From the moment of his return to Venice, Veronese was besieged from
all sides; once again he found himself enslaved to forced labor by the
incessant contracts demanded of him by his fellow citizens. The
scantiness of documents which we possess regarding his life does not
permit us to name the chronological order in which he painted his
pictures. We shall therefore gather them into groups for the sake of
convenience in studying his more important works. Furthermore, to
study one by one, all of his paintings, is not to be thought of; for
this painter was one of the most prolific producers of which the
history of art makes mention. In every one of his pictures will be
found, more or less accentuated, those qualities of composition, of
picturesqueness, and of colour which together constitute his glory.
Accordingly we shall limit ourselves to indicating, at the different
stages of his career, those pictures which show most deeply the
imprint of his genius and which also are most closely related to the
life of Venice of which he was, in a certain way, together with
Tintoretto, the official painter. For the rest the reader may be
referred to the complete catalogue of the works of Veronese given at
the close of this book.
Concerning the private life of the artist we are as poorly informed as
concerning the date of his pictures. We know only that he married and
that he had two sons, Gabriele and Carletto. When they were old enough
to hold a brush he entrusted them to Bassano, a Venetian painter whose
talent he held in high esteem. As regards himself, the documents of
the period vaunt his uprightness, his honesty and his keen sense of
honour. Ridolfi, one of his biographers, who wrote sixty years after
Veronese's death, and relied upon the recollections of people who knew
him personally, pictured him as a man of strict principles and settled
habits, and economical almost to the point of avarice. He cites, as an
example of this, that the artist rarely employed ultramarine, which
was very costly at that time, and thus condemned his works to
premature deterioration.
His fortune, the extent of which we learn from the fiscal records of
Venice, consisted in a few holdings of real estate at Castelfranco in
Trevisano. In 1585 he purchased a small estate at Santa Maria in
Porto, not far from the Pineta of Ravenna. He also possessed a bank
account representing approximately six thousand sequins. But what was
that for a man who was the most famous and the most fertile artist of
his time?
We have already given examples of his disinterestedness. Many a time
he refused opportunities of great wealth. He even declined the offers
made him by Philip II, who tried to lure him to Spain and would have
entrusted him with decorating the Escurial.
It was about the period of his return to Venice that Veronese
completed his celebrated picture: _The Family of Darius at the Feet of
Alexander after the Battle of Issus_, now in the National Gallery at
London. The episode is well known; Darius III., King of Persia,
conquered at Issus by Alexander, sends his wife and children to beg
for clemency from the victor. Admitted to the conqueror's tent, the
unfortunate wife perceives a warrior in resplendent garments whom she
takes for Alexander, and throws herself at his feet. The warrior,
however, is only Ephestion, Alexander's lieutenant and friend. The
wife of Darius apologizes for her mistake, but Alexander raises her up
and says: "You made no mistake, he also is Alexander."
Such is the historic theme. But what matters history to Veronese? Upon
this classic subject he has built the most fantastic, the most
improbable, and at the same time the most fascinating of his
compositions. The picture was painted for the Pisani family which had
given him hospitality, and every one of the figures contained in it
represents a member of that household.
It is related that, in order to spare his hosts the necessity of
thanking him or the obligation of making some return, he rolled up his
canvas and slipped it behind his bed in such a way that it would not
be discovered in his room until after his departure.
It is scarcely probable that Veronese could have painted so large a
canvas--fourteen metres by seven--in the necessarily brief space of a
friendly visit, or that he could have painted in his figures, which
are all of them portraits, without the knowledge of the Pisani family.
But the anecdote is so pretty that it is pleasant to accept it as
true.
It was a direct descendant of the Venetian Procurator, Count Victor
Pisani, who sold the painting to England in 1857.