Paolo Veronese

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The Feast in the House of Levi (1573), one of the largest canvases of the 16th century. It led to an investigation by the Roman Catholic Inquisition.

Paolo Veronese (Verona 1528 - Venice April 19, 1588) was an important Venetian Renaissance painter. His birth name was Paolo Cagliari or Paolo Caliari; he became known as "Veronese" from his birthplace in Verona.

Veronese studied the local art in Verona in his youth, then moved briefly to Mantua in 1548 (where he created frescos in that city's Duomo) before settling in Venice. He trained under fellow Veronese artist Giovanni Francesco Caroto.

Most of his works are vivid narrative cycles, executed in a dramatic and colorful Mannerist Venetian style, full of majestic architectural sets and glittering Venetian pageantry.

With Titian and Tintoretto he makes up the triumvirate of great painters of the late Renaissance in Venice. He is known as a supreme colourist and for his illusionistic decorations in both fresco and oil. His large paintings of biblical feasts executed for the refectories of monasteries in Venice and Verona are especially celebrated. He also produced many altarpieces, history and mythological paintings and portraits. His compositional sketches in pen, ink and wash, figure studies in chalk, and chiaroscuro modelli and ricordi form a significant body of drawings. He headed a family workshop that remained active after his death.