LONDON held its first ever monographic exhibition celebrating the life of Paolo Caliari (1528-88) in the spring of 2014, and this was closely followed by an outstanding show in Verona (Arts, 17 April 2014). Now, three years shy of the quincentenary of his birth in Verona, hence his name, it is the turn of Madrid.
This is the last in a series surveying the Venetian Renaissance masters which the Prado has staged over the past 25 years, beginning with an exhibition of the Bassano family in 2001 and most recently celebrating Lorenzo Lotto’s portraits (2018). Exhibitions of Titian in 2003 and Tintoretto in 2007 showed how the Prado makes ample use of its new exhibition spaces in the heart of its emerging campus.
Now Professor Enrico Maria Dal Pozzolo and the Director of the Prado, Miguel Falomir Faus, have together established an extraordinary show. The director of our own National Gallery in London had forewarned me that it was “magnificent”. Four visits over two days convinced me of his masterly understatement.
Veronese lived and worked in and around the Veneto in a period of unprecedented religious changes across Europe. His working life spans from the Treaty of Augsburg 1545 to the Armada in 1588. Despite the victory of the papal, imperial, and Venetian navies at the Battle of Lepanto in 1571, the Ottoman threat from the East was as menacing as that of Protestantism from the North.
The Veneto was the region criss-crossed by merchants, encouraging new exchanges of ideas — and this applied particularly to Venice itself, as a port. Bibles in the vernacular, in the banned Italian translation of Antonio Brucioli (1532), circulated widely, and Veronese himself was patronised by two leading patricians, Iseppo da Porto and his wife, the Contessa Livia Thiene, who openly promoted Calvinism in Vincenza between 1535 and 1548.
Paris, Musée du Louvre, Département des PeinturesPaolo Veronese’s The Pilgrims of Emmaus (1555), oil on canvas, 242 × 416cm on loan from the Louvre
As Ottavia Niccoli, in one of the outstanding scholarly contributions to the catalogue, points out, to counteract the political weight increasingly exercised by the papacy through the Holy Office of the Roman Inquisition (founded in 1542), the Venetian Republic established its own lay magistracy five years later. Morality and religious conformity were overseen by the three savi all’eresia and, by 1549, Venice had its own Index of Prohibited Books.
Unlike many artists (Lorenzo Lotto, for instance, who worked primarily for the Dominicans), Veronese did not seek patronage from any one religious order or patron, remaining free to take commissions, both sacred and profane, promiscuously throughout his life.
No exhibition can hope to include his most memorable works, which are frescoes and murals, of staggering architectural complexity and size. The Wedding Feast at Cana in Galilee was commissioned by the Benedictines for the refectory of their community house on the island of S. Giorgio Maggiore in Venice. It was looted by Napoleon’s troops in 1798 and assigned to the Louvre. It measures 677 by 994cm. Recent campaigns for its return have failed.
The Feast in the House of Levi (1573), now in the Accademia in Venice, measures 560 by 1309cm. Many works are still in situ, including his decorative murals across the region, among them those for the Villa Barbaro at Maser and the Villa Emo at Vedelago and extensively for the Doge’s Palace in Venice.
His earliest works show that, known first as a stonecutter (“Paolo Spezapreda”), presumably as his father was a stonemason, Veronese had grasped the dynamic that colour brings to composition.
Far from perfect, the Bevilacqua-Lazise altarpiece is probably his first church commission (c.1546-8). It is a simple, almost formulaic, image: the Virgin and Child are seated aloft beneath a green drape, while below the pediment are St John the Baptist and St Louis of Toulouse. The donors emerge in a foreground space, portrayed in profile busts as if emerging from a sepulchre below.
It works up the drawing, from Chatsworth, shown alongside, but differs from the modello oil sketch (The Uffizi), in which both Giovanni Bevilacqua-Lazise and his wife, Lucrezia Malaspina, appear much younger than in the finished work.
She is more demurely dressed, as her décolleté dress and pearl necklace has been replaced by a green robe, albeit with a gold chain. Her red-gold hair, revealed by her see-through veil, is now dark, covered up with a white one, while his has somewhat miraculously regrown across his bald pate. Are they the same couple?
