Our Lady of Mount Carmel with St. Simon Stock, St.Teresa of Avila, St. Albert of Vercelli, the Prophet Elijah and the Souls in Purgatory

Three centuries lived dangerously

Restoration of Giambattista Tiepolo’s Our Lady of Mount Carmel among Saints Simon Stock, Teresa D’Avila, Albert of Vercelli, the Prophet Elijah and the Souls in Purgatory (1721-1727) is underway, thanks to the generous support of Bank of America Merrill Lynch.

An early work by Tiepolo, Our Lady of Mount Carmel among the Saints has faced various vicissitudes over the centuries. Commissioned by the confraternity of the Suffragio del Carmine, which had its headquarters in the church of Sant’Apollinare in Venice, it suffered an improper rolling up on its way to Paris, which caused the first damage. In 1880 it even turned out to be divided into two parts: ironic evidence of this is the painting Vandalism (Poveri Antichi!) by Giacomo Favretto, kept at the Pinacoteca di Brera, in which Tiepolo’s canvas already deprived of the Purgatory scene and a painter intent on retouching the figure of St. Theresa are depicted. Purchased on the Parisian antiquarian market in 1925 by the Chiesa family, which, through the intervention of Ettore Modigliani, made a gift of it in the same year to the Pinacoteca di Brera, the painting was reassembled only in 1948.

Also in view of the extensive pictorial reintegration carried out during the last restoration in 1994 to compensate for the many gaps, the current intervention proceeds in phases with progressive general revisions. In respect of a history as fascinating as it is troubled.

The exceptionality of this restoration does not consist solely in confronting stratified problems sedimented over time: in fact, the intervention does not involve moving the large canvas, but takes place directly in Room XXXIV, making it possible for visitors to witness it “live.”