LATER ITALIAN ART--GIORGIONE, 1477-1511--CORREGGIO. ABOUT
1493-1534--TINTORETTO, 1512-1574--VERONESE, 1530-1588.
Giorgio Barbarelli, known as 'Giorgione,--in Italian, 'big,' or, as I
have heard it better translated, 'strapping George'--was born at
Castelfranco, in Treviso, about 1477, the same year in which Titian was
born. Nothing is known of his youth before he came to Venice and studied
in the school of Gian Bellini along with Titian.
The two men were friends in those days, but soon quarrelled, and
Giorgione's early death completed their separation. Titian was impatient
and arrogant; Giorgione seems to have been one of those proud, shy,
sensitive men--possibly morbidly sensitive, with whom it is always
difficult to deal; but it is recorded of him, as it is not recorded of
his great compeer, that Giorgione was frank and friendly as an artist,
however moody and fitful he might be as a man.
Giorgione soon became known. According to one account, he painted the
façade of the house which he dwelt in, for an advertisement of his
abilities as a painter, a device which was entirely successful in
procuring him commissions; but unfortunately for posterity, these were
frequently to paint other façades, sometimes in company with Titian;
grand work, which has inevitably perished, if not by fire, by time and
by the sea-damp of Venice, for to Venice Giorgione belonged, and there
is no sign that he ever left it.
He had no school, and his love of music and society--the last taste
found not seldom, an apparent anomaly, in silent, brooding
natures--might tend to withdraw him from his art. He has left a trace of
his love for music in his pictures of 'Concerts' and of 'Pastorals,' in
which musical performances are made prominent. In Giorgione, with his
romantic, idealizing temperament, genre[18] pictures took this form,
while he is known to have painted from Ovid and from the Italian tales
of his time. He was employed frequently to paint scenes on panels, for
the richly ornamented Venetian furniture. Giorgione was not without a
bent to realism in his very idealism, and is said to have been the first
Italian painter who 'imitated the real texture of stuffs and painted
draperies from the actual material.'
Giorgione died at the early age of thirty-three years, in 1511. One
account represents him as dying of the plague, others attribute his
death to a sadder cause. He is said to have had a friend and
fellow-painter who betrayed their friendship, and carried off the girl
whom Giorgione loved. Stung to the quick by the double falsehood, the
tradition goes on to state that Giorgione fell into despair with life
and all it held, and so died.
A portrait of Giorgione is in the Munich Gallery; it is that of a very
handsome beardless lad, 'with a peculiar melancholy in the dark glowing
eyes.'
Giorgione was, like Titian, grand and free in drawing and composition,
and superb in colour.[19] Mrs Jameson has drawn a nice distinction
between the two painters as colourists. That the colours of Giorgione
'appear as if lighted from within, and those of Titian from without;'
that 'the epithet glowing applies best to Giorgione, that of golden to
Titian.'
Giorgione's historic pictures are rare, his sacred pictures rarer still;
among the last is a 'Finding of Moses,' now in Milan, thus described by
Mrs Jameson: 'In the centre sits the princess under a tree; she looks
with surprise and tenderness on the child, which is brought to her by
one of her attendants; the squire, or seneschal, of the princess, with
knights and ladies, stand around; on one side two lovers are seated on
the grass; on the other are musicians and singers, pages with dogs. All
the figures are in the Venetian costume; the colouring is splendid, and
the grace and harmony of the whole composition is even the more
enchanting from the naïveté of the conception. This picture, like many
others of the same age and style, reminds us of those poems and tales
of the middle ages, in which David and Jonathan figure as _preux
chevaliers_, and Sir Alexander of Macedon and Sir Paris of Troy fight
tournaments in honour of ladies' eyes and the "blessed Virgin." They
must be tried by their own aim and standard, not by the severity of
antiquarian criticism.'
