Paolo Veronese: Piety and Display in an Age of Religious Reform 1138702706, 9781138702707

Table of contents :
Cover
Half Title
Title Page
Copyright Page
Table of Contents
List of figures
List of plates
Acknowledgements
Dedication
Introduction
Early career in Verona
Venice: the rooms of the Council of Ten in the Ducal Palace: Daniele Bárbaro
Consolidation: the frescos at Villa Bárbaro, Maser
Consolidation in Venice: San Sebastiano
Recognition and the revival of Venetian tradition
When seeing is believing
The master narrator – the mature secular narratives
The master narrator – the mature religious paintings
Late style: the religious paintings
Piety and display
1 From Verona to Venice
Venice: the heir of Constantinople and new Rome
Change in Venetian society and art
Veronese
The Venetian patrons
Veronese's other patrons
2 Public display, 1550–65
Recognition
Veronese and the tradition of the Venetian altarpiece
Veronese and the tradition of Venetian ceiling painting
San Sebastiano
The ceiling of the Jesuit church of Santa Maria dell'Umiltà
Venetian tradition renewed
Veronese and Catholic renewal
3 Public display, 1566–88
The saint as martyr
The Council of Trent and the cult of saints
The saint as exemplar
Veronese and the tradition of the Venetian altarpiece
Christ's Baptism and Crucifixion
Lavish display in existing churches: San Giacomo, Murano
San Nicolò ai Frari; Santa Maria Maggiore
The new status
4 Paintings for private display
Smaller devotional paintings
Larger narrative paintings
Paintings for camere grandi: the Coccina palace
Old and New Testament subjects for the Bonaldi, Charles Duke of Savoy, Simone Lando and Charles de Croy
Individual canvases
5 Christ's Feasts and Last Supper
Feast in the House of Simon, Turin
The Marriage Feast at Cana
The Feast in the House of Simon, San Sebastiano and S. Maria dei Servi
Feast of St Gregory the Great, Monte Berico
The Feast in the House of Levi, SS Giovanni e Paolo
Last Supper, Santa Soffia
Catalogue
Bibliography
Works by Veronese
Index

Citation preview

PAOLO VERONESE

Frontispiece Virgin and Child Enthroned with Sts Joseph, John the Baptist, Jerome, Francis and Justina, Gallerie deirAccademia, Venice, detail of pi. 7

Paolo Veronese Piety and Display in an Age of Religious Reform

Richard Cocke

First published 2001 by Ashgate Publishing Reissued 2018 by Routledge 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon, OX14 4RN 711 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10017, USA Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business Copyright © Richard Cocke, 2001 The author has asserted his moral right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988, to be identified as the author of this work. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. Notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe. Publisher's Note The publisher has gone to great lengths to ensure the quality of this reprint but points out that some imperfections in the original copies may be apparent. Disclaimer The publisher has made every effort to trace copyright holders and welcomes correspondence from those they have been unable to contact. A Library of Congress record exists under LC control number: 2001023660 Typeset in Palatino by Hilite Design, Southampton, Hampshire, UK. ISBN 13: 978-1-138-70270-7 (hbk) ISBN 13: 978-1-315-20913-5 (ebk)

Contents

List of figures List of plates Acknowledgements

VII XI XIII

Introduction Early career in Verona Venice: the rooms of the Council of Ten in the Ducal Palace: Daniele Bárbaro Consolidation: the frescos at Villa Bárbaro, Maser Consolidation in Venice: San Sebastiano Recognition and the revival of Venetian tradition When seeing is believing The master narrator - the mature secular narratives The master narrator - the mature religious paintings Late style: the religious paintings Piety and display

41

i

49

From Verona to Venice Venice: the heir of Constantinople and new Rome Change in Venetian society and art Veronese The Venetian patrons Veronese's other patrons

2 Public display, 1550-65 Recognition Veronese and the tradition of the Venetian altarpiece Veronese and the tradition of Venetian ceiling painting San Sebastiano

i i

6 9 15 i8 22

25

34 36

51

56 57 59 ¿5 73 73 76 83 84

VI

PAOLO VERONESE

The ceiling of the Jesuit church of Santa Maria dell'Umiltà Venetian tradition renewed Veronese and Catholic renewal 3 Public display, 1566-88 The saint as martyr The Council of Trent and the cult of saints The saint as exemplar Veronese and the tradition of the Venetian altarpiece Christ's Baptism and Crucifixion Lavish display in existing churches: San Giacomo, Murano San Nicolò ai Frari; Santa Maria Maggiore The new status

85 87 91 105 105 109 111

115 117 121

125 130

4 Paintings for private display Smaller devotional paintings Larger narrative paintings Paintings for camere grandi: the Coccina palace Old and New Testament subjects for the Bonaldi, Charles Duke of Savoy, Simone Lando and Charles de Croy Individual canvases

137 137

5 Christ's Feasts and Last Supper Feast in the House of Simon, Turin The Marriage Feast at Cana The Feast in the House of Simon, San Sebastiano and S. Maria dei Servi Feast of St Gregory the Great, Monte Berico The Feast in the House of Levi, SS Giovanni e Paolo Last Supper, Santa Soffia

167 167 168

Catalogue

185

Bibliography

209

Works by Veronese

221

Index

227

142

152

154 159

173 176 177 182

Figures

Frontispiece Virgin and Child Enthroned with Sts Joseph, John the Baptist, Jerome, Francis and Justina, Gallerie deir Accademia, Venice, detail of pi. 7 Introduction 0.1 Christ Preaching in the Temple, Museo del Prado, Madrid, dated MDXLVIII on the book held by scribe under Christ, 236 x 543 cm

0.8 Wall of the Stanza del Cane, showing the Holy Family, Villa Bárbaro, Maser, fresco (Photo Bõhm) 0.9 Ceiling of sacristy, San Sebastiano, Venice, with St Mark, 85 x 240 cm 0.10 Esther before Ahasuerus, nave ceiling, San Sebastiano, Venice, 450 x 370 cm

0.2 Temptation of St Anthony, Musée des Beaux-Arts, Caen, 198 x 151 cm

0.11 Triumph of Mordechai, nave, San Sebastiano, Venice, 500 x 370 cm

0.3 Jupiter Expelling Crimes and Vices, from the rooms of the Council of Ten, Ducal Palace, Musée du Louvre, Paris, 560 x 330 cm

0.12 Feast in the House of Simon, Gallería Sabauda, Turin, 315 x 451 cm

0.4 Portrait of Daniele Bárbaro, Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam, 121 x 105.5

c m

0.5 Ceiling, Sala deirOlimpo, Villa Bárbaro, Maser, fresco (Photo Bõhm) 0.6 Sala deirOlimpo, with the Good Samaritan above the entrance to the Stanza del Cane on the right, Villa Bárbaro, Maser, fresco (Photo Bõhm) 0.7 Faith, Hope and Charity, ceiling, Stanza della Lucerna, Villa Bárbaro, Maser, fresco (Photo Bõhm)

0.13 Honor et Virtus Post Mortem Floret, Frick Collection, New York, 219 x 169.5 c m 0.14 Omnia Vanitas, Frick Collection, New York, 214 x 167 cm 0.15 Mars and Venus United by Love, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, John Kennedy Fund, 1910 (10.189), signed PAULUS VERONENIS F, 205.7 x *6i cm 0.16 Hermes, Herse and Aglauros, Fitzwilliam Museum, University of Cambridge, signed PAULUS CALIAR/VERONESIS FACI, 232 x 173 cm

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PAOLO VERONESE

0.17 Family of Darius before Alexander, National Gallery, London, 336 x 475 cm

2.4 View of Marogna chapel, San Paolo, Verona (Photo Brenzoni)

0.18 Justice and Peace before Venice, Sala del Collegio, Ducal Palace, Venice,

2.5 Photomontage, Coccina altar, San Zaccaria with Virgin and Child appear to Sts John the Baptist and Jerome, Baratta engraving after Veronese (Photo Michael Brandon-Jones)

250 x 180 cm

0.19 Venice Triumphant, Sala del Maggior Consiglio, Ducal Palace, Venice, 904 x 580 cm 0.20 Crucifixion, Gallerie deirAccademia, Venice, 287 x 447 cm 0.21 The Virgin and Child adored by Sts Anne and Joachim, with view of altar, S. Polo, Venice, 350 x 170 cm (Photo Michael Brandon-Jones) 0.22 Miracle of St Pantaleon, San Pantalon, Venice, 277 x 160 cm (Photo Bohrn) 1

From Verona to Venice

1.1 View of 1562 entrance to sacristy, San Zaccaria, Venice (Photo Sarah Cocke)

2.6 Photomontage of Petrobelli altarpiece, Pietà, St Jerome and a Donor, St Anthony Abbot and a Donor, National Gallery of Canada, no. 3336, purchased 1925. By permission of the Trustees of Dulwich College Picture Gallery, National Gallery of Scotland, Edinburgh 2.7

Pietà, Hermitage, St Petersburg,

147 x 111.5

c m

2.8 Adoration of the Shepherds, Cappella del Rosario, SS Giovanni e Paolo, Venice, 340 x 455 cm (Photo Bohrn)

1.2 Finding of Moses, Museo del Prado, Madrid, 50 x 43 cm

2.9 Presentation of Christ in the Temple, organ, San Sebastiano, Venice, 490 x 190 cm

1.3 Resurrection, Badoer chapel, San Francesco della Vigna, Venice, 325 x 160 cm (Photo Bohrn)

2.10 Photomontage, Christ at the Pool ofBethesda, organ, San Sebastiano, Venice, each 245 x 190 cm

1.4 Baptism of Christ, sacristy of the Redentore, Venice, 204 x 102 cm (Photo Bohrn)

2.11 SS Geminianus and Severus, Gallería Estense, Modena, 341 x 240 cm

1.5 Queen of Sheba before Solomon, Gallería Sabauda, Turin, 344 x 545 cm 2

Public display, 1550-65

2.1 After Paolo Veronese, Christ Raising the Daughter ofjairus, Musée du Louvre, Paris, oil on paper, 42 x 37 cm 2.2 Transfiguration of Christ, cathedral, Montagnana, signed PAULO VERO P., 535 x 250 cm 2.3 The Virgin and Child enthroned with Antonio and Giovanni Battista Marogna presented by Sts Anthony and John the Baptist, San Paolo, Verona, 338 x 208 cm

2.12 Virgin and Child appear to Sts Anthony and Paul, the Chrysler Museum, Norfolk, VA, gift of Walter P. Chrysler Jr in memory of Delta Viola Forker Chrysler, 71.527, 285 x 170 cm 2.13 Consecration of St Nicholas, National Gallery, London, 282 x 170 cm 2.14 St Jerome, S. Pietro, Murano, 231 x 147 cm 2.15 Martyrdom of Sts Primus and Felician, Musei Civici agli Eremitani, Padua, 350 x 190 cm 2.16 St Sebastian Exhorts Sts Mark and Marcellian to their Martyrdom, chancel, San Sebastiano, Venice, 355 x 540 cm

Figures ix

2.17 View of chancel of San Sebastiano with Martyrdom of St Sebastian, 355 x 540 cm (Photo Bõhm) 2.18 View of south wall of nave with decoration of monks' choir (fresco) and Four Apostles (mixed media) 2.19 Detail of verso of Studies for the Martyrdom of St George, with preparatory drawing for the decorative scroll of San Sebastiano, the J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles, 83.GA.258, pen, ink and wash drawing, 28.9 x 21.7 cm 2.20 Martyrdom of St George, S. Giorgio in Braida, Verona, 430 x 300 cm (Cameraphoto Arte, Venice) 3

Public display, 1566-88

3.1 Studies for the Martyrdom of St George, the J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles, 83.GA.258, pen, ink and wash drawing, 28.9 x 21.7 cm 3.2 Martyrdom of St Justina, S. Giustina, Padua, signed PAULUS CALIARIVERONENSIS F, 525 x 240 cm (Photo Alinari) 3.3 Modello for the Martyrdom of St Justina, the J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles, 87.GA.92, pen, ink and wash drawing on blue paper, heightened with white, 47 x 24 cm 3.4 St Barnabas Healing, Musée des Beaux-Arts, Rouen, 260 x 193 cm 3.5 St Peter visits St Agatha in prison, S. Pietro, Murano, inscribed D P V, 147 x 231 cm (Photo Bõhm) 3.6 Adoration of the Magi, in gallery viewed from the left, the viewpoint of the spectator in San Silvestro, National Gallery, London, dated M.DLXXIII, on the lowest step, 355 x 320 cm 3.7 Baptism of Christ, S. Giovanni, Latisana, 410 x 225 cm (Photo Soprintendenza ai Monumenti, Udine)

3.8 Baptism of Christ, Palazzo Pitti, Florence, 196 x 113 cm 3.9 Study for the Baptism of Christ, pen, ink and wash drawing, New York Market, 7.4 x 15.4 cm 3.10 Crucifixion, San Lazzaro dei Mendicanti, Venice, 305 x 165 cm (Photo Alinari) 3.11 Crucifixion, Museum of Fine Arts, Budapest, 149 x 90 cm 3.12 Adoration of the Magi, Cappella del Rosario, SS Giovanni e Paolo, Venice, 287 x 447 cm (Photo Bõhm) 3.13 Baptism and Temptation of Christ, Pinacoteca di Brera, Milan, 248 x 450 cm 3.14 Assumption of the Virgin, Gallerie dell'Accademia, Venice, 398 x 200 cm 3.15 Agony in the Garden, Pinacoteca di Brera, Milan, 80 x 108 cm 3.16 Coronation of the Virgin, Gallerie deirAccademia, Venice, 396 x 219 cm (Photo Bõhm) 3.17 Modello for the Paradise, Musée des Beaux-Arts, Lille, 87 x 234 cm (Photo RMN) 3.18 Annunciation, Monastery of El Escorial, signed and dated MDLXXXIII PAUL CALIARIUS VERONEN Fe, 470 x 206 cm 4

Paintings for private display

4.1 Virgin and Child with Sts George, Justina and a Donor (Benedetto Guidi[?]), Musée du Louvre, Paris, 72 x 90 cm (Photo RMN) 4.2 Mystic Marriage of St Catherine, Musée Fabre, Montpellier, 128 x 129 cm 4.3 Consecration of David, Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna, 173 x 364 cm

X

PAOLO VERONESE

4.4 Presentation in the Temple, Staatliche 4.16 David and Bathsheba, Musée des Beaux-Arts, Lyons, 227 x 237 cm Gemaldegalerie, Dresden, 186 x 407 cm 4.5 Supper at Emmaus, Musée du Louvre, Paris, later inscription PAOLO VERONESE, 241 x 415 cm (Photo RMN) 4.6 Christ with Zebedee's Wife and Sons, Musée de Grenoble, 194 x 337 cm 4.7 Rest on the Flight, Pushkin Museum, Moscow, 120 x 85 cm 4.8 Rest on the Flight, John and Mable Ringling Museum of Art, Sarasota, inscribed [...]PAULI CALIARI VERONESI/FACIEBAT, 236.2 x 161.3 cm 4.9 St Helen, Vatican Galleries, Rome, 166 x 134 cm 4.10 Portrait of the Belle Nani (Elena Badile?), Musée du Louvre, Paris, 119 x 103 cm (Photo RMN) 4.11 Christ Carrying the Cross, Staatliche Gemaldegalerie, Dresden, 166 x 414 cm 4.12 }udith and Holofernes, Musée des Beaux-Arts, Caen, 245 x 269 cm 4.13 Judith and Holof ernes, Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna, 245 x 269 cm 4.14 The Angel Appears to Hagar and Ishmael, Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna, 140 x 282 cm 4.15 Christ and Woman of Samaria, Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna, 143 x 289 cm

4.17 Penitent Magdalen, Museo del Prado, Madrid, 122 x 105 cm, dated MDLXXXIII, on her book 4.18 Adam and Eve, Museo del Prado, Madrid, 105 x 153 cm 4.19 St John the Baptist Preaching, Gallería Borghese, Rome, 208 x 140 cm (Archivio Fotográfico Soprintendenza Beni Artistici e Storici di Roma) 5

Christ's Feasts and Last Supper

5.1 Musicians, detail of the Marriage Feast at Cana, Musée du Louvre, Paris (Photo RMN) 5.2 Servants recognizing the miracle of the water turned to wine, detail of the Marriage Feast at Cana, Musée du Louvre, Paris (Photo RMN) 5.3 The Feast in the House of Simon, Pinacoteca di Brera, Milan, 275 x 710 cm 5.4 Christ with the Penitent Magdalen, detail of The Feast in the House of Simon, on deposit, Château de Versailles (Photo RMN) 5.5 The Feast in the House of Levi, detail, converted servant 5.6 The Feast in the House of Levi, detail, Christ and Judas distracted by the young servant pointing to the dog 5.7 Last Supper, Pinacoteca di Brera, Milan, 230 x 523 cm

Plates

Between pages 114 and 115 1 Virgin and Child enthroned with Sts Joseph, John the Baptist, Catherine and Anthony Abbot (the Giustinian altarpiece), San Francesco della Vigna, Venice, 313 x 190 cm 2 Coronation of the Virgin, sacristy, San Sebastiano, Venice, 200 x 170 cm 3 Esther brought to the Palace, nave ceiling, San Sebastiano, Venice, 500 x 370 cm 4 Detail of Host with Bride and Groom from the Marriage Feast at Cana (pi. 23), Musée du Louvre (Photo RMN) 5 Annunciation, Gallerie deirAccademia, Venice, 275 x 543 cm (Photo Bohrn) 6 Deesis with Sts Sebastian and Roch, Musée des Beaux-Arts, Rouen, signed PAOLO CALIARI VERONESI F, 340 x 220 cm 7 Virgin and Child Enthroned with Sts Joseph, John the Baptist, Jerome, Francis and Justina, Gallerie deirAccademia, Venice, 341 x 193 cm (Photo Bohrn) 8 Christ and the Centurion, Museo del Prado, Madrid, 192 x 297 cm

