NEW YORK, NY.- Over 40 years ago, Italian culture officials in Venice began searching for the pieces of a nine-panel ceiling that artist-turned-biographer-of-artists Giorgio Vasari painted during a 16th-century Venetian sojourn.

Commissioned by Giovanni Corner, who belonged to one of Venice’s most powerful families, the ceiling depicting the “Triumph of Virtues” had been dismantled and scattered across Europe after his branch of the Corner family died out in 1798.

The ceiling — or most of it — was finally reassembled in Venice’s Gallerie dell’Accademia last month, coinciding with the 450th anniversary commemorations for Vasari’s death, after what culture officials described as a “treasure hunt.” Parts had landed on the antiquarian market passing through various hands in Germany, Switzerland, Britain and Italy.

When the hunt for the missing panels began, there was no guarantee that it would be successful, according to the Gallerie dell’Accademia’s director, Giulio Manieri Elia, but the works gradually emerged, in private collections, at auction and in Italian museums.

Some of the recoveries were nothing short of miraculous, he added, citing the panel of a chubby cherub that was identified when an art historian recognized the piece in an Architectural Digest article showcasing an Italian home.

“The fundamental thing was that Vasari described it, luckily,” said Manieri Elia, explaining that Vasari’s description of the ceiling in a book recounting his many commissions, as well as in his “Lives of the Artists,” helped guide officials during their hunt.

Vasari came to Venice in December 1541 to design a temporary theater for a play by poet, playwright and satirist Pietro Aretino, written for a society of wealthy Venetian noblemen to be performed during the Venetian carnival in 1542. The elaborate decorative scheme of the theater, which Vasari described in a letter to one of his patrons in Florence, included several figures depicting the virtues, typically used in Renaissance art to personify moral qualities.

Vasari’s talents caught at least one patron’s eye.

The uncle of one of the noblemen was Giovanni Corner, who tasked Vasari with decorating a ceiling in his palazzo along the Grand Canal.

The artist set out to dazzle, crafting a nine-panel oil painting depicting five virtues — Charity in the center, flanked by Faith, Hope, Justice and Patience — with four cherubs in the corners, united by the sky, whose color lightens in the central panel.

Vasari, who championed the artistry of the Tuscany region, had to measure up against some significant Venetian talents, like Titian, Tintoretto and Veronese. So “like all artists who came from outside to work in Venice, Vasari gave his best and here he showed everything that he could do,” Manieri Elia said.

The decision to try to reunite the Vasari ceiling’s pieces dates to the 1980s and ended nearly four decades later with the purchase of two panels from collectors in London. Negotiations were lengthy, at times complicated and required significant fundraising efforts because the Italian state didn’t always have the available cash. Private donors, including movie director James Ivory, as well as conservation charities, helped raise the money.

“Let’s say we helped put together the pieces of a puzzle,” said Toto Bergamo Rossi, director of the Venetian Heritage Foundation. He recalled the thrill of visiting the London house that was once the home of J.M. Barrie, the creator of Peter Pan, to negotiate the purchase of one of the virtues, the “Allegory of Faith,” which hung over a huge fireplace.

Being in Barrie’s home, “I became a child in a second,” he said.

Though each of the panels had taken divergent paths, their condition had been “quite good,” said Rossella Cavigli, the restorer who worked on the ceiling as panels arrived at the Accademia.

Vasari’s ceiling and its design — panels divided and united by an elaborate gold frame — had a significant impact on the local artists working in Venice at that time, and was an “incredible injection of mannerism on Venetian painting,” said Bergamo Rossi. Tintoretto, Veronese and even Titian were inspired by the ceiling, “so it was fundamental that this ceiling returned to Venice,” said Manieri Elia.

The hunt for the remaining panels continues. One depicting a cherub is missing, and the ends of the panel depicting the “Allegory of Faith” had been cut off. Art historians are still uncertain what the missing sections may have depicted.

The “Allegory of Hope” had also been cut. But in that case, art historians were able to identify a figure depicting the “Suicide of Judas” in the Vasari House Museum in Arezzo as the missing element. The Judas panel is now on loan to the Gallerie dell’Accademia.

The missing panels “could be anywhere,” Manieri Elia said. “Once they entered the market, they could have followed unpredictable routes.”

That so many were found was “part miracle, part stubbornness, part continuity,” Manieri Elia added, pointing out he was just one part of a long line of museum directors, curators and culture ministry officials who had worked to recover the panels. “It’s something to be proud of,” he said.

This article originally appeared in The New York Times.