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COLOURS USED IN
PAINTING
For an idea of the pigments
used by Paolo Veronese
in his colour painting, see:
Renaissance
Colour Palette.
WORLDS TOP ARTISTS
For top creative practitioners, see:
Best Artists of All Time.
For the greatest view painters, see:
Best Landcape Artists.
For the greatest still life art, see:
Best Still Life Painters.
For the greatest portraitists
see: Best Portrait Artists.
For the greatest genre-painting, see:
Best Genre Painters.
For the top allegorical painting,
see: Best History Painters.
AESTHETICS
For a discussion about the
meaning and defintion of art,
see: What is Art?
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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".
The next collaboration with Andrea Palladio
led to Veronese's greatest work - The Wedding at Cana (1560, Gemäldegalerie,
Dresden), painted during the years 1562-1563. 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 pigment and colours 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 works were 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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