9 Detail of Kneeling Magus from Adoration of the Magi (pi. 21), Staatliche Gemaldegalerie, Dresden 10 Mystic Marriage of St Catherine, Gallerie deirAccademia, Venice, 337 x 241 cm 11 Assumption of the Virgin, Cappella del Rosario, SS Giovanni e Paolo, Venice, 762 x 432 cm 12 The Virgin and Child Appear to Sts Sebastian, John the Baptist, Peter, Francis, Catherine and Elizabeth^.), chancel, San Sebastiano, Venice, 420 x 230 cm 13 Martyrdom of St Justina, Gallerie degli Uffizi, Florence, 103 x 113 cm (Photo Quattrone) 14 Martyrdom and Last Communion of St Lucy, gift of the Morris and Gwendolyn Cafritz Foundation and Ailsa Mellon Bruce Fund, Board of Trustees, National Gallery of Art, Washington, 138 x 171 cm 15 Adoration of the Magi, Santa Corona, Vicenza, 320 x 234 cm (Cameraphoto Arte, Venice)

XII

PAOLO VERONESE

16 Christ with Zebedee's Wife and Sons, Burghley House, Stamford, 396 x 201 cm

23 Marriage Feast at Cana, Musée du Louvre, Paris, 677 x 994 cm (Photo RMN)

17 Resurrection, Chelsea and Westminster Hospital, London, 272.9 x 155.4 cm (Photo John Hammond)

24 The Feast in the House of Simon, on deposit, Château de Versailles (after cleaning), inscription carried by angels: GAUDIUM IN COELO SUPER UNO PECATTORE POENITENTIAM AGENTE, 454 x 974 cm

18 Visitation, Barber Institute, Birmingham, 277.5 x 1 5 ^ c m 19 Virgin and Child with Sts Joseph, John the Baptist and Barbara, Gallerie degli Uffizi, 86 x 122 cm (Photo Quattrone) 20 Coccina Family presented to the Virgin and Child by Faith, Hope and Charity, Staatliche Gemaldegalerie, Dresden, 167 x 416 cm 21 Adoration of the Magi, Staatliche Gemaldegalerie, Dresden, 206 x 455 cm 22 Marriage Feast at Cana, Staatliche Gemaldegalerie, Dresden, 207 x 457 cm

25 Feast of St Gregory the Great, Monte Berico, Vicenza, inscription carried by angels: PAX DÑI SIT SEP BISCU, dated MDLXII, 477 x 862 cm 26 The Feast in the House of Levi, Gallerie dell'Accademia, Venice, inscribed A.D. MDLXXIII - DIE XX APR and FECIT. D.COVI MAGNU. LEVI-LUCAE CAP.V, 533 x 1310 cm (Photo Bõhm)

Acknowledgements

During Veronese's lifetime one of the leading younger artists from Bologna, probably Agostino Carracci, added this note in the margin of his copy of Vasari's 1568 edition of the Lives of the Painters: 'I have known Paulino and have seen his beautiful works. He deserves to have a great volume written in praise of him, for his pictures prove that he is second to no other painter, and this fool passes over him in four lines just because he wasn't a Florentine.' This book is intended to fill that gap and to help others to share my enthusiasm for one of the most underestimated of the great Renaissance painters. Many friends and colleagues have helped with queries. They include: Richard Beresford, Keith Christiansen, J. D. Culverhouse, Ian Dejardin, Jean Habert, David Hemsoll, Charles Hope, Susan Loppert, Sally Nicholls, Nicholas Penny, Terisio Pignatti, Thomas Puttfarken, Roger Rearick, Pierre Rosenberg, Francis Russell, Giovanna Nepi Scire, Sandro Sponza, Natalie Voile, Gregor J. M. Weber, Carol Willoughby. Andrew Martindale, much missed by a wide circle of friends and colleagues, read an early draft. I am particularly grateful to Peter Humfrey and Paul Joannides for their constructive criticism in shaping the present manuscript, although I remain responsible for any remaining errors. Throughout, Sarah has remained a source of inspiration, only partially repaid in the dedication.

FOR SARAH

Introduction

Early career in Verona: the Christ Preaching, Giustinian altar (cat. 1), Temptation of St Anthony, Mantua (cat. 2) Paolo Veronese's family name at his birth in Verona in 1528 was 'spezapreda' - literally translated as stonecutter. On his move to Venice, where he settled in 1553, he adopted the gentrified name of Caliari.1 The signature 'Paulus Caliari Veronensis' on the relatively small number of signed paintings and in contracts asserted both his rise in social status and the link with his native city. Verona was famous both for its red marble, used on the façades of Venetian palaces,2 and, as noted in Chapter 1, for its classical remains - the theatre, amphitheatre and Gateways - which had been a continued source of pride from the Middle Ages through to the sixteenth century. In the era of the rise of the artist, dominated by well-known personalities like Michelangelo and Titian, Veronese's association with his native city was significant. Down to his death in 1588 he remained a private figure. Contemporary references are brief and focus on his work, rather than personality, and his letters are concerned with the business of his landholdings in Treviso, rather than his extensive circle of patrons. 3 Discussion has, therefore, to focus on his work. The earliest painting, the Christ Preaching in the Temple (fig. 0.1) of 1548, now in the Prado, Madrid, dates from before Veronese's move to Venice. It is a large and ambitious canvas for a 20-year-old artist and demonstrates four key factors: command of architecture, ability to clarify narrative, visual wit and commitment to a Venetian, rather than a central Italian, mode of handling. The temple at Jerusalem, inaccessible to a young artist in Verona, is suggested by the classical architecture: the doorway with its triangular pediment, the background cornice topped by a row of columns and the curved colonnade on the right. Twin columns frame Christ, seated on a short flight of stairs and singled out through his position, rhetorical gestures, pink robe and green cloak. The modelling of his robe with expressive white highlights and the dramatic shadow is much closer to Venetian practice than to any contemporary work in Veronese's native city,4 although the red, green and yellow of his palette looks

o.i

Christ Preaching in the Temple, Museo del Prado, Madrid, dated MDXLVIII on the book held by scribe under Christ, 236 x 543 cm

Introduction 3

back to the older native tradition. This had been inspired by the example of Andrea Mantegna, the court artist at nearby Mantua until his death in 1506. Veronese's wit is demonstrated through the date 1548, shown in Roman numerals across the front of the book held open by the scribe at Christ's feet, an unusual device which meant that it was long overlooked.5 The scribes and Pharisees with their exotic costumes and headdresses peer into their books or look askance at Christ, by contrast with the devotion of the bearded donor, with his pilgrim's staff and cloak decorated with the cross of Jerusalem. For all this the Christ Preaching is a unique achievement in contemporary painting, whose command of architecture, of portraiture, of costumes and of Venetian, Titian-inspired colour, cannot be explained in terms of the training available in Verona.6 The donor would have seen Bonifazio Veronese's canvas of this subject, completed for the Council Chamber of the Palazzo dei Camerlenghi in Venice in 1545, but now in the Pitti Palace. His pilgrimage, the inspiration for the choice of subject, would have begun and ended in Venice.7 This may have prompted the choice of Bonifazio's canvas as model. The resemblance is limited to the general formula of Christ raised on steps above a twisting scribe, but not to the inventive detail or to the handling. We do not know how long Veronese spent on the Christ Preaching. However, it is unlikely to have been long. In an era when size was one of the key factors determining payment, Veronese's ability to undertake large commissions in a short time ensured financial success.8 During a 40-year career he produced over 300 paintings - at least five commissions a year, with no falling off during the last eight years of his career, when he produced over 70 autograph paintings, nine a year.9 Two-thirds of these were religious - the subject of this book - while the remainder was divided between work in the Ducal palace and Library in Venice, frescos at Palazzo Trevisan and Villa Maser (figs 0.5-0.8), mythologies (figs 0.13-0.17) and portraiture. 10 Although his portraiture was distinguished, see the Portrait of Daniele Bárbaro (fig. 0.4) for example, it formed a notably smaller part of his oeuvre than in those of Titian or Tintoretto. The quality of Veronese's early Vicentine portraits suggests that he could have continued to give portraiture a higher profile, but once in Venice chose to focus on religious and mythological paintings.11 Veronese's next documented commissions after the Christ Preaching are the Giustinian altarpiece in San Francesco della Vigna from 1551 (cat. 1, pi. 1), and the Temptation of St Anthony from Mantua Cathedral of 1553 (cat. 2,fig.0.2). They draw on differing aspects of his visual wit, ability to clarify narrative and handling of architecture. This was not an issue in the Temptation, which is set in front of a simple landscape dominated by the tempter, his back twisted across the slumped saint, whom he holds down in preparation for the beating he is about to deliver. The saint's self-protection is further undermined by the elegant temptress, digging her long nails into the palm

4

PAOLO VERONESE

0.2 Temptation of St Anthony, Musée des Beaux-Arts, Caen, 198 x 151 cm of his hand. The command of drawing in the tempter's rippling muscles and complex pose rival Michelangelo's male nudes, while the rich colour of the saint's simple cloak suggests Venetian - Titianesque - colour. At this date, 1553, the combination of a Venetian with a central Italian mode was deliberate, a demonstration of Veronese's awareness of

Introduction 5 contemporary critical debates over disegno (meaning both drawing in a narrow sense and a wider concept of design) and colorito, Venetian colour. This was fuelled by the publication of Vasari's Lives of the Artists in 1550. Vasari's preference for Tuscan art and artists, from Giotto to Michelangelo, was based on the ideal of 'disegno'. His views were well known even before the appearance of the Lives. The Venetian theorist Paolo Pino anticipated Vasari in his Dialogue on Painting, published in Venice in 1548. Pino reworked Lucian's description of the perfect statue, written in the second century AD, each of whose limbs had been carved by its acknowledged master, and finished by one of a number of specialist painters. 12 Pino suggested that the supreme artist would combine the 'disegno' of Michelangelo with the 'colorito' (colour and handling) of Titian without, offering any practical examples. 13 The debate was continued by another Venetian critic and friend of Titian, Lodovico Dolce. His dialogue on painting, the Aretino of 1557, rested on a reformulation of the traditional Platonic view that imperfect nature must be improved through decorum and artistic judgement. He was concerned to establish Titian as the equal of Vasari's chosen few - Leonardo, Raphael, Giorgione (just) and Michelangelo. Titian's later practice of extensive pentiments on the canvases, as reported critically by Vasari, made it impossible for Dolce to present him as Michelangelo's peer. Accordingly Raphael, rather than Michelangelo, was shown to have been the supreme painter.14 Dolce's views, which must have been formulated before the publication of his dialogue, have a wider relevance. Nature, but nature improved, to paraphrase Dolce on Raphael,15 is central to Veronese's achievement, by contrast with the stylishness of his contemporaries. In the Temptation he strikes a fine balance between representation, in the musculature of the tempter, and invention and wit, in the over-long nails which the temptress digs into the saint's hand. Antonio and Lorenzo Giustinians' commission of the Virgin and Child enthroned with Sts Joseph, John the Baptist, Catherine and Anthony Abbot for their chapel in San Francesco della Vigna called into play Veronese's command of Venetian colour and mastery of architecture. The Virgin and Child, who are seen against the gold brocade of the cloth of honour, are raised on a plinth and framed by twin columns. The palette is now fully Venetian, red and blue in the Virgin's robe and cloak, edged with green and contrasted with St Joseph's yellow robe. Veronese paid special attention to the base behind the Holy Family and to the cornice at their feet, enriched with pale yellow slabs, which echo those on the floor of the chapel. They are joined by St Joseph, to whom the chapel was dedicated, and the youthful Baptist standing on a Persian carpet and locked in unequal struggle with a lamb, determined to break his grasp as it peers out of the picture. St Catherine on the left looks up at

6

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the Virgin and Child, while on the other side St Anthony Abbot engages with the spectator. The composition and architecture, which were to be developed with greater boldness in later altarpieces, were inspired by Titian's Pesaro altarpiece, discussed further below. The architecture and wit St John's unequal struggle with his lamb, the wicked glint in the eye of St Anthony's pig, sharpening its teeth on the fallen masonry - demonstrate Veronese's independence. Venice: the rooms of the Council of Ten in the Ducal Palace: Daniele Bárbaro Antonio and Lorenzo Giustinian were related through their mother to Doge Andrea Gritti, the key figure in the patronage of San Francesco della Vigna, and through the marriage of their daughter Giustina to Marcantonio Bárbaro in 1534 to Daniele Bárbaro (1513-70).l6 Bárbaro, as we shall discuss below, was responsible for the programme for the decoration of the newly completed rooms of the Council of Ten in the Ducal Palace. He may well have ensured that Veronese obtained the key role in a commission deliberately shared between three artists/ 7 since the Venetian government encouraged rivalry to ensure better value for money.18 The Council of Ten had been established in 1310, in response to the discovery of a plot against Doge Pietro Gradenigo. It had expanded its original brief - to defend the city against the threat of exiled factions abroad and from conspiracy within - to include censorship, the suppression of heretical sects (by the midsixteenth century this meant Protestantism and from 1549 the first list of proscribed books) and sodomy. The Council controlled the police, drew up sumptuary laws, supervised the behaviour of the patriciate and was responsible for the regulation of prostitution. 19 For the first time official rooms were decorated with a suite of ceiling paintings, whose programme was devised by Daniele Bárbaro. In the oval Jupiter Expelling Crimes and Vices (fig. 0.3) from the audience room Veronese had to illustrate 'the causes which relate to the Council ... so that you see with fresh invention Heresy; then there is Rebellion accompanied by Sodomy and by False love of Money'. Here his command of narrative is combined with mastery of foreshortening, some of whose effect is lost as the canvas hangs on the walls of the Louvre rather than the ceiling of the Council chamber. The dramatically foreshortened Jupiter accompanied by his eagle - together they embody the Council - hurtles across the sky threatening the vices with his thunderbolts. He is accompanied by an angel with a gospel, emblematic of Venice's defence of Catholic Faith. Heresy, barely holding his book, feels the full weight of Jupiter's assault. The steep

0-3 Jupiter Expelling Crimes and Vices, from the rooms of the Council of Ten, Ducal Palace, Musée du Louvre, Paris, 560 x 330 cm

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0.4 Portrait ofDaniele Bárbaro, Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam, 121 x 105.5

cm

foreshortening used in Heresy, and the other vices suggests their disarray through the contrast with Jupiter's controlled energy, his pose was derived from the statue of the Laocoon, famous since its discovery in Rome in 1504. Rebellion breaks the ropes around his wrists while Love of Money clutches his coins to his head. The final pair, though, illustrate Lust rather than Sodomy, which was obviously unsuitable as a subject.20 Bárbaro had been educated at the University of Padua, where he took charge of the building of the Botanical Garden, before his appointment as Venetian ambassador in London from 1549 to 1551. While there he was

Introduction 9

appointed patriarch elect of Aquileia, one of the richest of ecclesiastical offices open to Venetian noblemen. 21 As patriarch-elect Bárbaro played an important role in the deliberations of the Council of Trent in the 1560s, discussed in the next section. However, his major enthusiasm was for architecture. He was responsible for the design of Camillo Trevisan's palace in Murano and, together with his brother Marcantonio, for the family villa, Maser.22 He travelled to Rome with Palladio in 1554 and two years later produced his annotated edition of Vitruvius, with Palladio's illustrations. His pride in this edition is shown in Veronese's portrait now in Amsterdam (fig. 0.4). Here Bárbaro is shown as patriarch, framed by a column, sitting with his recently completed edition of Vitruvius open on a table. 23 His massive pose is enlivened as he turns his head away from the spectator, in a gesture which establishes that the portrait stood on its own. The indication of Barbaro's scholarship contrasts with Titian's sober half-length portraits in the Prado and Ottawa, commissioned before Barbaro's elevation. 24 His learning and interest in the arts were acknowledged in his programmes both public and private, discussed above. None have survived, but in his notes to Vitruvius Bárbaro argued that painting should transcend detail to achieve a unifying effect, since 'like every other human activity painting must have an aim (intentione) and show some effect (effetto), and the whole composition should be geared to this effect. Painting must have an aim just as poetry should serve some useful end for man's life, and as music must have an aim'.25 Veronese responded to Barbaro's concern, both when he worked with Barbaro's programmes in the Ducal Palace and the family villa, and in other less obvious spheres: at San Sebastiano, for instance. Consolidation: the frescos at Villa Bárbaro, Maser It is a measure of Veronese's success on his arrival in Venice that Daniele and Marcantonio (1518-95) Bárbaro made provision for an extensive cycle of frescos on the ceilings and walls of five main rooms, as well as the crossing, of their new family villa at Maser. The family had owned a farm on the site at least since 1514 and this had been enlarged before Palladio was called in to assist with the design of the villa. The date is uncertain but much, possibly including Veronese's frescos, was completed by 1559. The farm was secondary to the gentlemanly pursuits, and artistic display of Daniele's architecture, and of Marcantonio Barbaro's26 awkwardly modelled gods and goddesses in the nymphaeum, whose misfortunes are contrasted with the harmony, marital and celestial, and rich harvests shown in the frescos.27

10

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Veronese achieved a lucidity and clarity of expression, which is unlikely to have figured in the original, but lost, programme. Complex ideas - the harmony of the spheres and the need to temper charity with prudence - are realized with wit, lucidity and emphasis on sight as illusionism. In the main reception room, the Sala dell'Olimpo, the walls are frescoed with Corinthian columns set on a decorative plinth, framing illusionistic statues of Peace and Faith in niches and four landscapes (fig. 0.6). The columns appear to support the stuccoed frieze, which runs round the room and which in turn provides the base of the balustrade. This opens to the sky in the two lunettes, while the remaining two curved walls are framed by twisting Salomonic columns. These support a frescoed frieze which frames the classically inspired octagonal frame decorated with a cornice, meander and bronze bosses (fig. 0.5). Within this frame the seven planetary gods - Jupiter, Saturn, Diana, Mercury, Venus, Apollo and Mars - are accompanied by their conventional zodiacal signs, and by the four elements in the corners - Vulcan (fire), Juno (air), Cybele (earth) and Neptune (water). At the centre a woman seated on a great snake opens her arms to greet the visitors approaching from the nymphaeum and fountain at the back of the villa. Her identity is a matter of debate, but she is most probably one of the nine muses - Thalia, whose companions are shown in niches in the adjoining crossing. Taken together they fulfil Barbara's demand for an 'effetto', the harmony of the spheres, which is contrasted with the display of the villa's prosperity in the lunettes and with the idealized 'portraits' of mother, child and nurse behind the balustrade. 28 Any description is necessarily prosaic. The decorative details and the gods are realized with unfailing visual wit, illustrated in Diana the goddess of hunting rubbing noses with one of her hounds. This unfailing illusionism was not confined to one great showpiece, but spread through the villa's main rooms. In the adjoining Stanza del Cane the primacy of the Christian faith is revealed through the Holy Family, brought to our attention by History, seated with her books besides Saturn, the embodiment of time (fig. 0.8).29 That our future rests on appreciation of the past is underlined in the fresco opposite, where a man who is asleep is crowned by Fortune, who could equally have bound him with her ropes. This is echoed in the central fresco where the seated Providence restrains Munificence, lest her actions lead to discord, the lady with a dagger lurking behind Munificence. The need for foresight is underlined in the fresco which the spectator sees immediately on their return to the Sala dell'Olimpo. The fictive bronze above the entrance to the Stanza della Lucerna shows Marcus Curtius plunging into the chasm which had opened in the Roman Forum, which from earlier prophecies he knew threatened Rome's greatness.

