Deposition

In 1797 French troops took over Verona, and among the paintings carried off as Napoleonic war booty was this one, removed from the sacristy of a convent in the city. It came back later and entered the museum's collection in 1816. The convent, Santa Maria della Vittoria Nuova, belonged to the Hieronymites, a religious order that mattered more than any other patron to Veronese's career. The museum dates this picture to 1548 and 1549, while he was still working in Verona. A few years later the same order gave him one commission after another for their church of San Sebastiano in Venice. The painting is well preserved. Its colour has a shifting, iridescent quality, and the brushwork is at its freest in the landscape behind the mourners.