Nevertheless, Veronese was not a native of Venice but of Verona, as is
indicated by the surname that was bestowed upon him during his life
and that has adhered to him ever since. His rightful name was Paolo
Caliari. He was born at Verona in 1528 and not in 1530, as is asserted
by several of his biographers, notably by Carlo Ridolfi. The correct
date is now verified by the discovery, in San Samuele of Venice,
Veronese's parish church, of the register of deaths wherein the
decease of the great painter is entered as having occurred the 19th of
April, 1588, the very day when he completed his sixtieth year.
Paolo Caliari belonged to a family of artists. His father, Gabriele
Caliari, was a sculptor and enjoyed some little reputation in his own
city. Veronese's uncle, Antonio Badile, was a painter, and in such
pictures as are known to be his we find evidence not only of a good
deal of ability, but of a certain facile grace that justifies the high
esteem in which his compatriots held him.
Veronese's father, being of a logical turn of mind, wished, since he
himself was a sculptor, to make a sculptor of his son. Veronese
learned to model statuettes in clay, and, aided by his precocious
intelligence, he acquired a real dexterity in this art, quite
remarkable in one so young.
But this was not his vocation. Frequent visits to the studio of his
uncle Badile had awakened in him an enthusiasm for painting. He
applied himself to learn to paint with so much zeal and imagination
that his father made no attempt to check his inclination, but
entrusted him to Badile. The latter was Veronese's real teacher,
though not the only one, for young "Paolino" also attended the studio
of another Veronese painter, Giovanni Carotto.
From the outset, Veronese applied himself energetically to perfecting
his skill in line drawing. The future genial painter of wondrous
fantasy yielded himself without a murmur to the rude but salutary
exigencies of technique. Strange caprice on the part of an artist who
was destined to show so much dexterity in execution and lavishness in
decoration, his tastes turned towards the most severe and least
imaginative of masters, Albert Durer and Lucas Van Leyden. It was
through copying the engravings of these illustrious masters that he
learned how to draw. Such lessons always bear their fruit. In this
laborious apprenticeship, Veronese acquired that steadiness of hand,
that firmness of line that was later to be noted even in his most
exuberant paintings, despite the enormous quantity of canvases that he
produced in the course of his life.
Even his earliest attempts reveal his abundant and facile genius; and
these first, and one might almost say immature, works already
foreshadow the great artist. The affectionate patronage of his uncle
Badile greatly facilitated his début. At an age when young folk have
not usually begun to form dreams of the future, young Caliari had
already forced himself upon the attention of Verona, and the Chapter
of the Church of San Bernardino commissioned him to paint a Madonna.
He acquitted himself well of this task. The work proved satisfactory,
other orders followed, and the name of the young artist swiftly spread
beyond the confines of his native city. A short time later, the
cardinal Ercole di Gonzaga decided to decorate the cathedral at
Mantua, recently rebuilt by Giulio Romano. He sent a summons to
Caliari, as well as to three other Veronese painters who enjoyed a big
reputation: Battista del Moro, Paolo Farinato degli Uberti, and
Brusasorci, who was regarded as the Titian of Verona. The cardinal
instituted a sort of rivalry between these four artists, and gave
them orders for four pictures, destined to be competitive. The
subject entrusted to Paolo Caliari was a representation of the
_Temptations of St. Anthony_. The young painter applied himself
resolutely to the task. Far from intimidating him, the redoubtable
competition of his three elders served only to excite his ardour and
stimulate his imagination. He painted the saintly anchorite defending
himself against the blows which the Devil is dealing him with a stick
and repulsing the advances of a woman who has been raised up from hell
itself to tempt him. The cardinal, delighted with this picture, gave
preference to Veronese over his three competitors.