0-5

Ceiling, Sala deirOlimpo, Villa Bárbaro, Maser, fresco

0.6 Sala deirOlimpo, with the Good Samaritan above the entrance to the Stanza del Cane on the right, Villa Bárbaro, Maser, fresco

Introduction 13

0.7 Faith, Hope and Charity, ceiling, Stanza della Lucerna, Villa Bárbaro, Maser, fresco The theme recurs in Christian guise in the Stanza della Lucerna (fig. 0.7). A beggar, his gesture and gaze suggesting that he embodies Hope, kneels before Catholic Faith, identified by her Bible and chalice, under the protection of Charity. Charity is accompanied by a lamb, the emblem of sacrifice, and holds a cornucopia and caduceus, the attribute of Public good. They underline that it is both a public virtue and a Christian duty to offer charity to the needy. That Catholic Faith points to the symbol of Eternity, the snake biting its tail, clarifies the message that charity must be inspired by the eternal values of the Catholic Faith. The theological virtues of Faith, Hope and Charity rest on the four cardinal virtues - Prudence (holding her mirror), Fortitude (her companion,

14

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0.8 Wall of the Stanza del Cane, showing the Holy Family, Villa Bárbaro, Maser, fresco the reclining Hercules) with Justice and Temperance opposite. On leaving the room the spectator is reminded that Charity is the greatest Christian virtue. The fictive bronze relief over the doorway leading into the Sala del Cane opposite (seen on the right of fig. 0.6) illustrates the parable of the Good Samaritan.

Introduction 15

Consolidation in Venice: San Sebastiano Just before his work at Maser, Veronese completed the ceiling of the sacristy, of the nave and frescos in monks' choir of the Hieronymite church of San Sebastiano (cat. 3). This was the third church on the site granted to the Hieronymites in one of Venice's poorer areas, near the Angelo Raffaelle, following their transfer from Rimini in 1396. The first, dedicated to the Virgin, was replaced soon after 1438 with one dedicated to St Sebastian 'because of whose intercession the city was preserved from the plague and to whom the poor monks owed their life'. Completion of the façade in 1548, long after the commission in 1506, and the building of the sacristy in 1554 were the responsibility of the prior, Fra Bernardo Torlioni.30 He belonged with a new breed of clerics acting 'as meta-patrons, co-ordinators and fund raisers', further exemplified by Benedetto Manzini at San Geminiano.31 Born in Verona in 1490, Torlioni had been the order's Apostolic General Vicar in 1539. Although he declined promotion three years later, he had presided over their general convocations from 1546 to 1549 and again from 1552 to 1555.32 Torlioni's enthusiasm for the artists from his native Verona - even though their identity remains uncertain - and for the convention of coupling Old and New Testament subjects was demonstrated in the canvases set above the plain panelling on the sacristy walls, which probably ante-date the installation of square and oval ceiling-frames. It shaped the programme for the sacristy ceiling, where the central Coronation of the Virgin is surrounded by the four evangelists and by two Old Testament cycles (pi. 2 and fig. 0.9).33 Torlioni's programme contrasted redemption through the Virgin's Coronation with Eve's creation and man's fall. Veronese clarified the narrative so that, in Daniele Barbaro's memorable phrase quoted above: 'the whole composition is geared to an effect'. The Old Testament scenes are set within painted frames, which rival the contemporary sculpture of Alessandro Vittoria. They are subsidiary to the central Coronation, where God the Father and Christ, seen against the golden light of heaven and under the hovering dove of the Trinity, embrace while crowning the Virgin as she kneels on a bank of cloud. The gestures and gazes of the evangelists in the ovals - with the exception of St Matthew contemplating the gospel held by the angel direct our attention to the Virgin. She in turn observes the priest, preparing for or returning from, mass. The lighter colours and central Italian mode of the sacristy gave way to a richer, Venetian mode in the ceiling of the nave, commissioned a week after completion of the sacristy on 22 November 1555. The three great canvases of the nave are a further example of Veronese's command of architecture, his ability to clarify narrative, his visual wit and return to a Venetian, rather than a central Italian, mode of handling (cat. 4, pi. 3

l6

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0.9 Ceiling of sacristy, San Sebastiano, Venice, with St Mark, 85 x 240 cm and figs 0.10 and 0.11). The narrative begins above the monks choir as Esther in the centre of the oval is brought to the palace by the massive soldier seen from behind. The other key players - the Assyrian king, Ahasuerus, his war-like general, Haman, and Esther's uncle, Mordechai - are shown at the edges of the composition, which is set on steps before a steeply foreshortened view of the outer palace. The steps in the Coronation of Esther are richer, the column, seen on the right, more ornate. There is a comparable progression in Esther's robes, as she kneels to be crowned by Ahasuerus, with servants behind her and members of the court on the other side, notably the shadowy Mordechai behind Haman in full armour. This progression is continued in the architecture; that of the Esther brought to the Palace is Doric, the manly order; the fluted columns of the Crowning are associated with Corinthian, which would be appropriate for Esther and the twisted columns of the Triumph of Mordechai were associated with the greatest of old Testament rulers, Solomon and his temple at Jerusalem. They were particularly appropriate since Mordechai (Esther 2:6) 'had been carried away from Jerusalem with the captivity of Jeconiah'.

Introduction 17

0.10 Esther before Ahasuerus, nave ceiling, San Sebastiano, Venice, 450 x 370 cm There is a comparable progression in the colour, also culminating with the Triumph. Mordechai in the centre rides the white charger, controlled by two soldiers. One holds the banner decorated with the imperial eagle, while his companion leans back to acknowledge the greetings of Esther, looking down from the foreshortened building marked by its twisting Salomonic columns. Veronese's wit is shown in the contrast between the control of Mordechai's progress and Haman's rearing horse, about to plunge his rider to disaster. The contemporary features, the imperial banner and Haman's armour are there for a positive reason, to underline that Esther and Mordechai illustrate the triumph of the Catholic Church over Protestantism, as noted in Chapter 2.

l8

o.ii

PAOLO VERONESE

Triumph of Mordechai, nave, San Sebastiano, Venice, 500 x 370 cm

Recognition and the revival of Venetian tradition Venetian critics followed the city's patrons in recognizing Veronese's abilities. Among the earliest references is that by Francesco Sansovino, son of the great architect, Jacopo (1486-1570). His guidebooks to Venice,

Introduction 19

beginning in 1556, praised Veronese's contemporary work in the rooms of the Council of Ten in the Ducal Palace as 'opera veramenta di disegno et gentile' (work imbued with design and gracefulness).34 This acknowledged his mastery of central Italian style and success as a 'court' artist, like Raphael able to make state propaganda accessible.35 Similarly in 1564 the Jesuits declared his ceiling for Santa Maria dell'Umiltà 'a great success (riuscito molto bene)'. Sansovino's comments date from the period of Veronese's arrival in Venice, when he was concerned with contemporary art theory and with the reconciliation of central Italian 'disegno' with Venetian colour, interests illustrated in the Temptation of St Anthony (fig. 0.2). Success at San Sebastiano followed by Santa Maria dell'Umiltà (pi. 11 and fig. 2.8) and elsewhere in the city engendered a new appreciation of Venetian tradition. Veronese looked beyond the immediate influence of Titian, decisive although this was, to the narrative modes and concerns with rich fabrics of Gentile da Fabriano and Pisanello. Their work in Venice, although long since lost, formed the basis for history paintings with which Carpaccio and Gentile Bellini had decorated the Venetian scuole. Veronese combined this tradition with the skills which we have already identified: command of architecture, clarity of narrative, visual wit and Venetian handling. The sixteenth-century recognition of Veronese was, however, limited by contrast with the rich vein of praise for Pisanello a century earlier. Humanist authors established a literary mode which paid especial attention to the variety and richness of Pisanello's paintings, by contrast with the austerer tradition associated with the early Florentine Renaissance and the De Pictura by Alberti (1404-72), the first humanist to take an active interest in painting, sculpture and architecture.36 Veronese developed this tradition so that the central elements in his commissions, be it an altarpiece, private devotional painting or the frescos at Maser, are set in striking architecture, and combine pictorial clarity with witty details, often animals, which make the subject accessible. The number of figures included in the Christ Preaching already suggest the importance of this tradition, to which Veronese returned with new mastery of colour, rich robes and classical architecture following his success with ceiling paintings in the nave of San Sebastiano. The new Venetian style is fully displayed in the organ shutters for San Geminiano and San Sebastiano, both 1560 and discussed in Chapter 2 (figs 2.9 and 2.10) and in one of his greatest achievements, the Marriage Feast at Cana, commissioned for the refectory of the Benedictine monastery of San Giorgio Maggiore, Venice, in 1562, but now in the Musée du Louvre (cat. 13, pis 4 and 23, and figs 5.1 and 5.2). The story of Christ's first miracle, turning water to wine at the end of a marriage feast, is orchestrated with singular pomp. Just under 30 guests are seated around a

20

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horseshoe table, decked with crisp white linen, which is angled to make Christ the focal point. He is seated in the centre, under a balustrade resting on an elaborate marble meander, whose shape echoes the tables. Behind it servants carry on with the preparation of the meal. More flutter behind the exotic guests on the left and the portraits set in the shadow on the right. Those in the dip of the table stand on an elaborately patterned marble floor and frame the musician/painters, seated at Christ's feet. The tables are flanked by symmetrical marble colonnades, with red columns in the foreground and fluted white ones further back. These frame the sky and are topped by spectators peering down. The dazzling scale of the architecture, as well as the inventive details - the red marble balls on the balustrade, for instance - must have rivalled the monastery's recent refurbishment by Andrea Palladio. Our description has focused on the virtuosity of the architecture and number of figures, rather than their narrative relevance. This, as we shall see, has become a well-established, but mistaken, view of the Feast. The servant immediately above Christ's head is preparing the sacrificial lamb with his cleaver. That this is an obvious reference to Christ's passion is shown in the setting of the tables, the guests have long since moved on to dessert. The hourglass between the musicians suggests Christ's words to Mary, who first noticed that the host had run out of wine, that 'his hour had not yet come'. It has other connotations, as do the musicians, who are discussed in Chapter 5. The servants on the right with their backs to Christ contemplate glasses of the miraculous wine (whose origin they alone know), drawn at Christ's command by their companions from great water-pitchers on the right. Colour is used to underline the narrative. Veronese ensures a progression through the canvas to the red/blue colour chord of Christ's robe and cloak at the centre. This contrast lies at the heart of Titian's colour from the Assunta of 1518 onwards. Here for all the splendour of the canvas Veronese retained the contrast for Christ. The green and gold brocade of the guest on the right is set against the red of his bearded companion and the blue of the figure seen from behind. Yellow, green and white brocades are used for the foreground servants and red for Titian bending over his double bass in the central group of musicians and serving to frame and highlight Christ's robe.37 The reception of the Marriage Feast gives us a measure of Veronese's critical reputation. Its contemporary fame is shown in the poem by a member of the monastery, written shortly after Veronese completed the commission and quoted in Chapter 5, and in Federico Zuccaro's rapid pen and ink copy, now in Stockholm.38 In the Lamento delia pittura su l'onde Venete, published in Mantua in 1603, Zuccaro sharpened Vasari's criticism of Tintoretto, now responsible for the death of Venetian painting, but mentioned Veronese as 'magnanimous, courteous and excellent, who completed a thousand beautiful works'. 39 This contrasts with Vasari's dismissive references in the second

Introduction 21 edition of the Lives of 1568, where he used the diminutive 'Paulino' and referred to his father as a stonecutter, long after his adoption of the gentrified name Caliari.40 Veronese's work continued to resonate: first as an example for his younger contemporaries in Bologna, the Carracci, and then for Rubens and Van Dyck. Pietro da Cortona's study of the Venice Triumphant helped to resolve his design of the Divine Wisdom on the vault of the Salone of Palazzo Barberini, Rome and prompted his judgement: 'Paolo has been so successful and masterful in his work on a grand scale, that it seems that everyone admires him. This is illustrated in the admiration and love for the oval in the Sala del Gran Consiglio in Venice.'41 This view of Veronese was further articulated in the biography which Carlo Ridolfi included in Le maraviglie dell'arte of 1648. The Maraviglie remain fundamental for all subsequent scholars because of the impressive range of work which Ridolfi studied with learning and understanding. Ridolfi, better at detail than generalizations, praised Veronese for his symmetry (simmetria), grandness (pompa) and ornament {ornamento) arguing that 'above all he was delighted to have worked in the Venetian style, which has illuminated every painter'. 42 Ridolfi's choice of terms was unfortunate, since it opened the way for a critical account of Veronese. 'Ornament' was soon used against Veronese by critics, beginning with GianLorenzo Bernini on his visit to Paris in 1665. His waspish asides, 'the Lombards were great painters, but poor draftsmen', for instance,43 anticipated the views of André Félibien's Entretiens, published in Paris between 1666 and 168544 and Sir Joshua Reynolds's Discourses on Art, delivered at the Royal Academy from 1769 to 1790. Reynolds must have had the Marriage Feast at Cana in mind in the Fourth Discourse. Here he developed Ridolfi's characterization of Veronese's ornamento into a general attack on the 'ornamental' Venetian School: I can easily conceive that Paolo Veronese if he were asked, would say that no subject was proper for an historical picture, but such as admitted at least forty figures; for in a less number, he would assert, there could be no opportunity for the painter's showing his art in composition, his dexterity of managing and disposing the masses of light and groups of figures.45 This hostile judgement divorced skill in the mechanical part of painting, acknowledged by Reynolds, from narrative. It coloured all subsequent critical thought, even of writers favourable to the artist, like Ruskin discussed in Chapters 1 and 4-46 Reynolds's unkind characterization was coloured by the revived interest in Veronese in eighteenth-century Venice, above all in the work of Tiepolo. Veronese formed part of the Venetian repertory in which Tiepolo 'sniffed out the performer in Veronese. This involved a rigorous though reductive way of looking at the painting and a sympathetic imagining of the maker in its making'.47 The freedom with which Tiepolo transformed

22

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the execution of Veronese's oils is even more striking in his handling of fresco, culminating in the new brilliance of palette at Würzburg and Madrid. Although Reynolds makes no mention of Tiepolo, he had copied the Banquet of Cleopatra during his visit to Venice, and published his attack on Veronese a year after Tiepolo's death in 1771. When seeing is believing Veronese worked within the traditions of the Venetian Renaissance. This is true of the large number of figures, of the command of architecture, use of colour and texture and of the concern for the primacy of sight as faith. The renewed significance of sight for the Renaissance resulted from the fundamental reassessment of the classical tradition, whose key figures include Petrarch and Coluccio Salutati in the fourteenth century, Leonardo Bruni and Ficino in the fifteenth. Their interests were diverse, from correct script and style, teaching methods, the reconciliation of pagan with Christian thought to political theory. Ficino's achievement in putting Platonism on the philosophical map of the Renaissance gave added significance to Plato's estimate of sight in his Timaeus: Vision is the cause of the greatest benefit to us, inasmuch as none of the accounts now given concerning the universe would ever have been given if men had not seen the stars or the sun or the heavens/ thus enabling us to 'learn the harmonies and revolutions of the universe, and thereby making the part that thinks like unto the object of thought.48 This had been developed with a different gloss in another key text, Aristotle's Metaphysics: Tor not only with a view to action, but even when we are not going to do anything, we prefer seeing (one might say) to everything else. The reason is that this, most of all the senses, makes us know and brings to light many differences between things.'49 The significance of this for the period is brought out in the winged eye adopted as his emblem by Leon Battista Alberti.50 Aristotle's account of sight was particularly important for the development of illustrations in the period's architectural treatises, beginning with Francesco di Giorgio in the 1470s.51 The courtly game of the paragone (comparison between artists and works of art) enjoyed by Isabella d'Esté,52 was enshrined in Leonardo's manuscript on the paragone, devoted to the supremacy of sight, and thence of painting. Comparison between artists figured briefly in Castiglione's Courtier, the key polite text following its publication in the later 1520s, and formed the basis for Benedetto Varchi's questionnaire to Florentine artists in 1548.53

Introduction 23

Leonardo's commitment to sight extended from his notebooks to his paintings. The pyramidic Holy Family and magi in the unfinished Adoration of the Magi are framed by a circle of followers. They express their faith in Christ through their collective gaze, by contrast with the beautifully observed bystanders in Gentile da Fabriano's version of the subject, painted 60 years earlier.54 Titian shared many of Leonardo's interests. Sts Peter and Jerome are isolated in their thoughts at the edge of Bellini's San Zacearía altarpiece, the culmination of the Venetian altarpiece of the late fifteenth century. The mood was transmitted to Titian's introspective St Sebastian, on the right of the St Mark Enthroned of c. 1511, contrasted with Cosmas/Damian's active gaze at Venice's patron saint. The apostles in Titian's Assumption of the Virgin on the high altar of the Frari express their faith through an intensity of vision not found in his immediate model, Andrea Mantegna's fresco in the Scrovegni chapel in the Eremitani, Padua.55 Veronese had used the idea of sight as faith in the first of the Feasts commissioned for monastic refectories, the Feast in the House of Simon from the Benedictine monastery of SS Nazaro e Celso, probably completed in 1560 (cat. 9, fig. 0.12).56 The feast is set around a table within a courtyard, bounded on the left by a colonnade. There are two major groups: to the right Christ, whose impending fate is suggested by the shadow, surrounded by Simon, Martha and with the penitent Mary with her jar of ointment at his feet and to the left, Judas. He complains of the waste by pointing to the poor huddled just outside the colonnade. His lack of faith illustrated as he turns his back on Christ, by contrast with Martha who gazes in sudden recognition at her saviour. Simon in his rich fur cape and the leading apostles also focus on Christ to suggest his faith. 'Seeing is believing' was central to Veronese's reformulation of representations of martyrdom, beginning with the Martyrdom of St George in San Giorgio in Braida of 1566, which is discussed in greater detail in Chapter 3 (cat. 19, fig. 2.20). Here it is worth noting that the saint turns his back on the priest, urging him to sacrifice to Apollo, and opens his arms as he looks to the heavens, where his prayer is furthered by Faith, Hope and Charity. St George's prayer illustrates the Council of Trent's reaffirmation of the efficacy of saints as intermediaries in their 1563 edict on saints and their images. The representation of St George before his martyrdom was new and established a formula for the Martyrdom of St Justina on the high altar of Santa Giustina, Padua (cat. 31, fig. 3.2). Its appeal is shown in its influence on later visitors to Venice, most notably Adam Elsheimer. He reused the moment in his Martyrdom of St Lawrence now in the National Gallery, London.

