ART

Reunification of altarpiece at Blanton solves a big art mystery

By Jeanne Claire van Ryzin
AMERICAN-STATESMAN ARTS WRITER
Monday, October 05, 2009

It's exquisitely beautiful on its own, the painting of a rosy-cheeked, curly-haired angel draped in a saffron robe with a greenish-gold sash. It's small — just a touch more than 16 inches by 12 inches. But it holds its own as the work of Italian Renaissance master artist Paolo Veronese. Even when compared with the other 250 paintings that arrived at the University of Texas' Blanton Museum of Art in 1998 as part of the Suida-Manning Collection of Old Master art, the petite canvas beckons with its beauty.

And yet no one suspected that the pretty little painting — originally called "Head of an Angel" — also would solve a 200-year-old art history mystery. Sure, scholars knew the angel painting was a fragment from a larger Veronese work, likely created at the height of the artist's career in the 1560s and a fine example of Veronese's use of a sumptuous color palette and precise draftsmanship.

But it took the sharp eye of a British scholar who visited the Blanton in 2006 to realize that the painting was actually the head of St. Michael, the central figure of the "Petrobelli Altarpiece," a massive major painting known to have been cut up and sold in pieces when the Northern Italian church for which it was created was destroyed in 1789. Three large pieces of the altarpiece painting wound up in museums in the United Kingdom and Canada. But where St. Michael went no one knew — until X-rays confirmed that the Blanton's painting was indeed a part of the "Petrobelli Altarpiece."

Now, in a rare reconstruction, all four known pieces of the artwork are on view displayed together in one frame, much as if they were a whole again. Opening today, the exhibit "Paolo Veronese: The Petrobelli Altarpiece" makes its only stop in the United States at the Blanton.

And it's likely this is the last chance to see the "Petrobelli Altarpiece" as it was conceived. When the exhibit closes, the fragments will go back to their respective homes at the Dulwich Picture Gallery in London and the National Gallery of Canada in Ottawa, Ontario, which also hosted the exhibit, and to the National Gallery of Scotland.

The pretty little painting? It will stay in the Blanton, but with its new name, "Head of Saint Michael."

Finding St. Michael

Xavier Salomon found "Head of an Angel" beautiful. At the time based in New York and armed with a fellowship from the Mellon Foundation, Salomon spent August 2006 making a tour of Texas museums, studying the Old Master and Baroque collections in Fort Worth's Kimbell Art Museum and the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, among others. Tops on Salomon's list was a stop at the Blanton for a few days with the Suida-Manning Collection. Assembled by two generations of art historians, the Suida-Manning Collection spans 14th- through 18th-century Italian, French and German art. UT paid $20 million in 1998 for the 250 paintings, 400 drawings and 20 sculptures, then considered the best collection of Old Master and Renaissance art to be in private hands. To be sure, the Suida-Manning Collection put the Blanton and UT on the map, literally drawing attention from around the world.

With an expertise in the work of Veronese, one of the giants of Venetian Renaissance painters, Salomon was struck by the little painting of the head of an angel. "It was remarkably beautiful — it's a stunning picture," he said by phone from London. He took a few pictures of it, and that was that.

By 2007, Salomon was chief curator at the Dulwich Picture Gallery, England's first and oldest public art gallery, and he was working on a project that would bring the three known fragments of the "Petrobelli Altarpiece" together for an exhibit.

Around 1563, Veronese received a commission from cousins Antonio and Girolamo Petrobelli to paint an altarpiece for their family chapel, one of 12 in the church of San Francesco, in Lendinara, near Verona. Wealthy landowners wanting both to impress their peers and to demonstrate their piety, the Petrobelli cousins had themselves painted into the painting, each watched over by their respective name saints (St. Anthony and St. Jerome), with St. Michael in the center. Crowning the images of saints and the Petrobellis is a scene of Christ's ascent to heaven.

"The Petrobellis were very rich, but very provincial in their taste," said Salomon. "What they wanted (in an altarpiece) was something they knew. (The 'Petrobelli Altarpiece') is absolutely standard in its composition. But it was the grandest (altarpiece painting) around, and it was painted by the leading artist of the time."

Measuring more than 16 feet tall, the painting shows Veronese at the height of his career, employing a vivid color palette and an expressive use of light. The altarpiece remained intact for more than two centuries.

Political and religious tumult in the late 18th century led to the destruction of the church of San Francesco. Around 1788, Venetian art dealer Pietro Concollo, with profits on his mind, cut the "Petrobelli Altarpiece" into pieces to be sold. Writing in 1795 of the dismemberment of the original painting, a local historian in Lendinara wrote, "It was sold in quarters, as one does with butcher's meat."

Eventually, portions of the altarpiece turned up in museums. The image of St. Anthony and Antonio Petrobelli entered the collection of the National Gallery of Scotland. The Dulwich Picture Gallery acquired the quarter showing St. Jerome and Girolamo Petrobelli. And the National Gallery of Canada purchased the top scene, which had become known as "The Dead Christ with Angels."

