[The UK’s National Gallery will open a free exhibition in spring 2022 that will allow visitors to experience Paolo Veronese’s 1562 painting “The Consecration of Saint Nicholas” as it would have appeared in its original chapel in the church of San Benedetto al Po near Mantua, Italy. Some of the details from the National Gallery’s press release are below; see the original version for three more images and more information about the painting. A company called Immersive Promotion Design presents details about and examples from the mentioned R&D project that explored the best ways to effectively promote this and other immersive experiences; excerpts follow the press release below. And for more on user responses to Virtual Veronese including presence, see the article “Do VR and AR versions of an immersive cultural experience engender different user experiences?” by Isabelle Verhulst and her colleagues in Computers in Human Behaviour. –Matthew]

[Image: Still from inside the ‘Virtual Veronese’ Virtual Reality experience. Credit: Focal Point VR]

National Gallery reunites Veronese painting with Italian church for the first time in 200 years in digital exhibition Virtual Veronese

Issued December 2021

Gallery F
7 March 2022 – 3 April 2022
Admission free, ticketed

The National Gallery is to bring a sixteenth-century altarpiece back to the chapel for which it was created, for the first time in over 200 years, through a new digital experience.

Visitors to the Gallery will experience Veronese’s painting The Consecration of Saint Nicholas as it would have been seen in its original Italian church setting in 1562 by using virtual reality headsets. The free digital exhibition will be available in 20-minute ticketed sessions that will be available from the Gallery’s website from late January.

Through this innovative experience, visitors will be able to see the painting in its original chapel in the church of San Benedetto al Po, near Mantua, and explore the beautiful frescoes and architecture that once surrounded it. Visitors will be able to choose from one of two virtual guides who will lead them through the experience: our curator, Dr Rebecca Gill, who explores the painting and frescoes, or the historical figure of Abbot Asola, who commissioned the painting from Veronese and reveals the threat facing the monastery at the time.

‘Virtual Veronese’, which creates a 3D model of the chapel, began as a research and development project looking at how the Gallery can share research with a wider audience by using immersive technologies to explore new ways of telling its stories.

Veronese’s ‘The Consecration of Saint Nicholas’ was commissioned in 1561 as an altarpiece to hang in San Benedetto al Po, the abbey church of one of the largest and most important Benedictine monasteries in Europe.

The church had been radically remodelled and enlarged in 1539 by Giulio Romano, Raphael’s prime pupil and himself a great painter and architect.

The altarpiece remained in San Benedetto al Po until the 1820s, when it was removed from the church during the Napoleonic Wars.

The digital experience is accompanied by a recording of Gregorian chant, performed by Veneti Cantores. The piece of music is taken from a choral book that was produced at San Benedetto al Po in the 1560s and is therefore contemporary with Veronese’s altarpiece. The music that you hear is the same as that performed by the monks nearly 500 years ago.

Lawrence Chiles, Head of Digital at the National Gallery, London, says: ‘‘Virtual Veronese’ has enabled us to understand how immersive storytelling can add depth of experience, meaning, and emotion to Gallery visitors’ engagement with our paintings.’

Dr Rebecca Gill, Ahmanson Curator in Art and Religion (August 2016 – March 2020), at the National Gallery, London, says: ‘Through this project we are able to bring architecture into the Gallery and allow our visitors to explore for themselves what it might have been like to stand in front of Veronese’s painting some 500 years ago.’

‘Virtual Veronese’ is curated by Dr Rebecca Gill, Ahmanson Curator in Art and Religion (August 2016 – March 2020), at the National Gallery, London.

This experience is for visitors aged 13 years or over.

Commissioned by the National Gallery and StoryFutures

Virtual Veronese was commissioned as part of the Gallery’s partnership with StoryFutures, funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council’s Creative Cluster’s programme to drive innovation and growth in the UK’s creative economy.

Virtual Veronese is an exciting example of new forms of research and development funded by the AHRC’s Creative Cluster’s programme.

The immersive experience was developed and produced by Focal Point VR, https://focalpointvr.com

Supported by Howard and Roberta Ahmanson.

