The execution of his large official canvases did not prevent Veronese from responding to all the appeals which came to him from every side. His unequalled activity, his prodigious facility made it possible for him to satisfy these demands. No one knows all the pictures which he painted for private individuals, nor all the frescoes with which he adorned certain dwellings that have since disappeared. Nevertheless what a formidable list the works of this painter would make if the attempt were made to draw up such a list without omissions! Ridolfi devotes not less than thirty pages to a simple enumeration of the pictures which Veronese painted for the neighbouring islands of Venice, such as Murano and Torcello, for the country house of the Grimani at Orlago, for that of the Duke of Tuscany at Artemino, or for the Palace of the Pisani. To Verona, to Brescia, to Vicenza, to Treviso, to Padua; to Venice also, to the Frari, to Ognissanti, to the Umilta, to San Francisco del Orto, to Santa Catarina, for which he painted his famous Marriage of St. Catherine, everywhere, in short, where they required him, he sent marvellous canvases, magic with colour and with life;—canvases for which to-day museums vie with each other for their weight in gold.

But Veronese was no longer young; he had entered well into the fifties; yet nothing in his craftsmanship betrayed fatigue or waning powers. A genius almost unique, he went steadily forward and no one could say of him, in the presence of his latest productions, what has so often been said of other illustrious painters: “That is a work of his old age!” Veronese had the rare privilege of remaining young to the end.

One day, while following a procession on foot, Veronese contracted a cold, and after a brief illness he died. His obsequies took place in the parish church of San Samuele, April 19, 1588. On that day he would have completed his sixtieth year.

When we remember that, up to the eve of his death, Veronese continued to paint with as steady a hand as at the age of twenty, his death seems premature, and it is only natural to deplore that this matchless artist should have failed to obtain the ripe age of Titian. What masterpieces he might still have painted!

Such as they are, brilliant and luxuriant, his works remain the most abundant that have ever come from the palette of any one painter, and Veronese stands lastingly, in the history of Art, as the most amazing of all masters, both in colour and in composition.

THE WORKS OF PAOLO VERONESE