His first masters, according to Mr. Berenson, were Badile and Brusasorci, masters of Verona, but before he was twenty, he was away working on his own account. His first patron was Cardinal Gonzaga, who brought several painters from Verona to Mantua; but Mantua was no longer what it had been in the days of Isabela d’Este, and Paolo Caliari soon returned to his own town. Before he was twenty-three he had decorated Villa Porti, near Vicenza, in collaboration with Zelotti, a Veronese, portraying feasting gods and goddesses, framed in light architectural designs in monochrome. The two painters went on to other villas, mixing mortal and mythical figures in a happy, light-hearted medley.
Zelotti having received a commission at Vicenza, Paolo decided to seek his fortune in Venice. The Prior of the Convent of San Sebastiano, on the Zattere, was a Veronese, and Caliari wrote to him before arriving in Venice in 1555. Thanks to the good Prior, who played a considerable part in his destiny, he obtained a commission for a “Coronation of the Virgin and four other Saints.” He first painted the sacristy, but his success was instantaneous, and many orders followed. The ceiling of the church was devoted to the history of Esther. The whole of these paintings are marvellously well preserved, and, inset in the carved and gilt framework, make a coup d’œil of surprising beauty. They had an immense effect. Every one was able to appreciate these joyous pictures of Venice, the loveliness of her skies, the pomp of her ceremonies, the rich Eastern stuffs and the glorious architecture of her palaces. It was an auspicious moment for a painter of Veronese’s temper; the so-called Republic, now, more than ever, an oligarchy, was at the height of its fortunes, redecorating was going forward everywhere, the merchant-nobility was rich and spending magnificently, the Eastern trade was flourishing, Venice was in all her glory. The patrons Caliari came to work for, preferred the ceremonial to the imaginative treatment of sacred themes, and he does not choose the tragedies of the Bible for illustration. He paints the history of Esther, with its royal audiences, banquets, and marriage-feasts. His Christs and Maries and Martyrs are composed, courtly personages, who maintain a dignified calm under misfortune, and have very little violent feeling to show.
At the time of his arrival in Venice, Palma Vecchio was just dead, Tintoretto was absorbed by the Scuola di San Rocco, Paris Bordone was with Francis I. As rivals, Caliari had Salviati, Bonifazio, Schiavone, and Zelotti, all rendering homage to Titian who was eighty years old, but still in full vigour. Titian’s opinions in matters of art were dictates, his judgment was a law. He immediately recognised Veronese’s genius, which was of a kind to appeal to him, and together with Sansovino, who at this time was Director of Buildings to the Signoria, he received the young painter with an approval which ensured him a good start. Five years after Veronese’s arrival he was retained to decorate the Villa Barbaro at Maser, which is a type of those patrician country-houses to which the Venetians were becoming more attached every year. Daniele Barbaro, Patriarch of Aquileia, whose magnificent portrait by Veronese is in the Pitti, was himself an artist and designed the ceiling of the Hall of the Council of Ten. Palladio, Alessandro Vittoria, and Veronese were associated to build him a dwelling worthy of a Prince of the Church. In style the villa is a total contrast to the gorgeous Venetian palaces; it is sober and simple, and well adapted to leisure and retirement. Its white stucco walls and decorations are devoid of gilding and colour, and the rooms adorned by Veronese’s brush show him in quite a new light. His visit to Rome did not take place till four years later, but he has been influenced here by the feeling for the antique, and he thinks much of line and style. He leaves on one side the gorgeous brocades and gleaming satins, in which he usually delights, and his nymphs are only clothed in their own beauty. And here Veronese shows his admirable taste and discretion; his patrons, the Barbaro family, are his friends, men and women of the world, who put no restraint on his fancy, and are not prone to censure, and Veronese, with the bridle on his neck, so to speak, uses his opportunities fully, yet never exceeds the limits of good taste. He is not gross and sensual like Rubens, but proud, grave and sweet, seductive, but never suggestive or vulgar. After having placed single figures wherever he can find a nook, he assembles all the gods of Olympia at a supper in the cupola. Immortality is a beautiful young woman seated on a cloud. Mercury gazes at her, caduceus in hand; Diana caresses her great hound; Saturn, an old man, rests his head on his hand; Mars, Apollo, Venus, and a little cupid are scattered in the Empyrean, and Jupiter presides over the party. Below, a balcony rail runs round the cupola, and looking over it, an old lady, dressed in the latest fashion, points out the company to a beautiful young one and to a young man in a doublet who holds a hound in a leash. They are evidently family portraits, taken from those who looked on at the artist, and on the other side he has introduced members of his own family who were helping him. These decorations have a gaiety, an absence of pedantry, a sound and sane sympathy with the spirit of the Renaissance which tell of a happy moment when art was at its height and in touch with its environment. From about 1563 we may begin to date his great supper pictures. The Marriage of Cana (Louvre), one of his most famous works, was painted for the refectory in Sammichele, the old part of S. Giorgio Maggiore. The treaty for it is still in existence, dated June 1562. The artist asks for a year; the Prior is to furnish canvas and colours, the painter’s board, and a cask of wine. The further payment of 972 ducats illustrates the prices received by the greatest artists at the height of the Renaissance: £280 for work which occupied quite eight months.
