Veronese

The greatest director and set designer of the Cinquecento, Paolo Caliari (1528-1588), 'Veronese' to his patrons and admirers in Venice – the city in which he lived and worked becoming its citizen – was appreciated first and foremost as a colourist, capable of proposing an unprecedented bright palette, daring combinations of colours, skilful plays of light. Furthermore, he was a sumptuous narrator. Alone he created a genre: the Cene, or Suppers, grandiose in size and display of fabrics, poses and portraits, where the evangelical event is an opportunity to stage the patrician society of his time, within architectural spaces in which the classical orders are articulated in urbanistic fantasies that are as impressive as they are creative. Furthermore, he painted for a clientele of patricians and main religious orders an impressive variety of biblical scenes, stories of saints and martyrs, sophisticated and allusive allegories, verging on ambiguity and irony. Appreciated and admired,