Paolo Veronese
Biography of 16th-Century Venetian Mannerist
Painter and Colourist.
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Paolo Veronese |
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Paolo Veronese (1528-1588)Along with Titian and Tintoretto, Paolo Veronese is one of the leading painters of the late Renaissance in Venice. Born Paolo Caliari, his nickname Veronese derives from Verona, the city of his birth. Renowned as one of the great colourists in sixteenth century Venetian painting, he is best known for his monumental banquet scenes - depicted in paintings like The Wedding at Cana and The Feast in the House of Levi, executed for monastic refectories in the typically dramatic and colourful Mannerist style - as well as his illusionistic fresco decorations. Like his cinquecento rival Jacopo Tintoretto (1518-1594), Veronese built upon the work of Titian (c.1488-1576), the father of High Renaissance painting in Venice. But while Tintoretto's reputation is derived from his development of Titian's use of dramatic light and emotional intensity, Veronese achieved his by developing Titian's mastery of colour painting - what was dismissively known as colorito by artists in Rome. A particularly versatile artist, Veronese's oeuvre encompasses frescoes, altarpieces, mythological narratives and portraits. Other important works include Madonna with the Cuccina Family (1571, Gemaldegalerie, Alte Meister, Dresden), Bathsheba in Her Bath (1575, Museum of Fine Arts, Lyon), and Four Allegories of Love (c.1580, The National Gallery, London). |
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Biography The son of a stonecutter, Veronese trained first with the undistinguished local master Antonio Badile (c.1518-60), and also with Giovanni Francesco Caroto. Veronese's precocious talent for drawing enabled him to quit the workshop by the age of 16, and by 1548 he was in Mantua painting religious frescos. From Mantua he moved to Venice, where his first commission was a Sacra Conversazione from San Francesco della Vigna (c.1552). In 1553, Veronese was awarded the commission to decorate the Sala dei Cosiglio dei Dieci (the Hall of the Council of Ten) as well as the Sala dei Tre Capi del Consiglio next door. However, it was his three ceiling frescoes - for the church of San Sebastiano, the Doge's Palace, and the Marciana Library, (the latter won him a prize awarded personally by Titian), that secured his reputation as one of the leading Mannerist artists in Venice, and triggered comparisons with the figurative work of Correggio and the heroic features of Michelangelo. In about 1556 Veronese began painting the first of his large scale banquet scenes, the Feast in the House of Simon, which was not completed until 1570. In addition, at about the same time, during a pause in his work for San Sebastiano, he collaborated with the architect Andrea Palladio in the decoration of the Villa Barbaro in Maser. Veronese's fine art painting aimed to fuse Christian spirituality with humanistic philosophy - the murals featured portraits of the Barbaro family, while the ceilings were filled with mythological figures set against blue skies - and employed a rich combination of complex perspective and trompe l'oeil. The result was described by contemporaries as "visual poetry". |
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The next collaboration with Andrea Palladio led to Veronese's greatest work - The Wedding at Cana (1562-3, Gemaldegalerie, Dresden). Commissioned by the Benedictine Abbot at the San Giorgio Maggiore Monastery, close to St Marks in Venice, the contract required the painting to occupy a massive 66 square meters, and stipulated that the quality of the colour pigments should be the finest available. As many figures as possible were to be included. As it was, Veronese included a staggering 300 portraits (including those of Titian, Tintoretto, and even Veronese himself) on a canvas almost 10 metres wide. The subject, a scene from the New Testament Gospel of John, II, 1-11, depicts the first miracle performed by Jesus, the turning of water into wine at a marriage in Cana, Galilee. The foreground of the picture contains a frieze of figures depicted in the most intricate and shimmering detail (personal jewellery, food on the plates etc.) flanked by two sets of steps leading to a background terrace, Roman-style colonnades, and a brilliant sky. Works like The Wedding at Cana, and The Family of Darius before Alexander (1565-1570) have little if any any emotional content - instead, their prime attraction is their narrative tableau of figures bursting with luminescence and colour. In 1573, Veronese decorated the rear wall of the refectory of the Basilica di Santi Giovanni e Paolo with The Feast in the House of Levi. The picture, intended to replace a canvas by Titian that had been destroyed in a fire, measured more than 5 metres high and 12 metres wide and depicted the Biblical scene of The Last Supper, augmented with German soldiers, and a host of exotica including midgets and animals. Unfortunately, not everyone was pleased with the extraneous, irreligious detail. Questioned by the Inquisition in July 1573, Veronese pointed out that painters customarily took the same liberties as poets and madmen. However, in deference to Ecclesiastical sensibilities, he renamed the painting The Feast in the House of Levi. As well as murals and ceiling frescoes, Veronese also completed a number of altarpieces (eg. The Consecration of Saint Nicholas, 1561-2, London's National Gallery), pictures of mythological subjects (eg. Venus and Mars, 1578, New York Metropolitan Museum of Art), and portraits (Portrait of a Lady, 1555, Louvre). Like most Renaissance Old Masters, he also composed a large number of sketches in pen and ink, along with figure drawings in chalk. To assist him in plotting the effects of light, he also produced a variety of chiaroscuro models. For a good deal of his career, Veronese was in competition with Tintoretto (1518-94), although in general they worked for different markets. Tintoretto focused on religious paintings while Veronese also executed numerous secular works. And while Tintoretto worked only in Venice, and focused almost exclusively on oil painting, some of Veronese's best art was produced outside Venice and in fresco. Stylewise they had even less in common: while Tintoretto's paintings were intensely emotional, and typically set out in a dark brooding atmosphere, Veronese favoured the clear light of day and subjects that made their impact through pomp and pageantry - bearing witness to the material splendour of Venice in its Golden Age. |
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Artistic Reputation According to the modernist critic Théophile Gautier, writing in 1860, Paolo Veronese was the greatest colorist who ever lived - greater even than Titian or Rubens - because he maintained a range of natural tones instead of the standard Academic-style method of dark and light chiaroscuro. The famous 19th century French Romantic painter Eugene Delacroix put it simply when he said that Veronese made light without violent contrasts, and maintained the strength of hue in shadow. In any event, he delighted in detailing the finery of Venice's leading citizens - his works are full of costumes in velvet and satin - and he employed a delicate palette in which pale blue, orange, silvery white and lemon yellow predominate. His prolific output was made possible through the establishment of a highly organized family studio, involving his brother Benedetto Caliari (1538-98), and sons Carlo (c.1567-96) and Gabriele (1568-1631). He had no significant pupils, but his influence on Venetian fine art was important, not least for its impact on 18th-century decorative painters like Giambattista Tiepolo (1696-1770). Works By Paolo Veronese Among the paintings executed by Veronese are the following: - St. Anthony Tempted by the Devil (1553)
Musée des Beaux-Arts, Caen Paintings by Paolo Veronese can be seen in many of the best art museums throughout the world. |
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