In portraits Giorgione has only been exceeded by Titian. In the National
Gallery there is an unimportant 'St Peter the Martyr,' and a finer
'Maestro di Capella giving a music lesson,' which Kugler assigns to
Giorgione, though it has been given elsewhere to Titian. The 'refined
voluptuousness and impassioned sombreness' of Giorgione's painting have
instituted a comparison between him and Lord Byron as a poet.
Correggio's real name was Antonio Allegri, and he has his popular name
from his birth-place of Correggio, now called Reggio; although at one
time there existed an impression that Correggio meant 'correct,' from
the painter's exceedingly clever feats of fore-shortening.
His father is believed to have been a well-to-do tradesman, and the lad
is said to have had an uncle a painter, who probably influenced his
nephew. But Correggio had a greater master, though but for a very short
time, in Andrea Mantegna, who died when Correggio was still a young boy.
Mantegna's son kept on his father's school, and from him Correggio might
have received more regular instruction. He early attained excellence,
and in the teeth of the legends which lingered in Parma for a full
century, his genius received prompt notice and patronage. He married
young, and from records which have come to light, he received a
considerable portion with his wife.
The year after his marriage, when he was no more than six-and-twenty,
Correggio was appointed to paint in fresco the cupola of the church of
San Giovanni at Parma, and chose for his subject the 'Ascension of
Christ;' for this work and that of the 'Coronation of the Virgin,'
painted over the high altar, Correggio got five hundred gold crowns,
equivalent to £1500. He was invited to Mantua, where he painted from the
mythology for the Duke of Mantua. Indeed, so far and wide had the
preference for mythological subjects penetrated, that one of Correggio's
earliest works was 'Diana returning from the Chase;' painted for the
decoration of the parlour of the Abbess of the convent of San Paulo,
Parma.
Correggio was a second time called upon to paint a great religious work
in Parma--this time in the cathedral, for which he selected 'The
Assumption of the Virgin.' A few of the cartoons for these frescoes were
discovered thirty or forty years ago, rolled up and lying forgotten in a
garret in Parma; they, are now in the British Museum.
In 1533, Correggio, then residing in his native town, was one of the
witnesses to the marriage of his sovereign, the Lord of Correggio. In
the following year the painter had engaged to paint an altar-piece for
an employer, who paid Correggio in advance twenty-five gold crowns, but
the latter dying very soon afterwards, in the forty-first year of his
age, 1534, his father, who was still alive, was in circumstances to
repay the advance on the picture, which had not been painted.
Correggio is said to have been modest and retiring in disposition, and
this, together with the fact that, like Giorgione, he did not have a
school, has been suggested as the source of the traditions which
prevailed so long in Italy. These traditions described the painter as a
man born in indigent circumstances, living obscurely in spite of his
genius (there is a picture of Correggio's in England, which was said to
have been given in payment for his entertainment at an inn), and leading
to the end a life of such ill-requited labour, that having been paid for
his last picture in copper money, and being under the necessity of
carrying it home in order to relieve the destitution of his family, he
broke down under the burden, and overcome by heat and weariness, drank a
rash draught of water, which caused fever and death.
The story, disproven as it is, is often alluded to still, and remains as
a foil to those flattering and courtly anecdotes which I have been
repeating of royal and imperial homage paid to Dürer, Titian, and
Holbein. I fancy the last-mentioned stories may have grown from small
beginnings, and circulated purely in the artist world; but that the
former is an utterance of the engrained persuasion of the great world
without, that art as a means of livelihood is essentially
non-remunerative in the sense of money-getting.
Modest as Correggio may have been, he was not without pride in his art.
After looking for the first time on the St Cecilia of Raphael, Correggio
is reported to have exclaimed with exultation, 'And I too am a painter.'
He left behind him on his death a son and a daughter, the former living
to be a painter of no great name. In the picture of Correggio in the
attitude of painting, painted by himself, we see him a handsome spare
man with something of a romantic cavalier air, engaged in his chosen
art.
