In spite of his keen desire to pay a visit to Rome, Veronese was kept in Venice by his ceaseless productivity, and he attained the age of forty without ever having had the chance of a sight of the Eternal City. Of all the masterpieces in that home of the Pontiffs, he knew nothing, excepting of such as he had seen copied in the form of engravings. The appointment of his friend and patron as ambassador to the Holy See, afforded him an opportunity to make the journey so many times projected and deferred.
No documents exist regarding Veronese's sojourn in Rome, but at all events it was fairly brief. Beyond this, we are reduced to mere conjecture. Furthermore, there is no extant evidence to sustain the idea that he practised his art in the Eternal City. If he had painted any pictures there, some trace of them would surely have been discovered. It must therefore be concluded that he contented himself with admiring the masterpieces with which his illustrious predecessors, Raphael and Michelangelo, had enriched the capital of the Pontiffs.
But his temperament was too peculiar, his manner too individual, and we may as well acknowledge, his nature too superficial, to permit of his experiencing those profound and overwhelming impressions that radically modify an artistic career.
And for this we ought rather to be thankful than to complain, since it was only his obstinate insistence upon remaining himself that saved Veronese from shipwreck upon the ever threatening reef of imitation.
From the moment of his return to Venice, Veronese was besieged from all sides; once again he found himself enslaved to forced labor by the incessant contracts demanded of him by his fellow citizens. The scantiness of documents which we possess regarding his life does not permit us to name the chronological order in which he painted his pictures. We shall therefore gather them into groups for the sake of convenience in studying his more important works. Furthermore, to study one by one, all of his paintings, is not to be thought of; for this painter was one of the most prolific producers of which the history of art makes mention. In every one of his pictures will be found, more or less accentuated, those qualities of composition, of picturesqueness, and of colour which together constitute his glory. Accordingly we shall limit ourselves to indicating, at the different stages of his career, those pictures which show most deeply the imprint of his genius and which also are most closely related to the life of Venice of which he was, in a certain way, together with Tintoretto, the official painter. For the rest the reader may be referred to the complete catalogue of the works of Veronese given at the close of this book.