Turin, Musei Reali di Torino, Galleria SabaudaPaolo Veronese’s The Feast in the House of Simon (c.1556-60), oil on canvas, 315 × 451cm, on loan from the Galleria Sabauda, Turin
One wall of the long gallery room is taken up with Tintoretto’s Foot-Washing (the Prado’s version of this 1548-49 work measures 210 by 533cm), which unites an architectural landscape, complete with a triumphal arch and obelisk beyond a lake on which fishing boats ply, with the biblical scene. Reminiscent of a stage set, the 3D effect is one taken up by the younger artist, as seen in his Christ and the Centurion (c.1571) and, at the other end of the hall, the earlier Feast in the House of Simon (Turin).
Both scenes were widely popular, and several patricians who were captains of war asked for versions of Matthew 8.5-13. The centurion is attended by his bodyguards, who reach forward as if to prevent the officer from kneeling. For his part, Jesus turns towards him, Simon Peter like a minder at his shoulder. Another Apostle engages a well-dressed Nubian in discourse, while a doctor of the Law looks over his shoulder. This is now a painting about conversion (Galatians 3.28), not just a theatrical representation of the encounter in a street at Capernaum.
Talking to Muslims and engaging them in conversation to encourage conversion, in the years before the Fourth Ottoman-Venetian War (1570-73), was funded in the Republic by the Pia Casa dei Catecumeni, a charitable institute (founded in 1557) where “infidels”, with Jews and fallen women, were accommodated and instructed in the Christian faith.
Such a (one-way) dialogue offers the possible context for the mistitled Saint John the Baptist Preaching, a painting of 1562 in which the Forerunner stands centrally, gesturing to the one who will come after him. In place of the crowds at Jordan bank, John addresses three men in oriental robes and turbans. At his feet kneels a young woman with her toddler. The banderole of his staff reads only “Ecce”. Gian Battista Contarini was among those who supported the work of the Pia Casa and might have commissioned the work to celebrate his namesake and the work of the community.
Christ among the Doctors is set accurately in the Temple, as the boy Jesus sits between the two pillars of Jachin and Boaz. His mother is glimpsed at the door beyond, but the emphasis is on a patrician who carries a pilgrim’s staff and wears the cross of Jerusalem on his habit. This may be a portrait of the donor: one Pietro Contarini from Padua had visited the Holy Land in 1526.
This would appear to be Veronese’s only privately commissioned tableau of the narrative, which has a much debated early date in the 1550s. The teenager sits on the seat of wisdom, slightly off centre. What is placed on the axis (which is overlooked by commentators of the work) is a tall hourglass. This is not a preacher’s aid, but, rather, reminds us that in Christ all time coinheres. Present in the midst of those gathered in the Temple is the one who was, who is, and who is to come.
Photo © Museo Nacional del PradoInstallation view of the Paolo Veronese exhibition galleries
The exhibition comprises more than 100 works and artefacts, including several mythological paintings of Mars and Venus; a tender Crucifixion, painted on slate; a silver-gilt ewer and basin (c.1580), loaned by the V&A, which looks as if it had just come off the credenza shelf of the overloaded buffet of the celebrating family in the highly populated supper at Emmaus (The Louvre); and panels of red and gold damask.
Veronese and his busy workshop, including family members, earned substantial monies; in October and November 1562, he paid 300 ducats for land around Castelfranco Veneto, where he had acquired a house for 500 ducats. He had recently been paid 105 ducats to fresco the walls of the nave of San Sebastiano in Venice. The success, until the end of the century, of his heirs is shown in one last room, alongside works by other artists who were influenced by him or who knew his work, including Annibale Carracci, El Greco, Rubens, and Alonso Cano.
Admission to all temporary exhibitions in the Prado is included in the general ticket cost. I took advantage of this to see “So Far, So Close. Guadalupe of Mexico in Spain” (on until 14 September), which showcases the many artworks celebrating the Virgin of Guadalupe which were sent back from the capital of the viceroyalty of New Spain to Iberia.
A further joy is to visit a major gallery that bans all private photography. Without selfies, and the mindless photographing of wall displays, it is possible to see what is on display without distraction.
“Paolo Veronese 1528-1588” is at the Museo Nacional del Prado, Madrid, until 21 September. www.museodelprado.es
