Paolo Veronese: Difference between revisions

In his ''Annunciation'', for example, the Virgin Mary is greeted by a beautiful, shimmering-robed Archangel Gabriel, while her dog trots out to investigate the heavenly being. His ''Marriage of St. Catherine'' shows two angels in the lower left corner apparently disputing a book of scripture—vying with Catherine’s mystical ceremony for the viewer’s attention.  

This seeming frivolity in Veronese’s work does not indicate his mockery of religion. On the contrary, it brings religion from stiff pomposity and fearful worship back into man’s domain, imparting the experience of the sacred to all.

The study of his paintings will reveal the love with which he painted the face and attitude of man in the garb of heaven. His conviction that heaven is man’s destiny shines from his faces and figures and speaks of his hope for man’s elevation.  

But the approachability of his saints, their faces and their gestures baffled and even infuriated some of his religious contemporaries who accused Veronese of a lack of sanctity, a disrespect for God and the saints.  

Untempered zealots roamed Italy, destroying paintings, decapitating statues, and threatening artists. Pope Pius V and the Spanish painter El Greco even advocated the destruction of Michelangelo’s Sistine Chapel because of the nude figures upon its ceiling.  

Veronese was summoned before the tribunal of the Inquisition under suspicion of heresy for the “irreverences” and “fantasy” in his painting of the Last Supper, which included in it a dwarf, a parrot, guards in German armour, dogs and a jester.

Public attention on Veronese’s trial caused a great increase in his popularity, and his commissions rapidly multiplied. Yet fame and wealth did little to affect his simple and affectionate nature. He was once contracted by the Pisani family to paint ''Family of Darius''. It is said that Paolo hid the painting from the Pisani family, so that he might escape from the premises before his host discovered it, so that the latter would feel no obligations to thank the donor with either words or coin. (The painting now hangs in the National Gallery of London. The figures in the composition depict members of the Pisani family.)  

: If you are victorious on this path, the day and the hour of your ascension will come, when the sacred fire shall rise on your spinal altar with an intensity so great as to almost overwhelm you. Your [[I AM Presence]] and [[Holy Christ Self]] shall then draw you up into the arms of everlasting Love, and you shall make the transition from mortality to immortality.

: And you shall hear the words of the Father: “Well done, thou good and faithful servant: thou hast been faithful over a few things, I will make thee ruler over many things.<ref>Matt. 25:21.</ref> Rise to the levels of the kingdom of God and let others follow in your wake!”<ref>{{POWref|38|34|, August 6, 1995}}</ref>  

This is precisely what Paul did at the conclusion of his embodiment as Paolo Veronese. He accelerated consciousness and reunited with his God source, ascending from the [[Cháteau de Liberté|Retreat of the Liberty Flame]] in the heaven world over southern France on April 19, 1588.

Here, at the Cháteau de Liberté, after his passing and yet prior to his ascension, Paul began the most important of his works, The Holy Trinity. The canvas has the unprecedented distinction of conveying the vibrations of both dimensions of activity—the earthly and the heavenly—for the canvas was completed after his ascension.  

: Now I speak to you because of some of the canvases that I created. There were times when I felt pressed, through the need for my livelihood, to create on canvas some wondrous object in order that mankind might be able to glory in it. And yet I was driven, in a sense, to a pensive mood whereby I could create at will a masterpiece only to find that when I came to create it, the inspirational spark was not present. And I found it could not be invoked. I found that the harder I tried, the more difficult became the decision as to just what I could paint, for I could not paint a commonplace item. It must be stirring and magnificent. This, then, is why I so well understand how the human hearts of men, at various times when the crossroads of life seem particularly difficult, stand in wonder and amazement as to just which way they shall turn.

: Beloved ones, at times such as those, I myself, finding that I was indeed stymied, ceased to resist the condition, and not with a sense of indifference or aloofness or despair but with a sense of realization that God works in strange ways, mysterious and wondrous to perform his will. I determined to cease and desist in the struggle and to rest in his compassionate consciousness, knowing that, with the tides of time, I would find an answer to the searching and probing question of the hour.

: And then, my peace would come in great flowing waves. And with the coming of my peace and my quietude, there was reestablished a contact between myself and those masterful divine beings who ensouled in my pictures the very essence of their own life. My angelic friends of light—those messengers of hope who guided my hand in its craftsmanship and artistry—were able to express, then, in the stilled muscular control that which they could never do when the tensions of the hour took their toll over my mortal frame.

: I therefore urge all the students to recognize that there is a time to tense and a time to relax; there is a time to pray and a time to wait; there is a time to be devotional and a time to repose in God’s devotion.

: I would like to remind all who are here that, after you have poured out all of your love to God—according to the capacity of your own soul—then is the hour when you should await, expectantly, to receive the love of God in return. It is as though an emptiness comes to you, for you have given your all; and then that all comes back to you charged with his love. The love of God flows in mighty waves, sweeping o’er you as the beating sea against the cliffs of being. And the foam intrigues your consciousness as its breakers of many patterns unfold multitudinous and wondrous spraylets of beauty.<ref>Paul the Venetian, July 6, 1963.</ref>