The Louvre in Paris and the city of Verona on Friday signed a cooperation deal six months after the French museum pulled the plug on a long-awaited exhibition of priceless works in the Italian city.
Louvre director Henri Loyrette and Verona Mayor Flavio Tosi inked a deal that will see them exchanging masterpieces for exhibitions between 2009 and 2015.
''The accord signed today is the first the Paris museum has ever made with a European city and it sanctions a collaboration for several years on a number of initiatives based on the exchange of works and knowledge,'' Tosi said.
Projects already lined up for Verona are a show on the Impressionists in autumn 2009, followed by an exhibition focussing on Venetian Renaissance painter Paolo Veronese.
In May the Louvre cancelled a show due to have opened at Verona's Palazzo della Gran Guardia in September after the French museum said there were not sufficient safety guarantees in place to agree to the loans.
The Louvre - Masterpieces in Verona was one of the most keenly awaited exhibitions on this year's Italian calendar and art fans had already snapped up over 100,000 advance tickets.
The show was to have included works by Raphael, Rembrandt and Titian as well as masterpieces that had never left the French museum before such as Leonardo Da Vinci's Portrait of a Woman (La Belle Ferroniere) and Botticelli's Portrait of a Young Man.
