It has been said of Veronese that he was the most absurd and the most
adorable of the great painters. Paradoxical as it sounds, this
judgment is perfectly true. Absurd, Veronese undoubtedly was, in his
disdain of logic and common sense, in his complete indifference to
historic truth and school traditions, and in his anachronistic habit
of garbing antiquity in modern raiment. "I paint my pictures," he
said, "without taking these matters into consideration, and I allow
myself the same license which is granted to poets and to fools." And
it is precisely his riotous fantasy, his naïve self-confidence, his
own peculiar way of understanding mythology and religion that have
made him the adorable artist whose glory has been consecrated by the
centuries.
Thanks to the rare power of his genius, the most audacious
improbabilities vanish beneath the magic adornments with which he
covers them, and it hardly occurs to one to notice his glaring
historical errors or the superficialities of his pictorial conceptions
in the continual delight inspired by the sense of concentrated life in
his characters, the splendour of his colouring, the caressing charm of
his draperies, the brilliance of his skies, and the impression of
youth and of joy that radiates from his work. Veronese was neither a
thinker nor an historian, nor a moralist; he was quite simply a
painter, but he was a very great one. If his preference is for the
joyous scenes of life, that is because life treated him indulgently
from his earliest years; if he delights in giving to his pictures
a sumptuous setting, in which silk, brocades and precious vases
abound, it is because he acquired a taste for these things in that
matchless Venice of the sixteenth century, marvellous treasury of
sun-bathed, gaily bedecked palaces, wherein all the opulence of the
East had been brought together. What these paintings of Veronese
reproduce for us are the thick, rich carpets of Smyrna, newly unladen
from Musselman _feluccas_, monkeys imported from tropic islands,
greyhounds brought from Asia, and negro pages purchased on the Riva
dei Schiavoni, the Quay of the Slaves, to bear the trains of the
patrician beauties of Venice. But, above all, one finds in them Venice
herself, Venice the Glorious, queen of the sea, Venice sated with gold
and lavish of it, sowing her lagunes broadcast with palaces, and the
robes of her women with diamonds. More truly than Titian or
Tintoretto, Veronese is the chosen painter of the Most Serene
Republic. He not only decorated the ceilings of her palaces and the
walls of her churches: but he took the city of his adoption as the
setting for all his compositions; it is at Venice that the _Feast at
the House of Simon the Pharisee_, the _Feast at the House of Levi_
take place; it is in Venetian surroundings that Jesus presides over
the _Wedding Feast at Cana_.
[Illustration: PLATE II.--THE DISCIPLES AT EMMAUS
(In the Musée du Louvre)
This biblical scene, as treated by Veronese, in no wise resembles the
same subject as treated by the Primitives or by Rembrandt. The
Venetian Master does not trouble himself about tradition; for him,
this Feast is simply an opportunity for a beautiful picture, brilliant
in colour, and embellished with rich accessories and architectural
drawing.]
One can understand how the painters of the Venetian school, nurtured
in the dazzling and joyous light of the sea-born city, transferred to
their palette that vibrant colour with which their artist eyes were
filled; nor is it surprising that Veronese, passionately enamoured of
Venice, achieved, through his wish to glorify her, that magnificence
of colour and of expression which remains his distinctive mark.