quite the way we have,” Gritt, chief of the NGC restoration laboratory, told CBC News.
“In a sense, we’ve added a major work to the corpus of one of the most important and influential painters of the 16th century,” he said.
Fragments include the National Gallery-owned oil on canvas, Dead Christ Supported by Angels, restored after being heavily water-damaged on the trip across the Atlantic in 1925, and the Head of Saint Michael, recently discovered to be a part of this work and owned by the Blanton Museum of Art in Austin, Texas.
Cousins Antonio and Girolamo Petrobelli originally commissioned the work, created around 1563, which was intended to hang in a family chapel in Lendinara in the Veneto Region of northern Italy.
"They had themselves painted into the painting, and it was installed on their family altar in a chapel in a rather small town, and when they died they were buried beneath it," Gritt said.
A beautifully illustrated catalogue entitled “Paolo Veronese: The Petrobelli Altarpiece” is available in English or French. It describes the reunification process, the restoration itself, and the historic aspect of donor portraits. It may be ordered online at www.shopping.ca.
In a talk on June 11 at the Lecture Hall of the NGC, Gritt will discuss the reunification of four fragments of the original piece and the fascinating story behind Veronese’s Petrobelli Altarpiece. Admission is free.
The Blanton Museum of Art will host the exhibition after it leaves Ottawa in September. At the end of the tour, Dead Christ Supported by Angels will remain as part of the National Gallery’s permanent collection.
Susan Hallett is an award-winning writer and editor who has written for The Beaver, The Globe & Mail, Wine Tidings and Doctor's Review among many others. Email: hallett_susan@hotmail.com