Correggio's pictures go to prove that under his seemingly quiet exterior
he was a man of the liveliest sensibilities and the keenest perceptions,
His pictures, unlike Titian's in their repose, are full of motion and
excitement. Correggio is spoken of as a painter who delighted 'in the
buoyance of childish glee, the bliss of earthly, the fervour of heavenly
love,' whose radiant sphere of art sorrow rarely clouded; but when
sorrow did enter, it borrowed from the painter's own quivering heart the
very sharpness of anguish. The same authority tells us of Correggio,
that he has painted 'the very heart-throbs of humanity.' But it seems as
if such a nature, with its self-conscious veil of forced stillness, must
have had a tendency to vehemence and excess; and so we hear that
Correggio's fore-shortening was sometimes violent, and the energy of his
actors spasmodic; thus the cruelly smart contemporary criticism was
pronounced on his frescoes of the 'Assumption of the Virgin,' in which
legs and arms in wild play are chiefly conspicuous from below, that
Correggio had prepared for the Parmese 'a fricassée of frogs.' In
addition, the great modern critic, Mr Ruskin, has boldly accused
Correggio 'both of weakness and meretriciousness,' and there is this to
be said of a nature so highly strung as Correggio's was strung, that it
was not a healthily balanced nature.
But if the painter were really inferior in his sense of form and
expression to his great predecessors, he was so great in one department,
that in it he was held worthy, not only to found the school of Parma,
but to be classed with the first four painters of Italy.
That chiarascuro, or treatment of light and shade, in which Lionardo and
Andrea Mantegna were no mean proficients, was brought to such perfection
by Correggio, that, as Mrs Jameson has sought to illustrate technical
expressions, 'you seem to look through. Correggio's shadows, and to see
beyond them the genuine texture of the flesh.' In undulating grace of
motion, in melting softness of outline, fixed on a canvas, he surpassed
all rivals, including Raphael; and this widely attractive quality
('luscious refinement,' Mr Ruskin terms it) in connection with
Correggio's ardent, if undisciplined sensibility, has rendered him one
of the most valued of painters; his best paintings being highly prized
and costly as the easel pictures attributed to Raphael. Sir W. Stirling
Maxwell writes that an old Duke of Modena was suspected of having caused
Correggio's 'Notte' to be stolen from a church at Reggio, and that the
princes of Este were wont to carry 'The Magdalene Reading' with them on
their journeys, while the king of Poland kept it under lock and key in a
frame of jewelled silver.
Among Correggio's masterpieces, besides his frescoes, there is at Parma
his picture called 'Day,' from the broad flood of daylight in the
picture (and doubtless in contrast to his famous 'Notte' or 'Night,' in
the Dresden Gallery). Here is a Virgin and Child, with St Jerome
presenting to them his translation of the Scriptures, and the Magdalene
bending to kiss in adoration the feet of the infant Saviour.
In the Dresden Gallery in addition to the 'Notte' are five pictures, one
of the marriage of St Catherine as the Church--the bride, espoused with
a ring to the infant Saviour, a favourite subject of Italian painters,
and a specially favourite subject with Correggio; and another, the
Magdalene reading, half shrouded with her flowing hair, so well known
by engravings. I must say a few more words of the 'Notte,'--it is a
nativity illuminated entirely by the unearthly glory shining from the
Child Christ. Virgin and Child are bathed and half lost in the fair
radiance, which falls softly on a shepherd and maiden, leaving the rest
of the figures, the stalled beasts, and the surroundings of the stable,
in dim shadow.
In our National Gallery there are fine specimens of Correggio. There is
an 'Ecce Homo': Christ crowned with thorns, holding out his bound hands,
with a Roman soldier softening into pity, Pilate hardening in
indifference, and the Virgin fainting with sorrow. There are also 'the
Virgin with the Basket,' so named from the little basket in front of the
picture; and 'a Holy Family;' and there is a highly-esteemed picture
from a mythological subject, 'Mercury teaching Cupid to read in the
presence of Venus.'
We must return to the Venice of Titian, and see how his successors, with
much more of the true painter in them than the fast degenerating
scholars of other Italian schools, were mere men, if great men, matched
with Titian.