Veronese must have delighted in painting this work. Needless to say, it is not in the least religious. He has united in it all the most varied personages who struck his imagination. So we see a Spanish grandee, Francis I., Suleiman the Sultan, Charles V., Vittoria Colonna, and Eleanor of Austria. In the foreground, grouped round a table, are Veronese himself, playing the viol, Tintoretto accompanying him, Jacopo da Ponte seated by them, and Paolo’s brother, the architect, with his hand on his hip, tossing off a full glass; and in the governor of the feast, opulent and gorgeously attired, we recognise Aretino. Under the marble columns of a Grimani or a Pesaro, he brings in all the illustrious actors of his own time and leaves us an odd and informing document. We can but accept the scene and admire the originality of its design and the freedom of its execution, its boldness and fancy, the way in which the varied incidents are brought into harmony, and the grace of the colonnade, peopled with spectators, standing out against the depth of distant sky.
The celebrated suppers, of which this is the first example, are dispersed in different galleries and some have disappeared, but from this time Veronese loved to paint these great displays, repeating some of them, but always introducing variety.
Paolo Veronese. MARRIAGE IN CANA. Louvre.
(Photo, Mansell and Co.)
In 1564 he accompanied Girolamo Grimani, procurator of St. Mark’s, who was appointed ambassador to the Holy See, and for the first time saw the works of Raphael and Michelangelo and the treasures of antiquity. For a time, the sight of the antique had some effect upon his work; in his famous ceiling in the Louvre, “Jupiter destroying the Vices,” the influence of Michelangelo is apparent and its large gestures are inspired by sculpture. Ridolfi says that Veronese brought home casts from Rome, and statues of Amazons and the Laocoon seem to have inspired the Jupiter. He did not go on long in this path; he does not really care for the nude—it is too simple for him. He prefers that his saints and divinities should appear in the gorgeous costumes of the day, and that his Venus and Diana and the nymphs should trail in rich brocades. But few documents are left concerning his work for the Ducal Palace up to 1576; much of it was destroyed in the great fire, but the Signoria then gave him a number of fresh commissions. The most important was the immense oval of the “Triumph of Venice,” or, as it is sometimes called, the “Thanksgiving for Lepanto”; the Republic crowned by victory and surrounded by allegorical figures, Glory, Peace, Happiness, Ceres, Juno and the rest. The composition shows the utmost freedom: the fair Queen leans back, surrounded by laughing patricians, who look up from their balconies, as if they were attending a regatta on the Grand Canal. The horses of the Free Companions, the soldiers who go afar to carry out the will of the Republic, prance in a crowd of personages, each of whom represents a town or colony of her domain. Like all Veronese’s creations, this will always be pre-eminently a picture of the sixteenth century, dated by a thousand details of costume, architecture, and armour. Venice, the Venice of Lepanto and the Venier, of Titian, Aretino, and Veronese himself, makes a deep impression upon us, and the artist reflects his age with sympathetic spontaneity.
Hardly a hall of the Ducal Palace but can show a canvas of Veronese or the assistants by whom he was now surrounded. From time to time he resumed the decorations of S. Sebastiano, and his incessant production betrays no trace of fatigue or languor. The martyrdom of the saint is a triumph of the beauty of the silhouette against a radiant sky. He goes back to Verona and paints the “Martyrdom of St. George.” He pours light into it. The saints open a shining path, down which a flower-crowned Love flutters with the diadem and palm of victory. The whole air and expression of St. George is full of strength and that look of goodness and serenity which is the painter’s nearest approach to religious feeling. Veronese was created a Chevalier of St. Mark; every one was asking for his services, but he was a stay-at-home by nature and fond of living with his family. Philip II. longed to get him to cover his great walls in the Escurial, but he very civilly declined all his invitations and sent Federigo Zucchero in his stead.