The Cummer Museum of Art & Gardens is pleased to announce the inclusion of Giovanni Battista Zelotti’s Spring, Summer, Autumn, and Winter in The John and Mable Ringling Museum of Art’s upcoming exhibition, Paolo Veronese: A Master and His Workshop in Renaissance Venice. The piece is comprised of four panels mounted together depicting four classical figures, each representing one of the seasons.
Giovanni Battista Zelotti, Allegories on Spring, Summer, Autumn, Winter, no date, grisaille on canvas, 19 1/2 x 37 x 2, Bequest of Ninah M. H. Cummer, C.0.151.1.
The Ringling Museum designed the exhibition to highlight Veronese’s great contributions to the Venetian Renaissance and showcase his illustrious body of work, which has not been shown in the states for over two decades. Spring, Summer, Autumn, and Winter was formerly attributed to Veronese because of its signature gestural style, but the work was likely created by Zelotti, a member of Veronese’s Venetian workshop, who worked in the same artistic manner as his master.
Veronese’s masterpiece, Rest on the Flight into Egypt, has been in the Ringling Museum’s collection since 1925, when John Ringling purchased it as his first Old Master painting. This piece, along with two Veronese portraits, form the foundation for the upcoming show, which will be joined by pieces drawn from institutions throughout the country, including numerous sketches and paintings. The exhibition intends to focus on Veronese’s approach to religious and secular narratives and portraiture, while examining his process and repetition of subject matter by including both quick and elaborate sketches and several versions of his favorite subjects. Dr. Virginia Brilliant, the Museum’s Curator of European Art, is behind the inception of this exhibition, she envisions grouping drawings and paintings that address the same subject in order to display Veronese’s process and subtle changes throughout his career. Dr. Brilliant believes that Veronese is dismissed as a “merely decorative painter” in comparison to other Venetian greats, like Tintoretto and Titian, and hopes that this exhibition will prove Veronese’s other merits.
The exhibition will run December 6, 2012 through April 14, 2013.
