Veronese, PAOLO, the name by which Paolo Caliari (or Cagliari), a great artist of the Venetian school, is usually known, from his having been born at Verona, probably in 1528. A sculptor's son, he studied painting under an uncle, Antonio Badile, a respectable artist, and, after some work in his native city and Mantua, in 1555 settled in Venice, where he rapidly acquired both wealth and reputation. He had for contemporaries both Titian and Tintoretto, and, though fifty years Titian's junior, was held in equal admiration with these famous painters. The church of San Sebastiano, in Venice, contains many of his pictures (both frescoes and easel pictures, from the story of Esther, martyrdoms, &c.) which are reckoned the most important of his earlier period—the period before his visit to Rome (1563), when he first became acquainted with the masterpieces of Raphael and Michelangelo. The influence of the Roman school on his style was marked, new dignity, grace of pose, and ease of movement being added to his rich Venetian colouring; a specific decorative element is also hereafter more conspicuous. He was kept busy with innumerable commissions, some of which he executed elsewhere than at Venice (as at Vicenza and Treviso). He died in Venice, 19th April 1588, and was buried in San Sebastiano. Veronese is remarkable more for the fertility than for the depth or spirituality of his imagination. His design is generally noble, his composition rich, and his execution truthful. In the invention of details, especially, he is inexhaustible, and often overloads his pictures with ornament. One peculiarity of his works is the frequent introduction of splendid architectural backgrounds, which, however, were frequently painted by his brother Benedetto. The most celebrated of his works—many of them very large—is the 'Marriage Feast at Cana of Galilee,' now in the Louvre at Paris; it is 20 feet high, and 30 in length, and contains 120 figures, many of them portraits of contemporaries, and the details much more 16th-century Italian than ancient Jewish. Besides these may be mentioned 'The Calling of St Andrew to the Apostleship,' 'The Feast of Simon,' and (in the National Gallery) the 'Presentation of the Family of Darins to Alexander,' and 'St Helena's Vision of the Invention of the Cross'—the former purchased for 13,000, and the latter for over 3000 guineas. Veronese was the last of the great Venetian painters.
See Symonds, Renaissance in Italy (1877); Crowe and Cavalcaselle; and a monograph by Caliari (Rome, 1888).