After the Vatican, it will return to its home at the Shrine to the Blessed Virgin of the Rosary at Pompei near Naples.

The show, The Pompei Mantegna, A Rediscovered Masterpiece, is in the Vatican’s Picture Gallery, Room XVII.

The attribution was made three years ago.

“Called by Monsignor [Pompei Archbishop Tommaso] Caputo to view the work in March 2022,” explained Barbara Jatta, Director of the Vatican Museums, “we immediately understood that under the layers of repainting there was extraordinary pictorial material.

“The restoration revealed iconographic and technical details that confirm the autograph of Mantegna, returning to the history of art a masterpiece that was thought to be lost.

“Then the ‘machine’ of the Vatican Museums started, with diagnostic tests, research and restoration.”

Fabrizio Biferali, curator of the department for Art of the 15th-16th centuries of the Vatican Museums, said “the scientific analyses and the restoration have clarified that the work is not a copy, but an original painting by Mantegna”.

ANSA