• Giovanni Bellini’s San Giobbe altarpiece will undergo its most extensive restoration in over 500 years.
• Too fragile to move, the 15th-century masterpiece will be restored behind glass in public view.
• The two-year, €500,000 project will stabilize the wood panel and analyze pigments using advanced imaging.

In the 1810s, a commanding Giovanni Bellini altarpiece was removed from its custom-crafted stone frame inside San Giobbe church and moved across Venice to the Gallerie dell’ Accademia. More than three centuries of damp had deteriorated the wood panel painting and it was in serious need of restoration.

Today, Bellini’s depiction of an enthroned Madonna and Child has once again fallen under the restorer’s eye and brush, but this time it isn’t going anywhere, with experts deeming it too fragile to move. Instead, in keeping with a trend increasingly employed across the museum sector, the late 15th-century masterpiece will be placed behind glass at the Gallerie dell’Accademia and restored in full view of the public.

Giovanni Bellini, Madonna and Child Enthroned (ca. 1478). Photo: courtesy Davide Bussolari/Gallerie dell’ Accademia.

According to the museum, the San Giobbe altarpiece—full name: Madonna and Child Enthroned, Music-Making Angels and Saints Francis, John the Baptist, Job, Dominic, Sebastian and Louis of Toulouse (c. 1478)—is set to receive the most comprehensive restoration of its more than 500-year history. The problems are fundamentally two-fold. First, the painting bears long cracks across its surface due to temperature fluctuations causing the wood to expand and contract. Second, the painting’s original pigments have changed color over the centuries.

The two-year project will initially see experts stabilize the painting’s wooden support. At the same time, Bellini’s altarpiece will be analyzed using ultraviolet fluorescence and infrared imaging to reveal the artist’s original composition and the effects of previous restorations (there have been half a dozen since the early 19th century). Only then will the painting be cleaned, using gentle solvents to remove dirt and old varnish, touched up with compatible and reversible pigments, and protected with a new stable varnish.

Stages of handling and moving the painting. Photo: courtesy Matteo Panciera/Gallerie dell’ Accademia.

“Restoring the San Giobbe Altarpiece in the presence of the public is not only about caring for an absolute masterpiece of our collection,” the museum’s director, Giulio Manieri Elia, said in a statement. “It’s about demonstrating how scientific knowledge, responsible conservation, and visitor communication are integral to the museum experience.”

The Bellini painting while being moved. Photo: courtesy Matteo Panciera/Gallerie dell’ Accademia.

The late Bellini work, which was painted at the same time as San Giobbe was being built, is considered a milestone in the evolution of Venetian altar painting. First, there’s the perspective and scale, with viewers looking up at a monumental painting that reaches more than 15 feet in height. Moreover, instead of presenting Madonna, Child, and worshipful accomplices across separate spaces, Bellini offers architectural harmony with a barrel vault ceiling and a curved marble walls accommodating his cast of saints.

The restoration has been estimated at a cost of €500,000 ($580,000), with Venetian Heritage, a non-profit focused on preserving Venice’s art and architecture, providing more than half of the funding. The organization’s Toto Bergamo Rossi said the project was “fundamental to the history of Venetian art and our understanding of Giovanni Bellini’s evolution.” Founded in 1999, Venetian Heritage has funded more than 70 projects and last year helped restore the Bellini Pieta (c. 1470) that belongs to the City Museum of Rimini.