In 1577 a violent conflagration destroyed the greater part of the Ducal Palace. In this disaster all the pictures perished with which Tintoretto, Horatio the son of Titian, and Veronese, had decorated it.

Desiring to restore the palace promptly and give it a new splendour, the Senate appointed a committee, authorized to distribute orders among the painters and decorators of Venice. The competitors were numerous and eager to secure a chance to collaborate in so glorious an enterprise; and to this end they paid eager court to the committee. Veronese alone made no advances, being unwilling to appear solicitous. This dignified course was looked upon as excess of pride, and one day when Jacopo Contanari met him in the street he reproached him with it. Veronese replied that it was not his business to seek for honours but to be deserving of them, and that he had less skill in soliciting work than in executing it.

But they could not exclude Veronese, whose fame had now become universal. Accordingly he was chosen with Tintoretto, and to them were added Francisco Bassano and the younger Palma. The Ducal Palace is therefore a sort of museum of the works of these masters, and forms the most brilliant collection of paintings relating to the public life and the glorification of Venice.

Veronese was entrusted with the decoration of the great central oval of the ceiling, and the lateral panels. In these he painted the Defence of Scutari, the Taking of Smyrna, and the Triumph of Venice. This last named painting is considered by many as Veronese’s crowning achievement.

Venice is here represented in the form of a superb and smiling woman, seated upon the clouds, her eyes raised towards Glory, who offers her a crown. At her side, Renown celebrates her grandeur; at her feet are grouped Honour, Liberty, Peace, Juno, and Ceres; lower down an ethereal structure of admirable daring and architectural beauty sustains a great assemblage of gentlemen and ladies richly clad, of cardinals and bishops, all emulously uniting in the glorification of Venice. On the ground level standards, trophies, and cavaliers add the finishing touch to the composition, and are treated with incomparable vigour and skill both in chiaroscuro and in perspective.

Although of more modest dimensions, the Taking of Smyrna and the Defence of Scutari are in no wise inferior to the great central composition. In this same Hall of the Grand Council, Veronese painted two other great canvases, representing the Military Expedition of the Doges, Loredan and Mocenigo.

But for that matter there is not a room in the Palace of the Doges in which Veronese is not represented by one or more canvases; in the Hall of the Anticollegio, there is a ceiling painting representing Venice Enthroned, a work that has unfortunately deteriorated; in the Hall of the Collegio, a Battle of Lepanto, a Christ in Glory, Venice and the Doge Venier, a Faith, a St. Mark, and a ceiling which is considered as the most beautiful in the whole Palace of the Doges: Venice Upon the Terrestrial Globe, Between Justice and Peace. The Hall of the Council of Ten contains, in the oval ceiling panel: An Old Man resting his Head on his Hand and A Young Woman. In the Hall of the “Bussola,” St. Mark crowning the Theological Virtues, the original of which is at the present time in the Louvre. Mention should also be made of: The Triumph of the Doge Venier over the Turks; the Return of Contanari, Victor over the Genoese at Chioggia; the Emperor Frederick at the feet of Alexander III., and, in the Hall of the Ambassadors, a magnificent allegory of Venice, personified as a patrician lady seen from behind, robed in white satin and of marvellous grace.

Veronese also had a share in the decoration of another of Venice’s monumental buildings, situated near the bridge of the Rialto and known by the name of the Fondaco dei Tedeschi. This building, which is to-day occupied by the Post Office, formerly served as warehouse for German business men having commercial relations with the Republic. These rich merchants had had the palace adorned by the greatest painters in Venice. Giorgione and Titian had decorated its walls not only within, but also on the exterior, where traces of the paintings can still be seen. Veronese was entrusted with four compositions, one of which is an allegory representing Germany receiving the Imperial Crown. It is believed that the canvas now in the Museum at Berlin, entitled Jupiter, Fortune and Germany, once formed part of the decoration of the Fondaco dei Tedeschi. It was purchased at Verona in 1841. Veronese’s celebrity, about the year 1580, had become world-wide. Every sovereign who prided himself on his art gallery wished to possess some of his work. The indefatigable artist endeavoured to satisfy them all; he even corresponded personally with several of them. For the Duke of Savoy, he painted The Queen of Sheba Visiting Solomon; to the Duke of Mantua, who had honoured him with his friendship, he sent a Moses Saved from the Waters; to the Emperor Rudolph II. he gave a Cephale and Procris and a Poem of Venus. These last two canvases, of which the German Emperor was very proud, were taken from him by Gustavus Adolphus, when that triumphant conqueror passed through Vienna.

Throughout his life, Veronese remained faithful to the pompous, brilliant, ornamental school of painting. Not that he was incapable of essaying other types, but because it was his own preference to paint ease and luxury on a broad scale. He sometimes had occasion to handle more vigorous subjects, and in this he was completely successful, as the magnificent painting entitled Jupiter Destroying the Vices abundantly bears witness.

The surprise experienced in the presence of this noble work, executed with the energy of a master-hand, is surpassed only by admiration for the versatility of a genius which could at will adapt itself to unfamiliar formulas. This famous painting, proud and virile in style, was taken from Italy by the victorious Armies of France, and placed in Versailles in the chamber of Louis XIV., where for a long period it served as the ceiling decoration. It was finally removed and now hangs in the Louvre, in company of other masterpieces by the same artist.