Veronese

Veronese defended himself as best he could. He assumed a sort of injured innocence and apparently failed to understand the enormity of the irreverence with which he was charged. Next, he took shelter behind the precedent established by the great masters. He cited Michelangelo and his Last Judgment:

“At Rome, in the Pope’s own chapel, Michelangelo has represented Our Lord, his Mother, Saint John, Saint Peter and the Celestial Choir, and he has represented them all naked, even the Virgin Mary, and that, too, in diverse attitudes, such as were certainly not inspired by our greatest of religions.”

Finally, Veronese emphatically denied the charge of any intentional irreverence toward the Church; he declared that he had simply permitted himself, perhaps wrongfully, a certain amount of license such as is accorded to poets and to fools.

His contrite attitude won him the indulgence of the Tribunal. But the judges demanded that he should correct his picture, and he was obliged to remove the dwarfs and the fools and to modify the attitude of his men at arms. This is the picture that may be seen to-day at the Accademia delle Belle Arti, at Venice, retouched in accordance with the orders of the Holy Office.

THE JOURNEY TO ROME

No documents exist regarding Veronese’s sojourn in Rome, but at all events it was fairly brief. Beyond this, we are reduced to mere conjecture. Furthermore, there is no extant evidence to sustain the idea that he practised his art in the Eternal City. If he had painted any pictures there, some trace of them would surely have been discovered. It must therefore be concluded that he contented himself with admiring the masterpieces with which his illustrious predecessors, Raphael and Michelangelo, had enriched the capital of the Pontiffs.

But his temperament was too peculiar, his manner too individual, and we may as well acknowledge, his nature too superficial, to permit of his experiencing those profound and overwhelming impressions that radically modify an artistic career.

And for this we ought rather to be thankful than to complain, since it was only his obstinate insistence upon remaining himself that saved Veronese from shipwreck upon the ever threatening reef of imitation.

THE RETURN TO VENICE

From the moment of his return to Venice, Veronese was besieged from all sides; once again he found himself enslaved to forced labor by the incessant contracts demanded of him by his fellow citizens. The scantiness of documents which we possess regarding his life does not permit us to name the chronological order in which he painted his pictures. We shall therefore gather them into groups for the sake of convenience in studying his more important works. Furthermore, to study one by one, all of his paintings, is not to be thought of; for this painter was one of the most prolific producers of which the history of art makes mention. In every one of his pictures will be found, more or less accentuated, those qualities of composition, of picturesqueness, and of colour which together constitute his glory. Accordingly we shall limit ourselves to indicating, at the different stages of his career, those pictures which show most deeply the imprint of his genius and which also are most closely related to the life of Venice of which he was, in a certain way, together with Tintoretto, the official painter. For the rest the reader may be referred to the complete catalogue of the works of Veronese given at the close of this book.

Concerning the private life of the artist we are as poorly informed as concerning the date of his pictures. We know only that he married and that he had two sons, Gabriele and Carletto. When they were old enough to hold a brush he entrusted them to Bassano, a Venetian painter whose talent he held in high esteem. As regards himself, the documents of the period vaunt his uprightness, his honesty and his keen sense of honour. Ridolfi, one of his biographers, who wrote sixty years after Veronese’s death, and relied upon the recollections of people who knew him personally, pictured him as a man of strict principles and settled habits, and economical almost to the point of avarice. He cites, as an example of this, that the artist rarely employed ultramarine, which was very costly at that time, and thus condemned his works to premature deterioration.

His fortune, the extent of which we learn from the fiscal records of Venice, consisted in a few holdings of real estate at Castelfranco in Trevisano. In 1585 he purchased a small estate at Santa Maria in Porto, not far from the Pineta of Ravenna. He also possessed a bank account representing approximately six thousand sequins. But what was that for a man who was the most famous and the most fertile artist of his time?

We have already given examples of his disinterestedness. Many a time he refused opportunities of great wealth. He even declined the offers made him by Philip II, who tried to lure him to Spain and would have entrusted him with decorating the Escurial.

It was about the period of his return to Venice that Veronese completed his celebrated picture: The Family of Darius at the Feet of Alexander after the Battle of Issus, now in the National Gallery at London. The episode is well known; Darius III., King of Persia, conquered at Issus by Alexander, sends his wife and children to beg for clemency from the victor. Admitted to the conqueror’s tent, the unfortunate wife perceives a warrior in resplendent garments whom she takes for Alexander, and throws herself at his feet. The warrior, however, is only Ephestion, Alexander’s lieutenant and friend. The wife of Darius apologizes for her mistake, but Alexander raises her up and says: “You made no mistake, he also is Alexander.”