0.12 Feasí m í/ze House of Simon, Gallería Sabauda, Turin, 315 x 451 cm

Introduction 25

The master narrator - the mature secular narratives The worldly trappings around St George, buildings in the background, the executioner with his long sword, the saint's armour, the priest and statue, and the amiable horse on the right are realized with rich colour and light. Carpaccio and Bellini are reinterpreted for the sixteenth century with a brilliance which characterizes Veronese's paintings during the 1560s and 1570s. The brilliant colour, costumes and architecture of the Martyrdom of St George and of the Marriage Feast are found in Veronese's most spectacular mythologies. These include the pair in the Frick collection (figs 0.13 and 0.14), the undated Mars and Venus in New York (fig. 0.15) and the Hermes, Herse and Agíamos (fig. 0.16) in Cambridge. All were mentioned in the inventories of the emperor Rudolf II (1552-1612, elected emperor 1576) at Hradcany Palace in Prague.57 Rudolf combined patronage of court artists with a passion for 'old masters', the category into which his Veronese's fall. They must have been created in the early 1560s, when Rudolf was only about 12 years old. His interest in Veronese may have been sharpened by Alberto Badoer's presence as Venetian ambassador from 1579 to 1582, since Veronese had painted the Resurrection for the family chapel in San Francesco della Vigna (fig. 1.3).58 The celebration of love and marriage in the one later set of paintings in Rudolf's collection, the Allegories of Love in the National Gallery, make it an unlikely commission by a prince who never married. They must have been created for a Venetian palace in celebration of a marriage in the early 1580s.59 In the first of the Frick pair, the Honor et Virtus Post Mortem Floret (Honour and virtue flourish after death) (fig. 0.13) an elegantly dressed man escapes the unwelcome attentions of death, whose pleasurable character is underlined by her décolleté, the naked caryatid and cards held in her left hand. Her character is concealed from the young man but revealed to the spectator by the knife resting on the sphinx, famed for killing those who could not answer her riddle. He escapes, with nothing worse than torn stockings, to be embraced by virtue.60 Omnia Vanitas (fig. 0.14) - all is vanity - inscribed on the base of the companion canvas refers to Cupid, the power of Love, the globe, the sceptre and jewels on the ground. Hercules, associated with the vanity of the world, is contrasted with Christian faith and Truth, shown through her attributes globe, sun - the light of god - and upward gaze. The Honor et Virtus and the Omnia Vanitas were included in an undated list of paintings drawn up by Jacopo del Strada. He was active in Italy on behalf of Albrecht V, perhaps in this case in anticipation of the marriage of Albrecht V's eldest son and subsequent heir, Wilhelm V, with Renata von Lothringen in 1568. The picture's austere message, at odds with the lavish marriage, reinforced lessons which Wilhelm had learned from the Jesuits and which in 1585 lead him to Rome and Loreto. As Elector (from 1579) he cut down on the

26

PAOLO VERONESE

0.13 Honor et Virtus Post Mortem Floret, Frick Collection, New York, 219 x 169.5

cm

extravagance of his father's court, spending less on music and painting, and may have ceded the two Veronese's to the Emperor Rudolf II.61 The Mars and Venus in New York and the Hermes, Herse and Aglauros in Cambridge can also be dated to the m i d i ó o s (figs 0.15 and 0.16).62 The contrast between Venus' undress and Mars' armour, suggested by classical sculpture, was enlivened

Introduction 27

0.14 Omnia Vanitas, Frick Collection, New York, 214 x 167 cm by the complexity of their poses. He is seated to the left while Venus stands, resting one arm on his shoulder, their legs intertwined and bound together by one of the amoretti - as a symbol of the bonds of marriage. Both the water from the fountain and the milk spurting from Venus' right breast indicate the fertility of the union, which has deprived Pan in the background of his pipes.

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0.15 Mars and Venus United by Love, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, John Kennedy Fund, 1910 (10.189), signed PAULUS VERONENIS F, 205.7 x l 6 1 cm Mars' horse gazes adoringly at his master, but is tethered as another amoretto holds up Mars' sword in its sheath to indicate that, at least for the time being, he is abandoning the horse and sword for love. The paragone with sculpture is one of the keys to the Hermes, Herse and Aglauros. Herse sits in elegant undress in a rich interior, awaiting a visit from

Introduction 29

0.16 Hermes, Herse and Aglauros, Fitzwilliam Museum, University of Cambridge, signed PAULUS CALIAR/VERONESIS FACI, 232 x 173 cm her lover, Mercury. His attentions have made her sister Aglauros so jealous that she guards her sister's door to bar him from entering. As he approaches, she catches him by his right foot and vows not to move, a threat which prompts Mercury to turn her to stone. Veronese has captured the climactic moment of a drama which, in Book II of Ovid's Metamorphoses, involved at

0.17 Family of Darius before Alexander, National Gallery, London, 336 x 475 cm

Introduction 31

least two encounters between Mercury and Aglauros, and a subplot in which Aglauros is overcome by Envy at Minerva's prompting. The musical instruments and the statue in the niche suggest the harmony of love, a harmony, which is doomed to failure - the fallen roses - through Aglauros' envy, embodied in the statue of a satyress, hidden behind the rich curtain. Mercury and Aglauros are the painterly equivalent of the interlocking two- or three-figure sculptural group, which began with Donatello and was developed by Michelangelo, Bandinelli, Ammanati, Sansovino and GiamBologna. By the end of the 1560s Veronese's style developed a new richness, illustrated in the Family of Darius before Alexander, painted for the distinguished Venetian patricians the Pisani (fig. 0.17).63 The action is set in front of a colonnade broken by a striking building crowned by a pyramid. This evokes - in reduced form - the Mausoleum at Halicarnassus and hence the East, while illustrating Valerius Maximus' dictum that the scene is set in Darius' castle (castrum).64 The horse, dog and page in Alexander's suite watch the drama as do the Persian servants together with a dwarf, carrying the crowns of the royal family, whose captivity is symbolized by the chained monkey. There is further incidental detail at a lower level, between the colonnade and platform. Here Darius's wife kneels before the imposing soldier she takes to be her conqueror, Alexander, to plead for her vulnerable daughters, the oldest of whom wears golden bridal costume. Although her entreaties are seconded by a bearded councillor, she has picked the wrong man and addressed Hephaestion, bare-legged but wearing contemporary parade armour. Alexander is singled out by his splendid red cuirass. His gesture combines two aspects of the narrative. His restraint before Darius's beautiful daughters indicates temperance and his gesture to Hephaestion friendship. He spares the queen's embarrassment by indicating that Hephaestion is a second Alexander, a flattering gesture extended to the Pisani through Hephaestion's contemporary armour.65 The new grandeur can also be seen in the ceiling of the Collegio in the Ducal Palace, commissioned after the fire of 1574. Comparison with the Jupiter Expelling Crimes and Vices, painted 20 years earlier for the rooms of the Council of Ten, is instructive. The foreshortened figures are now related to architecture, Venice, for instance in the culminating Justice and Peace before Venice, is enthroned on a large globe, under a cloth of honour (fig. 0.18). Energy and movement have been replaced by sophisticated textures, Venice's ermine and Justice's silk robe, as she kneels before Venice, her sword and scales balanced by Peace's olive branch.66 The skill with which the eight female allegories were fitted into 'L' and inverted T ' canvases, together with their witty use of attributes, underlines Veronese's development.67 Fortune, on the corner towards the Library for

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0.18 Justice and Peace before Venice, Sala del Collegio, Ducal Palace, Venice, 250 x 180 cm instance, includes a view of upper storey of Sansovino's building, to accompany the Campanile in the Mars and Neptune. Venice's good fortune stemmed from the disasters of others: the fall of Constantinople brought Bessarion together with his bequest and the sack of Rome, Sansovino. The

Introduction 33

0.19 Vera'ce Triumphant, Sala del Maggior Consiglio, Ducal Palace, Venice, 904 x 580 cm Library commission had resulted in the award of a gold chain to Veronese, following a ballot among all the painters under Titian's auspices.68 The greater command of richly clad figures in architecture and the new independence culminated in Veronese's greatest official commission, the

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Venice Triumphant of 1582 (fig. 0.19). This was the final canvas above the doge's throne following the redecoration of Sala del Maggior Consiglio, after the disastrous fire of 15 yy.69 The composition was developed from earlier ceilings, notably the Assumption of the Virgin from Santa Maria deirUmiltà, now in SS Giovanni e Paolo (pi. 11), and the ceiling of the Sala deirOlimpo at Villa Maser (fig. 0.5). The regal Venice, foreshortened on her globe and in front of a turreted building, sits just under the great cornice of a triumphal arch, marked out by twisted Salomonic columns. She is crowned by fame and victory, with allegorical representations of her just rule and prosperity on the cloudbank at her feet. There is a greater range of contrast between the figures than in the earlier ceilings, and the clouds are similarly realized with a richer play of light and shade. Venice is the focus of the peaceful Venetian matrons and their children behind the balustrade, the embodiment of the city's prosperity, which rests on military strength, the rearing horses and captured enemy. The programme, drawn up by 1578, had mentioned Venice, the accompanying allegories and the citizens, as well as putti to represent the four seasons. There was no mention of the soldiers with captives at the bottom of the canvas or of the triumphal architecture, whose twisted columns compare Venice with Solomon, an idea developed in the next century in Rubens's Whitehall ceiling. This is particularly significant since the commissioners had specified the setting for Tintoretto's scene. The omission gives an indication of contemporary appreciation of Veronese's ability to provide appropriate architecture. The master narrator - the mature religious paintings Public and private commissions for religious paintings in the 1570s are characterized by command of architecture and by a combination of narrative moments. The 1560 Feast in the House of Simon from SS Nazaro e Celso was framed by a Corinthian colonnade, which three years later was made deeper and extended to both sides of the Marriage Feast (pis 4 and 23, and figs 5.1 and 5.2). There was a characteristic development in the later versions of this subject, which had been revived in 1570 with Bernardo Torlioni's commission of the Feast in the House of Simon for the refectory of San Sebastiano, now in Milan (fig. 5.3). This culminated in the Feast, from the refectory of the Dominican monastery of SS Giovanni e Paolo of 1573 (cat. 28, pi. 26, and figs 5.5 and 5.6). Here giant Corinthian columns support a wooden cornice and form a loggia, running the length of the canvas, made up of three round-headed openings. Although the architecture, which also includes descending steps at either side, takes up over twothirds of the huge canvas, it does not distract from Christ in the centre. His

Introduction 35

head is seen against the sky, while the side openings are closed off with a busy cityscape. The Feast is discussed at greater length in Chapter 5. Here we should note the skill with which Veronese has drawn together strands from earlier versions: Peter tearing the sacrificial lamb from the Marriage Feast at Cana, the group of Christ, Sts Peter, John and Judas from the Last Supper. The Eucharistie references to bread and wine, which frame the donor, were continued in the German soldiers on the right, shown as Catholic converts rather than Calvinists. Judas's lack of faith, turning away from Christ, is highlighted through Christ's recognition by the servant in the striped robe standing in front of one of the great columns. This contrast was developed from the Feast of St Gregory the Great at Monte Berico (pi. 25). There is a parallel development in the architectural settings of other major public commissions. The setting in which St Justina is shown at the moment of her martyrdom in the high altar of Santa Giustina, Padua, is grander and more elaborate than that of the Martyrdom of St George, painted nine years earlier in 1566 (figs 2.20 and 3.2). She is set back from the surface of the canvas, kneeling on a flight of steps, surrounded by a larger group of soldiers and priests. The illusionistic space is greater, its background dominated by a view of the church itself, and in the heavens the foreground figure of Christ is contrasted with the brilliant heavenly light. That intercession is made to Christ, rather than the Virgin, is a point to which we will return in the discussion of the Deesis with Sts Sebastian and Roch (pi. 6). The architecture in the 1578 Annunciation, a private commission by the Cottoni and Cadabrazzo families for the recently rebuilt Scuola dei Mercanti, serves both as an advertisement of Veronese's skills and as symbol for the Virgin (cat. 35, pi. 5). She kneels at her reading desk, set on a splendidly complex marble floor. The loggia is framed by Ionic columns, whose pink tinge served as reminder - if one were needed - of the artist's birthplace, and leads on to the white marble doorway, developed from the main altar at San Sebastiano. This frames a view of the closed garden, the emblem of her purity, and of the building in the background, perhaps intended as a reference to the Virgin as the church. In Renaissance theories the Corinthian order represented the Virgin. Here it both evokes Ezekiel's (43:4) prophecy 'the Glory of the Lord came into the House by way of the doorway whose prospect is towards the East'70 and rivalled the lost setting in the Albergo, recently redesigned by Palladio. In the private sphere Veronese's greatest commission was that in 1571 for the camera grande of Coccina palace on the grand canal, discussed further in Chapter 4 (pis 20-22, and fig. 4.11). Some 10 to 15 years earlier another, now unknown, Venetian family had demanded inclusion alongside Christ at the supper in Emmaus, in a canvas now in the Louvre (fig. 4.5). The room is

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suggested by the pedimented doorway framing Christ and his host at the inn and fluted columns at either side, with a view of Christ on his pilgrimage in the landscape. In the Coccina Family presented to the Virgin and Child the scene is outside and twin marble columns divide the heavenly sphere of the Holy Family from the earthly of the kneeling members of the Coccina family, newly arrived from Bergamo but enjoying citizen status. The Christ child, standing on his mother's lap, responds with open arms to St John the Baptist and the angel, pointing to the Coccina beyond the columns, who follow Venetian convention in not looking directly at the Holy Family. They are presented by Faith, with the chalice, Hope and Charity, standing behind the kneeling brothers and Zanetta Coccina, two of whose younger sons are shown standing. The family in the Supper at Emmaus stand rather self-consciously, by contrast with the masterful combination of movement and devotion of the Coccina Family. Family pride plays its part as in the right background we see the family palace on the Grand Canal with Zanetta Coccina about to embark on a gondola. Late style: the religious paintings The four canvases for the Coccina palace ranged from the rich ostentation of the Adoration of the Magi to the tragic intensity of the Christ Carrying the Cross. The contrast between festive pomp and heightened intensity marks Veronese's work in the last eight years of his career. This is illustrated in the redecoration of San Nicolò ai Frari, completed in 1582 (cat. 38, figs 3.12-3.13), and discussed in Chapter 3. The Adoration of the Magi from the centre of the ceiling is comparable to the Venice Triumphant (fig. 0.19), finished in the same year, in its richly dressed, foreshortened, figures set in impressive architecture. The Stigmatisation of St Francis, also from the ceiling, shows a very different side of Veronese's late work, as the saint's vision is set in an expressive landscape and against a dramatic sky. Veronese used this mode for the drama of the two large canvases which were set around Titian's altarpiece, now removed to the Vatican Galleries. The Baptism and Temptation of Christ is set within an extensive landscape, contrasted with Jerusalem in the background (fig. 3.13). This looms even larger in the Crucifixion (fig. 0.20). Although set back and relatively small, Christ is the dominant figure. His pale body is signalled by the halo shining against the dark sky, 'now from the sixth hour there was darkness' (Matthew 27:45). He is flanked by the crucified thieves, with the adoring Magdalen and St Longinus, his spear over his shoulder, at his feet. The fall in the ground leads first to the slumped Mary, and then to soldiers and further mourners seen under the hooves of the rearing horse. Veronese

