utiful 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: L280 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.

[Illustration: _Paolo Veronese._
MARRIAGE IN CANA.
_Louvre._
(_Photo, Mansell and Co.