Joseph and Potiphar's Wife

The plague of 1630 killed a large part of Verona's people, and the city's art market took decades to recover. When it did, the museum explains, private buyers in Verona turned to painters from elsewhere. This canvas belongs to that revival. Antonio Bellucci, a painter trained in Venice, made it for the Turco, a Verona family, and the museum now dates it to 1690 and 1691. In 1966 a scholar had suggested it might come from his last years, after he returned to Venice in 1722.

The story is from Genesis. Joseph, a young Hebrew slave who ran the household of Potiphar, an Egyptian officer, is pressed day after day by his master's wife. When he finally flees from her, she keeps his cloak in her hand and uses it to accuse him. Until the new hang of these rooms in December 2025, the picture had never been on show in the museum.