0.20 Crucifixion, Gallerie deirAccademia, Venice, 287 x 447 cm

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PAOLO VERONESE

0.21 The Virgin and Child adored by Sts Anne and Joachim, with view of altar, S. Polo, Venice, 350 x 170 cm

Introduction 39

chose a most unusual moment, Matthew 27:52 'and the earth did quake and the rocks rent; and the graves were opened and many bodies of the saints which slept arose'. In the foreground the lids of sarcophagi are thrown back and a figure crawls out to the horror of the soldier running towards the group playing dice for Christ's robe.71 The choice of an unusual Gospel text finds a parallel in the Agony in the Garden (fig. 3.15), discussed in Chapter 4. There is comparable invention, within very different conventions, in three late altarpieces. At San Polo Veronese was commissioned to provide an altarpiece to enclose the church's precious Byzantine icon of the Virgin and Child (cat. 36, fig. 0.21). As with other Venetian commissions the marble frame must have preceded Veronese's contribution. The Virgin's parents kneel with their hands clasped in celebration of their union looking up at the miraculous icon, which appears to be carried by angels and is blessed by God the Father. The donkey in the background, the palm tree and the heads suggest an interrupted journey, as Joachim and Anna kneel on a broken classical cornice, emblematic of the triumph of Christianity over paganism, which echoes the altar's marble frame. Convention demanded that Venetian donors looked straight ahead, rather than directly at the Holy Family. At San Pantaleone the parish priest, Bartolommeo Borghi, wished to be included beside his church's patron saint (cat. 43, fig. 0.22). He therefore looks away from the central figure of the saint to observe the young boy, whose sight has been healed and demon exorcized. The saint's elegant red robes indicate his status as court physician, here moving in humble surroundings. His healing is contrasted with the impotent paganism of the broken statue, while he looks towards the angel, descending with the martyr's palm, to show the strength of his faith in spite of his impending martyrdom. 72 The coincidence of the dedication of San Rocco, Parma, the original site of the Deesis with Sts Sebastian and Koch, with the devastating experience of the plague in 1575-76 left an indelible mark on this most moving of Veronese's late altarpieces (cat. 44, pi. 6). Christ holding the crystal globe is just prevented from casting down the arrow of judgement on the background figures. They kneel before their still unfinished church, their prayers transmitted through Roch and Sebastian, and furthered by the Virgin and the Baptist. Both here and in the Martyrdom of St Justina, painted some 12 to 13 years earlier, a titular saint is combined with a renewed emphasis upon Christ. This is part of a process which developed under the aegis of the Council of Trent and which resulted in altarpieces where the titular saint was displaced by Christ. Veronese's skilful compromise shows his, and his patrons, responsiveness to the Catholic reform movement, one of the themes of the next section.73

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0.22 Miracle of St Pantaleon, San Pantalon, Venice, 277 x 160 cm

Introduction 41

Piety and display The commissions for Veronese's religious paintings were shaped by major developments in Catholic liturgy, by Venetian practice and by the reform movement, which developed during the sixteenth century. Central to Christian worship was celebration of the Mass by a priest at an altar. Following the Council of Nicaea in 787 these had to contain the relics of a saint, which might be placed in a crypt under the altar, within the altar, or in a reliquary placed on the altar-table. The form of the altar, and of its decoration, developed under the impulse of the Fourth Lateran Council of 1215. This both insisted that each altar had to be clearly labelled with its titulus (title) and changed liturgical practice. The priest now celebrated mass facing the altar, on the side of - but with his back to the congregation. The visual ritual resulted in a moment of high drama, as the host, which represented Christ's real presence, was raised above the priest's head. As the liturgy was modified so the decoration of the altar changed. Previously the major element had been the altar frontal, placed, as its name suggests, in front of - rather than on - the altar-table. In some cases these were now moved up on to the altar, whilst in others their rectangular shape was adopted for the retables, which now stood on and at the back of altars. The need to frame the priest with the host held above his head at the climax of the mass, lead to the upright altar familiar from the late Gothic period to the Renaissance.74 By the period with which we are concerned, the sixteenth century, these had developed from the Gothic polyptich to the Renaissance pala, generally an upright rectangle with a round top. The frame with its classical columns and triangular pediment was freely inspired by the period's rediscovery of classical architecture. Venetian practice was further affected by another profound development in Christian belief. During the period 1150-1250 Catholics moved from a system which contrasted hell with paradise, to one where the soul was suspended between these extremes, awaiting the last judgement in purgatory.75 Fixing purgatory as a defined space influenced patronage. Lay patrons sought burial at the foot of an altar, for which they made provision together with their tomb and, most significantly, for continued and regular celebration of mass. These stipulations in their testaments, linking their immortal soul with their physical remains, were intended to speed their soul on its journey through purgatory. The resulting demand for lay burial within a church was met by the Mendicant orders, in Venice by 1220. The building of their two great churches, the Frari for the Franciscans and SS Giovanni e Paolo for the Dominicans was dependent on lay patronage.

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One is so accustomed to tombs of laymen in churches that the extraordineress of such burials is often taken for granted. Even with most of its Medieval and early Renaissance tombs destroyed S. Croce in Florence, for example, almost seems to be a necropolis, itsfloorin effect paved with tombstones. But the historical reality is that always excepting the burials of rulers and other rulers - the burial of laymen in churches was rare before the twelfth century and became common only with the establishment of the Mendicant orders ... A case in point is Olda, a notary's wife whose son was a friar in the Frari. Olda wished to be buried there and bequeathed funds in her testament of 1361 for the friars who would attend her funeral service and for the purchase of candles/6 This illustrates the tradition of the patronage and rights in lay hands, known under canon law as juspatronatus. Its continued vitality throughout the Renaissance is demonstrated through Peter Humfrey's calculations that there were over 1000 altars in Venice by the beginning of the sixteenth century. The lay patron's concern for his (or her) soul's journey through purgatory remained a strand in Veronese's patronage, as represented by Antonio and Lorenzo Giustinians' patronage at San Francesco della Vigna, discussed above, and again, for example, by Lise Soranzo's in the chancel of San Sebastiano, discussed in Chapter 2.77 There the heavenly Virgin and Child, with attendant angels, appear to St Sebastian, to whom the church was dedicated, and a group of saints chosen because they were the family's namesakes. Veronese's treatment of the imagery reflected the demands for Catholic reform, prompted above all by the issue in 1563 of the decrees on saints and their imagery by the Council of Trent, discussed in Chapter 3. However, the scheme of the San Sebastiano altarpiece was as traditional as its patronage. By the end of the sixteenth century the bulk of Venetian altars were dedicated to the Virgin, followed by the Holy Sacrament and the Holy Cross and a range of individual saints. This resulted in the prominence of the enthroned Virgin with the Christ Child in Venetian altarpieces of the holy conversation (sacra conversazione). By 1526 Titian had reformulated this type with his Pesaro altarpiece, where the Holy Family are framed by twin columns, echoing those in the Frari, and set asymmetrically to the right, elements developed by Veronese, beginning with the Giustinian altarpiece. Titian's St Mark Enthroned from S. Spirito in Isola - together with Sebastiano del Piombo's St John Chrysostom Enthroned in S. Giovanni in Crisóstomo - was equally significant for the sacra conversazione where the saint to whom the chapel was dedicated replaced the Virgin. Titian gave a similarly decisive - but curiously delayed impulse to the narrative altarpiece, showing key moments in the saint's life and - more especially - their death with the now destroyed Death of St Peter Martyr. That was commissioned in 1526-29, but its lessons were relatively overlooked before Veronese's Martyrdom of St George of 1566, discussed in Chapter 3 (fig. 2.20).78

Introduction 43

Concern at the corruption and growing secularism of the papacy and of the Catholic Church was widespread in both Italy and Germany during the fifteenth century. The most distinguished Catholic author Erasmus (c. 1466-1536) had attacked the role of saints, fasting and the issue of indulgences in a series of publications beginning with the Enchiridion of 1504. While Erasmus remained a Catholic, Martin Luther (1483-1546) broke with the church, followed by much of Germany, the Netherlands and Scandinavia. His initial doubts, published in Wittenburg in 1517, like those of Erasmus, concerned indulgences. In the next three years he developed a radically new view of justification by faith, which was wholly 'extrinsic to man' and dependent upon Christ alone, followed by a redefinition of the sacraments. These he reduced from seven to two - baptism and Eucharist. Although he continued in the belief of Christ's real presence, together with the consecrated wine and bread, his position differed from the Catholic view of transubstantiation and from the later Protestant denial of Christ's presence.79 The papal response to the challenge of Luther, followed by those of the leaders of the Swiss reformation, Zwingli (1481-1531) and Calvin (1509-1564), was slow and half-hearted. The emperor Frederick II (1194-1250, elected emperor 1220) had been in constant dispute with the papacy, his feudal lords, beginning with Honorius III, who had excommunicated him in 1227. Frederick responded by challenging the familiar account of papal power - the pope ruled as supreme ruler since Christ had handed the keys of the church to St Peter, through whom they passed to the pope. Frederick argued that power was vested not in the pope but in a great Council, and that the pope only acted on its behalf. The attraction of this argument to rulers who disagreed with the pope is obvious and resulted in a turbulent period as papal power was challenged by a series of Councils, including those at Constance and Bale. The threat of a hostile great Council remained very real. As late as 1511, for instance, Louis XII of France expressed his dissatisfaction with Julius II by establishing a council in Pisa.80 It is hardly surprising that Julius's successors, Leo X and Clement VII (1523-34), failed to contain the threat of Lutheranism by establishing a General Council. This became possible for later popes. In 1534 Alessandro Farnese secured key votes for his accession as Paul III through the promise of a Council. Two years later, in 1536, he set up a commission to investigate Church reform. Its recommendations appeared in the following year, but there was a delay of a further eight years before the Council was established in Trent in 1545.8l The early sessions, which lasted until 1548, were concerned with Luther's views on justification, not with the Protestant removal of imagery from its churches. When the Council returned to Trent in 1561-63 its final sessions were much better attended than before, illustrated by the presence of Daniele Bárbaro among over 70 Italian bishops.

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Again a wide range of practical issues were covered. The Council's decrees were concerned with reform of the clergy. Here they strengthened the authority of bishops, who now had to visit their dioceses regularly. There was a comparable combination of new controls and regular attendance at church rituals for both the religious orders and the confraternities, lay associations which dated back to at least the thirteenth century. This and a renewed emphasis on the Eucharist meant that altars devoted to the church's patron saint might be moved from the high to a side altar, allowing the high altar to be dedicated to Christ. Three of Veronese's commissions show an intermediary stage, where the patron saints are combined with Christ: the Martyrdom of St Justina of 1575 (cat. 31, fig. 3.2), the Christ with Zebedee's Wife and Sons from San Giacomo of 1578 (cat. 34, pi. 16), and the Deesis with Sts Sebastian and Roch delivered to the Jesuits as the high altar of San Rocco, Parma towards the end of Veronese's career (cat. 44, pi. 6).82 Veronese benefited from this new atmosphere. During the 1550s and 1560s Tintoretto had monopolized the decoration of chapels belonging to confraternities.83 Veronese received two commissions in 1573: the Adoration of the Magi for San Silvestro for the Scuola di San Giuseppe (cat. 30, fig. 3.6) and the workshop Madonna of the Rosary for San Pietro, Murano for the Confraternity of the Rosary.84 The Annunciation (pi. 5), discussed above was a private commission in 1578 for the Scuola dei Mercanti, while the Appearance of the Pietà to Sts Mark, James and Jerome was commissioned by the Confraternity of the Strazzaroli for their altar in San Giuliano by 1581.85 The Last Supper, now in the Brera, was painted for Santa Soffia at the commission of the Scuola del Sacramento early in the 1580s (cat. 37, fig. ^.y). The Martyrdom and Last Communion of St Lucy was commissioned for the chapel of St Lucy in the Confraternity of the Cross, Belluno in the 1580s (cat. 42, pi. 14). The Virgin and Child appear to Sts Anthony, Paul the Hermit, Peter and Paul was ordered as a replacement for a polyptich by Antonio Vivarini by the confraternity of St Anthony in Pesaro in 1586 (cat. 41). The final session of the Council of Trent in 1563 reaffirmed the Catholic belief in the role of images. The decree, discussed in Chapter 3, was notable for its emphasis on the devotion to saints, which in turn shaped Veronese's representations of martyrdom, beginning with the Martyrdom of St George in 1566. In Rome the decree resulted in a renewed devotion to the early church. New catacombs became known from 1578 onwards, with the discovery of that of St Priscilla. This rediscovery was one of the factors which led to a revived Catholic scholarship, concerned to separate fact from legend in the lives of the saints, although this did not become an issue for Veronese, whose representations continued to be based on the Golden Legend of Jacobus de Vorágine. The popularity of Voragine's fanciful version of the

Introduction 45

Catholic calendar, completed by 1264, was greatly boosted through the introduction of printing at the end of the fifteenth century.86 The commissions for confraternities underline that the reforms of the Council of Trent affected both piety and display. This can be seen in the extensive redecoration of older churches, beginning in 1578 with San Giacomo, Murano (cat. 34, pis 16-18) and the new ceiling and laterals for the small oratory of San Nicolo ai Frari (cat. 38, figs 0.20, 3.12 and 3.13). Before this Veronese had been commissioned to produce Feasts for the refectories of a number of great monasteries, discussed in Chapter 5. The inclusion of lay patrons in some, but not all of these, suggests reward for footing the bill and a concern for display. This latter influenced the decoration of Venetian palaces during the 1570s. Around 1500 paintings were confined to religious images in bedrooms or small paintings, like those of Giorgione, for a studio. The major rooms were the site of lavish fireplaces, decorative ceilings etc., but not of paintings. Veronese played a key role in the new fashion for sets of canvases in camere grande,87 with the commission around 1571 for the four canvases, now in Dresden, for the Coccina family palace on the grand canal. As already noted above, these range from the rich ostentation of the Adoration of the Magi to the piety of the Christ Carrying the Cross. The Coccina Family presented achieved that happy blend of piety and display, which is be explored in the remaining chapters.

Notes 1. Pignatti docs i and 2; he wrote to Ercole Gonzaga in March 1553 as 'spezapreda', literally translated as stonecutter, not necessarily his father's profession; the contract for the Montagnana Transfiguration of June 1555 refers to Caliari, in imitation of patricians from Verona; Pignatti, 1976, docs 5 and 8; Trecca, p. 17. 2. Sansovino, p. 383 notes that 'le piètre poi da Verona ci sono in stima, perche essendo rosse' (marble from Verona is highly thought of because it is red), Veronese often includes it. 3.

Cocke, 1984, p. 44, note 2.

4.

Lazzarini, p. 140.

5. The date - MDXLVIII - on the book held by scribe under Christ, was first read by Levey It has been doubted by many scholars; Levey; Cocke, 1984, pp. 1 and 2; Rearick, W. N. G., p. 57. 6. Vasari, vol. 6, p. 370 refers to Veronese's work with Giovanni Caroto (c. 1488-c. 1566); C. Hope, "The Historians of Venetian Painting' in London, pp. 38-9; Borghini, p. 561 suggests a training with Antonio Badile, whose daughter Veronese was later to marry. 7. After an outward journey of 40 days, he had spent 21 in Jerusalem, before the return, lasting over 80 days, Hyde, 'Navigation of the Eastern Mediterranean in the fourteenth and Fifteenth Centuries According to Pilgrims' Books' in 1993, pp. 96-9. 8. Hochmann, 1992a, pp. 19-29; in 1573 Veronese completed the Rape of Europa, the Adoration of the Magi in the National Gallery, London, that still in S. Corona, Vicenza and the Feast in the House of Levi, now in the Accademia. 9. Pignatti and Pedrocco, 1995, list 403 attributions; of these 102 are doubtful: 1, 2, 4-6, 7-8,12,13,14, 16, 22, 23, 24, 37-40, 52, 55, 59, 60, 61, 62, 63, 86,128,132,135,139,144,147,158-61,163-6,169,180, 191, 208, 209, 211, 235, 236, 243, 246, 251, 255, 267, 270, 272, 275-6, 278, 286, 287, 294, 313, 315, 316,

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322, 327, 328-29, 330-31, 335, 337, 342-3, 346, 347, 351, 354, 357, 360-61, 372-4, 378, 379, 382, 384, 386, 387-9, 392, 393, 394, 396, 397, 398, 401-2. 10. Portraits make a ninth (29) of the 265 works included by Pignatti and Pedrocco, 1991; for Titian between a third and a quarter of the 490 entries in Valcanover, 1969 (allowing for minor adjustments) are portraits (134); for Tintoretto a similar exercise in De Vecchi, 1970 left a catalogue of 270, as the 80 portraits formed a comparable ratio. 11.

In Vicenza he painted the Francesco Franceschini, now in Sarasota, in 1551 and the da Porto family in two portraits now in Baltimore and Florence, in 1552-53, immediately after completion of Palladio's façade, Batilotti, 1981, and L. Puppi, 'La committenza Vicentina di Paolo Veronese' in Gemin, p. 342 and notes 20 and 21.

12. Cited by Dempsey, pp. 52-5 and 60-65. 13.

Pino, vol. 1, pp. 126-7.

14. Vasari, vol. 7, p. 447; Cocke, 1984,17-I8. 15.

Dolce, pp. 98-101.

16. Marcantonio was 16 in 1534, Dizionario 1964,104-5, Humfrey and Holt, pp. 192-4. 17. The first reference to the rooms, by Sansovino/Guisconi refer to 'Paolo' (meaning Veronese) as the guiding spirit. This view is better informed than Vasari's that the commission had been assigned to Ponchino, Guisconi/Sansovino, 1556, A viiij v and 1561, 20v; Vasari, vol. 6 (life of San Michèle), pp. 370-71 and (life of Battista Franco), Schulz, 1968, pp. 96-9, Wolters, pp. 247-8. 18. The deliberations for additional canvases in the Great Council Chamber of January 1561 include the phrase that the commissions would be given 'in concorentia', to ensure a reasonable price, Pignatti, 1976, 253, doc. 20. 19. Lane, 114-16; Wolters, 247 ff.; da Mosto, vol. 1, p. 52 ff. and Cocke in Gemin, 245-7. 20.

Sansovino, 1581, p. 325 cited by Hope, 1985, p. 409, Cocke in Gemin, p. 246.

21.

Logan, pp. 30 and 298-9.

22.

R. Cevese 'L'Opera del Palladio' in Vicenza, 1973, p. 126, note 105; Ridolfi's, attribution of the nymphaeum to Marcantonio is supported by most modern scholars in view of their 'amateur' quality.

23.

It shows the frontispiece of the 1556 edition and p. 235 - omitted in the 1567 edition - combined with a temple façade from book III.

