17 April 2005
There is a small Veronese exhibition in the Correr. He is not a painter always to enthral me, but always there has been the great Hermes, Herse and Aglauros in the Fitzwilliam, exceptional, blue and silver, wonderful to me for forty years. At first this exhibition seems rather desperate, limited, with its climax fetched in from nearby, the freshly cleaned Europa, which is, of course, luscious. That will be in the last room, the inner room, well spotlit. But, when we get in there, there is first, opposite this, smaller, 109 by 90.2 cm, from Vienna, the Lucrezia. Yes. 1583. Five years before he died. A late work into which he was allowing explicit emotion. I have seen illustrations of this. Here it is.

Face downtilted and eyes lowered. Her lips are notably unmoved as the sword goes in. She hides the cold hurt. The lack of overt expression is not, at any rate, any longer just his style, the vestige of mannerism. It registers tragedy. True, but however true, the colours do still decide that she belongs to Veronese. The crackly old-gold cloth through which she pushes the blade. Then the main dress, thick cloth, viridian, Hooker's green, dark. Underneath this is lined pink, but you see only a slender thread of that at the hem, where it is caught up over the furniture, over the frame of the bed on which she ...