Veronese in Murano: Two Venetian Renaissance Masterpieces Restored

Veronese in Murano: Two Venetian Renaissance Masterpieces Restored focuses on two recently-conserved and rarely-seen paintings by the celebrated artist Paolo Veronese (1528–1588), Saint Jerome in the Wilderness and Saint Peter Visiting Saint Agatha in Prison. While the paintings are known to scholars, their remote location in a church in Murano, an island in the lagoon of Venice, has made them difficult to study. Saint Jerome in the Wilderness has been exhibited outside the church only once—in 1939, in the Paolo Veronese exhibition at Ca’ Giustinian, in Venice—while Saint Peter Visiting Saint Agatha in Prison has not left since being installed there in the early nineteenth century. The exhibition will provide a unique opportunity for an international audience to discover these two masterpieces in New York.

Over the last year, the paintings have been fully restored by Venetian Heritage, thanks to the sponsorship of Bulgari, and their conservation was accompanied by thorough research into their history. This fall, the canvases will be shown in the Frick’s Oval Room, which will be transformed into a chapel-like space in order to recreate the feeling of Francesco Degli Arbori’s chapel in Murano. The paintings date from the same time as the Frick’s two allegorical paintings by Veronese, The Choice between Virtue and Vice and Wisdom and Strength. When hung in the Oval Room, the religious works will create a fascinating dialogue with the allegories displayed in the adjacent West Gallery.

Credit: Exhibition overview from museum website

Paolo Veronese, Saint Peter Visiting Saint Agatha in Prison 

Oil on canvas, 65 1/2 x 81 1/2 inches, Diocesi Patriarcato di Venezia