Tintoretto is only Tintoretto or Tintoret because his father was a dyer,
and 'Il Tintoretto' is in Italian, 'the little dyer.' Tintoretto's real
name was one more in keeping with his pretensions, Jacopo Robusti. He
was born in Venice, in 1512, and early fore-shadowed his future career
by drawing all kinds of objects on the walls of his father's dye-house,
an exercise which did not offend or dismay the elder Robusti, but, on
the contrary, induced him to put the boy into the school of Titian,
where Tintoretto only remained a short time. Titian did not choose to
impart what could be imparted of his art to his scholars, and, in all
probability, Tintoretto was no deferential and submissive scholar. There
is a tradition that Titian expelled this scholar from his academy,
saying of the dyer's son, that 'he would never be anything but a
dauber.'
Tintoret was not to be daunted. He lived to be a bold-tempered, dashing
man, and he must have been defiant, even in his boyhood, as he was
swaggering in his youth, when he set up an academy of his own, and
inscribed above the door, 'The drawing of Michael Angelo and the
colouring of Titian.' He had studied and taught himself from casts and
theories since he left the school of Titian, and then, with worldly
wisdom equal to his daring, he commenced his artistic career by
accepting every commission, good or bad, and taking what pay he could
get for his work; but, unfortunately for him and for the world, he
executed his work, as might have been expected, in the same headlong,
indiscriminate spirit, acquiring the name of 'Il Furioso' from the
rapidity and recklessness of his manner of painting. Often he did not
even give himself the trouble of making any sketch or design of his
pictures beforehand, but composed as he painted.
Self-confident to presumption, he took for his inspirations the merest
impulses, and considerably marred the effect of his unquestionably grand
genius by gross haste and carelessness. He was a successful man in his
day, as so energetic and unscrupulous a man was likely enough to be, and
his fellow-citizens, who saw principally on the surface,[20] were
charmed beyond measure by his tremendous capacity for invention, his
dramatic vigour, his gorgeous, rampant richness and glare; or, by
contrast, his dead dulness of ornament and colouring; and were not too
greatly offended by his occasional untruthfulness in drawing and
colouring, and the inequality of his careless, slovenly, powerful
achievements. Yet even Tintoret's fascinated contemporaries said of him
that he 'used three pencils: one gold, one silver, one lead.'
Naturally Tintoretto painted an immense number of pictures, to only
three of which, however, he appended his name. These were, 'The
Crucifixion,' and 'The Miracle of the Slave,' two of fifty-seven
pictures which he painted for the school of St Roch alone, in Venice;
the other was the 'Marriage at Cana,' in the church of Santa Maria
della Saluto, Venice.
There is an authentic story told of Tintoretto in his age, which is in
touching contrast to what is otherwise known of the man. Dominico, who
was a painter, Tintoret had a daughter, Marietta, very dear to him, who
was also a painter--indeed, so gifted a portrait painter, as to have
been repeatedly invited to foreign courts to practise her art,
invitations which she declined, because she would not be parted from her
father. To Tintoret's great grief, this daughter died as she was thirty
years of age, and her father was in his seventy-eighth year. When her
end was unmistakably near, the old man took brush and canvas and
struggled desperately to preserve a last impression of the beloved
child's face, over which death was casting its shadow.
Tintoretto died four years later, in 1594. His portrait is that of a man
who holds his head high and resolutely; he has, strange to say, a
somewhat commonplace face, with its massive nose, full eye, short curly
beard and hail. The forehead is not very broad, but the head is 'long,'
as Scotch people say, and they count long-headedness not only an
indication of self-esteem, but of practical shrewdness. Tintoret's power
was native, and had received little training; it is a proof of the
strength of that power that he could not quench it. His faults, as a
painter, I have already had to chronicle in the sketch of the man. He
was greatest on large canvases, where his recklessness was lost in his
strength; and in portraits, where his quickness in seizing striking
traits more than equalled that rapidity of conclusion in realizing, and
still more notably in classifying, character, which, to say the least,
is liable to error.
