Paolo Veronese, the Petrobelli Altarpiece, and Venice in Texas
Combine a mystery and a masterpiece and what do you have? You have “Paolo Veronese: The Petrobelli Altarpiece,” a small, perfectly focused exhibition recently at the Blanton Museum of Art at the University of Texas at Austin. The show--which has also been seen at the Dulwich Picture Gallery in London and the National Gallery of Canada in Ottawa--comes with a backstory engaging enough to make museum-goers pay close attention.
In the 1560s, already in command of his genius for opulent decorative effects, Veronese painted a vast altarpiece for a Franciscan church in the town of Lendinara, not far from Venice. Two centuries later, after the convent with which the church was associated was suppressed, the altarpiece was acquired by an art dealer, and he cut it into pieces and sold them off one by one--“just like meat in a butcher’s shop,” as the Scottish artist Gavin Hamilton observed at the time. Only now, after decades of work resolving the relationship of fragments in London, Edinburgh, and Ottawa, plus the recent discovery of a fourth fragment in Austin, can we see what Veronese had in mind. No matter that several pieces are still missing and are unlikely to be recovered: the Petrobelli Altarpiece, some fifteen feet high, turns out to be an astonishingly powerful meditation on themes of mortality and immortality. Veronese brings a luxuriant gravitas to his representations of saints and sinners alike. The canvas, for all its bold public appeal, has undercurrents of haunted, dusky reverie.
Mounted in one of New York’s major museums, “Paolo Veronese: The Petrobelli Altarpiece” would be hailed as exactly the kind of brilliant, concise exhibition we need in these recessionary times. In Austin, the exhibition was embraced by a loyal audience that has come to expect world-class scholarly work from the curators at the Blanton. When I was last in Austin, a little over a year ago, the museum was host to a show unlike “The Petrobelli Altarpiece” in every respect except its sky-high quality. This was “Reimagining Space: The Park Place Gallery Group in 1960s New York,” organized by Linda Dalrymple Henderson, an art historian at the University of Texas. Henderson brought unexpected shadings to our understanding of New York in the 1960s by focusing on a group of artists--among them Mark di Suvero, Robert Grosvenor, and David Novros--who were re-imagining the old Abstract Expressionist swagger in terms of their own increasingly hard-edged, conceptual, and technologically oriented sensibilities. And two years before that, Jonathan Bober, the curator of European art at the Blanton who is responsible for bringing the Veronese show to Austin, organized a retrospective of the sixteenth-century Italian painter Luca Cambiaso. He is best known today for his geometricized drawings of the human figure, which have long had a cult following among painters, who see their sharply angled forms as a prefiguration of Cubism. In his paintings, Cambiaso’s mingling of analytical rigor and poetic fantasy occasionally brings to mind the uncanniness of Uccello. The Blanton was the only American venue for this unprecedented event.
“Paolo Veronese: The Petrobelli Altarpiece,” “Reimagining Space: The Park Place Gallery Group,” and the Luca Cambiaso retrospective epitomize a kind of offbeat, imaginative programming that is at risk in our museums even in the best of times, and is most certainly at risk today. There are perfectly good reasons why museum administrators prefer brand-name events. Monet--or, for that matter, Warhol--has a proven track record when it comes to bringing in a reluctant public. And if you seek sponsors for a Monet show, you won’t have to cope with the blank looks with which the name Cambiaso will be received. Innovative curators such as Bober and Henderson are fighting an uphill battle, no question about it....
Read entire article at The New Republic
In the 1560s, already in command of his genius for opulent decorative effects, Veronese painted a vast altarpiece for a Franciscan church in the town of Lendinara, not far from Venice. Two centuries later, after the convent with which the church was associated was suppressed, the altarpiece was acquired by an art dealer, and he cut it into pieces and sold them off one by one--“just like meat in a butcher’s shop,” as the Scottish artist Gavin Hamilton observed at the time. Only now, after decades of work resolving the relationship of fragments in London, Edinburgh, and Ottawa, plus the recent discovery of a fourth fragment in Austin, can we see what Veronese had in mind. No matter that several pieces are still missing and are unlikely to be recovered: the Petrobelli Altarpiece, some fifteen feet high, turns out to be an astonishingly powerful meditation on themes of mortality and immortality. Veronese brings a luxuriant gravitas to his representations of saints and sinners alike. The canvas, for all its bold public appeal, has undercurrents of haunted, dusky reverie.
Mounted in one of New York’s major museums, “Paolo Veronese: The Petrobelli Altarpiece” would be hailed as exactly the kind of brilliant, concise exhibition we need in these recessionary times. In Austin, the exhibition was embraced by a loyal audience that has come to expect world-class scholarly work from the curators at the Blanton. When I was last in Austin, a little over a year ago, the museum was host to a show unlike “The Petrobelli Altarpiece” in every respect except its sky-high quality. This was “Reimagining Space: The Park Place Gallery Group in 1960s New York,” organized by Linda Dalrymple Henderson, an art historian at the University of Texas. Henderson brought unexpected shadings to our understanding of New York in the 1960s by focusing on a group of artists--among them Mark di Suvero, Robert Grosvenor, and David Novros--who were re-imagining the old Abstract Expressionist swagger in terms of their own increasingly hard-edged, conceptual, and technologically oriented sensibilities. And two years before that, Jonathan Bober, the curator of European art at the Blanton who is responsible for bringing the Veronese show to Austin, organized a retrospective of the sixteenth-century Italian painter Luca Cambiaso. He is best known today for his geometricized drawings of the human figure, which have long had a cult following among painters, who see their sharply angled forms as a prefiguration of Cubism. In his paintings, Cambiaso’s mingling of analytical rigor and poetic fantasy occasionally brings to mind the uncanniness of Uccello. The Blanton was the only American venue for this unprecedented event.
“Paolo Veronese: The Petrobelli Altarpiece,” “Reimagining Space: The Park Place Gallery Group,” and the Luca Cambiaso retrospective epitomize a kind of offbeat, imaginative programming that is at risk in our museums even in the best of times, and is most certainly at risk today. There are perfectly good reasons why museum administrators prefer brand-name events. Monet--or, for that matter, Warhol--has a proven track record when it comes to bringing in a reluctant public. And if you seek sponsors for a Monet show, you won’t have to cope with the blank looks with which the name Cambiaso will be received. Innovative curators such as Bober and Henderson are fighting an uphill battle, no question about it....