Minerva tra la Geometria e l'Aritmetica

This is a piece of a wall. Around 1551 a young painter, most likely Paolo Veronese near the start of his career, frescoed the interior of the Villa Soranzo near Castelfranco, working alongside Giovanni Battista Zelotti. The villa was later pulled down, but a few fragments had already been sawn off the plaster and sold. This one, showing the goddess Minerva flanked by figures of Geometry and Arithmetic, was carried to England in the 19th century and changed hands several times before the Veneto region bought it back in 2002. Because these early frescoes were a shared job, scholars still argue over which hand did what, some crediting Veronese, others Zelotti or Anselmo Canera. It survives as a bright scrap of a decorative scheme that no longer exists.