Altarpiece back together after 200 years

Four parts of an Italian altarpiece cut up and dispersed more than 200 years ago have been reunited at Dulwich Picture Gallery.

They include a fragment of canvas long thought lost - but which had been on public view in Blanton Museum of Art in Austin, Texas, for many years.

Xavier Salomon, a curator at Dulwich, realised it was a crucial missing section when he started work on the proposed reconstruction of the Petrobelli Altarpiece by Paolo Veronese. Far from being a simple Head Of An Angel, the Texan fragment is the head of Saint Michael. The piece joins the Dulwich gallery's section, Saint Jerome And Girolamo Petrobelli, and two from Edinburgh and Ottowa.

Dr Salomon said: "Everyone always thought this piece had been destroyed so it became truth. Then I started thinking, 'Could it exist?' I was looking for a full figure, but when I thought they might just have saved a head, I remembered what I had seen in Texas. Nobody had ever connected them together. When we got the technological data we knew for sure."

The Dulwich gallery's own section is the only Venetian work from the 16th century in its collection. It was acquired by Noel Desenfans, the gallery's founder, at about the time it was cut up in 1795.

The altarpiece is from the church of San Francesco at Lendinara in north-eastern Italy. Veronese (1528-88) was a Renaissance artist who worked in Venice. The exhibition is on from today until 3 May.