Author Description

"The Museo Nacional del Prado and Fundación AXA are presenting the first major monographic exhibition in Spain devoted to Paolo Veronese, one of the most brilliant and admired masters of the Venetian Renaissance. Curated by Miguel Falomir, director of the Museo del Prado, and Enrico Maria dal Pozzolo, professor at the Università degli Studi di Verona, the exhibition highlights the pictorial intelligence of a superlative artist who created a unique formal universe; a painter with an all-embracing concept of art that encompassed an infinite number of aesthetic and cultural references which he expressed with enormous formal and conceptual freedom. Veronese was active at a critical time for Venice, when religious tensions were surfacing and the first signs of an economic and political decline were becoming evident, all masterfully camouflaged by the brushes of an artist who decisively contributed to capturing in images the "myth of Venice" that has survived to this day. Furthermore, like all great artists, Veronese transcended his own time. The beauty and elegance of his compositions captivated collectors and artists for centuries, from Philip IV and Louis XIV to Rubens, Velázquez, Delacroix and Cézanne. These and other themes are reflected in the exhibition through more than 100 works loaned from prestigious international institutions, including the Musée du Louvre, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the National Gallery, London, the Galleria degli Uffizi, Florence, and the Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna. These works establish dialogues with key paintings from the Prado’s own collection. With Paolo Veronese(1528-1588) the Prado is concluding an ambitious programme of research, restoration and exhibitions initiated more than two decades ago and devoted to Venetian Renaissance painting, the foundation stone of the former royal collection and the current Museo del Prado. The exhibition Paolo Veronese (1528-1588) represents the culmination of a lengthy process of research a