Veronese lost no time in returning to Verona, but, however flattering
the esteem with which his compatriots surrounded him might be, he was
not long in finding that the limited scope afforded by his native city
was too narrow for his activity. He had a boyhood friend, Battista
Zelotti, a painter like himself, and also like himself tormented by
dreams of glory. Together they quitted Verona and betook themselves to
Tiene, in the duchy of Vicenza. Here they had the good luck to meet a
man of discrimination, in the person of the paymaster-general
Portesco, who entrusted them with the decoration of his palace. The
two friends apportioned the work between them; while Zelotti, who had
studied at Venice under Titian, undertook the fresco painting,
Veronese decorated the intervening panels in _grisaille_, or gray
monochrome. The result of this friendly collaboration was a complete
series of paintings, of great diversity: hunting scenes, banquets,
dances and numerous subjects borrowed from mythology or from history,
the _Loves of Venus and Vulcan_, the _Heroism of Mucius Scaevola_, the
_Festival of Cleopatra_, and a remarkable _Sophonisba_. This work in
common was not without profit to Veronese. Zelotti's manner closely
resembled his own; they both show the same qualities of colouring and
composition, and the same broad and facile touch.
They collaborated once again on fresco work in the home of a certain
Eni, in the village of Fanzolo, in the neighbourhood of Trevise. After
this they separated, Zelotti going to Vicenza, whither he had been
summoned, while Caliari betook himself to Venice, the Promised Land
towards which he was impelled by his ardent desire for glory.
When he arrived in the Most Serene Republic, Caliari was not yet
twenty-five years old. We have no reliable document regarding these
first years of his residence there, nor even of the impressions
produced upon him by the opulent and magnificent city. But these
impressions are easy to conceive. To anyone so sensitive as he to
externals, Venice must have seemed enchanted ground. How could he have
failed to be dazzled, in acquainting himself with that gorgeous city,
enthroned upon the Adriatic, like a pearl in a casket of velvet? With
what joyous eagerness his colour-enraptured eye must have rested upon
those white marble palaces, moulded and filagreed in arabesque, those
churches paved with precious mosaics, those quays swarming ceaselessly
with a picturesque and motley crowd of Armenians, Greeks and Moors,
spreading the sun-bathed pavements with a glittering display of
spangled ornaments, turquoise-inlaid cutlery, and multicoloured
fabrics.
[Illustration: PLATE III.--THE HOLY FAMILY
(In the Musée du Louvre)
In this work, one of the most beautiful in the Salon Carré, Veronese
has grouped his figures in a charming manner. Following his customary
formula, he has clothed them in the Venetian style, but the faces of
the Virgin and the Child are remarkable for their tenderness. It is a
matter of regret that time has faded the colours of this magnificent
painting.]
If the models that passed in endless procession before his eyes
impressed him as magnificent opportunities, the sight of what other
painters had already wrought from this material aroused his artist
soul to keen enthusiasm. The whole constellation of the great
Venetians had converted the city of the Doges into an incomparable
museum: Giorgione, with his melancholy compositions, full of vague
dreams; Carpaccio, with his naïve and picturesque reproductions of
Venetian life. Among the living, Sansovino, simultaneously architect
and artist, who built marvellous palaces and adorned them with
graceful frescoes; Tintoretto, sombre genius whose creative power
largely redeemed the somewhat obscure tints of his palette; and above
them all, Titian, the great Titian, who at that time was already
eighty years of age, yet still manipulated his brush with the firm
hand of youth.
All these masters Veronese admired indiscriminately, as was fitting in
a young painter who had never known other models than those of his own
small city. He ran the danger of acquiring mannerisms and becoming an
imitator. By a special grace accorded to genius alone, Veronese
succeeded in remaining himself and borrowing nothing either from his
predecessors or his contemporaries. From his contemplation of the
works of the others he gained only a nobler passion for his art; and
he altered nothing in the personal vision which he already formed of
men and of things.
Vigorous, blessed with good health, jovial by nature, and much
enamoured of the bright and sparkling side of life, Veronese fashioned
his paintings in the image of his own temperament. His work was always
an exaltation of the joy of living, an apology for those agreeable
externals that render existence pleasant and easy; fine dwellings,
flowers, copious repasts, women luxuriously apparelled, precious
fabrics, horses and dogs of fine breed. If he wished to paint a _Last
Supper_, it mattered little to him that legend and history agree
regarding the simplicity and the humble station of Jesus and his
disciples: History and tradition did not count with him. A repast,
whatever it would be, he could not conceive of, unless around a
sumptuous table, covered with costly vessels, served by attendants in
picturesque costumes and enlivened by the antics of buffoons or the
harmonies of music. It was thus that he painted Christ, it was after
this original conception that he worked out his immortal compositions.
Accordingly no one could justly appraise Veronese, without first
setting aside, as he did, all those historic data which he voluntarily
ignored.