Read "Veronese" by François Crastre online for free on Textopian. Full text with search, annotations, highlights, and AI-powered reading aids.
In 1577 a violent conflagration destroyed the greater part of the Ducal Palace. In this disaster all the pictures perished with which Tintoretto, Horatio the son of Titian, and Veronese, had decorated it.
Desiring to restore the palace promptly and give it a new splendour, the Senate appointed a committee, authorized to distribute orders among the painters and decorators of Venice. The competitors were numerous and eager to secure a chance to collaborate in so glorious an enterprise; and to this end they paid eager court to the committee. Veronese alone made no advances, being unwilling to appear solicitous. This dignified course was looked upon as excess of pride, and one day when Jacopo Contanari met him in the street he reproached him with it. Veronese replied that it was not his business to seek for honours but to be deserving of them, and that he had less skill in soliciting work than in executing it.