Such is the historic theme. But what matters history to Veronese? Upon this classic subject he has built the most fantastic, the most improbable, and at the same time the most fascinating of his compositions. The picture was painted for the Pisani family which had given him hospitality, and every one of the figures contained in it represents a member of that household.

It is related that, in order to spare his hosts the necessity of thanking him or the obligation of making some return, he rolled up his canvas and slipped it behind his bed in such a way that it would not be discovered in his room until after his departure.

It is scarcely probable that Veronese could have painted so large a canvas—fourteen metres by seven—in the necessarily brief space of a friendly visit, or that he could have painted in his figures, which are all of them portraits, without the knowledge of the Pisani family. But the anecdote is so pretty that it is pleasant to accept it as true.

It was a direct descendant of the Venetian Procurator, Count Victor Pisani, who sold the painting to England in 1857.

THE DECORATION OF THE DUCAL PALACE

In 1577 a violent conflagration destroyed the greater part of the Ducal Palace. In this disaster all the pictures perished with which Tintoretto, Horatio the son of Titian, and Veronese, had decorated it.

Desiring to restore the palace promptly and give it a new splendour, the Senate appointed a committee, authorized to distribute orders among the painters and decorators of Venice. The competitors were numerous and eager to secure a chance to collaborate in so glorious an enterprise; and to this end they paid eager court to the committee. Veronese alone made no advances, being unwilling to appear solicitous. This dignified course was looked upon as excess of pride, and one day when Jacopo Contanari met him in the street he reproached him with it. Veronese replied that it was not his business to seek for honours but to be deserving of them, and that he had less skill in soliciting work than in executing it.

But they could not exclude Veronese, whose fame had now become universal. Accordingly he was chosen with Tintoretto, and to them were added Francisco Bassano and the younger Palma. The Ducal Palace is therefore a sort of museum of the works of these masters, and forms the most brilliant collection of paintings relating to the public life and the glorification of Venice.

Veronese was entrusted with the decoration of the great central oval of the ceiling, and the lateral panels. In these he painted the Defence of Scutari, the Taking of Smyrna, and the Triumph of Venice. This last named painting is considered by many as Veronese’s crowning achievement.

Venice is here represented in the form of a superb and smiling woman, seated upon the clouds, her eyes raised towards Glory, who offers her a crown. At her side, Renown celebrates her grandeur; at her feet are grouped Honour, Liberty, Peace, Juno, and Ceres; lower down an ethereal structure of admirable daring and architectural beauty sustains a great assemblage of gentlemen and ladies richly clad, of cardinals and bishops, all emulously uniting in the glorification of Venice. On the ground level standards, trophies, and cavaliers add the finishing touch to the composition, and are treated with incomparable vigour and skill both in chiaroscuro and in perspective.

Although of more modest dimensions, the Taking of Smyrna and the Defence of Scutari are in no wise inferior to the great central composition. In this same Hall of the Grand Council, Veronese painted two other great canvases, representing the Military Expedition of the Doges, Loredan and Mocenigo.

But for that matter there is not a room in the Palace of the Doges in which Veronese is not represented by one or more canvases; in the Hall of the Anticollegio, there is a ceiling painting representing Venice Enthroned, a work that has unfortunately deteriorated; in the Hall of the Collegio, a Battle of Lepanto, a Christ in Glory, Venice and the Doge Venier, a Faith, a St. Mark, and a ceiling which is considered as the most beautiful in the whole Palace of the Doges: Venice Upon the Terrestrial Globe, Between Justice and Peace. The Hall of the Council of Ten contains, in the oval ceiling panel: An Old Man resting his Head on his Hand and A Young Woman. In the Hall of the “Bussola,” St. Mark crowning the Theological Virtues, the original of which is at the present time in the Louvre. Mention should also be made of: The Triumph of the Doge Venier over the Turks; the Return of Contanari, Victor over the Genoese at Chioggia; the Emperor Frederick at the feet of Alexander III., and, in the Hall of the Ambassadors, a magnificent allegory of Venice, personified as a patrician lady seen from behind, robed in white satin and of marvellous grace.

