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On show in Room 10.
This canvas entered the National Gallery collection in 1916 as a work by Gentile Bellini. It was later attributed to Vittore Carpaccio, mainly because some of the figures in the painting also appear in a drawing by Carpaccio. Over the years the varnish became very discoloured and brown, and it was difficult to see any of the detail in the painting where it was displayed in the Lower Floor Galleries. When it was brought up to the Conservation Department for examination in 1997, it was apparent that it was a much damaged painting, extensively repainted in the nineteenth-century to cover areas of loss. However, the general design, especially of the landscape, suggested the possibility to a number of scholars that it might be the work of Giovanni rather than Gentile Bellini. The cleaning and restoration (carried out over the past four years by Jill Dunkerton of the Conservation Department) has revealed a painting which has good claims to be by Giovanni Bellini and painted probably in the late 1470s. Few fifteenth-century canvas paintings have survived, and those that do are often in poor condition. The discovery of the painting is important for our understanding of Giovanni Bellini since almost all his works of this type were thought to have been lost. The painting seems also to have influenced other Venetian painters, including Carpaccio.
An article on 'The Adoration of the Kings' by Jennifer Fletcher and Jill Dunkerton will be published in a future issue of the 'Burlington Magazine'.
February 2003
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