Still the question remained: What happened to the central figure of the giant painting? There certainly was evidence it once existed. The question kept coming up as Salomon moved forward with his project to reunite the existing fragments.

On a research trip to Lendinara, Salomon scoured the local historic churches and museums on the chance that the St. Michael figure had never left Italy. He turned up nothing. Back in London, Salomon spent hours pondering the details of the remaining three altarpiece fragments. Clearly, the hands of the missing central figure could be seen in two of the fragments. So could portions of the figure's robe. And, Salomon hypothesized, it was probably unlikely that a figure of St. Michael without hands would have been marketable when the painting was cut into pieces. Likely the very cutting up of the painting had damaged portions of it that were discarded. "Over the years, everybody had all along assumed that the figure of St. Michael must have remained intact," said Salomon. "But what if just the image of the figure's head had been preserved? Certainly a beautiful little painting of a blonde angel's head by Veronese would have been very sellable at the time."

With the existing altarpiece fragments so fresh in his mind, Salomon thought he just might have seen such a picture of a head of St. Michael. Somewhere, that is. "It was like trying to put a name to the face of a celebrity you just can't remember," he said. Then Salomon literally woke up in the middle of the night in late 2007 and realized, "I had seen it in Texas." He spent a sleepless night poring over his notes and pictures from Texas, sure he was on to something, then e-mailed Jonathan Bober, the Blanton's curator of prints, drawings and European paintings. "I wrote that I thought I possibly had discovered something that, if it was true, then it was it was potentially something very, very big."

Filling in the pieces

That works of art throughout history have been chopped up, badly altered, lost or misidentified is not news. But the reconstitution of an Italian masterpiece was.

Art historian William Suida, along with his daughter Bettina and son-in-law Robert Manning, amassed their impressive collection of Renaissance and Baroque art not by having unlimited financial resources, but because as scholars, they were able to acquire artwork that was often incompletely or even inaccurately identified from out-of-the-way dealers. Thus there's no record of where "Head of an Angel" was before Suida noted its addition to his collection in 1934, nor where Suida bought it or how much he paid for it. And that lack of history, or provenance, is not unusual. "Having a complete, uninterrupted provenance for an Old Master painting is rare," said Bober. "Even when the first three, much larger fragments of the 'Petrobelli Altarpiece' entered collections in England in the 19th century, nothing was known of their provenance."

Dimensions of the figure in "Head of an Angel" matched those in the known fragments. And the weave of the canvas on which it was painted looked like it matched the rest of the altarpiece as well. But before any announcement could be made, scientific proof was needed. Bober took "Head of an Angel" to the National Gallery of Canada, where the painting underwent an infrared X-ray. The X-ray confirmed what Salomon and Bober had suspected: The canvas was a match.

"It's a little bit like there's a new masterpiece by Veronese in the world now," said Salomon.

Since the Suida-Manning Collection was acquired by UT, a considerable number of paintings have been properly attributed and better identified, Bober said. "In several cases, significant information about provenance has been added," said Bober. "I'm sure there are discoveries of all sort to come, although it will be difficult to match the impact and significance of this one."

For Salomon, the Austin showing of the Petrobelli is a bit bittersweet. Though he's thrilled that Texas will get to see its part of the art history mystery (the altarpiece was on exhibit in London and Ottawa earlier this year), it's unlikely the four parts of the massive painting will be seen together again. It's simply too complex an undertaking.

"This really is a once-in-a lifetime opportunity. After 200 years, one of the largest, grandest Venetian altarpieces can be seen as it was originally conceived, and it's an absolutely beautiful work," said Salomon, who added that he'll spend more time with the Suida-Manning Collection when he visits Austin later this month to give a public lecture.

"Great art historical discoveries are always made by chance."

jvanryzin@statesman.com; 445-3699

'Paolo Veronese: The Petrobelli Altarpiece'

When: 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Tuesdays-Fridays, 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. Saturdays, 1 to 5 p.m. Sundays through Feb. 7 (Open until 9 p.m. third Thursday of the month.)

Where: Blanton Museum of Art, Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard and Congress Avenue.

Cost: $3-$7 (free on Thursdays)

Information: 471-7324, www.blantonmuseum.org

'Reconstructing Paolo Veronese's Petrobelli Altarpiece'

What: Xavier Salomon, chief curator of the Dulwich Picture Gallery, discusses the journey of the `Petrobelli Altarpiece' through history.

When: 2 p.m. Oct. 25

Cost: Free with museum admission ($3-$7)

`Reuniting the Fragments'

What: Stephen Gritt, chief conservator of the National Gallery of Canada, discusses the reunification of the `Petrobelli Altarpiece' at the Blanton Museum of Art.

When: 2 p.m. Sunday

Cost: Free with museum admission ($3-$7)