His most famous works are elaborate narrative cycles, executed in a dramatic and colorful style, full of majestic architectural settings and glittering pageantry. His large paintings of biblical feasts, crowded with figures, painted for the refectories of monasteries in Venice andVerona are especially famous, and he was also the leading Venetian painter of ceilings. Most of these works remainin situ, or at least in Venice, and his representation in most museums is mainly composed of smaller works such as portraits that do not always show him at his best or most typical.
He has always been appreciated for "the chromatic brilliance of his palette, the splendor and sensibility of his brushwork, the aristocratic elegance of his figures, and the magnificence of his spectacle", but his work has been felt "not to permit expression of the profound, the human, or the sublime", and of the "great trio" he has often been the least appreciated by modern criticism.[1] Nonetheless, "many of the greatest artists ... may be counted among his admirers, includingRubens,Watteau,Tiepolo,Delacroix, andRenoir".[3]
Veronese took his usual name from his birthplace ofVerona, then the largest possession of Venice on the mainland. The census in Verona attests that Veronese was born sometime in 1528 to astonecutter, orspezapreda in theVenetian language, named Gabriele, and his wife Caterina. He was their fifth child.[4] It was common for surnames to be taken from a father's profession, and thus Veronese was known as Paolo Spezapreda. He later changed his name to Paolo Caliari, because his mother was the illegitimate daughter of a nobleman called Antonio Caliari.[5] His earliest known painting is signed "P. Caliari F., "the first known instance in which he used this surname", and after using "Paolo Veronese" for several years in Venice, after about 1575 he resumed signing his paintings as "Paolo Caliari".[5] He was often called "Paolo Veronese" before the last century to distinguish him from another painter from Verona, "Alessandro Veronese", now known asAlessandro Turchi (1578–1649).[6]
By 1541, Veronese was apprenticed withAntonio Badile, who was later to become his father-in-law, and in 1544 was an apprentice ofGiovanni Francesco Caroto; both were leading painters in Verona.[5] An altarpiece painted by Badile in 1543 includes striking passages that were most likely the work of his fifteen-year-old apprentice; Veronese's precocious gifts soon surpassed the level of the workshop, and by 1544 he was no longer residing with Badile.[7] Although trained in the culture ofMannerism then popular inParma, he soon developed his own preference for a more radiant palette.[8]
In his late teens he painted works for important churches in Verona, and in 1551 he was commissioned by the Venetian branch of the importantGiustiniani family to paint the altarpiece for their chapel in the church ofSan Francesco della Vigna, which was then being entirely rebuilt to the design ofJacopo Sansovino. In the same year he worked on the decoration of the Villa Soranzo nearTreviso, with his fellow VeroneseGiovanni Battista Zelotti andAnselmo Canneri; only fragments of the frescos remain, but they seem to have been important in establishing his reputation. The description byCarlo Ridolfi nearly a century later mentions that one of the mythological subjects wasThe Family of Darius before Alexander, the rare subject in Veronese's grandest treatment of secular history, now in theNational Gallery, London.[9]
St Mark,San Sebastiano (1556–57)House of Veronese in Venice
Veronese moved to Venice in 1553 after obtaining his first state commission, ceilings in fresco decorating theSala dei Consiglio dei Dieci (the Hall of theCouncil of Ten) and the adjoiningSala dei Tre Capi del Consiglio in theDoge's Palace, in the new rooms replacing those lost in the fire of 1547. His panel ofJupiter Hurling Thunderbolts at the Vices for the former is now in theLouvre. He then painted aHistory of Esther on the ceiling for the church ofSan Sebastiano (1556–57). It was these ceiling paintings and those of 1557 in theMarciana Library (for which he was awarded a prize judged by Titian and Sansovino) that established him as a master among his Venetian contemporaries.[12] Already these works indicate Veronese's mastery in reflecting both the subtle foreshortening of the figures ofCorreggio and the heroism of those byMichelangelo.[13]
By 1556, Veronese was commissioned to paint the first of his monumental banquet scenes, theFeast in the House of Simon, which would not be concluded until 1570. Owing to its scattered composition and lack of focus, however, it was not his most successful refectory mural.[14] In the late 1550s, during a break in his work for San Sebastiano, Veronese decorated theVilla Barbaro inMaser, a newly finished building by the architectAndrea Palladio. The frescoes were designed to unite humanistic culture with Christian spirituality; wall paintings included portraits of theBarbaro family,[15] and the ceilings opened to blue skies and mythological figures. Veronese's decorations employed complex perspective andtrompe-l'œil, and resulted in a luminescent and inspired visual poetry.[16] The encounter between architect and artist was a triumph.[17]