24. Lanz; Rearick, C , p. 60; Titian's portrait from the Giovio collection in Como, was mentioned by Aretino in a letter of 25 February 1545, Venice, 1990, p. 49. 25.

Cocke, 1972, p . 226.

26.

Ridolfi, pp. 341-42 refers to spalliere with the life of Esther on which Marcantonio collaborated with Veronese; they may be reflected in the smaller Three Scenes with Esther and Ahasuerus now in the Castelvecchio, Verona, whose attribution to Veronese is unlikely. The relationship of figures to architecture is unconvincing, as is the structure of the figures, Gisolfi Pechukas, 1982, pp. 388-413: Verona, 1988, cat. 1; Barriault, p. 27.

27.

Boucher, pp. 149-56.

28.

Marcantonio Bárbaro was about 40 when the villa was decorated. If this was also the age of Giustina Giustinian she was older than the idealized mother shown in the fresco, see above note 13; for a different account see Rogers, pp. 379-97.

29. Hope, 1985, p. 415 ff. 30.

Schulz, 1968, pp. 76-7; Schulz, 1978, esp. p. 439.

31.

Hills, 1993, p. 114.

32. Rognini, pp. 143-65. 33.

Simonetti, 1986,169-76, Kahr, pp. 235-47.

34. Guisconi/Sansovino A viiij v and 1561, 20V. 35.

Summers, 1981, pp. 37 and 325; Rubin, 1995, pp. 22,324, 359.

36.

Baxandall, 1971, pp. 90-95.

Introduction 47

37. The literature on Titian's colour is summarized by Panofsky, 1969, pp. 18-26. 38.

Made on visit to the city in either 1564 or 1582, A. Priever, 'Copies: XVIe, XVIIe, XVIIIe siècles' in Habert, pp. 298-300, a copy after the Frederick Barbarossa from the Council Chamber of the Ducal Palace now in the Morgan Library is attributed to Zuccaro, Mundy, cat. 54.

39.

Ed. Heikamp, 1961, p. 127.

40. Vasari, vol. 6, p. 370; C. Hope, 'The historians of Venetian Painting' in London, 1983, p. 38. 41.

Boschini, 1660, pp. 157-220; Cocke, 1980b, pp. 96-111; Scott, 1991, pp. 130-31 and 156-9.

42.

Schlosser-Magnino, ed. Kurz, 1977, p. 527 ff.

43.

On the Christ with Zebedee's Wife and Sons, discussed in Chapter 4, Chantelou, p. 107.

44. Vol. 2, p. 105. 45.

1778,1961 edn, p. 62.

46.

It underpins Rosand's comparison of the Feast with theatrical sets, 1982a, 166-7.

47.

Alpers and Baxandall, pp. 7-30.

48. J. Kraye, 'Philologists and Philosophers' in Kraye, 1996, p. 150. 49.

Summers, 1987, pp. 32-3; Hankins, 1990.

50. Gadol, 1969. 51.

Onians, pp. 174-6; Leonardo da Vinci, esp. pp. 20-46 for the paragone.

52.

In 1498 she asked Cecilia Gallerani for the loan of her portrait by Leonardo to compare (vederle al parangone) with a portrait by Giovanni Bellini, Cartwright, 1932, vol. 1, p. 341.

53.

Varchi, 1549.

54. Wolfflin, 1952, pp. 251-79, remains fundamental; he defined the changes in terms of: repose, simplification, complexity, unity and inevitability; sight needs to be added to his list. 33.

Humfrey, 1993, cats 62, 78 and 86.

56. Suggested by the resemblance with the organ shutters in San Sebastiano, even though Abbot Mauro made the first payment of ten crowns on 3 January 1556, Cooper, 283-4. ^j.

In addition he owned another fragmentary Venus disarms Mars, the Venus and Adonis in Stockholm and the four Allegories of Love in the National Gallery, Zimmerman, XLV, XLVI; Granberg, p. 37; Goodison and Robertson, p. 125 ff.; Cocke, 1977, pp. 120-21, Zeri, pp. 43-8.

58.

Humfrey and Holt, pp. 205-11.

59. They resemble the four canvases, formerly in Berlin, devoted to the zodiac and praise of Germany, which in 1580 accompanied the new gilt leather hangings in the Sala délie Pitture of the Fondacho dei Tedeschi, Milesio, p. 42; for the fashion for gilt leather hangings, Thornton, 1991, p. 85; Rearick, W. N. G., pp. 63 and 64; Penny, Roy and Spring, pp. 33-43. 60. Veronese combined the Choice of Hercules with Cartari's representation of Honour and Truth in his engraving of a bust-length husband and wife joining hands in the conjunctio dextris, with their son in the centre as Love, Cartari, p. 84, Panofsky, 1930, p. 109. 61.

Stockbauer, p. 43; K. Garas, 'Veronese e il collezionismo del Nord nel XVI-XVII Secólo' in Gemin, pp. 16-18; Rearick, W. N. G., p. 120 ff.

62. Zimmerman, XLV, XLVI, 1151; Granberg, p. 37 notes 41 and 42; Goodison and Robertson, p. 125 ff. 63.

The date is not known, but it is usually dated to the end of the 1560s or beginning of the next decade, Gould, 1959, pp. 143-5; Penny and Spring, pp. 16-29.

64. The tomb for Mausolos, satrap of Caria, was completed by 362; known to the Renaissance through the descriptions of Pliny and Pausanias, it was crowned by a pyramid, Panofsky, 1992, p. 23; for its reconstruction in the woodcut in the Hypnerotomachia Poliflli, see Fortini Brown, 1996, p. 215. 65.

Diodorus, Curzius Rufus, Valerius Maximus and Arrian are summarized by R. Guerrini, 'Dalla Soranza a Casa Pisani', in Gemin, pp. 371-9; Penny and Spring, pp. 16-18.

66. The Collegio was responsible for religion, for the agenda of the Senate, for the Venetian army and fleet. These were underlined by the Latin inscription: CVSTODES LIBERTATIS; followed by REIPVB FUNDAMENTUM, NUMQVAM DERELICTA and ending, over the entrance, with ROBVR IMPERII, Da Mosto, pp. 22ff and 213; Wolters, pp. 256-64.

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PAOLO VERONESE

6j. Schulz, 1968, pp. 104-7; Pignatti, 1976, docs 46-8; E. Merkel, 'Gli Exempla Virtutis. Una riconsiderazione dopo il restauro del soffitto del Collegio' in Gemin, pp. 380-90. 68. Vasari, vol. 6, p. 367, with no mention of Titian, referred to by Ridolfi, p. 306. 69. The programme was drawn up by Giacomo Marcello and Giacomo Contarini, with the help of Jacopo Soranzo and Francesco Bernardo, Wolters, 1965, Wolters, 265-87. 70. Echoed in the prophetic figures above the doorway. 71. In the version, now in the Louvre, Veronese replaced drama with meditation, retaining the crosses set against the dark sky, but simplifying the mourning group and background, Rearick, W. N. G., pp. 95 and 94. 72. Acta Sanctorum, vol. 33, p. 397, 27 July. 73. Humfrey, 1996, pp. 374-9. 74. Humfrey, 1993, pp. 57-8, Dunkerton, pp. 22-33. J5. Link, pp. 117-19. 76. Goffen, p. 23. JJ. Humfrey, 1993, p. 61. 78. Humfrey, 1993, pp. 117-30,149-64, Humfrey, 1996, pp. 374-5. 79. Dickens, pp. 9-11, 29-41. 80. Dickens, pp. 91-5. 81. Dickens, pp. 96-107. 82. Po-Chia Hsia, pp. 22-3, Humfrey, 1996, pp. 378-9. 83. Hills, 1983, pp. 30-44, Davidson, 1987, p. 47. 84. Pignatti, 1976, A214. 85. It replaced Lazzaro Sebastiani's altarpiece, as first noted by Holt, Sansovino, pp. 126-7. 86. Po-Chia Hsia, pp. 18-20,130-32. 87. Hochmann, 1992b, p. 50, note 21 draws attention to Tintoretto's contract of 1573 with Girolamo da Mula to paint several paintings for his camera grande.

1 From Verona to Venice

Verona was one of the great cities of north Italy, whose wealth stemmed from agriculture in the Po valley, enhanced by its position at the foot of one of the major alpine passes. Protected on three sides by the river Adige, it preserved outstanding Roman remains, two gateways, a triumphal arch, arena and theatre. 1 It had continued as a centre of architectural patronage with the great Romanesque churches of San Zeno and San Fermo. In the fourteenth century the della Scala built the Castelvecchio, the Scaliger tombs, and encouraged native painters, notably Altichiero, the bulk of whose work, however, was in Padua. During the fifteenth century both native and Venetian patrons looked outside the city to Pisanello, Nanni di Bartolo and Mantegna. 2 Following the collapse of the della Scala regime in 1387 the city escaped the threat of Milan, under the leadership of Giangaleazzo Visconti, and together with Vicenza and Padua was incorporated into Venice's terraferma land empire by 1405.3 Venetian command was relatively easy. Taxation, the fisc and the levy for the police and army were controlled by the Venetian rector and captain, directly answerable to Venice, while the rest of Verona's affairs were left in the hands of a governing council, made up of 50 local grandees. 4 Verona's Roman remains had continued as the subject of scholarly interest during the Middle Ages, culminating in the Historia Imperialis on which Giovanni Mansionario was at work by 1310, whose borders were decorated with portrait-heads based on Roman coinage.5 These antiquarian interests were fanned by the Mantuan court artist, Andrea Mantegna. He was in contact with Veronese scholars, most notably Felice Feliciano, and influenced the younger Giovanni Maria Falconetto (1468-1535). The architectural backgrounds of Falconetto's cycle of the months in Palazzo d'Arco, Mantua, combined scholarly reconstruction of classical buildings with appreciation of

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their ruined character. His now lost drawings of North Italian monuments circulated in Rome, where they formed a part of those which Sebastiano Serlio (1475-1554) brought with him to Venice in 1528.6 There he planned a series of publications on architecture, including Book III on Roman remains in 1540.7 That year the humanist scholar Torello Saraina published his De origine et amplitudine civitatis Veronae with woodcuts based on drawings by Giovanni Caroto. The introduction underlines the polemic intention of correcting the mistaken views of Serlio, who had never visited Verona.8 Saraina's publication is a token of the renewed civic pride after Verona's return to Venetian rule, after its brief loss to the forces of the League of Cambrai, discussed further below. Another indication of Verona's renewal was the number of young painters, born between 1514 and Veronese's birth in 1528.9 Although Veronese shared some of their concerns, his work stands apart. Vasari's account of 1567 placing him with Giovanni Caroto (c. 1488-c. 1566) finds support in his mastery of learned architecture, particularly relevant for the Christ Preaching (fig. 0.1) discussed in the Introduction, and for the design of the organ in San Sebastiano late in 1558, an afterthought, which covers part of Veronese's own recent wall frescos (figs 2.9 and 2.10).10 Fluted Corinthian columns rise from plinths to support a triangular pediment, whose bottom segment is broken by the curved arch. This innovation in the otherwise orthodox tradition of Venetian altar design, reflects Veronese's interest in architecture and experience at Villa Maser. Daniele and Marcantonio Bárbaro, rather than Palladio, had been responsible for much of the design of their new family villa, as noted in the Introduction. The triangular pediment of the main façade is just broken by the arched top of the central window, an innovation 'corrected' by Palladio in his woodcut illustration of the villa in the Quattro Libri. Veronese turned to the source used at Maser, the illustration in Serlio's third book of an ancient, but licentious, doorway near Rome.11 Concern with civic identity suggested different models for his contemporaries. They turned not to Titian in Venice, but to Moretto in Brescia and Giulio Romano in Mantua. Moretto avoided any suggestion of provincialism as he revised the tradition of the 'well-produced' altarpiece, with figures rendered with a weight and movement which acknowledge the achievements of the sixteenth century, without paying lip-service to Michelangelo, Raphael or Titian. His success at establishing figures within an architectural setting was emulated by painters in Verona, following his commissions there from 1540.12 Command of figures in front of architecture was developed in Romanino's organ shutters with scenes from the life of St George, commissioned for S. Giorgio in Braida in 1540,13 and adapted by Veronese, beginning with the Christ Raising the Daughter ofjairus discussed in Chapter 2 (fig. 2.1). Veronese paid a comparable tribute to the columnar backgrounds of the first

From Verona to Venice 51

artist from Verona to make his career in Venice, Bonifazio de' Pitati (1487-1553). They helped early Venetian historians, by contrast with Vasari, to remember Bonifazio's origins in Verona.14 Giulio Romano's presence as Gonzaga court artist in Mantua was particularly significant for Verona since the city's bishop, Gianmatteo Giberti (1495-1543), had come into contact with the artist during his stay in Rome under the pontificate of Leo X.15 Giberti's major concern on taking up his residence in 1528 was with the Cathedral choir, which he reorganized with Sanmicheli's 'tornacoro' and with frescos of the Assumption of the Virgin and the Annunciation, executed by Francesco Torbido from Giulio Romano's drawings. Giberti's employment of Sanmicheli helped the career of a local architect who only settled in Verona after the sack of Rome in 1527. Once there he combined the roles of civic and military architect, being employed under Doge Gritti to strengthen and rebuild Verona's walls and gateways, and by Veronese grandees for their palaces.16 Sanmicheli's career was significant as a model for Veronese, since he was active in both Verona and Venice. Veronese, ambitious, and well connected, followed his example and made a key career move to Venice.

Venice: the heir of Constantinople and new Rome Venetian patronage was fuelled by the city's wealth and by a tradition which linked piety, both personal and institutional, with competitive display as a means to status. In the second half of the sixteenth century the city was at the height of its commercial, political and artistic powers. Geography and trade with the East, above all Constantinople, had shaped a unique identity. This had emerged with the transport to Venice of the relics of St Mark in 828, a political gesture which enabled the Venetians to distance themselves from the threat of both Frankish and Byzantine control.17 The present St Mark's is the third church on the site. It was rebuilt from 1063, in competition with another great sea-trading nation, the Pisans, whose cathedral was also begun in 1063. Although the Holy Apostles in Constantinople has long been acknowledged as the model for St Mark's, the Venetians achieved a unique mixture of East and West. As with the great Romanesque cathedrals the major spaces of the interior were marked with a columnar architecture, not found in the Byzantine tradition. Rivalry with the West and victory over Constantinople during the fourth crusade of 1204 resulted in further enrichment of the façade with the spoils - reliefs, columns, and four horses crowning the façade, the marblecladding and tetrarchs on the treasury - all removed from Constantinople. The Venetian nobility, and many of its citizens, built their wealth on trade at sea. The routes to Constantinople had been secured from the

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eleventh century through control of the cities lining the Adriatic, the Péloponnèse, together with Crete and Cyprus, from 1489. On the terraferma Treviso had been acquired in 1339, to be followed by Vicenza, Verona and Padua and then by the Alpine territory previously under the control of the patriarch of Aquileia in the 1420s.18 The manufacture and export of luxury goods maintained a favourable balance of trade, both during Veronese's lifetime and for the next century, long after the city's domination of the Eastern trade had been broken by Portuguese, Dutch and English traders.19 It continued in spite of the growing Turkish threat, which intensified after the fall of Constantinople in 1453. One result had been the peace of Lodi, finalized in the city on 30 August 1454. This ensured relative peace on the mainland, broken by the war of Ferrara in the late 1470s and then, more significantly, in 1508. In that year the papacy, the emperor, the French king, Naples and Spain joined in the League of Cambrai to partition Venice's land empire. The League's initial successes included the occupation of much of the land empire, which Venice had recaptured by 1517.20 The Venetian constitution was rigidly hierarchical with the doge at its apex, elected for life and chosen from a handful of the most distinguished patrician families, whose position had been assured by the serrata of 1297, limiting membership of the Great Council.21 The next tier was represented by the 'citizens', distinguished by their rights to careers in the chancery and a level of respect not accorded to the rest of the city's huge population, which had reached its peak of 170 000 in 1563, dropping to 134 871 in 1581.22 The reality was cloaked in the 'myth of Venice' as the perfect 'mixed' constitution. First formulated before the fall of Constantinople by Greek theorists, using Plato's Laws, the myth was developed in Gasparo Contarini's De Republica, written in the 1520s, but published in 1543. For Contarini the Senate and the Council of Ten embody the nobility, the Great Council the people and the doge the king. These differing strands did not lead to disagreement or civil strife, but co-operated. They were said to resemble the harmony of the spheres.23 According to one well-informed account, that of Jacopo Sansovino's son, Francesco, in 1581, the statue of Apollo with his lyre on Jacopo Sansovino's Loggetta (begun in 1538) was intended as the embodiment of the city's mythic harmony. The Loggetta was part of the public rebuilding after the League of Cambrai commissioned by the procurators of St Mark's, under the leadership of Doge Andrea Gritti (1523-38). His dogeship marked a response to the challenge of Cambrai through firmer control of morality and greater concentration of power in the hands of an even smaller political elite, notably the Council of Ten, whose rooms Veronese decorated in 1553 (fig. 0.3). This was also reflected in Gritti's 'Renovarlo Urbis' (renewal of the city), which brought a new sense of order, based on command of classical architecture, to the area around the doge's palace and St Mark's Venice's civic fabric.24

