Worcester Art Museum announced that it had acquired Venus Disarming Cupid by Paolo Veronese.
The work, based on a drawing by Parmigianino and one of several paintings of the same theme known to have been made by Veronese, sold for $2.9 million to the collector Hester Diamond, who has decided to give it to the Worcester in honor of her stepdaughter, Rachel Kaminsky, a museum board member.
In 1990, Venus Disarming Cupid was consigned to Christie’s by its owner as “Circle of François Boucher.” Prior to the sale, the attribution for this important rediscovery of a work by Veronese was enthusiastically endorsed by the art historian and Veronese expert Terisio Pignatti, who, in conjunction with Filippo Pedrocco, published the work in Veronese: Catalogo completo dei dipinti (1991), and W. R. Rearick, a well-known expert on Venetian 16th century painting. A collector’s stamp on the reverse of the canvas suggests that the painting was once in the collection of the Prince of Hohenzollern-Hechingen, a county and principality in southwestern Germany. The painting was on view at The Metropolitan Museum of Art in late 2006, and was included in the exhibition Venus: Bilder einer Göttin (Images of a Goddess) at the Alte Pinakothek in Munich in 2001.
The painting will go on view at Worcester beginning Sept. 21 as part of the museum’s re-installation of its old-master galleries.