Paolo Veronese (1528 1588) was an Italian Renaissance painter and one of the great masters of the Venetian School. He was born Paolo Caliari in Verona but was called Veronese for his native city. The conservative local tradition of Verona remained fundamental to Veronese's style throughout his career. In his early works, Veronese combined elements of the local High Renaissance style with elements of mannerism, which included complex compositional schemes that often employ a so called worm's eye view perspective. He also used figures reminiscent of those of Italian artist Michelangelo. In 1553, he moved to Venice, where he blended brilliant, luminous contrasting hues in the Veronese tradition. His compositions often involve multileveled settings and dramatically steep perspectives. Veronese was seen as a master of the use of color and also excelled at illusionary compositions that extend the eye beyond the actual confines of the room ("Uffizi Paolo Veronese"). One of Veronese's major works is "Mars and Venus United by Love" from about 1570, currently displayed at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York.
The Renaissance is a period seen as a rebirth of learning on the classical model. The modern conception of the Renaissance actually derives from the nineteenth century in the work of Swiss historian Jacob Burckhardt, who published a pioneering work in 1860 in which he saw the Renaissance as almost purely cultural, as the work of a small Italian elite pioneering a new attitude toward human beings. They now saw human beings as people who had suddenly acquired a new consciousness of their own uniqueness and individuality. We now know that the Renaissance had three dimensions, historic, economic, and cultural. Historically, there was a new interest in the remote past, especially that of Greek and Roman antiquity, and also a tendency to reject the more recent past we now call the Middle Ages. This was fed in Italy by a ...