1528–1588 · Mannerism. Wikipedia
Paolo Caliari, known as Paolo Veronese, was an Italian Renaissance painter based in Venice, known for extremely large history paintings of religion and mythology, such as The Wedding at Cana (1563) and The Feast in the House of Levi (1573). Included with Titian, a generation older, and Tintoretto, a decade senior, Veronese is one of the "great trio that dominated Venetian painting of the cinquecento" and the Late Renaissance in the 16th century. Known as a supreme colorist, and after an early period with Mannerism, Paolo Veronese developed a naturalist style of painting, influenced by Titian.
Venus and Adonis is a painting by the Italian late Mannerist artist Paolo Veronese, executed in the early 1580s, now in the Museo del Prado, in Madrid. It is an oil on canvas and its dimensions are 162 cm × 191 cm (64 in × 75 in). The original painting was enlarged by 50 cm in the upper border in the 18th century. This added section was removed in a restoration in 1988, so the work recovered its original horizontal format.
Allegory of Virtue and Vice, also known as The Choice Between Virtue and Vice or The Choice of Hercules is a painting by Paolo Veronese, created c. 1565 in Venice, Italy. It is now located in the Frick Collection, in New York. It is a large-scale allegorical painting depicting Hercules' struggle between virtue and vice, personified here by the figures of the two women physically pulling him in different directions. In the painting, Virtue appears to be winning the struggle over Hercules, but Vice has torn Hercules' stocking and still reaches out her hand toward him. Concealed behind her skirt is a dagger and a statue of a sphinx. On the stonework above the scene, an inscription reads "[HO]NOR ET VIRTUS/[P]OST MORTÊ FLORET (Honor and Virtue Flourish after Death)." As an allegory, the job of this painting is to convey a moral message, that of the superiority of virtue over vice.
The Feast in the House of Levi or Christ in the House of Levi is a 1573 oil painting by Italian painter Paolo Veronese and one of the largest canvases of the 16th century, measuring 555 cm × 1,309 cm (18.21 ft × 42.95 ft). It is now in the Gallerie dell'Accademia, in Venice. It was painted by Veronese for a wall of a Dominican friary called the refectory of the Basilica di Santi Giovanni e Paolo. This painting was intended to be a Last Supper, to replace an earlier work by Titian of this subject destroyed by fire in 1571. The painting is directly tied to Luke, chapter 5, of the Bible which is clear from the inscription the artist added. The painting shows a banquet taking place in which Christ is the focal point at the center of the image. However, the painting led to an investigation by the Tribunal of the Venetian Holy Inquisition. Veronese was called to answer for irreverence and indecorum, and the serious offense of heresy was mentioned.
The Wedding at Cana (Italian: Nozze di Cana, 1562–1563), by Paolo Veronese, is a representational painting that depicts the biblical story of the Wedding at Cana, at which Jesus miraculously converts water into red wine (John 2:1–11). Executed in the Mannerist style (1520–1600) of the late Renaissance, the large-format (6.77 m × 9.94 m or 22 ft 3 in × 32 ft 7 in) oil painting comprehends the stylistic ideal of compositional harmony, as practised by the artists Leonardo, Raphael, and Michelangelo. The art of the High Renaissance (1490–1527) emphasised human figures of ideal proportions, balanced composition, and beauty, whereas Mannerism exaggerated the Renaissance ideals – of figure, light, and colour – with asymmetric and unnaturally elegant arrangements achieved by flattening the pictorial space and distorting the human figure as an ideal preconception of the subject, rather than as a realistic representation. The visual tension among the elements of the picture and the thematic instability among the human figures in The Wedding Feast at Cana derive from Veronese's application of technical artifice, the inclusion of sophisticated cultural codes and symbolism (social, religious, theologic), which present a biblical story relevant to the Renaissance viewer and to the contemporary viewer.
Venus and Mars is an oil painting on canvas painted in the 1570s by the Italian Renaissance artist Paolo Veronese. The painting was commissioned by Emperor Rudolph and was one of three mythological and love-themed works commissioned by the artist. The other two are at the Frick Collection in New York: The Allegory of Virtue and Performance and Allegory of the Source of Wisdom and Power. It deals with the romantic love of the Roman goddess of love Venus and the god of war Mars, as described in Ovid's Metamorphoses.
The Battle of Lepanto was a naval engagement that took place on 7 October 1571 when a fleet of the Holy League, a coalition of Catholic states arranged by Pope Pius V and led by the navies of the Spanish Empire and the Republic of Venice, inflicted a major defeat on the fleet of the Ottoman Empire in the Gulf of Patras. The Ottoman forces were sailing westward from their naval station in Lepanto (the Venetian name of ancient Naupactus – Greek Ναύπακτος, Turkish İnebahtı) when they met the fleet of the Holy League which was sailing east from Messina, Sicily. Lepanto marks the last major engagement in the Western world to be fought almost entirely between rowing vessels, namely the galleys and galleasses, which were the direct descendants of ancient trireme warships. The battle was in essence an "infantry battle on floating platforms". It was the largest naval battle in Western history since classical antiquity, involving more than 450 warships. Over the following decades, the increasing importance of the galleon and the line of battle tactic would displace the galley as the major warship of its era, marking the beginning of the "Age of Sail".
