A Popular Handbook to the National Gallery, Volume I, Foreign Schools / Including by Special Permission Notes Collected from the Works of John Ruskin

by Unknown

777. MADONNA AND CHILD.

Paolo Morando (Veronese: 1486-1522). See 735.

A picture of great beauty, which goes far to justify the title of "the Raphael of the Veronese School" by which Morando has been distinguished. Every visitor will be struck by the unpretentious simplicity of conception, the rich colours and the sweet faces—with just a dash of Raphaelesque affectation. It is interesting to note that Morando was almost exactly contemporary with Raphael, while his art exhibits a maturity developed under totally different circumstances. For Morando never left Verona, and was thus, says Sir F. Burton, "a pure growth of the native Veronese School. His colouring, though often brilliant, is rather cold; the pale flesh-tints, glossy in surface, are shadowed with grey, and even the lake reds introduced in garments tend towards that purplish hue which the best colourists avoid."