Verona. SS. Nazaro e Celso: Saints; Pieta; Frescoes, 1491-93.
Vicenza. Holy Family; Madonna enthroned; Two Madonnas with Saints;
Three Madonnas.
Duomo: Altarpiece; Frescoes.
S. Corona: Madonna and Saints.
Monte Berico: Pieta, 1500; Fresco.

CHAPTER XXIV

PAOLO VERONESE

Paolo Veronese, though perhaps he is not to be placed on the very
highest pinnacle of the Venetian School, must be classed among
those few great painters who rose far above the level of most of his
contemporaries and who brought in a special note and flavour of his own.
His art is an independent art, and he borrows little from predecessors
or contemporaries. His free and joyous temperament gave relief at a
moment when the Venetian scheme of colour threatened to become too
sombre, and when Sebastian del Piombo, Pordenone, Titian himself, and
above all Tintoretto, were pushing chiaroscuro to extremes. Veronese
discards the deepest bronzes and mulberries and crimsons and oranges,
and finds his range among cream and rose and grey-greens. Titian
concentrated his colours and intensified his lights, Tintoretto
sacrifices colour to vivid play of light and dark, but Veronese avoids
the dark; the generous light plays all through his scenes. He has no
wish to secure strong effects but delights in soft, faded tints; old
rose and _turquoise morte_. In his colour and his subjects he is a
personification of the robust, proud, joy-loving Republic, in which, as
M. Yriarte says, a man produced his works as a tree produces its fruit.
We get very near him in those vast palaces and churches and villas,
where his heroic figures expand in the azure air, against the white
clouds, and yet he is one of the artists of the Renaissance about whom
we know least. Here and there, in contemporary biography, we come across
a mention of him and learn that he was sociable and lively, quick at
taking offence, fond of his family and anxious to do his best by them.
He was, too, very generous with his work--a great contrast in this
respect to Titian--and contracts with convents and confraternities show
that he often only stipulated for payment for bare time. Yet he was fond
of personal luxury, loved rich stuffs, horses and hounds, and, says
Ridolfi, "always wore velvet breeches."

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.