—

[From Immersive Promotion Design (“leading the way in the creation of a reimagined promotional language for the immersive sector, one that goes beyond gaming audiences and science-fiction imagery”). These are text excerpts only – see the original version for a lot more information and multimedia examples of the promotional materials from the project. –ML]

Virtual Veronese by The National Gallery
R&D Campaign

CREATOR’S STATEMENT

Virtual Veronese is a research and development (R&D) prototype funded by StoryFutures Academy for The National Gallery in 2019. Produced by Focal Point VR, the project aimed to enable StoryFutures Academy to better understand how immersive technologies can add depth of information, meaning and emotion to Gallery visitors’ experiences of paintings. For two weeks in the National Gallery, through a combination of VR and AR headsets (Oculus Quest and Magic Leap/Prism Mira), visitors were invited to experience Paolo Veronese’s painting The Consecration of Saint Nicholas as it would have been seen in its original chapel setting in 1562. Virtual Veronese is a prototype, allowing StoryFutures to collect audience feedback that informed future project development. Best categorised as a Wonder in Education in terms of immersive format, Virtual Veronese is a site-specific experience. The audience role is that of a passive observer, transforming visitors into a version of you during the chapel-set historical elements.

BACKGROUND RESEARCH

Research shows that VR and AR are not markedly different in terms of current sites of audience engagement: both technologies are most popular in the home amongst younger audiences, and both see a decline in this popularity at home with audiences over the age of 25. Both VR and AR are often most commonly consumed outside of the home amongst audiences over the age of 25. As of 2020, for example, between only 6% and 10% of VR consumption in the UK is said to take place in museums or galleries, at least amongst the 16-29 demographic. The fact that approximately 86% of all immersive activity across the various demographics is believed to be undertaken as a largely social activity is also not especially welcome news when attempting to promote an experience like Virtual Veronese.

As such, our R&D content aimed to engage younger audiences through relevant digital channels, doing so by repositioning the Virtual Veronese experience’s use of VR and AR technologies in terms of ‘context effect’. Context effect is an aspect of cognitive psychology that describes the influence of environmental factors on one’s perception of a stimulus. Context affect is known to alter the perception of an artwork: for example, a piece of art presented in a museum setting is far more likely to be liked more and rated as more interesting than if it were presented in, say, a laboratory setting. Could this approach to context motivate non-art enthusiasts aged between 16-29 to attend an art exhibition at The National Gallery?

NB: The below material was produced as a research project, and did not form part of a real marketing campaign. It was informed by the Immersive Promotion Bible, funded by StoryFutures Academy, 2020.

PROMOTIONAL STRATEGY:

• Aim: To explore if promoting VR/AR as a form of ‘context effect’ can encourage audiences with varying levels of familiarity and engagement with immersive technologies to attend an art exhibition at The National Gallery.

• Title of campaign: ‘See for Yourself’.

• Strategy summary: Taping into our understanding of immersion as that which brings a stronger connection with the world around you, the campaign is a demonstration of the ‘Mary the Colour-blind Neuroscientist’ thought experiment, otherwise known as the ‘knowledge argument‘, in this case using the topic of Paolo Veronese and his paintings to communicate the philosophical idea that we may not truly understand our own lives if we choose not to acquire our knowledge through first-hand experience. The ‘everyday miracle’ of the campaign is rooted in how we can all gain more transcendent knowledge through engaging with more personal experiences – in this case, through VR and AR.

AUDIENCE EVALUATION: WHAT WE DID

• In order to evaluate what worked about our promotion and what was less effective, we tested it out on 750 people.
• Respondents were all based across the UK, of various ages (16-50+), a mix of male (45%) and female (55%), and with very different levels of familiarity with immersive technologies. This evaluation was done via an online survey.
• In addition to more general findings, our evaluation focused on the following four questions in particular:

1. 1. What is the relationship between response to our overall promotion and the age and gender of respondents?
   2. What is the relationship between current familiarity or engagement with VR/AR technologies and which individual piece of promotion our respondents found to be the most emotionally engaging?
   3. What is the relationship between where respondents currently experience VR/AR (e.g. VR films, AR games) and what they anticipated Virtual Veronese’s intended audience role and level of interactivity to be, based on our promotion?
   4. What is the relationship between what respondents generally find to be most appealing about VR/AR technologies and which immersive characteristics they believed had been communicated most effectively in our promotion?

AUDIENCE EVALUATION: WHAT WE FOUND

[See the project’s web page.  –ML]