Nevertheless, Veronese was not a native of Venice but of Verona, as is indicated by the surname that was bestowed upon him during his life and that has adhered to him ever since. His rightful name was Paolo Caliari. He was born at Verona in 1528 and not in 1530, as is asserted by several of his biographers, notably by Carlo Ridolfi. The correct date is now verified by the discovery, in San Samuele of Venice, Veronese’s parish church, of the register of deaths wherein the decease of the great painter is entered as having occurred the 19th of April, 1588, the very day when he completed his sixtieth year.

Paolo Caliari belonged to a family of artists. His father, Gabriele Caliari, was a sculptor and enjoyed some little reputation in his own city. Veronese’s uncle, Antonio Badile, was a painter, and in such pictures as are known to be his we find evidence not only of a good deal of ability, but of a certain facile grace that justifies the high esteem in which his compatriots held him.

Veronese’s father, being of a logical turn of mind, wished, since he himself was a sculptor, to make a sculptor of his son. Veronese learned to model statuettes in clay, and, aided by his precocious intelligence, he acquired a real dexterity in this art, quite remarkable in one so young.

But this was not his vocation. Frequent visits to the studio of his uncle Badile had awakened in him an enthusiasm for painting. He applied himself to learn to paint with so much zeal and imagination that his father made no attempt to check his inclination, but entrusted him to Badile. The latter was Veronese’s real teacher, though not the only one, for young “Paolino” also attended the studio of another Veronese painter, Giovanni Carotto.

From the outset, Veronese applied himself energetically to perfecting his skill in line drawing. The future genial painter of wondrous fantasy yielded himself without a murmur to the rude but salutary exigencies of technique. Strange caprice on the part of an artist who was destined to show so much dexterity in execution and lavishness in decoration, his tastes turned towards the most severe and least imaginative of masters, Albert Durer and Lucas Van Leyden. It was through copying the engravings of these illustrious masters that he learned how to draw. Such lessons always bear their fruit. In this laborious apprenticeship, Veronese acquired that steadiness of hand, that firmness of line that was later to be noted even in his most exuberant paintings, despite the enormous quantity of canvases that he produced in the course of his life.

Even his earliest attempts reveal his abundant and facile genius; and these first, and one might almost say immature, works already foreshadow the great artist. The affectionate patronage of his uncle Badile greatly facilitated his dÉbut. At an age when young folk have not usually begun to form dreams of the future, young Caliari had already forced himself upon the attention of Verona, and the Chapter of the Church of San Bernardino commissioned him to paint a Madonna.

He acquitted himself well of this task. The work proved satisfactory, other orders followed, and the name of the young artist swiftly spread beyond the confines of his native city. A short time later, the cardinal Ercole di Gonzaga decided to decorate the cathedral at Mantua, recently rebuilt by Giulio Romano. He sent a summons to Caliari, as well as to three other Veronese painters who enjoyed a big reputation: Battista del Moro, Paolo Farinato degli Uberti, and Brusasorci, who was regarded as the Titian of Verona. The cardinal instituted a sort of rivalry between these four artists, and gave them orders for four pictures, destined to be competitive. The subject entrusted to Paolo Caliari was a representation of the Temptations of St. Anthony. The young painter applied himself resolutely to the task. Far from intimidating him, the redoubtable competition of his three elders served only to excite his ardour and stimulate his imagination. He painted the saintly anchorite defending himself against the blows which the Devil is dealing him with a stick and repulsing the advances of a woman who has been raised up from hell itself to tempt him. The cardinal, delighted with this picture, gave preference to Veronese over his three competitors.