TheWedding at Cana, painted in 1562–1563, was also a collaboration with Palladio. It was commissioned by theBenedictine monks for theSan Giorgio Maggiore Monastery, on the eponymous small island across from Saint Mark's, in Venice. The contract insisted on the huge size (to cover 66 square meters), and that the pigment and colors should be of premium quality. For example, the contract specified that the blues should contain the precious minerallapis-lazuli.[18] The contract also specified that the painting should include as many figures as possible. There are a number of portraits (including those of Titian and Tintoretto, as well as a self-portrait of Veronese) staged upon a canvas surface nearly ten meters wide. The scene, taken from the New TestamentBook of John, II, 1–11, represents the first miracle performed by Jesus, the making of wine from water, at a marriage inCana,Galilee. The foreground celebration, a frieze of figures painted in the most shimmering finery, is flanked by two sets of stairs leading back to a terrace, Romancolonnades, and a brilliant sky.[16]
In the refectory paintings, as inThe Family of Darius before Alexander (1565–1570),[19] Veronese arranged the architecture to run mostly parallel to the picture plane, accentuating the processional character of the composition. The artist's decorative genius was to recognize that dramatic perspectival effects would have been tiresome in a living room or chapel, and that the narrative of the picture could best be absorbed as a colorful diversion.[20] These paintings offer little in the representation of emotion; rather, they illustrate the carefully composed movement of their subjects along a primarily horizontal axis. Most of all they are about the incandescence of light and color.[21] The exaltation of such visual effects may have been a reflection of the artist's personal well-being, for in 1565 Veronese married Elena Badile, the daughter of his first master, and by whom he would eventually have a daughter and four sons.[21]
Also painted between 1565 and 1570 is hisMadonna and Child with St. Elizabeth, the Infant St. John the Baptist, and St. Justina (now in theTimken Museum of Art, San Diego). In this workSt. Justina, a patroness ofPadua and Venice, is at the right with the Blessed Virgin Mother and the Christ child in the center. In contrast to Italian works of a century earlier the infant is rendered convincingly as an infant. What makes one stop and take notice in this painting is the infant's reaching out to St. Justina, since a baby of this age would normally limit his gaze to his mother. Completing the work is St. Elizabeth, the cousin of Mary and mother ofSt. John the Baptist, located on the left. The artist delicately balances the forms of the extendedHoly Family and renders them using a superb balance of warm and cool colors.
In 1573 Veronese completed the commission forThe Feast in the House of Levi, a last-supper painting for the rear wall of the refectory at theBasilica di Santi Giovanni e Paolo, Castello, Venice. Originally titledThe Last Supper, the painting was to replace a Titian painting burnt in a fire; Veronese's oversized (5.55m x 12.80m) replacement depicted a Last Supper banquet scene that included German soldiers, dwarves, and animals – the human and animal exotica usual to Veronese's representational narratives.[22] Artistically,The Feast in the House of Levi indicates Veronese's technical development in using intense and luminous colors for texture, attention to narrative coherence, the acute representation of human emotion, and the psychologically subtle interplay occurring among the characters who crowd the scene.[23]
The Feast in the House of Levi (1573) featured people and animals that the Inquisition perceived as heretical. The Inquisitors'investigation found no heresy, yet ordered Paolo Veronese to re-title the painting something other thanThe Last Supper, the original title.
Given the subject of the painting, the biblicalLast Supper, thehumanistic depictions of the characters lacked the piousness usual toRoman Catholic art depicting the Christ character and the events of his life; and theInquisition readily noticed Veronese's irreligiosity. By the 1570s, the theology of theCounter-Reformation had given legal authority to Roman Catholic doctrine in Venice, which was a new, political development for an artist such as Veronese. In theVenetian republic of the Late–Renaissance, for an artist, painting crowd scenes had acquired political ramifications regarding who and what appeared in a religious painting commissioned from him, regardless of the patron or patroness.
