Museo Correr

Museo Correr

VERONESE. Myths, Portraits, Allegories.

The Accademia Gallery

The sizeable number of works in this gallery come largely from the churches and monasteries which were stripped of their treasures by order of Napoleon. The earliest is the altarpiece from the sacristy of the church of San Zaccaria. Depicting The Madonna and Child with Saints, this work was probably painted shortly after 1564, a date suggested by the preparatory sketch now in the Boymans-van Beuningen Museum, Rotterdam. The Allegory of the Battle of Lepanto from the Murano church of San Pietro Martire dates from the early 1570s; it commemorates the important victory of the Christian fleet over the Turkish on 7 October 1571 – a victory to which Venetian ships and manpower made such an sizeable contribution. The vast canvas of Supper in the House of Levi is of the same period. Veronese painted it in 1573 for the refectory of the Monastery of Santi Giovanni e Paolo; it is this work which led to the artist being tried for heresy by the Inquisition, the court finally obliging him to make certain changes (including the name; the painting was originally intended as a Last Supper). The splendour of colour to be seen in that work is also apparent in the altarpiece of The Mystic Marriage of Saint Catherine , painted around 1575 for the Venetian church dedicated to that saint. The ceiling panel of Venice Receiving the Homage of Hercules and Ceres came from the offices of the Magistrato alle Biade [the authority responsible for fodder supplies] in the Doge’s Palace. Dating from the mid-1570s, the work was originally rectangular but its shape was modified during restoration at the beginning of the nineteenth century. A few years later – 1578 – Veronese would paint the Annunciation for the Scuola dei Mercanti at the church of Madonna dell’Orto; the work was commissioned by the Cadabrazzo and Cottoni families, whose crests can be seen in the upper section. The numerous works from the latter period of the artist’s career include the masterpiece St. Jerome the Penitent, a small altarpiece from the church of Santa Maria della Zirada (early 1580s). As for the canvasses from the church of San Nicolò della Lattuga, they certainly date from before 1582, the year in which the church was re-consecrated; they comprise two ceiling panels – St. Francis Receiving the Stigmata and St. Nicholas Recognised as Bishop of Myra – as well as a large Crucifixion which hung in the chapel dedicated to St. John the Baptist. The large Assumption of the Virgin from the high altar of Santa Maria Maggiore and the Coronation of the Virgin from the church of Ognissanti (consecrated in 1586) are of particular interest for what they tell us about the style of Veronese’s very last works; the former was donated to its church by Simone Lando in 1584.