By Emily Pennington

Petrobelli Altarpiece Detail

A puzzle is rarely considered a piece of art, but in the case of the Blanton Museum of Arts’ painting from the Suida-Manning collection, “The Head of Saint Michael” was discovered as the missing piece of a puzzle.

The fragment of a painting created by master Venetian painter Paolo Veronese has been part of the Blanton’s collection for 10 years and has recently been identified as a missing piece of Veronese’s larger work, the Petrobelli Altarpiece.

According to the Blanton’s Web site, the original altarpiece was created around 1565 and placed in the Petrobelli family burial chapel in the now destroyed Franciscan church in Lendinara, Italy. The commission to create the 15-foot work of art was made by cousins Antonio and Girolamo Petrobelli, who were neither wealthy landowners nor noble descendents.

“An altar, such as this, is all about wealth, status and devotional aspirations,” said University of Texas art history professor Jeffrey Smith.

The grand altarpiece depicts Saints Anthony and Jerome standing next to the cousins with a dark boar and a lion standing at their heels. In the middle is a child-like St. Michael, the angel who is believed to guard the heavenly gates, with a spear in one hand and a scale in the other. At the top of the painting is an ethereal crucified Christ supported by angels in the clouds. The regality of the subject matter and portrayals suggest their greatest desires for eternal salvation, according to the Cybermuse Web site.

“The two men, pictured with their patron saints, are obviously pleased to have obtained the services of Venice’s leading artist,” Smith said. “And, doubtlessly, they paid dearly for the privilege.”

The piece was originally set in a thick limestone frame and placed above the altar where masses for the repose of the patrons’ souls were celebrated. Generations of Petrobelli family members were buried near the altarpiece.

It remained in the chapel until 1788 when it was dismembered and sold in four different pieces following the suppression of the Franciscan Order. The Blanton’s Web site states that Gavin Hamilton, one of the first buyers of a fragment of the Petrobelli Altarpiece wrote in a letter in 1788: “In a short time they will begin the cutting of the great picture of Paolo, it will be sold just like meat in a butcher’s shop, poor Paolo, poor painting.”

The Dulwich picture gallery acquired its piece in 1811, while the pieces that landed in Edinburgh and Ottawa passed through many different hands before arriving in Dulwich in the early 20th century.

Xavier Salomon, a curator at the Dulwich Picture Gallery outside of London, who studied Veronese for five years and was credited with solving the Petrobelli mystery, said he was not planning to find the missing fragment when he began working on the altarpiece.

Petrobelli Altarpiece

“I think it was one of those situations where I was the right person at the right time,” Salomon said.

He recalled returning from a trip from Lendinara when he began thinking about what could possibly have happened to the fragment.

“Everyone, including me, had always been looking for a full fragment with the entire figure of Saint Michael, and that is when I had the key thought that helped me find the fragment: ‘What if they only kept the head?’”

The last fragment came to Texas when the work was acquired by the Blanton in 1998 as part of the Suida-Manning Collection, which was one of the finest collections of old master paintings and drawings in private hands, according to the Blanton’s Web site.

While the last fragment sat in Austin, Salomon racked his brain in England trying to figure out what happened to it. He remembered seeing a head that might fit the description, but could not remember where.

“It took me a few days and then I literally woke up in the middle of the night and remembered that I had seen it in Austin,” Salomon said. “It was amazing, I immediately went through my notes and photographs from a trip to Texas a few years earlier and there it was. I was so excited I could not sleep all night.”

In February of 2009, the four works were X-rayed, treated and reunited for the first time in more than two centuries in Dulwich. The reconstructed Petrobelli Altarpiece is on display at the Blanton Museum of Art until Feb. 7, 2010.

Jonathon Bober, curator of prints, drawings and European paintings for the Blanton believes the work is a scientific phenomenon.

“All culture, like all matter, is governed by entropy in any realm we can imagine,” he said. “But here is a major work of art: Destroyed. Forgotten.  Brought back together, if not made better. It’s fighting entropy.”

Salomon calls the exhibit an “unmissible” opportunity because after its museum tour the pieces will return to their respective homes.

“You can see [the pieces] in museums in Austin, Edinburgh, Ottawa and London, but this is the one and only time you can see them together and understand how they worked as a whole,” he said. “Once the fragments leave Austin in February I don’t think we will see them [together] again, at least in our lifetimes.”