When he arrived in the Most Serene Republic, Caliari was not yet twenty-five years old. We have no reliable document regarding these first years of his residence there, nor even of the impressions produced upon him by the opulent and magnificent city. But these impressions are easy to conceive. To anyone so sensitive as he to externals, Venice must have seemed enchanted ground. How could he have failed to be dazzled, in acquainting himself with that gorgeous city, enthroned upon the Adriatic, like a pearl in a casket of velvet? With what joyous eagerness his colour-enraptured eye must have rested upon those white marble palaces, moulded and filagreed in arabesque, those churches paved with precious mosaics, those quays swarming ceaselessly with a picturesque and motley crowd of Armenians, Greeks and Moors, spreading the sun-bathed pavements with a glittering display of spangled ornaments, turquoise-inlaid cutlery, and multicoloured fabrics.
(In the Musée du Louvre)
In this work, one of the most beautiful in the Salon Carré, Veronese has grouped his figures in a charming manner. Following his customary formula, he has clothed them in the Venetian style, but the faces of the Virgin and the Child are remarkable for their tenderness. It is a matter of regret that time has faded the colours of this magnificent painting.
If the models that passed in endless procession before his eyes impressed him as magnificent opportunities, the sight of what other painters had already wrought from this material aroused his artist soul to keen enthusiasm. The whole constellation of the great Venetians had converted the city of the Doges into an incomparable museum: Giorgione, with his melancholy compositions, full of vague dreams; Carpaccio, with his naïve and picturesque reproductions of Venetian life. Among the living, Sansovino, simultaneously architect and artist, who built marvellous palaces and adorned them with graceful frescoes; Tintoretto, sombre genius whose creative power largely redeemed the somewhat obscure tints of his palette; and above them all, Titian, the great Titian, who at that time was already eighty years of age, yet still manipulated his brush with the firm hand of youth.
All these masters Veronese admired indiscriminately, as was fitting in a young painter who had never known other models than those of his own small city. He ran the danger of acquiring mannerisms and becoming an imitator. By a special grace accorded to genius alone, Veronese succeeded in remaining himself and borrowing nothing either from his predecessors or his contemporaries. From his contemplation of the works of the others he gained only a nobler passion for his art; and he altered nothing in the personal vision which he already formed of men and of things.
Vigorous, blessed with good health, jovial by nature, and much enamoured of the bright and sparkling side of life, Veronese fashioned his paintings in the image of his own temperament. His work was always an exaltation of the joy of living, an apology for those agreeable externals that render existence pleasant and easy; fine dwellings, flowers, copious repasts, women luxuriously apparelled, precious fabrics, horses and dogs of fine breed. If he wished to paint a Last Supper, it mattered little to him that legend and history agree regarding the simplicity and the humble station of Jesus and his disciples: History and tradition did not count with him. A repast, whatever it would be, he could not conceive of, unless around a sumptuous table, covered with costly vessels, served by attendants in picturesque costumes and enlivened by the antics of buffoons or the harmonies of music. It was thus that he painted Christ, it was after this original conception that he worked out his immortal compositions. Accordingly no one could justly appraise Veronese, without first setting aside, as he did, all those historic data which he voluntarily ignored.