e physical and mental
characteristics of the sitter and the atmosphere of the time.[2]

Yet where is the critic bold enough to place even the finest of these
exquisite productions on the same level as _Le Jeune Homme au Gant_ and
_L'Homme en Noir_ of the Louvre, the _Ippolito de' Medici_, the _Bella
di Tiziano_, the _Aretino_ of the Pitti, the _Charles V. at the Battle
of Muehlberg_ and the full-length _Philip II._ of the Prado Museum at
Madrid?

Finally, in the domain of pure colour some will deem that Titian has
serious rivals in those Veronese developed into Venetians, the two elder
Bonifazi and Paolo Veronese; that is, there will be found lovers of
painting who prefer a brilliant mastery over contrasting colours in
frank juxtaposition to a palette relatively restricted, used with an art
more subtle, if less dazzling than theirs, and resulting in a deeper,
graver richness, a more significant beauty, if in a less stimulating
gaiety and variety of aspect. No less a critic than Morelli himself
pronounced the elder Bonifazio Veronese to be the most brilliant
colourist of the Venetian school; and the _Dives and Lazarus_ of the
Venice Academy, the _Finding of Moses_ at the Brera are at hand to give
solid support to such an assertion.

In some ways Paolo Veronese may, without exaggeration, be held to be the
greatest virtuoso among colourists, the most marvellous executant to be
found in the whole range of Italian art. Starting from the cardinal
principles in colour of the true Veronese, his precursors--painters such
as Domenico and Francesco Morone, Liberale, Girolamo dai Libri,
Cavazzola, Antonio Badile, and the rather later Brusasorci--Caliari
dared combinations of colour the most trenchant in their brilliancy as
well as the subtlest and most unfamiliar. Unlike his predecessors,
however, he preserved the stimulating charm while abolishing the
abruptness of sheer contrast. This he did mainly by balancing and
tempering his dazzling hues with huge architectural masses of a vibrant
grey and large depths of cool dark shadow--brown shot through with
silver. No other Venetian master could have painted the _Mystic Marriage
of St. Catherine_ in the church of that name at Venice, the _Allegory
on the Victory of Lepanto_ in the Palazzo Ducale, or the vast _Nozze di
Cana_ of the Louvre. All the same, this virtuosity, while it is in one
sense a step in advance even of Giorgione, Titian, Palma, and Paris
Bordone--constituting as it