Even before Tintoretto lived sacred subjects and art had entirely
changed places. In the days of Fra Angelico and the Van Eycks, art was
the means by which painters brought before men sacred subjects, to whose
design painters looked with more or less of conviction and feeling. By
the time that Tintoret painted, sacred subjects were the means by which
painters showed their art; means, the design of which was largely lost
sight of, and which might be freely tortured and twisted, falsified,
well-nigh burlesqued, if, by so doing, painters could better display
their originality, skill, and mastery of technicalities. Sacred subjects
had become more and more human in the lower sense, and less and less
divine. A man who had so little reverence as Tintoret showed for his own
higher self, his fellow-men, and his art, would scarcely seem well
qualified to take up sacred subjects. But criticism is entirely and
hopelessly divided on the question, for while some authorities hold that
he made of the awful scene of the Crucifixion a merely historical and
decidedly theatrical procession, other authorities maintain that he
preserved in that 'great composition' 'repose and dignity, solemnity and
reverence.'
Here is M. Charles Blanc, the French art critic's opinion of Tintoret's
largest work, seventy-four feet in length and thirty feet in height: The
Glory of Paradise, in the great hall or throne-room of the Doge's
Palace:--
'If the shadows had not become so black, such a picture would have had
something of sublimity; but that sky, without transparency, the lights
of which, even, are of a burnt and baked colour, has rather the air of a
lit-up Erebus than of a Paradise. Four hundred figures are in motion in
this vast enclosure, some naked, others draped, but draped uniformly in
a staring red or a hard blue, which form as many spots, in some sort
symmetrical. The manner is quick; a little loose, but confident. The
models are neither taken from nature nor from the ideal, they are drawn
from practice, and are in general only turns of the head, without beauty
and without delicacy. The angels are agitated like demons; and the
whole--coarse enough in execution as in thought, is imposing
nevertheless by mass, movement, and number. It is the striking image of
a multitude in the air, a rout in the heavens, or rather in purgatory.'
Here, again, is Mr Ruskin's unequalled estimate of Tintoret's works: 'I
should exhaust the patience of the reader if Ion the various stupendous
developments of the imagination of Tintoret in the Scuola di San Rocco
alone. I would fain join awhile in that solemn pause of the journey into
Egypt, where the silver boughs of the shadowy trees lace with their
tremulous lines the alternate folds of fair cloud, flushed by faint
crimson light, and lie across the streams of blue between those rosy
islands like the white wakes of wandering ships; or watch beside the
sleep of the disciples among those mossy leaves that lie so heavily on
the dead of the night beneath the descent of the angel of the agony, and
toss fearfully above the motion of the torches as the troop of the
betrayer emerges out of the hollows of the olives; or wait through the
hour of accusing beside the judgment-seat of Pilate, where all is
unseen, unfelt, except the one figure that stands with its head bowed
down, pale like the pillar of moonlight, half bathed in the glory of the
Godhead, half wrapt in the whiteness of the shroud. Of these and all
other thoughts of indescribable power that are now fading from the walls
of those neglected chambers, I may perhaps endeavour at a future time to
preserve some image and shadow more faithfully than by words; but I
shall at present terminate our series of illustrations by reference to a
work of less touching, but more tremendous appeal; the Last Judgment in
the church of Santa Maria dell' Orto.'
