Rendering - Week 4

You Had to Have a Veronese

The article was published  on ARTNews.com, by Ann Landi on 01/23/13 and discusses the theme, which states "A survey at the Ringling chronicles the career of the Renaissance painter American collectors coveted." The first thing that needs to be said is , that Paolo Veronese (1528–1588) was a painter who delighted in highly charged storytelling, grandiose architecture, sumptuous fabrics, and occasionally daring improprieties (he was hauled before the Inquisition for including buffoons, drunken guests, and dwarves in his 1573 tableau The Feast in the House of Levi). The author adds, that Veronese was also extremely popular among American collectors during and after the Gilded Age. The author points out the fact, that That massive canvas, nearly eight feet tall, became the starting point for “Paolo Veronese: A Master and His Workshop in Renaissance Venice,” an overview of Veronese’s long and prolific career, at the John and Mable Ringling Museum (through April 14), that was organized by Virginia Brilliant, associate curator for European art, who arrived at the museum in 2008 and was charged with curating shows inspired by its impressive collection of Old Masters. Analyzing the situation, it's necessary to admit  that one of the reasons Americans found Veronese accessible, Brilliant says, was because his paintings are not overtly religious. And Ann Landi adds, that many collectors, such as Isabella Stewart Gardner in Boston, were building their houses in the Venetian style, and Veronese “became one of those standard artists”. It's a noticeable fact that the number of Veronese’s drawings and paintings in American collections, including several examples from the National Gallery in Washington, D.C., allowed Brilliant and her chief collaborator, Frederick Ilchman, curator of paintings at the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, to assemble a show that tells “the whole story of how these masterpieces went from the artist’s very first doodles, his first ideas for a composition, and how he worked those up into very highly finished drawings” and from there to paintings. It wouldn't be unfair for the author not to say, that Henry James called Veronese the “happiest painter” of the Renaissance, one who enjoyed a reputation for vivid color and the creation of a festive mood even when his subject wasn't a celebration. To draw the conclusion, the author says that Veronese is so often dismissed as a decorative painter, Brilliant and her colleagues included examples of actual Venetian fabrics from the period, of which the MFA in Boston has an exemplary collection , saying, that We wanted to show that these are real things that people had and could use.” In Veronese’s hands, “they were an advertisement for the Venetian luxury lifestyle.”  In my personal opinion, Veronese is one of the most genius artist of Renaissance period. His massive painting “The Wedding at Cana (or The Wedding Feast at Cana)” is a work of a great master. It is on display in the Musée du Louvre in Paris, where it is the largest painting in that museum's collection. I can understand those people, who really want to have such works at their homes, because they have enough material possessions to obtain it – but the works of art are made for people, not only for one family of official who made a fortune unfairly – but for ordinary mass – just to make this mass not so ordinary with magnetic power of esthetics .