Article courtesy of Il Giornale dell’Arte
The portrait of Agostino Barbarigo, admiral of the Venetian fleet which defeated the Turks during the battle of Lepanto in 1571, is perhaps the most representative of the exposition “Paolo Veronese: myths, portraits, allegories” showing at the Correr Museum until the 29th of May.
The rise of Veronese as a painter, in competition with Jacopo Tintoretto, is indeed parallel to the consolidation of the image of the Serenissima republic, determined to strenghten its position of great power, even without having a reign and a royal court.
From a symbolic point of view (but less from a practical one) there are no doubts that the victory of Lepanto marked the climax of the Venetian status. Barbarigo was one of its protagonists, paying for his involvement with his own life: he was indeed struck by an arrow (depicted in the painting) on one eye, and he died a few days later.
The portrait, representing Barbarigo’s bust with a shot red cloth in the background, stands out both for the intensity of the face and for the light reflections on the wonderful armour.
The portrait comes from the Cleveland museum, thus representing the return of a masterpiece to Venice; a peculiarity of all thirty works and one of the expositions’virtues.
Another comeback is, always in the field of portraits, that of the gentleman dressed in lynx’fur (Budapest, 1960): this dress, that shows the belonging to a privileged class and at the same time gives light to the apparel, lighting even the darkest capes, is recurring in Veronese’s iconography: it can be found also in another painting of the exposition, the portrait of Alessandro Contarini (Dresden 1565-1570), paradigmatic as to character’s authority.
Brilliant for the magnificence of clothes, value of jewels, delicacy of complexion and melancholy of look is the blond noblewoman, the “Bella Nani” (Paris, Louvre 1560-65) i.e. Giustiniana Giustinian, lady of the villa Barbaro at Maser near Treviso, that represents the painter’s most famous fresco cycle.
Veronese left many evidences of his miraculous activity in Venice: in Palazzo Ducale, where he celebrates the climax of the Serenissima; in the Galleries of the Academy, where there is an allegory concerning the battle of Lepanto, in several churches, particularly the San Sebastiano church, that represents at the best the synthesis of his poetry.
Conversely, with time going by have disappeared evidences of the Veronese profane, as was called this exposition at its first date in Paris, at the musée Luxembourg.
An exposition from which the present one derived the basic approach.
Even the coordinators are the same: Giandomenico Romanelli, director of the Musei Civici Veneziani and Claudio Strinati, chief inspector of the Museum Pole in Rome.
Then comes the mythes and allegories’side.
“Venice with Hercules and Neptune” (Budapest, 1575) depicted sitting under a triumphal canopy and coiled in sumptuous clothes, with a lion beside her.
Of all comebacks, this is the most significant: the portrait, of octagonal shape, was originally decorating the magistrate hall at the Legne of Palazzo Ducale.
Venus, that is to say the ideal of feminine beauty, represented in all her sensual nakedness, is one of recurring subjects of Veronese’s iconography (see “Mars and Venus with Eros” (Turin, Galleria Sabauda,1575); one of the myths more linked with the hail of the Serenissima is the allegory of Justice, a juvenile work of 1551, taken from a fresco original of the Duomo of Castelfranco.
On the religious side there is the biblical subject of “Susanna and the eldest” (Genua, 1570), set in a fantastic Renaissance palace.
The Correr exposition can also be visited following a chronological order, since it documents the artist’s route, from juvenile works such as the allegories of Peace and Good Government of 1552, coming from the Vatican Museums and characterized by bright colours, up to the magnificent and at the same time dramatic picture of “Lucrezia” dated 1983 and coming from the Kunsthistiriches Museum in Wien, good conclusion of an author that has always been able to pair his pictorial qualites to an uncommon introspective ability.
Lidia Panzeri