'By Tintoret only has this unimaginable event been grappled with in its
verity; not typically, nor symbolically, but as they may see it who
shall not sleep, but be changed. Only one traditional circumstance he
has received with Dante and Michael Angelo, the Boat of the Condemned;
but the impetuosity of his mind bursts out even in the adoption of this
image; he has not stopped at the scowling ferryman of the one, nor at
the sweeping blow and demon-dragging of the other; but, seized
Hylas-like by the limbs, and tearing up the earth in his agony, the
victim is dashed into his destruction; nor is it the sluggish Lethe, nor
the fiery lake, that bears the cursed vessel, but the oceans of the
earth and the waters of the firmament gathered into one white, ghastly
cataract; the river of the wrath of God, roaring down into the gulf
where the world has melted with its fervent heat, choked with the ruin
of nations, and the limbs of its corpses tossed out of its whirling like
water-wheels. Bat-like, out of the holes, and caverns, and shadows of
the earth, the bones gather, and the clay-heaps heave, rattling and
adhering into half-kneaded anatomies, that crawl, and startle, and
struggle up among the putrid weeds, with the clay clinging to their
clotted hair, and their heavy eyes sealed by the earth darkness yet,
like his of old who went his way unseeing to the Siloam pool; shaking
off one by one the dreams of the prison-house, hardly hearing the
clangour of the trumpets of the armies of God; blinded yet more, as they
awake, by the white light of the new heaven, until the great vortex of
the four winds bears up their bodies to the judgment-seat; the Firmament
is all full of them, a very dust of human souls, that drifts, and
floats, and falls in the interminable, inevitable light; the bright
clouds are darkened with them as with thick snow; currents of atom life
in the arteries of heaven, now soaring up slowly, and higher and higher
still, till the eye and thought can follow no farther, borne up,
wingless, by their inward faith, and by the angel powers invisible, now
hurled in countless drifts of horror before the breath of their
condemnation.'
There is only one little work, of small consequence, by Tintoretto in
the National Gallery, but there are nearly a dozen in the Royal
Galleries, as Charles I. was an admirer and buyer of 'Tintorettos.' Two
Tintorettos which belonged to King Charles I, are at Hampton Court; the
one is 'Esther fainting before Ahasuerus,' and the other the 'Nine
Muses.' With another 'Esther' I have been familiar from childhood by an
old engraving. In the congenial to Tintoret, and he has certainly
revelled in the sumptuousness of the mighty Eastern tyrant, in royal
mantle and ermine tippet, seated on his throne, and stretching his
jewelled sceptre to Esther, who is in the rich costume of a Venetian
lady of the period, and sinking into the arms of her watchful maids,
with a fair baby face, and little helpless hands, having dainty frills
round the wrists, which scarcely answer to our notion of the attributes
of the magnanimous, if meek, Jewish heroine.
Paul Cágliari of Verona is far better known as Paul Veronese. He was
born in Verona in 1530, and was the son of a sculptor. He was taught by
his father to draw and model, but abandoned sculpture for the sister art
of painting, which was more akin to his tastes, and which he followed in
the studio of an uncle who was a fair painter.
Quitting Verona, Paul Veronese repaired to Venice, studying the works of
Titian and Tintoret, and settling in their city, finding no want of
patronage even in a field so fully appropriated before he came to take
his place there. His first great work was the painting of the church of
St Sebastian, with scenes from the history of Esther. Whether he chose
the subject or whether it was assigned to him, it belonged even more to
him than to Tintoret, for Veronese was the most magnificent of the
magnificent Venetian painters. From that date he was kept in constant
employment by the wealthy and luxurious Venetians. He visited Rome in
the suite of the Venetian ambassador in 1563, when he was in his
thirty-fourth year, and he was invited to Spain to assist in the
decoration of the Escurial by Philip II., but refused the invitation.
Veronese is said to have been a man of kindly spirit, generous and
devout. In painting for churches and convents, he would consent to
receive the smallest remuneration, sometimes not more than the price of
his colours and canvas. For his fine picture now in the Louvre, the
'Marriage of Cana,' he is believed not to have had more than forty
pounds in our money. He died when he was but fifty-eight years of age,
in 1588. He had married and left sons who were painters, and worked with
their father. He had a brother, Benedotto, who was also a painter, and
who is thought to have painted many of the architectural backgrounds to
Veronese's pictures.
