Artworks that have never been seen outside Italy — or even beyond the walls of a remote church near Venice — will arrive in New York starting this fall for two exhibitions at the Frick Collection, the museum announced on Friday. The first, “Veronese in Murano: Two Venetian Renaissance Masterpieces Restored,” is slated to be on view from Oct. 24 through March 11, 2018. The exhibition features two newly conserved paintings by Paolo Veronese (1528–88): “Saint Jerome in the Wilderness” and “Saint Peter Visiting Saint Agatha in Prison.”
Both paintings were commissioned in 1566 for a small chapel at Santa Maria degli Angeli, a church on the island Murano, part of the Venetian Lagoon and off the beaten path for tourists and scholars. Only “Saint Jerome” has been shown outside the church, and that was in 1939, at an exhibition in Venice. The church — including the paintings — was restored in recent years by Venetian Heritage and Bulgari, said Xavier F. Salomon, the Frick’s chief curator. Exhibiting Veronese’s works at the Frick, he added, will be “a great opportunity to see them in a museum context before they go back to the church.”
