Fifteen Eighty Four

As the diminutive early Christian saint Giustina teeters between life and death in Paolo Veronese’s painting depicting her martyrdom, her gaze sets itself upon one of the most spectacular scenes of the heavens painted in all of the Renaissance. A massive altarpiece, the largest of the painter’s career, in it the skies have opened to reveal Christ in glory at the apex of the canvas, accompanied by the Virgin Mary and Saint John. Around them a celestial choir appear armed with musical instruments, and a host of delightfully chubby putti catapult themselves down from the heavens to reward the faith of Giustina with garlands of flowers, the palms of martyrdom and a gem-studded crown. Veronese imagines paradise as a realm of divine sound, radiant light and magnificent colour. Those who torment the virgin Giustina are for the most part unaware of the supernatural forces above them. Their attentions are focused squarely on this life, meaning that they are unable to perceive the ‘reality’ that is granted both to the stoical saint and to us, the spectators.

Veronese’s painting tells us much about contemporary attitudes towards dying and a good death, of the afterlife, miracles, the nature of faith and salvation and even of idolatry. These were all questions of vital importance in the wake of the century’s Reformations (both Protestant and Catholic) that transformed the daily lives of countless early modern Europeans and altered the physical appearance of the places that they inhabited. Legend held that the circumstances that brought about Giustina’s murder were her refusal to worship the pagan statue of Mars. In the painting, the saint is exhorted by her tormentors to shift her gaze to the gilded idol. A clever visual rebuttal of the Protestant accusation that Catholics worshipped images, here and in other contemporary works like it, idolatry is shown as a pagan practice, one that from its earliest times the Church, via the sacrifice of saints such as Giustina, had consistently rejected.

This painting also communicates something significant about creative agency in a period when the appropriate limits for artistic freedom were vigorously debated. Although it might be tempting to understand works such as this as straightforward pictorial responses to contextual factors, this would diminish the power early modern artists possessed in visually articulating belief, and by extension, shaping the spiritual world of their time. Here, Veronese depicted something unknowable: paradise, and he deployed a series of artistic devices to insist that a supernatural world existed, and that the visions and miracles of the saints were authentic. According to his biographer, Carlo Ridolfi, the artist believed that ‘images of saints and angels should be painted by excellent painters, since they should inspire admiration and sympathy.’ In Veronese’s view, a beautiful painting, skilfully realised, was far more effective at eliciting a compassionate response from the viewer than a mediocre one. To kindle an emotive reaction in the viewer was also the stated objective of the Catholic Church for devotional imagery, propounded in the final session of the Council of Trent (1545-63). Here, the power of such images was endorsed, described as capable of encouraging the faithful to ‘adore and love God, and to cultivate piety.’

Yet it was in the same period that many felt that the creative freedom exercised by artists was excessive and had to be somehow reined in. There was widespread criticism for those sacred images that featured details deemed to be irreverent, for the quantity of nude flesh on display, and for bewildering iconographic novelties. Veronese himself was infamously questioned by the Inquisition over his unusual refectory painting of the Last Supper in 1573 (subsequently Feast in the House of Levi). It is this contrast between a climate of censorship on the one hand and artistic innovation on the other that form the principal themes of the two sections of my book. Part one explores the nature of institutional artistic censorship in this period, analysing the various methods established for policing the decorum of images and their effectiveness. Part two explores the more generative relationship between spiritual change and the new iconographies that emerged. It examines how artists in Venice and its environs revisited and reinvented older visual practices, creating some of the most compelling works of the age. In the process, Venice emerges as a key site for the reform of art and architecture in the sixteenth century. This is especially the case for the latter decades of the century, when there was a huge increase in the embellishment of the city’s sacred edifices. Readers will learn about images of the body of Christ appearing in a chalice and comforted by angels in his tomb, of the saints facing their martyrdoms with an almost humorous nonchalance, of the fashion for ‘skyscraper’ tabernacles so gargantuan that complaints were made about the fact that were providing a welcoming home to stray cats, and of souls springing out of the purgatorial flames in one of the most extensive cycles to depict the dogma of its time.

What do I find most interesting about this period? It is certainly one of great artistic achievement, something that readers can appreciate from the numerous illustrations in the book. As an art historian, this is my first consideration. But I am also struck by the devotion that sacred images inspired in those who revered them, because the majority of the objects I analyse in the book were valued for reasons beyond their aesthetic qualities. Some were believed capable of working miracles, others were used to console the condemned as they faced the gallows, many were intended as a focus for the prayers of the faithful. What was impressed upon me as I completed this research was how invested early modern Venetians were in contributing to the splendour of their city. Touchingly, even in the poorest parishes, the laity gave generously to beautify the sacred buildings that they felt so attached to. Their visual culture was remarkably rich, sacred images were everywhere, and opinions on their necessity and whether or not they should be venerated were central to the Reformation debates that divided Europe and shaped the world we live in. I hope the reader also enjoys stepping into this dynamic, magical realm of images and learning more about one of the most consequential ages for the history of art.