Veronese also had a share in the decoration of another of Venice’s monumental buildings, situated near the bridge of the Rialto and known by the name of the Fondaco dei Tedeschi. This building, which is to-day occupied by the Post Office, formerly served as warehouse for German business men having commercial relations with the Republic. These rich merchants had had the palace adorned by the greatest painters in Venice. Giorgione and Titian had decorated its walls not only within, but also on the exterior, where traces of the paintings can still be seen. Veronese was entrusted with four compositions, one of which is an allegory representing Germany receiving the Imperial Crown. It is believed that the canvas now in the Museum at Berlin, entitled Jupiter, Fortune and Germany, once formed part of the decoration of the Fondaco dei Tedeschi. It was purchased at Verona in 1841. Veronese’s celebrity, about the year 1580, had become world-wide. Every sovereign who prided himself on his art gallery wished to possess some of his work. The indefatigable artist endeavoured to satisfy them all; he even corresponded personally with several of them. For the Duke of Savoy, he painted The Queen of Sheba Visiting Solomon; to the Duke of Mantua, who had honoured him with his friendship, he sent a Moses Saved from the Waters; to the Emperor Rudolph II. he gave a Cephale and Procris and a Poem of Venus. These last two canvases, of which the German Emperor was very proud, were taken from him by Gustavus Adolphus, when that triumphant conqueror passed through Vienna.

Throughout his life, Veronese remained faithful to the pompous, brilliant, ornamental school of painting. Not that he was incapable of essaying other types, but because it was his own preference to paint ease and luxury on a broad scale. He sometimes had occasion to handle more vigorous subjects, and in this he was completely successful, as the magnificent painting entitled Jupiter Destroying the Vices abundantly bears witness.

The surprise experienced in the presence of this noble work, executed with the energy of a master-hand, is surpassed only by admiration for the versatility of a genius which could at will adapt itself to unfamiliar formulas. This famous painting, proud and virile in style, was taken from Italy by the victorious Armies of France, and placed in Versailles in the chamber of Louis XIV., where for a long period it served as the ceiling decoration. It was finally removed and now hangs in the Louvre, in company of other masterpieces by the same artist.

THE LAST YEARS

The execution of his large official canvases did not prevent Veronese from responding to all the appeals which came to him from every side. His unequalled activity, his prodigious facility made it possible for him to satisfy these demands. No one knows all the pictures which he painted for private individuals, nor all the frescoes with which he adorned certain dwellings that have since disappeared. Nevertheless what a formidable list the works of this painter would make if the attempt were made to draw up such a list without omissions! Ridolfi devotes not less than thirty pages to a simple enumeration of the pictures which Veronese painted for the neighbouring islands of Venice, such as Murano and Torcello, for the country house of the Grimani at Orlago, for that of the Duke of Tuscany at Artemino, or for the Palace of the Pisani. To Verona, to Brescia, to Vicenza, to Treviso, to Padua; to Venice also, to the Frari, to Ognissanti, to the Umilta, to San Francisco del Orto, to Santa Catarina, for which he painted his famous Marriage of St. Catherine, everywhere, in short, where they required him, he sent marvellous canvases, magic with colour and with life;—canvases for which to-day museums vie with each other for their weight in gold.

But Veronese was no longer young; he had entered well into the fifties; yet nothing in his craftsmanship betrayed fatigue or waning powers. A genius almost unique, he went steadily forward and no one could say of him, in the presence of his latest productions, what has so often been said of other illustrious painters: “That is a work of his old age!” Veronese had the rare privilege of remaining young to the end.

One day, while following a procession on foot, Veronese contracted a cold, and after a brief illness he died. His obsequies took place in the parish church of San Samuele, April 19, 1588. On that day he would have completed his sixtieth year.

When we remember that, up to the eve of his death, Veronese continued to paint with as steady a hand as at the age of twenty, his death seems premature, and it is only natural to deplore that this matchless artist should have failed to obtain the ripe age of Titian. What masterpieces he might still have painted!

Such as they are, brilliant and luxuriant, his works remain the most abundant that have ever come from the palette of any one painter, and Veronese stands lastingly, in the history of Art, as the most amazing of all masters, both in colour and in composition.

THE WORKS OF PAOLO VERONESE

THE WORKS OF PAOLO VERONESE

ITALY

BELGIUM

SPAIN

GERMANY

AUSTRIA

SWEDEN

RUSSIA