A decade earlier, the Benedictine monks who commissionedThe Wedding at Cana (1563) had directed Veronese to freely include as many human figures as would fit in the banquet scene. In contrast, a decade later, Veronese encountered legal, religious constraints that determined the suitability (theological, political, sociological) of who and what he depicted in a painting—thus, on 18 July 1573, Veronese was summoned before theVenetian Holy Inquisition to explain the presence of what Church doctrine considered characters, animals, and indecorum extraneous to an image of theLast Supper of the Christ.[24]
The tribunal's interrogation of Veronese was cautionary, rather than punitive; political, rather than judicial; nonetheless, Veronese explained to the Inquisitiors that "we painters take the same liberties as poets and madmen" in telling a story. Although the Inquisition's tribunal ordered Veronese to repaint the last-supper scene, he opposed their remedy to his theological offences, yet was compelled to re-title the painting from the sacramentalThe Last Supper toThe Feast in the House of Levi.[25] That an artist, such as Veronese, had successfully perdured against the Inquisition's implied accusation ofheresy, indicated he had the discreet political support of apatrician patron of the arts.[26]
A fuller biography of Veronese had to awaitLe maraviglie dell'arte ovvero le vite degli illustri pittori Veneti e dello stato (1648), byCarlo Ridolfi, a compilation of theVenetian School painters. Ridolfi said that Veronese's painting ofThe Feast in the House of Levi (1573) is "by far, the most important source for our knowledge of his art"[3] because "it gave rein to joy, made beauty majestic, made laughter, itself, more festive".[27]
In 2014, the art historianCharles Hope wrote of Veronese's strengths and weaknesses: "He is notable above all as a colorist who used a range of bright hues with a boldness unmatched in his time and scarcely equaled since", but because his use of color "was often calculated to create a harmonious overall effect rather than to single out the main protagonists", his paintings convey little narrative drama. According to Hope, "the effect is sumptuous, seductive but ultimately excessive and a little monotonous, rather like a visit to a patisserie."[28]
InPaintings in the Louvre (1987),Lawrence Gowing’s modern assessment of Paolo Veronese’s artistic achievement is that:
The French had no doubts, as the criticThéophile Gautier wrote in 1860, that Veronese was the greatest colorist who ever lived—greater than Titian, Rubens, or Rembrandt because he established the harmony of natural tones in place of the modeling in dark and light that remained the method of academic chiaroscuro. Delacroix wrote that Veronese made light without violent contrasts, "which we are always told is impossible, and maintained the strength of hue in shadow".
This innovation could not be better described. Veronese’s bright outdoor harmonies enlightened and inspired the whole nineteenth century. He was the foundation of modern painting. But whether his style is in fact naturalistic, as theImpressionists thought, or a most subtle and beautiful imaginative invention must remain a question for each age to answer for itself.[29]
In addition to the ceiling creations and wall paintings, Veronese also produced altarpieces (The Consecration of Saint Nicholas, 1561–62, London'sNational Gallery[30]), paintings on mythological subjects (Venus and Mars, 1578, New YorkMetropolitan Museum of Art[31]), and portraits (Portrait of a Lady, 1555,Louvre). A significant number of compositional sketches in pen, ink, and wash, figure studies in chalk, andchiaroscuromodelli andricordi survive.
He headed a family workshop, including his younger brotherBenedetto (1538–1598) as well as his sonsCarlo andGabriele, and his nephewLuigi Benfatto (also called dal Friso; 1559–1611), that remained active for a decade or so after his death in Venice in 1588, signing their work "Haeredes Pauli" ("Heirs of Paolo"), and continuing to use his drawings. According toNicholas Penny, "The role of the workshop seems to have increased steadily, and after 1580 it is rare that we can feel confident that Veronese's was the sole hand involved".[3] Among his pupils were his contemporaryGiovanni Battista Zelotti and later,Giovanni Antonio Fasolo,Sigismondo de Stefani, andAnselmo Canneri.[32] The Caliari family continued and another Paolo Caliari published the firstmonograph on his ancestor in 1888.[3]
Veronese was one of the first painters whose drawings were sought by collectors during his lifetime.[33]
^Penny, 331; Freedberg, 551 andpassim in the following pages on the influence of Romano.
^Penny, 331; Dunkerton, Jill, et al.:Durer to Veronese: Sixteenth-Century Painting in the National Gallery, page 125. National Gallery Publications, 1999.
^ThePortrait of Daniele Barbaro, painted 1566–67, entered the collection of the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam in 1952.Veronese: Gods, Heroes and Allegories, De Vecchi, Pierluigi, pages 104–5. Rizzoli, 2004.
^*Bernasconi, Cesare (1864).Painting Studi sopra la storia della pittura italiana dei secoli xiv e xv e della scuola pittorica veronese dai medi tempi fino tutto il secolo xviii. Googlebooks. pp. 337–338, 343.
^Eisler, Colin:Masterworks in Berlin: A City's Paintings Reunited, page 270. Little, Brown and Company, 1996.
Freedberg, Sydney J. (1993). Pelican History of Art (ed.).Painting in Italy, 1500–1600. Penguin Books Ltd. pp. 550–60.
Ilchman, Frederick,et al.,Titian, Veronese, Tintoretto: Rivals in Renaissance Venice, MFA Publications, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, 2009,ISBN978-0878467396
Penny, Nicholas, National Gallery Catalogues (new series):The Sixteenth Century Italian Paintings, Volume II, Venice 1540–1600, 2008, National Gallery Publications Ltd,ISBN1857099133
Rearick, W. R.,The Art of Paolo Veronese 1528–1588, National Gallery of Art, 1988
Rosand, David,Painting in Sixteenth-Century Venice: Titian, Veronese, Tintoretto, 2nd ed. 1997, Cambridge University Press,ISBN0521565685
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