The Mystic Marriage of Saint Catherine is a c.1575 oil-on-canvas painting by Paolo Veronese, produced as the high altarpiece for Santa Caterina church in Venice. It remained there until the First World War, during which it was moved to its present home in the city's Gallerie dell'Accademia It shows the Mystic Marriage of Saint Catherine, a subject repeatedly returned to by the artist, such as in a c.1547–1550 work by the artist. It is one of the most successful variants on Titian's 1519–1526 Pesaro Altarpiece for Santa Maria Gloriosa dei Frari, also in Venice, using the same asymmetric diagonal composition with the Madonna and Child in a stepped throne to the left of centre. A pair of Corinthian columns behind the throne represent the pillars of the faith.
Lucretia is an oil-on-canvas painting by Paolo Veronese from c.1580-1583. This Venetian painting depicts Lucretia in the act of piercing her chest with a dagger after having been raped by the king’s son Sextus Tarquinius. It is held in the collection of Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna, Austria. A subject of many works of other artists, such as Titian, Rembrandt and Raffaello Sanzio, in Veronese's painting what is striking is the attention to detail, from the drapery that cloaks the figure to her jewels.
The Family of Darius Before Alexander is an oil painting on canvas by Paolo Veronese, executed c. 1565–1570. It depicts Alexander the Great with the family of Darius III, the Persian king he had defeated in battle. Although Veronese had previously painted a version of the subject, since destroyed, the theme had rarely been depicted by other artists before him. The painting has been in the collection of the National Gallery in London since 1857. In 333 BC Alexander defeated Darius III, the last king of the Achaemenid Empire, at the Battle of Issus. Darius escaped capture, but his wife Stateira I, his mother, Sisygambis, and his daughters Stateira II and Drypetis were taken by Alexander. Alexander displayed forgiveness in victory. According to Plutarch:
The Conversion of Mary Magdalene is an oil painting, an early work by the Italian Renaissance artist based in Venice, Paolo Veronese (1528–1588). He was known for his sumptuous paintings with a dramatic and colourful style. Dating from circa 1545–1548, when he was still in his teens, the painting was probably commissioned by a noble patron in Verona. It is now in the National Gallery in London. The scene that the painting depicts is an event that is not described in the Gospels or the Golden Legend, and reflects the widespread beliefs at the time that, firstly, Mary Magdalene and Martha were sisters, living together, and secondly that Mary Magdalene was the woman mentioned elsewhere in the Gospels who had lived a life of sexual sin, perhaps a prostitute. Furthermore, Mary Magdalene is the first individual to whom Christ reveals himself following his death. In other medieval and Renaissance art, she is often depicted in the cemetery, attempting to reach out and touch him, but failing to do so. Today these are seen by most Christians, including the Catholic Church, as three different women, with Mary of Bethany as Martha's sister.
Bathsheba at Her Bath is an oil painting on canvas by the Italian Renaissance painter Paolo Veronese, dated to around 1575 and now in the Musée des Beaux-Arts de Lyon, France. This work is a marriage painting ordered by a Venetian customer. It arrived in France in the seventeenth century in the royal collections. It was then kept at the Palace of Versailles, enlarged atop and on the left side to match the woodwork. It was sent to Lyon by the State in 1811, and is currently at the Musée des Beaux-Arts de Lyon. Its original format was restored in 1991, keeping the extension behind the new guidelines.
The Feast in the House of Simon the Pharisee is an oil-on-canvas painting by Paolo Veronese, completed in 1570 for San Sebastiano, a Hieronymite monastery in Venice. He also produced a cycle of works for the monastery church (still in place), where he was later buried. After the French occupation of Venice in the late 18th century, the monastery was suppressed and its art confiscated. In 1817, after the fall of Napoleon, Feast was assigned to the Pinacoteca di Brera in Milan, where it still hangs. From Veronese's mature phase, it was one of a series of monumental "Feasts" for monastery refectories of monasteries in Venice – The Wedding at Cana for San Giorgio Maggiore (now in the Louvre) and another The Feast in the House of Simon the Pharisee for Santi Nazaro e Celso (now in Turin) were earlier works in the series. The Feast in the House of Levi (Gallerie dell'Accademia, Venice, 1573), renamed from a Last Supper to satisfy the objections of the Venetian Holy Inquisition, is the largest and perhaps the best known. They are all framed by huge trompe-l'œil architecture modelled on the contemporary architecture of Palladio, with whom Veronese had collaborated on decorating the Villa Barbaro in Maser.