From Verona to Venice 53

Although preoccupied with a favourable comparison between their empire and that of Rome, Venice never overlooked the legacy of Constantinople. Marcantonio Sabellico published his hack history, the Rerum venetarum ab urbe condita libri XXXII, as a private commission in 1487. Its bragging comparison with Rome set the tone for all later historians and ensured it official status, albeit posthumously. In 1516 the city's first official historian, Andrea Navagero, was ordered to begin where Sabellico ended. Sabellico highlighted liberty as a key theme. The defence of liberty had prompted the city's founding and continued as its major civic virtue. As a result Venice's empire had lasted, by contrast with Rome's. Sabellico included pointed comparisons of Venice's wars and its enemies with those of Roman history, culminating in the view that Who can deny the great and glorious deeds of certain nations at the forefront of whom are the Romans? Before the magnificence and scope of their foreign conquests, we should perhaps yield, but, in the inviolability of its laws, the impartiality of its justice, its integrity and the sanctity of its constitution, Venice shall be not inferior, but indeed far superior.25 As Sabellico wrote in the 1480s Venice's public buildings, the rebuilt wing of the Ducal Palace, the Porta della Carta, the Arco Foscari and Scala dei Giganti, demonstrated a new command of alVantica decoration. This though was applied with Venetian richness, intended to demonstrate their double inheritance Rome and Constantinople. This is clearer in the period's churches and chapel decoration. Classically inspired ornament was combined with centrally planned, domed spaces, which referred to St Mark's, and so to Constantinople. Recent history, the role played by Julius II in the League of Cambrai and continued tension with the papacy, ensured that Rome remained at arms length. 26 After Jacopo Sansovino's arrival in Venice in 1527 and his appointment as proto, his public buildings both acknowledged Venetian precedent and demonstrated the theories on the orders of his fellow exile Sebastiano Serlio, published in Venice in 1537-27 Sansovino's awareness of Venetian tradition contrasts with the severely classical Palladio, refused the post of proto by the Salt Magistracy (responsible for public commissions) in 1554.28 Painters, beginning with Giovanni Bellini, realized 'Venetian' colour through the exploitation of Flemish techniques. 29 At. the beginning of the sixteenth century Giorgione and Titian combined Bellini's colour with central Italian innovations. The scale and movement of the apostles in Titian's Assumption of the Virgin on the high altar of the Frari rival the contemporary work of Raphael and Michelangelo, but with colour and light and shade which look back to Bellini. Titian's example was equally decisive for ceiling decoration - the monumental Old Testament canvases for the ceiling of the now destroyed church of

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l.i

View of 1562 entrance to sacristy, San Zacearía, Venice

From Verona to Venice 55

Santo Spirito, Venice - for the sacra conversazione with the Pesaro altarpiece and for the representation of martyrdom with the now destroyed Death of St Peter Martyr and for Scuola decoration with the Presentation of the Virgin.30 The influence of the Pesaro altarpiece has already been noted in the Introduction; Veronese was equally alive to Titian's achievements in his ceiling paintings, discussed in the next chapter, and representations of martyrdoms, one of the themes of Chapter 3. The guidebooks to Venice produced by Jacopo Sansovino's, scholarly son, Francesco, culminated in the Venetia Nobilíssima of 1581. Here he followed the traditional division of the city into sestiere, concentrating on the history of the city's churches through a careful examination of inscriptions. In most Sansovino devoted a brief section to paintings, singling out Giovanni Bellini's altarpiece in San Zaccaria, for instance, and mentioning his contribution to San Giovanni Crisóstomo. 31 Sansovino's sense of Venetian tradition contrasts with Vasari's enthusiasm for the High Renaissance, which was represented in Venice by Dolce's account of Titian's training, described as an advance from the dry style of the previous century, embodied in Bellini.32 That Veronese may have helped to shape Sansovino's priorities is demonstrated in the Virgin and Child Enthroned with Sts Joseph, John the Baptist, Jerome, Francis and Justina (cat. 12, pi. 7), commissioned as part of Francesco Bonaldi's rebuilding of the sacristy of San Zaccaria in 1562 (fig. 1.1). The Virgin and Child are securely raised on a marble plinth, richer in colour than that shown in the earlier Giustinian altar at San Francesco della Vigna. The red-veined marble let into the white surround serves as an indirect, but intentional, reminder of the artist's origins in Verona. The Virgin is rendered with a new mastery of form, which is reflected in the energy of the surrounding saints. St Jerome turns from his Bible with a massive physical presence, while St Francis leans forward, pleading with a psychological intensity not found in the earlier Giustinian altarpiece. Both the curved niche behind the Virgin and the sparkling mosaic-like cloth of honour respond to Bellini's altar, as does the view of sky and the all'antica decoration on the framing pilasters. Although Veronese's sacra conversazione was placed on the relatively simple altar within the sacristy, he rivalled the sacristy doorway with the fluted pilaster, rich detail and coloured marble. The doorway is framed by columns, raised on plinths, supplemented by inlaid coloured marble, which support a double cornice displaying the inscription. This records Bonaldi's commission, which had been prompted by the death of his 12-year-old son, Giovanni. The doorway would have been the most expensive element in Bonaldi's commission and may have set the pattern for the other frames, including that of the most famous painting in the nave, Giovanni Bellini's altarpiece.33

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Change in Venetian society and art Oliver Logan concluded his masterly study of the Venetian Upper Clergy with the observation that courts were the great shapers of local cultures in our period and the Venetian culture was more pluralistic and is more difficult to make generalisations about than cultures in the ambience of courts ... By and large, however, Venetian religious culture, when it was not ponderously academic, was sober and orientated towards pastoral objectives.34 These, as we shall see in Chapter 3, were given fresh impetus through the Council of Trent. Veronese showed saints as exemplary intercessors, before their martyrdom, avoiding the overtly propagandistic modes of Rome or Antwerp, where Protestantism was more threatening than in Venice. The audience for which Veronese worked welcomed Calvinist and Lutheran literature - where available - as the source for an enriched spiritual life.35 The new seriousness of late Veronese reflected other changes. Venice's long period of peaceful coexistence with the Ottomans ended with the Turkish capture of Cyprus in February 1570. This prompted the pronouncement of the Holy League, the combination of Venetian, Papal and Spanish forces, on 2 July 1571, the subject of Veronese's later elaborate allegorical celebration, now at Chatsworth, 36 an indication of the continuing interest in the League's diplomatic triumph. This had heralded the naval victory over the Turkish fleet at the Battle of Lepanto on 7 October 1571, St Justina's day, represented in Veronese's private commission now in the Gallerie dell'Accademia.37 The triumph was short-lived. Lepanto was far from Cyprus, and October late in the season, with the result that Cyprus was assigned to the Turks in the spring of 1573. Separate peace with the major force in the eastern Mediterranean was deeply unpopular, especially with Pope Gregory XIII, who had renewed the call for a crusade.38 Sensitive to the charge of collaborating with the infidel, Venice emphasized its Catholic orthodoxy, witness Veronese's appearance before the Inquisition in 1573, discussed in Chapter 5. A final factor for change was the plague: as a port Venice had been susceptible to attacks throughout the century, beginning with that of 1510, responsible for the death of Giorgione, culminating in the great plague of 1576, resulting in the Senate's decree to build the first of the state's votive churches, Palladio's Redentore. Patrons reacted directly to the threat of plague with commissions calling for representations of the plague saints, Sebastian and Roch. Indirectly it was another of the factors which shaped the new seriousness in both the late mythologies, from the 1580s onwards, and the late religious paintings. 39

From Verona to Venice y¡

Veronese Artists from outside Venice had long made their careers in the city. They included the major sculptors and architects of the fifteenth century - Pietro Lombardo and his family from near Lake Como, Andrea Rizzo from Verona, Mauro Codussi from near Bergamo. In the sixteenth century they were followed by the Tuscans Jacopo Sansovino and Danese Cattaneo who joined their fellow-exile Pietro Aretino (1492-1556). Aretino's literary career balanced the threat of blackmail with the publication of numerous dialogues and collected letters. He played a significant role through his support for Titian. This was one factor which served to reduce the number of visiting painters. Earlier Giorgione (d. 1510), from Castelfraneo, had made his career there, followed by Palma Vecchio from Bergamo and Bonifazio de' Pitati (1487-1553) from Verona.40 Later Francesco Salviati, Vasari and Federico Zuccari made fleeting visits,41 while Bonifazio de' Pitati (1487-1553) from Verona, established a career working for the lesser magistracies, and Pordenone and Giuseppe Salviati found commissions for altarpieces and palace façades.42 Jacopo Bassano (c. 1510-92), Tintoretto (1519-94) and Veronese adopted differing career patterns. Jacopo Bassano ran the family workshop in his native Bassano, receiving commissions from Bassano, Belluno, Feltre, Treviso, Vicenza, from the resident Venetian podestà and from private collectors in the city 43 By the time of Vasari's second edition of the Lives in 1567 his genre-like paintings were in demand and he came to share patrons with Veronese.44 Tintoretto had been excluded from the competition for the rooms of the Council of Ten and the Library. He employed two new marketing features to establish his career: he frequently offered his paintings as gifts and traded on his speed of execution, which enabled him to meet tight deadlines. By the 1570s he shared some patrons with Veronese and played a significant role in the redecoration of the Ducal Palace.45 Veronese furthered his career through patrician contacts and success in the competitive sphere of the Ducal Palace, which enabled him to set prices which heightened the contrast with Tintoretto's relatively cheap rates.46 At first he rented a house in the parish of Santissimi Apostoli, moving as his standing improved. By 1565 he was in more expensive accommodation in the nearby parish of San Felice and after his marriage to Elena Badile in 1566 in the house in the Salizada di San Samuele, where he died of fever on 19 April 1588, aged 60.47 Its location, within easy walking distance of the Rialto and of St Mark's and the Ducal Palace, is a measure of success since it was similar to that of Aretino's last house, where he 'spent his final years in huge and venerable noble "seat" at the heart of the city's downtown, like a patrician

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man of affairs, living but a step from the offices and persons of the powerful'.48 To this indication of status can be added the mixture of noble and prosperous merchant families, who acted as godparents for Veronese's children from 1568 to 1572.49 During this period Veronese joined the relatively new bandwagon of investment in the terraferma,50 with a holding of over 1000 ducats, which realized an annual income of 75 ducats.51 This placed him among the prosperous cittadini and middle-ranking civil servants, and on a par with Giovanni Bellini and Titian, who had received an official annual income of 100 ducats.52 Veronese's success was due to a range of factors. The artistic ones were summarized in the Introduction. Here we focus on practical issues. Happy to work on a large scale, witness the Marriage Feast at Cana from the refectory of S. Giorgio Maggiore of 1562 and the Adoration of the Magi from San Nicolò ai Frari from the beginning of the 1580s (pi. 23 and fig. 3.12), he demonstrated his mastery in drawings, including a group of chiaroscuros for display, the Pittura Quinta for example, and small canvases including the Virgin and Child with Sts George, Justina and a Donor (Benedetto Guidil?]) and Mystic Marriage of St Catherine in Montpellier (figs 4.1 and 4-2).53 He worked fast. In the last eight years of his career he completed an average of nine commissions a year, by contrast with the earlier period when it was five. This was achieved with the assistance of a workshop, in which we know his brother Benedetto, born c. 1538, to have worked. Towards the end of his career Veronese was joined by his sons, beginning with Carletto, born 1570. Their role is harder to define. Even where they receive payments they make no individual contribution to the finished canvases. Here the figures are realized with mastery of foreshortening, successfully projected in three dimensions and linked together. This is combined with an unfailing sense of colour and light to suggest standards, which never dropped even though from the 1570s onwards expressiveness sometimes replaced correct anatomy. There were other new subjects, beginning with the Madrid Christ and the Centurion (pi. 8).54 This was commissioned, probably in the later 1560s, by the unidentified bearded donor immediately behind Christ. The balustrade and columns, which recall the background in the Family of Darius before Alexander (fig. 0.17) frame the centurion, supported by two of his soldiers. He kneels before Christ to indicate that he (the Centurion) is unworthy. He had asked Christ to heal his sick servant and then responded to Christ's reply that he would come to the centurion's house T am not worthy that thou shouldest come under my roof; but speak the word only, and my servant shall be healed. For I am a man under authority ... and I say to this man Go, and he goeth'. Christ's gesture suggests his response 'he marvelled, and said to them that followed, Verily I say unto you, I have not found so great faith, no not in Israel' (Matthew 8:5-11).55

From Verona to Venice 59

The success of the Christ and the Centurion from the mid-^óos and of Finding of Moses from the early 1580s resulted in versions largely by the workshop. 56 His revival of the Finding, popularized in Bonifazio de' Pitati's large-scale canvases 30 years earlier, began in 1582 with the sparkling small upright canvas in Madrid (fig. 1.2).57 Pharaoh's daughter, accompanied by servants and a dwarf, stands on a strip of land, in a landscape outside the city, seen in the distance. Her position is emphasized by the tree, while her robe was realized with Veronese's customary mastery of brocade. The foreshortened infant Moses nearly falls out of the servant's hands as he is presented to the princess. The theme's rapid popularity is shown by the number of versions, ending with those in Dresden and Turin,58 owing more to the workshop than to Veronese. The clumsy and spatially unconvincing figures are conceived as individuals rather than as part of a compositional whole. The Turin Finding, for instance, had been prepared in a sparkling drawing in Cambridge, whose qualities the workshop failed to match. The canvas does, however, throw light on the subject's popularity: the donors kneel on the left, waiting for their newborn son, in the guise Moses, to be found by pharaoh's daughter.59

The Venetian patrons In 1551 Antonio and Lorenzo Giustinian commissioned the Virgin and Child enthroned with Sts Joseph, John the Baptist, Catherine and Anthony Abbot as the altarpiece for their chapel in San Francesco della Vigna, discussed in the Introduction (pi. 1). Contact with such distinguished patrons - Lorenzo was among the most powerful members of the Venetian patriciate during the 1540s - was particularly notable so early in Veronese's career.60 Other Venetian patrons at this period included a member of the Benedictine monastery of San Giorgio Maggiore, possibly Benedetto Guidi (fig. 4.1). Veronese's move to Venice two years later was prompted by the competition for the ceiling decoration in the rooms of the Council of Ten in the Ducal Palace, where he may have been assigned the leading role through the influence of Daniele Bárbaro, as noted in the Introduction.61 Other official commissions included the 1556 competition to decorate Jacopo Sansovino's newly completed Marciana Library,62 the redecoration of the Collegio following the fire of 1574, discussed in the Introduction, culminating with Sebastian Venier's votive painting, Doge Sebastian Venier's Thanksgiving for the Battle ofLepanto63 and the Venice Triumphant of 1582 for the Sala del Maggior Consiglio (fig. 0.19). Veronese's immediate success was cemented with the decoration of the Hieronymite church of San Sebastiano. Fra Bernardo Torlioni, the prior

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1.2 Finding of Moses, Museo del Prado, Madrid, 50 x 43 cm

From Verona to Venice 61

responsible for completing the church, ensured that San Sebastiano rivalled the Madonna dell'Orto, at the opposite end of the city (pis 2 and 3, and figs 0.9-0.11). During this period, under the leadership of its prior, and with the involvement of the Grimani family, Tintoretto painted the huge Golden Calf and Last Judgement for the choir. Torlioni began at San Sebastiano in 1555 with the ceiling of the sacristy, whose completion was followed a month later with the commission for the ceiling of the nave. Success prompted further decoration - the frescos for the walls and in 1560 the design of the organ and its shutters (cat. 7) - as well as Lise Soranzo's commission in 1559 for the chancel to Veronese's design, followed, perhaps in 1564, by the main altar and laterals (together with lost frescos). By 1561 Benedetto Manzini, the priest in charge of San Geminiano, on the piazza opposite St Mark's, rivalled the splendid organ shutters commissioned for San Sebastiano with the SS John the Baptist and Mennas, and SS Geminianus and Severus (cat. 8, fig. 2.11), in May 1564 the Jesuits unveiled the ceiling of Santa Maria deU'Umiltà, the Assumption of the Virgin, the Adoration of the Shepherds and the Annunciation (cat. 15, pi. 11 and fig. 2.8). The Giustinians' provision of the family altar is a good example of the social pressures at San Francesco della Vigna, notably that of keeping up with Doge Andrea Gritti, the key figure in the church's patronage, to whom the Giustinian were related through their mother, one of Gritti's cousins. In the Badoer chapel in San Francesco della Vigna, commissioned for the funerary chapel of Alberto and Andrea Badoer shortly after Andrea's death on 11 September 1575, the Resurrection (cat. 33, fig. 1.3) takes place at night. The saviour rises triumphantly above the screen of trees, framed by the great banner which heightens the contrast with the burst of light. He is contrasted with the soldiers guarding the tomb, who were developed from the Dresden canvas. One in the foreground sleeps on his bedroll, another struggles up from his back, the remainder twist to ward off the light with arms, cloaks (the figure immediately under Christ), halberds and shields.64 Giovanni Trevisan, the patriarch of Venice, commissioned the St John the Evangelist with Sts Mark and Peter for his altar in San Pietro, Castello by 1581.65 Marino Grimani, doge from 1595, commissioned the Adoration of the Shepherds as part of the redecoration of the choir of San Giuseppe on 4 April 1582, with a posthumous portrait of his father Girolamo as St Jerome, kneeling besides Vittoria's portrait-bust. 66 Veronese had met Girolamo in 1554, when he was one of the heads of the Council of Ten. He made the first of his three embassies to Rome the following year, when it would have been natural for him to be accompanied by Veronese, then in charge of the decoration of the Council's rooms. In 1556 Grimani paid 9 000 ducats for a site on the Grand Canal at San Luca, to be filled with Sanmicheli's Roman-inspired palace. 67

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1.3 Resurrection, Badoer chapel, San Francesco della Vigna, Venice, 325 x 160 cm

