Paolo Veronese (redirected from Paolo Caliari)

Veronese, Paolo 

(pseudonym of Caliari). Born 1528, in Verona; died Apr. 19, 1588, in Venice. Late Renaissance Venetian painter.

Veronese studied with the Veronese painter A. Badile. He worked primarily in Venice (from 1553), as well as in Verona, Mantua, Vicenza, and Padua. He may have visited Rome in 1560. His works of the late 1540’s and early 1550’s indicate that he had studied the drawings of Michelangelo, the compositional structure of Raphael and Correggio, and the colorist discoveries of Titian. He achieved an independent style by the mid-1560’s—a combination of light, artistically refined drawing and fluid form with a subtle range of colors based on a complex harmony of pure colors joined by a luminous silvery tone. He did mostly monumental decorative paintings.

Veronese’s large oil on canvas compositions with many figures, which decorate the walls and ceilings of secular and religious buildings in Venice, often glorified the majesty and military triumphs of the Venetian Republic. They are characterized by heroic elevation of images, powerful chiaroscuro, expressive foreshortening and motion, and a festive triumphant magnificence of color (Age and Youth, 1553, Dialectic, 1575-77, The Triumph of Venice, 1578-1585, all in the Palazza Ducale in Venice; and Triumph of Mardochei and others, 1556, San Sebastiano, Venice). His frescoes in Venetian country villas (Villa Soranzo, 1551; fragments of frescoes now in the cathedral in Castelfranco; and the Villa Barbaro-Volpi at Maser near Treviso, c. 1561), with their cold, airy range of colors, are characterized by great intimacy of the images. In addition to mythological compositions and allegorical figures, the frescoes contain landscapes and genre scenes with humorous illusionist effects.

Embodying humanistic imagery and ideas in integral, complete, monumental decorative forms and organically linking painting with architecture, Veronese developed the finest achievements of Renaissance art on a new level. His favorite kind of easel painting was triumphant many-figured compositions portraying festive banquets, processions, and audiences in which man interacts with the social environment (The Marriage at Cana, 1563, the Louvre, Paris; The Family of Darius Before Alexander, after 1565, National Gallery, London; a series of paintings for the Cuccina family, including The Marriage at Cana and The Adoration of the Magi, c. 1571, both in the Picture Gallery, Dresden; and Feast in the House of Levi, the Accademia, Venice).

Veronese’s bold introduction of concrete observations from real life, genre motifs, and portraits of contemporaries caused the Inquisition to accuse him in 1573 of too secular an interpretation of religious themes. He created a large number of altar pieces that varied in concept and compositional treatment (Madonna With Infant and Holy Men, c. 1562, and The Betrothal of St. Catherine, c. 1575, both in the Accademia in Venice). His few portraits are characterized by gentle lyricism and sometimes have nuances of genre style (Bella Nani, 1550’s, the Louvre, Paris; and Conte Giuseppe da Porto With His Son Adriano, c. 1556, Contini-Bonacossi Collection, Florence).

Veronese’s last works showed signs of the crisis of the Renaissance world outlook. There was cold ostentation and shallow emotionality in his works of the 1580’s; at the same time, they revealed a mood of confused anxiety, grief, and melancholia (The Rape of Europa, 1580, Palazza Ducale, Venice; Hagar and Ismail in the Desert, 1580’s, Museum of Fine Arts, Vienna; and The Lamentation of Christ, early 1580’s, the Hermitage, Leningrad). Refined, rich coloring with the subtlest of shades began to have less meaning. Among Veronese’s pupils were his brother Benedetto and his sons Carlo and Gabriele.

REFERENCES

Antonova, I. A. Veronese. Moscow, 1957.
Fiocco, G. Paolo Veronese. Bologna, 1928.
Palucchini, R. Catalogo della mostra di Paolo Veronese. Venice, 1939.
Palucchini, R. Veronese, 3rd ed. Bergamo, 1953.

I. A. ANTONOVA