Veronese lost no time in returning to Verona, but, however flattering the esteem with which his compatriots surrounded him might be, he was not long in finding that the limited scope afforded by his native city was too narrow for his activity. He had a boyhood friend, Battista Zelotti, a painter like himself, and also like himself tormented by dreams of glory. Together they quitted Verona and betook themselves to Tiene, in the duchy of Vicenza. Here they had the good luck to meet a man of discrimination, in the person of the paymaster-general Portesco, who entrusted them with the decoration of his palace. The two friends apportioned the work between them; while Zelotti, who had studied at Venice under Titian, undertook the fresco painting, Veronese decorated the intervening panels in grisaille, or gray monochrome. The result of this friendly collaboration was a complete series of paintings, of great diversity: hunting scenes, banquets, dances and numerous subjects borrowed from mythology or from history, the Loves of Venus and Vulcan, the Heroism of Mucius Scaevola, the Festival of Cleopatra, and a remarkable Sophonisba. This work in common was not without profit to Veronese. Zelotti’s manner closely resembled his own; they both show the same qualities of colouring and composition, and the same broad and facile touch.

They collaborated once again on fresco work in the home of a certain Eni, in the village of Fanzolo, in the neighbourhood of Trevise. After this they separated, Zelotti going to Vicenza, whither he had been summoned, while Caliari betook himself to Venice, the Promised Land towards which he was impelled by his ardent desire for glory.

When he arrived in the Most Serene Republic, Caliari was not yet twenty-five years old. We have no reliable document regarding these first years of his residence there, nor even of the impressions produced upon him by the opulent and magnificent city. But these impressions are easy to conceive. To anyone so sensitive as he to externals, Venice must have seemed enchanted ground. How could he have failed to be dazzled, in acquainting himself with that gorgeous city, enthroned upon the Adriatic, like a pearl in a casket of velvet? With what joyous eagerness his colour-enraptured eye must have rested upon those white marble palaces, moulded and filagreed in arabesque, those churches paved with precious mosaics, those quays swarming ceaselessly with a picturesque and motley crowd of Armenians, Greeks and Moors, spreading the sun-bathed pavements with a glittering display of spangled ornaments, turquoise-inlaid cutlery, and multicoloured fabrics.

If the models that passed in endless procession before his eyes impressed him as magnificent opportunities, the sight of what other painters had already wrought from this material aroused his artist soul to keen enthusiasm. The whole constellation of the great Venetians had converted the city of the Doges into an incomparable museum: Giorgione, with his melancholy compositions, full of vague dreams; Carpaccio, with his naÏve and picturesque reproductions of Venetian life. Among the living, Sansovino, simultaneously architect and artist, who built marvellous palaces and adorned them with graceful frescoes; Tintoretto, sombre genius whose creative power largely redeemed the somewhat obscure tints of his palette; and above them all, Titian, the great Titian, who at that time was already eighty years of age, yet still manipulated his brush with the firm hand of youth.

All these masters Veronese admired indiscriminately, as was fitting in a young painter who had never known other models than those of his own small city. He ran the danger of acquiring mannerisms and becoming an imitator. By a special grace accorded to genius alone, Veronese succeeded in remaining himself and borrowing nothing either from his predecessors or his contemporaries. From his contemplation of the works of the others he gained only a nobler passion for his art; and he altered nothing in the personal vision which he already formed of men and of things.

Vigorous, blessed with good health, jovial by nature, and much enamoured of the bright and sparkling side of life, Veronese fashioned his paintings in the image of his own temperament. His work was always an exaltation of the joy of living, an apology for those agreeable externals that render existence pleasant and easy; fine dwellings, flowers, copious repasts, women luxuriously apparelled, precious fabrics, horses and dogs of fine breed. If he wished to paint a Last Supper, it mattered little to him that legend and history agree regarding the simplicity and the humble station of Jesus and his disciples: History and tradition did not count with him. A repast, whatever it would be, he could not conceive of, unless around a sumptuous table, covered with costly vessels, served by attendants in picturesque costumes and enlivened by the antics of buffoons or the harmonies of music. It was thus that he painted Christ, it was after this original conception that he worked out his immortal compositions. Accordingly no one could justly appraise Veronese, without first setting aside, as he did, all those historic data which he voluntarily ignored.