From Verona to Venice 63

Members of the next tier, the citizens, were active patrons of Veronese's altarpieces. 68 In 1562 Girolamo and Giovanni Coccina marked their arrival in Venice from Bergamo with their commission for the now destroyed Virgin and Child appear to Sts John the Baptist and Jerome for their altar in the sacristy of San Francesco della Vigna (fig. 2.5).69 In the same year Francesco Bonaldi ordered the sacra conversazione for San Zaceada, discussed above (pi. 7). The Garzoni family may well have emulated the Soranzo with their commission for the Crucifixion on the family altar in San Sebastiano. 70 Francesco degli Arbori, chaplain of the monastery of Santa Maria degli Angeli in Murano, ordered the St Jerome in 1566 for the altar in his newly built free-standing chapel (fig. 2.14).71 The SS Lawrence with Jerome and Prospero in San Giacomo dell'Orio was commissioned for the family chapel by Laura Barbarigo after the death of her husband, Jerome Malipiero, in 1572.72 In 1584 Simone Lando donated a notable series of New Testament paintings, including a number by Veronese, to Santa Maria Maggiore. To these, originally intended for his palace, he added the high altar, the Assumption of the Virgin (cat. 39, fig. 3.14). Lando's inclusion among the apostles was significant. During the 1560s non-Venetian patrons, discussed below, had been shown kneeling before the Holy Family, protected by their namesake saints, by contrast with Venetian altarpieces. In 1587 Bartolommeo Borghi, the parish priest, appeared alongside St Pantaleon in the Miracle of St Pantaleon on the high altar of his church (cat. 43, fig. 0.22). Similarly the priest from San Luca is included carrying the saint's crosier in the St Luke paints the Virgin, suggesting that he assisted with the commission for the main altar of San Luca by the confraternity of the Holy Sacrament.73 In 1561 Bartolommeo Stravanzino and his son Giovanni Battista commissioned the Baptism of Christ for the now destroyed church of San Giovanni Battista (fig. 1.4).74 The extensive landscape vistas of Cima and Bellini75 have been replaced by a restricted screen of trees, which enhances the burst of heavenly light, the naturalism of the brilliantly observed details of Christ's and the angel's feet in the water and the command of contrapposto. Christ's dramatically foreshortened head is seen against a tree-trunk, the focus of attention which illustrates Mark 1:11 'and there came a voice from heaven, saying, Thou art my beloved son in whom I am well pleased'. Bartolommeo Stravanzino looks away as he is fitted somewhat awkwardly behind the shoulder of his son, Giovanni, who witnesses his patron saint baptizing Christ. Michèle Spavento, appointed prior of San Sebastiano in 1578, donated Veronese's earlier devotional canvas to the church. There he is included in Franciscan costume with the lily of St Anthony, watching in devotion as the Christ Child peeps out from his mother's protection, resting on a cushion/ 6

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1.4

Baptism of Christ, sacristy of the Redentore, Venice, 204 x 102 cm

From Verona to Venice 65

Altarpieces whose patronage is not known include: the high altarpiece from Santa Caterina, Venice, the Mystic Marriage of St Catherine (cat. 22, pi. 10) perhaps from the 1560s, the St Anthony Enthroned with SS Cornelian and Cvprian, in the Brera from Sant' Antonio, Torcello, of 1570,77 the Coronation of the Virgin, from the high altar of the Benedictine church of Ognisanti, Venice, completed by 21 July 1586 (cat. 40, fig. 3.16). Side altars or laterals include: the Crucifixion with the Virgin and St John from Sansovino's church in the Ospedale degli Incurabili, transferred to San Lazzaro dei Mendicanti (cat. 32, fig. 3.10), the autograph but severely worn The Virgin and Child adored by Sts Joachim and Anne at San Polo of 1581 (cat. 36, fig. 0.21). The city's wealth was reflected in the proliferation of charitable scuole. Introduced by the flagellant orders in the 1270s, by the fifteenth century there were over 200. Charity was combined with civic ritual. Members formed part of the processions organized by the state, as well as those celebrating their own school. Under state direction the five great scuole (joined at the end of the fifteenth century by San Rocco) were as concerned with display as charity. Their meeting houses were rebuilt with ever richer façades, matched by the decorative cycles around the walls of the governors' rooms. Here the model was the decoration of the walls of the Ducal Palace, itself subject to continued renewal. The Catholic renewal gave new prominence to confraternities, an important source of commissions as noted in the Introduction. From 1578 older churches were remodelled with new altarpieces, beginning with the now destroyed church of San Giacomo, Murano (cat. 34, pis 16-18), while another significant new site for the display of religious paintings, some as a result of private patronage, monastic refectories are discussed in Chapter 5.

Veronese's other patrons Veronese began as a member of a team of artists from Verona, employed by Ercole Gonzaga for the Temptation of St Anthony for Mantua Cathedral in 1552 because they must have been relatively cheap (cat. 2, fig. 0.2). The move to Venice established him as a painter in his own right. Commissions for the Benedictines, centred on Santa Giustina, Padua, had begun in 1556 with the first payment for the Feast in the House of Simon for SS Nazaro e Celso, Verona (cat. 9, fig. 0.12). This was followed by the extraordinarily rapid dispatch of three altars for the Benedictine monastery of San Benedetto Po between December 1561 and March 1562. This was the date of a further two - the Glory of Angels and Martyrdom of St Primus and Felician - for the monastery at Praglia, followed by the Marriage Feast at Cana for San Giorgio Maggiore in Venice, noted above, and in 1575 by the Martyrdom of St Justina for the high altar of the Santa Giustina itself (cats 10,11,13 and 31, pi. 23, figs 2.12, 2.13, 2.15 and 3.2).

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In 1563 Antonio and Jerome Petrobelli commissioned Veronese's altar now divided between Ottawa, Dulwich and Edinburgh - for their chapel in San Francesco, Lendinara (cat. 14, fig. 2.6). In 1565 Antonio and Giovanni Battista Marogna commissioned the sacra conversazione in which they are presented to the Virgin and Child for their chapel in San Paolo, Verona (cat. 16, figs 2.3 and 2.4). In 1565 the monks of San Giorgio in Braida, Verona commissioned the Martyrdom of St George for the high altar, accompanied by the St Barnabas Healing (cats 19 and 20, figs 2.20 and 3.4). In 1566 the Venetian sculptor Andrea Fosco da Faenza passed on to Veronese the commission for the Baptism of Christ, which formed part of the new high altar commissioned for San Giovanni, Latisana (cat. 21, fig. 3.7). In 1572 the prior of the Vicentine order of the Servîtes, Damianus Grana, commissioned the Feast of St Gregory the Great in rivalry with the Feast which Veronese had just delivered to the Venetian Servites (cat. 27, pi. 25). In 1573 Marcantonio Cogollo ordered the Adoration of the Magi for the family chapel in Santa Corona (pi. 15) and in the following year Laura Cumana commissioned the Ascension for San Francesco, Padua.78 Other patrons were not so fortunate. In 1580 the Benedictines of San Teonisto, Treviso paid for a workshop Marriage Feast at Cana for their refectory, while in 1584 Giacinto Roselli ordered the Virgin and Child and St Roch for S. Giovanni in Xenodochio, Cividale. In spite of the clause demanding the inclusion of the artist's name a payment of 35 ducats indicates that he expected paintings by the workshop.79 His final altarpiece, the Baptism for San Giovanni in Malta, Padua, was completed between 4 February 1588 the date on one of the preparatory drawings - and his death on 19 April that year (cat. 45, fig. 3.8). In 1574 the Venetian vice-consul in Ostuni, the Milanese Andrea Albrizio, presented the Lamentation to SS Annunziata, Ostuni. In similar guise Veronese's work was used by Venetian diplomats. Francesco Bárbaro, the Venetian ambassador to the court of Savoy, was the son of Marcantonio, who together with his brother Daniele had provided Veronese with the opportunity to fresco the family villa at Maser around 1559. Francesco must have recommended Veronese to Charles Emanuel I (b. 1562, d. 1630) on his youthful accession - he was aged 18 - to the dukedom of Savoy in 1580, when he commissioned a group of four paintings of which only the Queen of Sheba before Solomon survives (fig. 1.5).80 It was accompanied by a lost Adoration of the Magi and another, now lost, pair - David with the head of Goliath and Judith.81 The commission for four large-scale canvases must have been prompted by the new fashion in the Coccina palace. The court is suggested by the unparalleled richness of the giant order, accompanied by a lesser one framing the central opening. The youthful Solomon, his age carefully rendered in tribute to Charles Emanuel, is raised

1.5

Queen ofSheba before Solomon, Gallería Sabauda, Turin, 344 x 545 cm

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on the Salomonic throne, decorated with lions and accompanied by counsellors, possibly including Francesco Bárbaro holding the cross immediately under Solomon. The Queen of Sheba's gifts are spread at the bottom of the throne, one servant bends over to present his casket, while a companion kneels in the foreground under the direction of the Queen. Francesco Bárbaro may have played a key role in the choice of subjects, which became common in the later Savoy inventories. The Queen of Sheba had long been coupled with the Adoration of the Magi to flatter rulers as disparate as Philip II and Henry VIII.82 Barbara's ambassadorial report to the Venetian Senate set the tone for Veronese's painting 'but to see him (Charles Emanuel) also most zealous in justice, fervent in his belief and fearful before God, is to feel certain that his highness and his states will flourish with greater Christian blessings as a result of his rule'.83 On a Sunday morning in 1858 John Ruskin experienced an almost mystical experience in front of this painting, while listening to military music in the courtyard, the result was to: 'fasten in me the old article of Jewish faith, that things done delightfully and rightly were always done by the help and in the Spirit of God ... That day my evangelical beliefs were put away, to be debated of no more'.84 This can be linked with his eloquent evocation of the mastery with which Veronese rendered the Queen of Sheba's robes, a point of more general significance illustrated in the Mystic Marriage of St Catherine in the Gallerie dell'Accademia and in the splendid costumes of the leading Magus from the Adoration of the Magi commissioned for the Coccina family and now in Dresden (pi. 9): Well one of the most notable characters in this picture is the splendour of its silken dresses and in particular there was a piece of white brocade with designs upon it in gold which it was one of my chief objects in stopping in Turin to copy. You may perhaps be surprised at this but I must just note in passing that I share this weakness of enjoying dress patterns with all good students and all good painters. The queen is one of the loveliest of Veronese's female figures all the accessories are full of grace and imagination and the finish of the whole so perfect that one day I was upwards of two hours vainly trying to render, with perfect accuracy, the curves of two leaves of the brocaded silk.85 This is not the only Veronese Francesco Bárbaro used as a diplomatic gift. Later in the 1580s, as Patriarch of Aquileia, he presented the unfinished St John now in the Borghese Gallery, Rome to Scipione Borghese (fig. 4.19). In 1583 Philip II of Spain had ordered the Annunciation for the new high altar of El Escorial (fig. 3.18), together with Tintoretto's Adoration of the Shepherds.86 It was sent, but never used on the high altar. Veronese's success is underlined by a letter of 1585 to the Spanish ambassador in Venice urging him to see whether he might persuade Veronese to come - in place of the reluctant Federico Zuccaro - since 'among people who understand his

From Verona to Venice 69 (Veronese's) reputation is better than that of the other'. 87 This is echoed in another contemporary judgement, that of Sir Philip Sidney, in Venice in 1574 to have his portrait painted. His choice lay between Tintoretto and Veronese who, in Sidney's words, 'holds by far the highest place in the art'. His judgement resulted in Veronese's portrait admired by its recipient, but long since lost. It serves, however, as a suitable introduction to the achievements discussed in the following chapters. 88

Notes i.

Ward-Perkins, 1984, pp. 224-8.

2. Reclams, 1965, p. 1042, S. Anastasia, 1054, Brenzoni monument, S. Fermo, and 1078 for the San Zeno altar commissioned by the Venetian Gregorio Corner. 3.

Chambers, 1970, pp. 54-55.

4.

Brown, 1893, pp. 264-8.

5. Weiss, 1969, pp. 22-4,171 and 183; Mitchell, 1961, pp. 197-221. 6. G. Schweikhart and H. Burns in Verona, 1980, pp. 92-4 and 84. 7. Onians, p. 263. 8. Thomson, 1993, p. 118. 9.

Battista del Moro, 1514-74; Domenico Brusacorci 1516-67, Paolo Farinati 1524-1606; Giovanni Battista Zelotti 1526-78, Orlando Flacco c. 1527-93.

10. Vasari, vol. 6, p. 370; C. Hope, "The Historians of Venetian Painting' in London, pp. 38-9; for a different account see Borghini, p. 561. 11.

Serlio III, 76r, in Hart and Hicks, p. 146.

12. Brescia, 1988, his influence is shown in Badile's Virgin and Child enthroned with Sts John the Evangelist, Peter and Andrew of 1544, from S. Spirito, now in the Museo di Castelvecchio, S. Marinelli in Verona, 1988, pp. 38-41 and 277-84. 13.

Brescia, 1965, p. 62 and 60.

14. Cocke, 'Civic Identity and the Venetian Art Market: Paolo Veronese and Jacopo Bassano' in Ames-Lewis, 1994, pp. 91-9. 15.

P. C. Brownell, 'La figura di committente del vescovo Gianmatteo Giberti. II rinnovamento cinquentesco della chiesa di S. Stefano' in Verona, 1988, pp. 53-83.

16. Puppi, 1971, pp. 11-12,19-41, 44ff and J. R. Hale, 'Terra Ferma Fortifications in the Cinquecento' in M. Bertelli, Rubinstein and Hugh Smyth 1980, pp. 171 and 183. 17. H. F. Brown, especially chs 3 and 5; Lane, 1973; Nicoll, 1988, pp. 1-124. 18.

Chambers, pp. 54-9.

19. Goldthwaite, pp. 17-20; shipping and the market to the Levant returned to record levels in the years 1559 to 1564. 20. Mattingley, ch. 8; Chambers, pp. 64-9. 21.

Two hundred and ten in 1296, increasing to 2622 by 1513, drawn from a restricted number of families, H. F. Brown, pp. 162-4, Chambers, pp. 74-9.

22.

Chambers, pp. 74,123 and 188.

23.

George of Trebizond had been patronized by Francesco Bárbaro in 1451, F. Gilbert, 'The Venetian Constitution in Florentine Political Thought' in Rubinstein, 1968, pp. 466-71; Bouwsma, 1968, pp. 145-53; Rosand, 1977, pp. 511-37; Muir, pp. 34-41.

24. Martin, 1993, pp. 51-70, Tafuri, 1985, pp. 169-71 identified Gritti as a member of a 'pro-Rome'

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faction in the Venetian government; his argument overlooks the continued tension between Venice and Rome, discussed by Bouwsma, see note 26. 25. Gaeta, pp. 67-JO and Fortini Brown, 1996, pp. 163-4.

26. Bouwsma, 1968. 27. Howard, 1975, pp. 120-25; Howard, 1989 rightly defines the period after the peace of Bologna of 1529 as 'Roman' Renaissance; Onians, pp. 263-86; Hollingsworth, 1996, pp. 145"""71. 28. H. Burns, 'Architecture' in London, 1983, pp. 24-8. 29. Humfrey, 1995, pp. 71-81. 30. Humfrey, 1995, pp. 117-30, 149-64. 31. Sansovino, pp. 84, 154, 326-37; Pomian, 'Collections in Venetia in the Heyday of Curiosity', 1990, pp. 65-6. 32. Barbaro's preference for fifteenth-century tradition, notably Mantegna and Giovanni Bellini, in the manuscript of his Pratica della perspettiva of 1569 is noted by Rosand, 1982a, pp. 130-33; for Vasari see Rubin, 1995, pp. 234"""71; for Dolce see Introduction, note 15. 33. See note 31; the Bonaldi may have commissioned the Bellini, Humfrey, 1993, pp. 233. 34· Logan, 1995, pp. 523-4. 35. Pommier, p. 25. 36. The rapidly indicated architectural background in the preparatory study (Cocke, 1984, p. 61; Rearick, W. N. G., p. 52) was developed from the sketches in the upper section of the Study at Kassel. This complex sheet combined motifs from the Study for a Finding of Moses, dated 1582 and now in the Fitzwilliam Museum, Cocke, 1984, pp. 62, 91 and 102; Rearick, W. N. G., pp. 53, 76. 37. Dario Varotari's canvas was commissioned by Jacopo Emo for the Palazzo de! Podesta Padua in 1573, Alessandro Maganza painted the central section for a triptych for the confraternity of the Madonna of the Rosary for Santa Corona of 1613, Venice, (1986?), cats 5 and 6. 38. Bouwsma, pp. 1~1. 39. Prato, p. 155££. 40. London, 1983, pp. 194, and 355. 41. Freedman, pp. 13-17; Cheney, 1963, Hirst, 1963, Schulz, 1961a, p. 500££ and Schulz, 1968, pp. 15-17. 42. D. McTavish in London, p. 276, Simonetti, 1986. 43. Muraro, 1992; P. Marini, 'Jacopo Bassano seen anew' in Brown and Marini, pp. 13-45. 44. Simone Lando, discussed below and Giacomo Contarini, the patron of the Rape of Europa of 1573. Contarini was a protege of Daniele Barbaro, a distinguished administrator and collector with an especial interest in Francesco Bassano, Palma Giovane and Palladio, whose drawings he inherited, L. Magagnato in London, p. 146; Aikema, 1996, pp. 67"""73 and Bo-81. 45. Hills, 1993, pp. 115-17, Nicholls, pp. 72-101. 46. Veronese's prices ranged from 380 ducats for cat. 13 and for the Sala de! Collegio; he may have received 300 ducats for the Annunciation for El Escorial, 130 ducats for the Transfiguration (cat. 5), 150 for an unspecified altarpiece commissioned after his success with the Martyrdom of St Giustina (cat. 31), 125 scudi for cat. 41 and 50 ducats for the Adoration of the Shepherds in San Giuseppe, completed by the workshop, note 66 below. 47. His house at San Samuele is now marked by a plaque; Pignatti, 1976, docs 7, 29, 38, 69. 48. J. Schulz, 'The Houses of Titian, Aretino and Sansovino' in Rosand, 1982b, pp. 73-118. 49. Gabriele's in 1571 was the nobleman Agostino Barbarigo, the subject of the portrait in Cleveland?, Carlo's in 1570 an advocate; that of Vittoria and Ottavia in 1572 was Alvise Coccina, the owner of the palace for which Veronese had just produced his four canvases, Hochmann, 1992a, p. 50. 50. See the letters concerning Veronese's agricultural holdings, Pignatti, 1976, docs 49 (see also Cocke, 1984, p. 44, note 2), 50, 51, 58-61, 63, 65 and S. J. Woolf, 'Venice and the Terraferma: Problems of the Change from Commercial to Landed Activities' in Pullan, 1968, pp. 198--