Veronese Paolo Veronese Shows to See in New England Before Summer’s Out Restoration Drama 2009 Preview: Paris Museum Shows Veronese at Austin Museum Belongs to Long-Lost Altarpiece Koons Goes to Versailles Christie’s Plays Yenta for Old Masters and “Youngish” Collectors

Send a letter to the Editor

Save to Del.icio.us Digg this

Part of the Blanton's collection for 10 years, the work was inspected several years ago by Veronese scholar Xavier Salomon. Last year, while he was working on an exhibition about the altarpiece for the Dulwich Picture Gallery in London, he began to suspect that Head of St. Michael was in fact the missing piece in the famed altarpiece. "Since the 1930s, scholars said the missing head had been destroyed," he said. "But it didn't make sense to me that anyone would really throw away a figure." X-rays and other test confirmed his suspicions.

Created around 1565 for the church of San Francisco in a small town in Italy, the Petrobelli altarpiece is considered one of Veronese's most important achievements. Head of St. Michael is now being restored in Ottawa, along with another fragment currently in the collection of the National Gallery of Canada. The altarpiece will be reunited and reconstructed for the first time in over two hundred years for the Dulwich exhibition, which opens in February 2009.