Veronese: Magnificence in Renaissance Venice, National Gallery

This Spring the National Gallery reveals the largest ever UK exhibition of Paolo Veronese: one of the Italian Renaissance’s most gargantuan talents.  

Veronese: Magnificence in Renaissance Venice brings together fifty of the painter’s finest altarpieces, portraits and mythological works for the first time in more than 500 years. These vast works, which adorned churches and palazzos throughout the affluent Veneto region before being disseminated to international collections, open a window on the wealth, grace and opulence of the 16th century Venetian Republic.

Veronese, born Paolo Caliari in Verona, moved to Venice in 1553. He quickly earned the endorsement of Titian and Tintoretto with a showstopping trio of works: Portrait of a Gentleman 1555, Portrait of a Gentleman 1660 and Portrait of a Lady, known as the Bella Nani. Take a moment to admire the effervescent velvets, intricate semi-translucent lace and and gilded, jewel-encrusted dress-fastenings in these studies of the Venetian gentry and it’s easy to see why.

Titian, Tintoretto, and Veronese went on to become the three great titans of late Renaissance painting, and each was uniquely influential in his way. Keep an eye out here for the enormous altarpiece commission The Martyrdom of St George (1565), which makes its way to the UK for the first time from its home in San Giorgio in Braida, Verona, and The Family of Darius Before Alexander (1565-7), perhaps his most famous secular work, for examples of the genteel grace and theatrical approach to architecture that were inspirational to later artists including Van Dyck, Rubens and Delacroix.

There’s a peculiar sense of time travel about this exhibition, which for us is the real treat. We particularly loved The Adoration of the Kings (1573), a large, bold diagonal painting of the Magi, and its twin: a near-identical altarpiece created for the church of Santa Corona, Vicenza. They come together here for the first time since being painted next to each other in Veronese’s studio nearly 500 years ago. You don’t get much closer to stepping back into the Renaissance than that.