'''Paolo Veronese''' (c. 1528 - April 19, 1588) was an important Venetian Renaissance painter. His birth name was '''Paolo Cagliari''' or '''Paolo Caliari'''; he became known as "Veronese" from his birthplace in Verona.

Veronese studied the local art in Verona in his youth, then moved briefly to Mantua in 1548 (where he created frescoes in that city's Duomo) before settling in Venice.

Most of his works are vivid narrative cycles, executed in a dramatic and colorful Mannerist Venetian style, full of majestic architectural sets and glittering Venetian pageantry.

With Titian and Tintoretto he makes up the triumvirate of great painters of the late Renaissance in Venice. He is known as a supreme colourist and for his illusionistic decorations in both fresco and oil. His large paintings of biblical feasts executed for the refectories of monasteries in Venice and Verona are especially celebrated. He also produced many altarpieces, history and mythological paintings and portraits. His compositional sketches in pen, ink and wash, figure studies in chalk, and chiaroscuro modelli and ricordi form a significant body of drawings. He headed a family workshop that remained active after his death.

Famous works

*The Wedding at Cana
*Allegory of Wisdom and Strength
*The Battle of Lepanto

External links

* paintings of Paolo Veronese
* Veronese biography on Web Gallery of Art with link to images of many of his paintings

Biography courtesy of the brilliant Wikipedia!