The Veronese Room conveys a sensuous, sumptuous feel, with its leather wall covering and an exuberant ceiling painting by the Venetian painter Paolo Veronese and his studio. Different materials and textures, scattered throughout, compete for attention—leather and lace, furniture and fans, porcelain and paintings.

Completed in 2001, extensive conservation of the historic Veronese Room focused on cleaning and conserving the gallery’s signature painting adorning its ceiling, Paolo Veronese’s The Coronation of Hebe. The Veronese Room is an opulent space with its painted and gilded ceiling, leather wall hangings, antique lace, paintings, furniture, and sculpture. The leather wall hangings, comprised of 500 individual panels, represent the largest collection of European 17th- and 18th-century leather hangings on public view in the United States. Conservation of the individual leather hangings included repairing tears in the leather and the flattening of wrinkles that had developed on their surfaces. Because of its size, which makes it too large to fit through the gallery doors, the Veronese ceiling painting had to be treated in the Veronese Room itself, which served as a conservation studio during the fall and winter of 2000. Conservation of the Veronese Room coffered ceiling involved conservators working on scaffolding hanging 5 inches below the ceiling to clean the gilt surfaces, to replace areas of lost gilding, and to preserve the work’s blue paint. Additional upgrades to the lighting in the gallery, as part of the Museum’s eight-year Lighting Project, were completed in 2009.