Paolo Farinati was an important Veronese painter who headed a family workshop that included his sons Orazio and Giambattista. He was a highly consistent and prolific artist in fresco and in oil and often recieved commissions from neighbouring Piacenza, Mantua, and Venice. His use of strong colours was influenced by Veronese but he also absorded certain Mannerist influences from the frescoes of scenes from the Life of the Virgin (1534) in the choir of Verona Cathedral, executed by Francesco Torbido to Giulio Romano's design.

We are grateful to Professor Sergio Marinelli, who has suggested that the present is a late work by Paolo Farinati, perhaps with the assistance of his children (private communication).


The collection of art historian Terence Mullaly (1927-2020):

The scholar and art critic Terence Mullaly was born in 1927. The son of an army colonel, Mullaly was educated in India, England and Canada. He graduated from Cambridge University and then made several archaeological excavations in Tripolitania and Sicily. In public life, he was best known as The Daily Telegraph’s art critic, where he was one of Britain’s leading voices writing on art for over thirty years from 1956 to 1987.

He was also a considerable scholar and became a leading expert in Veronese art. In 1966, he organised an exhibition in the Museo di Castelvecchio in Verona on Ruskin’s experience of that city, as recorded in his writings and paintings. In 1971, he curated an exhibition on Veronese drawings of the sixteenth century and published an accompanying catalogue (Disegni Veronesi del Cinquecento) that is still cited today as an authoritative guide on attributions in that area. He was a regular contributor to The Burlington Magazine and Old Master Drawings art journals.

His collecting habits followed his interests in Veronese art of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries and he acquired rare works by Veronese artists such as Paolo Farinati (1524-1606), Orlando Flacco (1527-1593) and Marco Antonio Bassetti (1586-1630).