![\"The](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/STT-L-PAINTING-2-0429-01.jpg\")
The painting had a plain background before the cleaning and restoration. (COURTESY OF THE UNIVERSITY OF SCRANTON)<\/p>\nThe University of Scranton will unveil an artistic discovery Thursday, the transformation of a Renaissance painting. It is thanks to a grateful World War II veteran and an art restoration expert raised in Taylor.<\/p>\n
The painting attributed to Niccol\u00f2 Betti is now called \u201cMadonna and Child with the Young St. John the Baptist.\u201d The restoration team will outline their findings at a public event Thursday at 5:30 p.m.<\/p>\n
The figure of John the Baptist was uncovered by John Powell, a native of Taylor and co-owner of Chelsea Restoration Associates in New York City.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe\u2019s arguably the best thing about the painting, I think,\u201d Powell said.<\/p>\n
The painting had a plain background before the cleaning and restoration. (COURTESY OF THE UNIVERSITY OF SCRANTON)<\/p>\n
Betti was born in Italy in 1546. He was not a Renaissance superstar, but made a contribution during \u201cone of the pinnacles of Western art,\u201d Powell said.<\/p>\n
The unveiling will be in the Charles Kratz Scranton Heritage Room on the fifth floor of the Weinberg Memorial Library at Linden Street and Monroe Avenue.<\/p>\n
The painting will be on permanent display in a quiet study area on the library\u2019s fourth floor, which is open to the public.<\/p>\n
The Morgan family donated the painting to the university several years ago as part of closing the family home in Carbondale. Patricia Morgan said the painting came with her parents\u2019 home because a previous owner had embedded it so solidly into the wall.<\/p>\n
Her father, Dr. Albert Morgan, had to leave the university to enlist during World War II. After the war, a university dean shepherded veterans through their return to college.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe was very grateful,\u201d Morgan said. \u201cI can\u2019t remember the name of the dean of students at that time, but he took very good care of all the people, the GIs that returned, made sure they got the courses they needed so they could graduate from the (university) in a timely fashion.\u201d<\/p>\n
Many of Morgan\u2019s relatives have graduated from the university.<\/p>\n
The family had no clue there was a hidden underpainting.<\/p>\n
But Powell had a hunch. \u201cThere was something awkward about the composition, the figure being so isolated and also the evenness of the background,\u201d he said. The top of the wooden panel appears to have been added later.<\/p>\n
Painting over part of a work was not unusual, might be done for various reasons and is usually not significant, Powell said. Not this time.<\/p>\n
\u201cAt one point I just started seeing what looked like a flesh color coming out from underneath. And as I was very excited by this, I just kept going and it started to become apparent that this was a full figure, that there were details, intact details there. And the removal of the overpaint was going very, very easily. So there was no harm to the original paint that was underneath. And I was just so excited to see such a beautiful figure.\u201d<\/p>\n
Powell said John the Baptist\u2019s gaze at Mary, with his eyelashes pointing directly at her, directs the viewer\u2019s gaze.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The University of Scranton will unveil an artistic discovery Thursday, the transformation of a Renaissance painting. It is…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":178607,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[15],"tags":[201,182,28,178,180,179,289],"class_list":["post-178606","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-scranton","tag-lackawanna-county","tag-local-news","tag-pennsylvania","tag-scranton","tag-scranton-headlines","tag-scranton-news","tag-things-to-do"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/178606","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=178606"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/178606\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/178607"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=178606"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=178606"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=178606"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}