Veronese's portrait, which he has left us, gives the idea of a more
earnest and impressionable man than Tintoret. A man in middle age,
bald-headed, with a furrowed brow, cheeks a little hollowed, head
slightly thrown back, and a somewhat anxious as well as intent
expression of face; what of the dress is seen, being a plain doublet
with turned-over collar, and a cloak arranged in a fold across the
breast, and hanging over the right shoulder like a shepherd's 'maud' or
plaid. Looking at the engraving, and hearing of Paul Veronese's
amiability and piety, one has little difficulty in thinking of the
magnificent painter, as a single-hearted, simple-minded man, neither
vain nor boastful, nor masterful save by the gift of genius.
I have called Paul Veronese a magnificent painter, and magnificence is
the great attribute of his style; but before going farther into his
merits and defects, I should like to quote to you a passage from Mr
Ruskin, the most eloquent and dogmatic of art critics, prefacing the
passage with the statement that the true lesson which it teaches is
particularly needful for women, who, if they love art at all, are apt to
regard it chiefly for its sentiment, and to undervalue such proper
painter's work, such breadth and affluence and glory of handling, as are
to be met with on the canvases of painters like Veronese and Rubens.
'But I perceive a tendency among some of the more thoughtful critics of
the day to forget the business of a painter is _to paint_, and so
altogether to despise those men, Veronese and Rubens for instance, who
were painters, _par excellence_, and in whom the expressional qualities
are subordinate. Now it is well, when we have strong moral or poetical
feeling manifested in painting, to mark this as the best part of the
work; but it is not well to consider as a thing of small account the
painter's language in which that feeling is conveyed; for if that
language be not good and lovely, the man may indeed be a just moralist
or a great poet, but he is not a _painter_, and it was wrong of him to
paint.'
It was said of Paul Veronese, that while he had not 'the brilliance and
depth of Titian' or the 'prodigious facility' of Tintoret, yet, in some
respects, Veronese surpassed both. But he was certainly deficient in a
sense of suitability and probability. He, of all painters, carried to an
outrageous extent the practice, which I have defended in some degree, of
painting sacred and historical subjects as if they had happened in his
own day and city. He violated taste and even reason in painting every
scene, lofty or humble, sacred or profane, alike, with the pomp of
splendour and richness of ornament which were the fashion of the time;
but he had a vivid perception of character, and a certain greatness of
mind which redeemed his plethora of gorgeousness from monotony or
vulgarity.
Veronese is reported to have been far more correct and careful in
drawing than was Tintoret, while Veronese's prodigality of colour was a
mellowed version of Tintoret's glare or deadness. One of Veronese's best
pictures is the 'Marriage of Cana,' painted originally for the refectory
of the convent of San Giorgio, Venice, and now in the Louvre. 'It is not
less than thirty feet long and twenty feet high, and contains about one
hundred and thirty figures, life size. The Marriage Feast of the
Galilean citizen is represented with a pomp worthy of "Ormuz or of Ind."
A sumptuous hall of the richest architecture; lofty columns, long lines
of marble balustrades rising against the sky; a crowd of guests
splendidly attired, some wearing orders of knighthood, are seated at
tables covered with gorgeous vases of gold and silver, attended by
slaves, jesters, pages, and musicians. In the midst of all this dazzling
pomp, this display of festive enjoyment, these moving figures, these
lavish colours in glowing approximation, we begin after a while to
distinguish the principal personages, our Saviour, the Virgin Mary, the
twelve Apostles, mingled with Venetian senators and ladies, clothed in
the rich costume of the sixteenth century; monks, friars, poets,
artists, all portraits of personages existing in his own time; while in
a group of musicians he has introduced himself and Tintoretto playing
the violoncello, while Titian plays the bass. The bride in this picture
is said to be the portrait of Eleanor of Austria, the sister of Charles
V, and second wife of Francis I.'[21]
Though Veronese is not greatly esteemed as a portrait painter, it so
happens that the highly-prized picture of his in our National Gallery,
called 'The Family of Darius before Alexander,' is understood to be
family portraits of the Pisani family in the characters of Alexander,
the Persian queen, etc., etc. Another of Veronese's pictures in the
National Gallery is 'The Consecration of St Nicholas, Bishop of Myra.'