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Veronese
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In-depth portrait of the great 16th-century Venetian painter whose controversial Last Supper brought him before the Inquisition, but who miraculously survived
"Art is the celebration of the world. It does not seek to evoke sin, guilt, torment, distress and fear." With these words Paolo Cagliari from Verona, called Veronese (1528-88), defended the supposed irreverence of his work before the Inquisition. Paradoxically, however, most of his paintings were of a religious nature or intended to glorify his Venetian masters.
Renate Liebenwein's film, shot on location in Venice, combines sumptuous photography of the 16th-century capital of European culture and of works by both Veronese and contemporaries such as Tintoretto, with a historical-biographical narrative which places Veronese in his artistic context. Quotations from later admirers as diverse as Eugène Delacroix and Hermann Hesse show his influence on successive generations.
The doges of Venice were eager to display and perpetuate their economic hegemony by fostering the fine arts. Thus, the young Veronese competed with painters of the manneristic school, such as Tintoretto, for the favours of his idol Titian and for prestigious commissions such as the decoration of the Biblioteca San Marco. Liebenwein conducts the viewer, room by room, through what was the first secular library, demonstrating the subordination of art to Venetian power-politics while bringing out the originality and flair of the competitors for the prize, eventually won by Veronese. His depiction of music in the form of three young women singing and playing contemporary instruments shows a Cupid and a faun sitting at their feet, symbolising animal instincts. It is this skilful incorporation of small but poignant details which distinguished Veronese's work and allowed him to comment on his subjects, adding a lighter note to an otherwise conventional artistic excursion.
When he decorated the villa of the rich Barbaro family, his devices included not only idyllic landscapes harking back to the 'golden age' of Roman antiquity, and Olympic scenes into which he generously incorporated the owners of the villa, but also the joke of leaving lowly household objects like a broom 'lying around' on the painted wall. However, Veronese was living at the time of the counter-Reformation, whose centre in Italy was Trento, but which, nevertheless, exercised a considerable influence on his own artistic environment. Thus he was assigned to paint the church of San Sebastiano in such a way as to honour the saint and the Virgin Mary as required by a newly self-assertive Catholicism.
He fulfilled this task well enough: the camera takes us over the painted ceiling, lingering on each detail of the centre-piece of the sacristy, which shows Mary and the Holy Trinity on a cloud bank, asserting the Catholic dogma of the corporeal ascendance of Mary to Heaven. However, his otherwise eminently austere and discreet depiction of Saint Sebastian's second martyrdom brims over with elegant artistic self-indulgence. Arrows seem to fly over the ceiling from one wall to the other, monks disappear through a trompe l'oeuil doorway; and the Old Testament story of Esther and Mordechai anticipates many of the techniques later employed by baroque painters.
No wonder, then, that Rubens admired Veronese and was influenced by precisely these paintings. Naturally, his fierce independence and playfulness brought him into conflict with the Church. His 'blasphemous' painting of the Last Supper, complete with a greedy, worldly Peter, children and Moors and two German soldiers, suggesting an allusion to the Reformation, caused him to be called before the Inquisition. That his spirited defence of artistic freedom was largely accepted, gaining him his release, is most likely due not merely to the liberal Venetian regime but to the fact that, for their own purposes, the city's rulers could hardly dispense with so sensitive and expressive an artist.
This film not only illustrates Hermann Hesse's view of Veronese's paintings as "carelessly beautiful, soft dreams" through the lavish and well-directed photography, but also brings into focus the deeper interaction between sensuousness and faith that lies beneath the surface of Veronese's work.
Renate Liebenwein's film, shot on location in Venice, combines sumptuous photography of the 16th-century capital of European culture and of works by both Veronese and contemporaries such as Tintoretto, with a historical-biographical narrative which places Veronese in his artistic context. Quotations from later admirers as diverse as Eugène Delacroix and Hermann Hesse show his influence on successive generations.
The doges of Venice were eager to display and perpetuate their economic hegemony by fostering the fine arts. Thus, the young Veronese competed with painters of the manneristic school, such as Tintoretto, for the favours of his idol Titian and for prestigious commissions such as the decoration of the Biblioteca San Marco. Liebenwein conducts the viewer, room by room, through what was the first secular library, demonstrating the subordination of art to Venetian power-politics while bringing out the originality and flair of the competitors for the prize, eventually won by Veronese. His depiction of music in the form of three young women singing and playing contemporary instruments shows a Cupid and a faun sitting at their feet, symbolising animal instincts. It is this skilful incorporation of small but poignant details which distinguished Veronese's work and allowed him to comment on his subjects, adding a lighter note to an otherwise conventional artistic excursion.
When he decorated the villa of the rich Barbaro family, his devices included not only idyllic landscapes harking back to the 'golden age' of Roman antiquity, and Olympic scenes into which he generously incorporated the owners of the villa, but also the joke of leaving lowly household objects like a broom 'lying around' on the painted wall. However, Veronese was living at the time of the counter-Reformation, whose centre in Italy was Trento, but which, nevertheless, exercised a considerable influence on his own artistic environment. Thus he was assigned to paint the church of San Sebastiano in such a way as to honour the saint and the Virgin Mary as required by a newly self-assertive Catholicism.
He fulfilled this task well enough: the camera takes us over the painted ceiling, lingering on each detail of the centre-piece of the sacristy, which shows Mary and the Holy Trinity on a cloud bank, asserting the Catholic dogma of the corporeal ascendance of Mary to Heaven. However, his otherwise eminently austere and discreet depiction of Saint Sebastian's second martyrdom brims over with elegant artistic self-indulgence. Arrows seem to fly over the ceiling from one wall to the other, monks disappear through a trompe l'oeuil doorway; and the Old Testament story of Esther and Mordechai anticipates many of the techniques later employed by baroque painters.
No wonder, then, that Rubens admired Veronese and was influenced by precisely these paintings. Naturally, his fierce independence and playfulness brought him into conflict with the Church. His 'blasphemous' painting of the Last Supper, complete with a greedy, worldly Peter, children and Moors and two German soldiers, suggesting an allusion to the Reformation, caused him to be called before the Inquisition. That his spirited defence of artistic freedom was largely accepted, gaining him his release, is most likely due not merely to the liberal Venetian regime but to the fact that, for their own purposes, the city's rulers could hardly dispense with so sensitive and expressive an artist.
This film not only illustrates Hermann Hesse's view of Veronese's paintings as "carelessly beautiful, soft dreams" through the lavish and well-directed photography, but also brings into focus the deeper interaction between sensuousness and faith that lies beneath the surface of Veronese's work.
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