Veronés. La disputa con los doctores en el templo. Hacia 1560. Óleo sobre lienzo. Madrid, Museo Nacional del Prado
On view through 21 September at the Prado Museum is the first major monographic exhibition on the Venetian Renaissance master Paolo Veronese. Curated by Miguel Falomir and Enrico Maria dal Pozzolo, it brings together over a hundred works that attest to the artist’s extraordinary pictorial intelligence and creative freedom. Veronese spendidly captured the visual universe of a particular moment of transformation in Venice, expertly integrating Renaissance architecture into his compositions.
One of the exhibition’s central themes, ‘Maestoso teatro: Architecture and Stage Design,’ explores how Veronese, influenced by the treatises of Vitruvius and the architecture of Andrea Palladio, incorporated architectural and theatrical elements into his painting. A dialogue is established with the approach of Tintoretto, linked to the scenographic conceptions of the architect Sebastiano Serlio. The show delves into these two narrative visions, which took shape through respective alliances between painter and architect: Veronese and Palladio on the one hand, Tintoretto and Serlio on the other, in both cases derived from interpretations of the Roman theater scene as described by Vitruvio.
Serlio, followed by Tintoretto, imagined a deep stage with an elevated vanishing point flanked by buildings, generating dynamic compositions and foreshortenings. Palladio, for his part, proposed an architecture arranged transversally. Veronese adopted this solution with a low viewpoint, which reduces the space and brings the scene close to the viewer, reinforcing the grandeur of the ensemble and giving it balance and serenity.
Unlike Tintorreto, who painted unified atmospheres, Veronese accentuated the contrast between figures and architecture by means of color, with people highlighted by the shine of their clothing against architectural backgrounds of neutral tones.
With this exhibition the Prado wraps up an ambitious program of research studies, restorations, and exhibitions that began more than two decades ago, devoted to Venetian Renaissance painting.
