_Paolo Veronese_ (Veronese: 1528-1588). _See 26._
St. Helena, the mother of Constantine, made a pilgrimage to
Jerusalem, when a victory was gained by the emperor, to recover
the very cross of which she had seen a mysterious symbol.
Having reached the sacred city, she caused the soil of Calvary
to be excavated, because the Jews were accustomed to bury the
instruments of execution upon the spot where they had been
used. And there she found three crosses, and that one which was
the holy cross was distinguished from the others by the healing
of a lady of quality who was sick. The empress divided the
true cross into three parts, giving one of them to the Bishop
of Jerusalem, and another to the church at Constantinople. The
third she brought to Rome, where she built for it the great
basilica of S. Croce.
Here we see the saint in devout reverie, while through the open window
two cherubim bear a cross through the air. This beautiful picture, in
which Veronese gives us an ideal and mystic composition, treated with a
simplicity unusual to him, seems to have been derived from a plate by
Marc Antonio, the founder of Italian engraving (1480-1534), supposed
to be after a drawing by Raphael. The design is identical, though an
exquisitely airy angel with a slender cross in Marc Antonio's engraving
is replaced in Veronese's picture by chubby cherubs with a more solid
cross. (The engraving is reproduced in the _Art Journal_, 1891, p.
376, with some critical remarks. "This wonderful picture," says the
writer, "is at once a delight and a puzzle. If Veronese was capable of
efforts like the 'Vision of St. Helena,' why have we not more such,
seeing how many treasures of his art have survived to us? The engraving
offers an explanation, curiously exact, of this difficulty. Whatever
in the 'Vision' is Veronese's own--the drapery and the colour--is not
more remarkable than in many other pictures of his; on the other hand,
whatever is not distinctively of Veronese is Marc Antonio's.... What
more natural than that Veronese should essay to clothe in the glory of
his own colouring[206] some creation of the great Italian who learnt
from Dürer how to interpret the art of Raphael to Italy?") Veronese's
picture once formed the altar-piece of a chapel dedicated to St. Helena
at Venice, and was afterwards in the collection of the great Duke of
Marlborough.