A Veronese painting in the collection of the Blanton Museum of Art at the University of Texas at Austin has been identified as a missing fragment from a long-lost altarpiece by the Venetian master.

The work that the Texas museum has called Head of an Angel is now thought to be the head of Saint Michael, the central figure in the Petrobelli altarpiece, which Veronese created around 1565, at the height of his career. The altarpiece, which measured over five meters high, was done for the church of San Francisco at Lendinara, a small town near Padua, but following the suppression of the Franciscan Order, the church was closed in 1788 and the painting was cut down and sold in pieces.

The intervening history of the Blanton's fragment is unknown before 1938, when it was published by William Suida. The work entered the collection of the Texas museum in 1998 as part of the Suida-Manning Collection of Old Master works.

Three other fragments from the altarpiece had been previously identified in the collections of Dulwich Picture Gallery outside London, the National Gallery of Canada in Ottawa, and the National Galleries of Scotland in Edinburgh.

All four fragments are currently undergoing treatment and will be reunited for the first time in more than two centuries, when the reconstructed altarpiece will be exhibited in a traveling exhibition. The show, which opens in Dulwich in February 2009, comes to Austin on September 27, 2009.