'Veronese: Magnificence in Renaissance Venice’ opens at the National Gallery, London WC2 (020 7747 2885), on March 19
If
you are in London between March 19 and June 15, you could visit
National Gallery and see some work
by the XVI century italian painter.
Here
an excerpt of interview with Nicholas Penny (director of the National
Gallery) posted by Alastair Sooke on the Telegraph website last march
12:
“Veronese
is not an unknown artist,” Penny says. “He is very well
represented in the National Gallery [which boasts 10 paintings by him
in its permanent collection] – so much so that you could say you
begin to take him for granted. It seems to me that there is an
opportunity to see him with fresh eyes. Every generation needs to
understand really great artists in a new way.”
What
does Penny hope that visitors to the exhibition will discover about
Veronese? “He is a very dramatic painter,” Penny replies. “That
has been underestimated. He is also a very beautiful painter, even
when he is also being dramatic. His impact on the subsequent history
of art was huge, because he has always been a favourite painter of
painters. He had imitators throughout the 17th century culminating in
Sebastiano Ricci. Tiepolo’s style is a deliberately modified
version of Veronese. Then he was a favourite painter of Delacroix and
indeed of Renoir.”
What
did they admire about Veronese? “They always talked about his
palette, his colour schemes, about what used to be called in English
the 'carnations’: his beautiful painting of pearly flesh and
blushing cheeks. He is a fantastic painter of the translucency of
especially female flesh.”
Veronese
is also known for working on a very large scale. His famous
painting The
Feast in the House of Levi (1573),
for instance, is nearly 42 feet across. Now in the Accademia in
Venice, it started life as a monumental Last Supper. When the
Inquisition took exception to
the inclusion within the painting of German-looking soldiers and
“buffoons”, Veronese was forced to alter it. Cannily, he changed
nothing but the title, so that it referred to a less contentious
biblical event.
The
Feast in the House of Levi will not be travelling to London. Nor will
other colossal compositions by Veronese such as The Marriage Feast at
Cana (1562-63), which is the largest painting in the Louvre, and
which Penny “didn’t even dream of asking [for], because we
wouldn’t be able to fit it in a plane, on a truck, through the door
and on the wall – it’s gigantic”. But there will be several
important and enormous loans, including The Martyrdom of Saint George
(c.1565), which is more than 14 feet tall, from the church of San
Giorgio in Braida, Verona.
As
a result, Penny took the exceptional decision to stage the exhibition
not in the Sainsbury Wing, where temporary loan shows are usually put
on, but in the main galleries. “We are mounting it there because
the paintings need the light, space and gallery height. The last
exhibition we did that involved the upstairs galleries was Velázquez
in 2006. I don’t think we are going to do this more than once every
15 years or so.”
To
see the full article you could visit this website:
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