Transfiguration of Christ

Paolo Veronese was still in his mid-twenties in 1555 and only breaking through when he won this commission, the high altarpiece for the cathedral in Montagnana, a walled town on the mainland west of Venice. He owed it to a well-placed patron, the Venetian nobleman Francesco Pisani, in whose villa the contract was signed. The subject is the Transfiguration, Christ shown in radiance on the mountain between Moses and Elijah while three apostles reel below. It was the same busy year Veronese began the ceiling paintings in Venice that would soon make him one of the city's leading masters. The picture has never left the church it was made for, still standing over the same altar, sized and lit for exactly this spot rather than a gallery wall.